I went ahead and installed the newest version of mint.
I then reinstalled bitcoin-core through the ubuntu ppa.
Now when I'm trying to run armory it is asking for an installation directory..
does anyone one know where it gets installed through a PPA install?
or am I gonna have to download and install the linux zipped file?
When I installed the bitcoind package from the PPA in LM17, it installed to /usr/bin (so that's the installation directory for the PPA version).
My fresh install of Armory was able to automatically locate it there, so it's a little strange that your Armory didn't automatically locate it, but maybe you're not doing a fresh install?
Regardless of all of this, I'd just follow etotheipi's instructions, they look best all around to me.