Linux reinstall

My Olenka (the one running Linux Mint 8 Helena) started lagging terribly for some reason. I’m suspecting bug #12309, but I’ve decided to reinstall Mint anyway. At first I was thinking about downgrading — because the newer version 9 Isadora didn’t work out for me — it was saying something about the hard drive during boot, I don’t remember exactly what. And in version 7 Gloria there was still that X server under which the proprietary drivers for my ancient graphics card worked, and Compiz ran really nicely. However, just yesterday (or thereabouts) version 10 — Julia — came out. I’ll go with that one, give it a try. And specifically the GNOME edition. I thought about it — all I need from a computer is something to launch Firefox and a torrent client. So KDE or not KDE, what’s the difference? Alright then, let’s get started.