I'm all for an advanced guide, but there are some who want just the basics to get it up and running. From what little I've read mint is pretty easy and most windows like for us rookies
I thought we used to have a guide that was written by
@Vinska. I feel like my memory could be wrong though. I could not find it when I just looked.
If the optimizations I will be trying even increase ppd, I have not done any yet, I will be sharing. The guide will be for those comfortable enough with a linux terminal. I guess I could share some of what I plan on doing.
For example, I really like mint. But if you want to maximize ppd you want the latest kernal. Mint uses the long term support release so it is not ideal for maximizing your ppd. It has kernal 3.13 which is really old. The most recent kernal is 3.19. Just using that, I am told, should increase cpu performance a few percent.
Another thing I plan on trying is not using a desktop environment. I like Mate for a desktop. It uses about 1.5% of the cpu. So just running without a desktop I would get a 1.5% more ppd. Running without a desktop environment, I am told, should make the system faster overall making that maybe even upto 3% increase.
I have heard before that using a linux distro like Arch linux or Gentoo which compiles everything for your native hardware which can increase cpu performance by at least 10%. I am told you can get that same compiled beneifit from Ubuntu and Debian based distros. For those familiar with the linux terminal, you should know of apt for installing and updating linux with commands like "sudo apt-get install boinc-manager" and "apt-get update." Well apparently there is a program called apt-build that allows you to compile individual software or the whole system for greater performance. I plan on trying this one out.
There are a few other optimizations of which I don't really understand that I will not try to explain here. There are others that this "friend" has not shared with me yet. When I find some time to dedicate to trying out some new things with linux I will let you all know how it goes. I will also write a guide on how to do everything I did. I could easily add a quick and easy linux install guide like bluebumblebee just wrote too.
I have a few things I could add to improve what blue said too. I actually like conky way better than psensor. Conky allows you to display literally anything you want to know about your pc on your desktop. Cpu temps, cpu clocks, and even more mundane things like hdd temps. Whatever you feel you need. Psensor may be better on a system without a desktop environment like I am planning though. But if you have the desktop, give conky a try.
I am in no way a linux expert, I just have been playing and learning about it myself over the last couple years. I am where I feel comfortable, but some of the things I have said I will do will be pushing that comfort level.
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. Used laptop drives are cheap...)
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we celebrate it on another date here. 
