Then, too, there’s the ever-growing array of tiny Linux PCs such as the Raspberry Pi, the Cotton Candy, the Mele A1000, the Vivaldi tablet, and the MK802 micro-PC, to name just a few.

Linux Mint is my favorite desktop Linux. Thanks to Microsoft's Secure Boot implementation , however, installing Mint, or any other operating system, on a new Windows 8 PC is a royal pain in the rump.

Announced earlier this year, the fanless mini-PC has a $299 starting price and ships with a quad-core Intel Celeron processor and the latest flavor of Mint.