I currently have Peppermint OS installed on my netbook, which is great for netbooky things like being on the net. I'd like to keep it this way, but also want to use the netbook for productive matters, mostly to do with my work as a secondary school science teacher. Instead of just installing LibO or similar on peppermint, I'd love to keep it lightwieght and net-based and install a second OS to dual boot when I need it for more professional stuff.
I have used Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and UNR (which I really disliked) on the netbook before and all were pretty good. I'm wondering if debian would be worth a look?
Also, does anyone have any suggestions? I'm not fussy between XFCE, GNOME, KDE, or maybe even OpenBox. Mint interests me, but I'm having some trouble with it on my desktop at the moment.
TL;DR: Want a distro for netbook exclusively for work-stuff, no preference of DE, not Mint.