Open Source and Free Software

I'm an old gnome2 user so I gravitate to Mate.
My problem with mint, as childest as it is, is the green color so I never stay with it very long. Right now I'm working on ubuntu 13.10 with Mate and so far I'm liking it ok. I'm been using 10.04 for so long but its getting mighty long of tooth and I'm wanting to upgrade to something better, faster more secure. Not that I'm having security issues just that I can't seem to get past firefox 20 and I'd like too keep up with the newer versions as they come out.
I started this venture by installing ubuntu 13.10 gnome and then adding Mate but that didn't work out as I couldn't get my sound to work at all so I reinstalled ubuntu 13.10 the version with unity and then added Mate and thats where I'm at now. I've gotten a couple error messages so far but I think I can get them worked out. At any rate I have my drive with 10.04.4 on and I can and do go back to it from time to time.
My old computer is a dell dimension 4700 with a three gig processor with two gigs ram with an added sound card and video card. One of these days I'm going to upgrade this but as long as this thing chugs along I'll probably stick with it.

No way would I consider going back to microshaft and their products.