Should I wait for 13.04?

At the moment I have Mint on my computer, and I want to change back to Ubuntu, but with 13.04 coming so soon, should I install 12.10 and upgrade, or are there any advantages in waiting and doing a fresh install of 13.04?

If you have already decided to use Ubuntu, you should feel free to install Ubuntu 12.10, because you can upgrade to 13.04 when it comes out.

Assuming you wait for the actual release date to upgrade, most likely there will be no problems upgrading. I do recommend reading the release notes before upgrading, in case there are bugs that might affect the upgrade. (Similarly, I recommend reading the release notes before performing a fresh install, if you choose to do that.)

It's possible that a fresh install will work better than an upgrade, even if nothing is noted in the release notes about it. But if you have any preference at all, I recommend going with your preference. There's no strong reason to think a fresh install will work better, and if something goes wrong during the upgrade or afterwards, you can always just wipe the disk and perform a fresh install of 13.04!

You also have the options of:

• Sticking with 12.10 even after 13.04 is out (12.10 will be supported through April 2014).
• Installing 13.04 now, even though it is not yet released (please note that if you do this, you cannot get support for it here on Ask Ubuntu until it is released, but you can get support from a variety of other official Ubuntu help resources). You shouldn't do this unless you're prepared to face bugs, including crashes. Unless you know or want to learn how to report bugs, I recommend against using a development release of Ubuntu. But I've included this because it's one of your options. In my experience, 13.04 works pretty well now, but my experience with it is highly limited.