That was My reason: trying something new. However, I just can’t get Mint to easily accept minor configuration changes, such as easily recognizing resized partitions. Plus, I too can not get it to share folders with other machines no matter what I do. I finally resorted to keeping files I wished to share on an external HDD and plugging in the USB cable to the other machine to transfer them.
I played with Mint for a few days last week. I was able to mount directories on it from my server, just making the appropriate additions to /etc/fstab.
But if I’m not misktaken, I had to install NFS-utils from the repos first, as it was not installed by default.
Odd. I have network attached storage (go flex pro) on my network and I can use samba to open it and copy to/from it from dolphin. I’ve even mounted it on occasion under /mnt. I’ve used scp to copy files from my old mint laptop to the desktop. I’ve also used ssh to run remotely on it. I don’t claim to be an expert. ... Maybe just lucky?