The Perfect Desktop - Linux Mint 12 (Lisa)

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Linux Mint 12 (Lisa) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Linux Mint 12 is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that has lots of packages in its repositories (like multimedia codecs, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Skype, Google Earth, etc.) that are relatively hard to install on other distributions; it therefore provides a user-friendly desktop experience even for Linux newbies.
I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

To fully replace a Windows desktop, I want the Linux Mint 12 desktop to have the following software installed:

Graphics:

The GIMP - free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop
Shotwell Photo Manager - full-featured personal photo management application for the GNOME desktop
Google Picasa - application for organizing and editing digital photos

Internet:

Firefox
Opera
Chromium - Google's open-source browser
Flash Player
FileZilla - multithreaded FTP client
Thunderbird - email and news client
Evolution - combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions
aMule - P2P file sharing application
Transmission BitTorrent Client - Bittorrent client
Vuze - Java Bittorrent client
Pidgin - multi-platform instant messaging client
Skype
Google Earth
Xchat IRC - IRC client
Gwibber Social Client - open-source microblogging client (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

Office:

LibreOffice Writer - replacement for Microsoft Word
LibreOffice Calc - replacement for Microsoft Excel
Adobe Reader
GnuCash - double-entry book-keeping personal finance system, similar to Quicken
Scribus - open source desktop publishing (DTP) application

Sound & Video:

Amarok - audio player
Audacity - free, open source, cross platform digital audio editor
Banshee - audio player, can encode/decode various formats and synchronize music with Apple iPods
MPlayer - media player (video/audio), supports WMA
Rhythmbox Music Player - audio player, similar to Apple's iTunes, with support for iPods
gtkPod - software similar to Apple's iTunes, supports iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod photo, and iPod mini
XMMS - audio player similar to Winamp
dvd::rip - full featured DVD copy program
Kino - free digital video editor
Sound Juicer CD Extractor - CD ripping tool, supports various audio codecs
VLC Media Player - media player (video/audio)
Totem - media player (video/audio)
Xine - media player, supports various formats; can play DVDs
Brasero - CD/DVD burning program
K3B - CD/DVD burning program
Multimedia Codecs

Programming:

KompoZer - WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Macromedia Dreamweaver, but not as feature-rich (yet)
Bluefish - text editor, suitable for many programming and markup languages
Eclipse - Extensible Tool Platform and Java IDE

Other:

VirtualBox - lets you run your old Windows desktop as a virtual machine under your Linux desktop, so you don't have to entirely abandon Windows
TrueType fonts
Java
Read-/Write support for NTFS partitions

All desired applications are available in the Linux Mint repositories.
As you might have noticed, a few applications are redundant, for example there are two CD/DVD burning applications in my list (Brasero, K3B). If you know which one you like best, you obviously don't need to install the other applications, however if you like choice, then of course you can install both. The same goes for music players like Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox, XMMS or browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chromium).
I will use the username howtoforge in this tutorial. Please replace it with your own username.

2 Installing The Base System

The installation of the base system is easy as 1-2-3 because the Linux Mint installer doesn't offer a lot of options to choose from, so you cannot go wrong.
Download the Linux Mint 12 DVD iso image from http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php, burn it onto a DVD, and boot your computer from it (please note that I used the DVD iso image instead of the CD iso image; the DVD comes with some additional software such as Java or VLC that get installed by default, whereas they are missing if you install from the CD; if you use the CD, you must install these applications from the Synaptic Package Manager):

The system boots and starts a desktop that is run entirely in the RAM of your system (the Linux Mint installation DVD is also a Live-DVD) without changing anything on your hard disk. This has the advantage that you can test how Linux Mint works on your hardware before you finally install it.
This is how the Linux Mint desktop looks. Double-click the Install Linux Mint icon on the desktop to start the installation to the hard drive:

The installer starts. First, select your language:

On the next screen you see a few requirements for the Linux Mint 12 installation (the system should have at least 5.8GB available drive space and should be connected to the Internet). Click on Continue:

Now we come to the partitioning of our hard disk. Usually Erase disk and install Linux Mint is a good choice, unless you need custom partitions and know what you're doing. Erase disk and install Linux Mint will create one big / partition for us. If you already had another operating system installed on your hard drive, select the option Replace ... with Linux Mint, which does the same as above: