Need advice Distro needed, no gaming needed.

I normally am a pretty big fan of Fedora, but F22 is.....err....."lacking in polish", shall we say? Also, Fedora is really focused on Gnome, and KDE doesn't get the attention it deserves (I say that from the standpoint of someone who uses KDE rather than Gnome on Fedora).

I think I would go with allenskd's recommendation of Kubuntu.

If you aren't looking to do any gaming, the Nuveau drivers will probably be more than adequate for your nVidia card needs.

ORLY?! Interesting that the nouveau drivers are causing you issues, as I was under the impression they had progressed to a pretty solid platform as long as you stayed away from 3D.

In any case, agreed that the stable nvidias are USUALLY the best approach if they are easy to install.

I've finally decided Mint is my favorite distro "hands down"!
I have played with Ubuntu a few times and end up frustrated because I can't find something.

Mint is great because they have themes where you can make the window decorations look like Windows 7
Mint also comes with a Driver Manager and downloads the Nvidia drivers with a single click.
I constantly have success with Mint every time I use it.
Now I'm running it on 2 desktops, 1 all-in-one touchscreen desktop, 4 laptops and my desktop at work.

I still use Fedora on my server and Ubuntu on my chromebook.

George, whatever distro you end up with, never fear. There are plenty of folks here to help out if you run into a problem, and there are no reasons at all to think about changing your nVidia card. It will work fine.

Hey, if we were able to get Daniel running, you'll be a slam-dunk, lolz.

Yeah, I knew you didn't want to game...
I'm not sure what everyone hated about Gnome, but I use Cinnamon Desktop and it absolutely ROCKS!
I don't know if its based on Gnome?
Since I've mostly been a Windows users, Mint Cinnamon really makes the most sense. It has the Start Menu with categories for all of your applications and places. You can even fully customize the menu!
You can right-click any folder/file and change permissions or the icon
You can make quick shortcuts to programs/folders/files by right-clicking
The System Settings is very similar to Control Panel
Even the Panel at the bottom (Taskbar) can be moved anywhere and customized like a Quickstart bar and Systems tray.

With Ubuntu and Unity I can figure out how to do most of these things, but with Fedora I can mostly find all the programs I need and place shortcuts in the panel at the top.

ThunderRd is right!
Any distro you choose, we can help you!
Also, try creating a USB drive with Linux on it, then you can "trial" any distro you want without disturbing Windows.
Universal USB Installer

Use this HP USB tool to format your flash drive
HP USB Tool

The easiest/cheapest way is to go to Walmart and pick up a 4 GB or 8 GB flash drive.
If you are still using Windows then use the above HP USB tool to format the flash drive.
Then download the distro you want to use and use Universal USB tool to install it.

Most of the popular distro's have a "live disc" version where you can just run it off a flash drive and play around with Linux.
I've even been able to apply extra space with Universal USB tool and then update Mint on the flash drive its-self.
Anyways, trialing Linux this way allows you to play with hardware/software/internet/some games/etc without installing it on your hard drive.

If the desktop manager is the deal-breaker for you, ironically you can install other desktop environments with your package manager.
For example, you can install Ubuntu 14 and it comes with Unity desktop. You can use Synaptic Package Manager to install Cinnamon desktop, Gnome desktop, KDE desktop and many others.
Then when you login just select the session you want to try.

I don't think you can do all of this with a Flash Drive, but once you install the Distro you want, then play around with other desktops.

My limited views of Desktop Environments:
Unity - Tablet like functionality desktop (top panel/left dashboard)
Unity 2D - Classic Linux/OSX desktop (top panel)
Cinnamon - Windows like desktop (bottom panel/menu)
Gnome - Classic Linux/OSX desktop (top panel/left dashboard)
KDE - Windows like desktop (bottom panel/menu)
Xfce - Classic Linux/OSX desktop (top panel)
Mate - Classic Linux/OSX desktop (top panel)
LXDE - Windows like desktop (bottom panel/menu)
Openbox - Blank Slate (no desktop, no panels, no menu's)

I think you have to forget your past experiences with Gnome and Linux in general. Things have come so far, even in the 7 or 8 years I have used it extensively, that 15 year old memories are moot. As far as the environment goes, there are many, many choices. Everyone has his preference. I happen to be partial to Xfce, it's light, fast, and simple, but on my main machine I don't even use a desktop environment, just a tiling window manager (Xmonad) without all the bells and whistles of a DE.

As for why some folks didn't like Gnome, it was mostly because Gnome acquired a reputation of getting too bloated, and having too many dependencies. On some equipment, this made it slow and somewhat clunky, but IDT that is the case as much anymore. That is why I grew to like Xfce; it never had those problems. In any case, don't think about that. Try them and see for yourself. If Gnome is sluggish on your box, try Xfce or another, light DE.

The *major* DEs are all 'windows-like' enough to be intuitive for former windows users. Bare WMs are not. They require more experience, and can be tough to set up. The DEs are all packaged to be easy setups.

For you, George, I think that you would find all of the major DEs easy to use, but you'll be able to establish a preference after you try them out. Just get in the water, and we'll help you swim.

Very good points!
I've come to not like Ubuntu's Unity Desktop because it is very sluggish on older systems with integrated video chipsets. The only fallback is Unity 2D which is nothing like Unity 3D.
Mint Cinnamon seems to run on anything... old servers, old laptops, Chromebooks, you name it

I'm going to talk about George as if he's not here.

I really, really want him to have a good Linux experience. He's an asset, and I want to get him over to this site posting full time like he used to on the old site.

It looks like he's now getting ready to finally commit to the change. I'm looking forward to hearing from him regularly again, and I might even give him a venue for it : something like 'Cloaster's Pearls of Wisdom' [or something like that]

Come on George, give this a real try, learn to love it, and you get your own forum to opine in. We "don't even need no steenkin case badges" to do it, lolz

Yeah, that would be awesome to have more of the AOA gang here!

George, do you have any really specific programs you "need" to use that might be Windows dependent?

Daniel was rather partial to Gnome 2 (for that matter, so am I). Gnome 3 went and pretty much destroyed everything that made Gnome 2 good and replaced it with something that tried to be all things to all users, and failed so badly that I hurl every time I try to use it. And I have tried. I really, really have. Partly because Gnome is Fedora's DE of choice.

But
I
just
can't
do
it.

Gnome 3 fails so badly, in fact, that the Cinnamon folks took the Gnome 2 codebase, forked it, improved it, and that is what became Cinnamon, which Daniel also likes quite well.

That said, although I like KDE I'm not overly impressed with the recent Plasma 5 update.

The last iterations of Gnome 2 were actually not too bad, IMO, for performance. As for the dependencies and bloat thing, well that doesn't really matter any more, now that systemd is here. It has dependencies on bloody EVERYTHING. Which means that as soon as you have booted, you have pretty well loaded the entire hard drive.