I would also recommend fedora and Debian. I think i would say Debian over fedora as fedora is on a 6month release cycle and has some issues with video drivers at the moment. From an user standpoint I feel debian has better/moreuptodate documentation but lacks in raid support.
Mint is based off ubuntu/debian & Ubuntu is based off debian. So debian would be more in line with your experience sofar. I currently use fedora 22 workstation with kde plasma desktop. Its a great experience but has its issues. Jmokney runs great I get about double the performance my windows box does even though i have worse hardware in my linux rig.
Unrelated
Linux rig
AMD-8350
8g ram 1600
1tb seagate (it was cheap)
gtx 560 2gig(non ti)
windows rig
i-5 2500k
16g ram 1600
2x wd RE4 500g (raid 0)
gtx 680 4g (most powerful kelper gpu)