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Mint 18.2: Still the best Linux desktop
- grey-sunshine 9y agoIs this for real? Do people really use Mint?
- dnautics 9y agoMint's pretty great. I use it because it's basically a lightweight Ubuntu.
- eklavya 9y agoWhat does it remove from ubuntu?
- mysterydip 9y agoHow does it compare with xubuntu (xfce) or lubuntu (lxde)?
- anbotero 9y agoThat’s what I setup for my siblings whenever I can. I’m starting to get bored of doing full upgrades from scratch for them, but I only do them once or twice a year. For Archlinux users like myself of course I could care less about Mint, but it cannot be denied that “normal” users appreciate intuitive and good-looking interfaces.
- jcoffland 9y agoInstall Debian instead and you will never have to do a "full upgrade" again.
- VonGuard 9y agoJust installed my second Mint machine for desktop work yesterday. Really cannot complain. The difference in desktop responsiveness between this 7 year old Mint machine versus a brand new PC or Mac is night and day. Every modern OS needs a major GUI refactoring, I swear. It takes a full minute for my Mac to open control panels. Mint can do it in microseconds... Silly that this is the case.
- unethical_ban 9y agoIt's what I installed on my parents' computer. Cinnamon by default has the Windows look and feel; it comes with codecs available out of box, and it just works.
- Glyptodon 9y agoI think the article is over the top, but in terms of thoughtless lowest common denominator user experience I don't think there's a better choice. I use it on several machines accordingly.
- dudul 9y agoI don't know about now, but a year or so ago it was the most popular distro yeah. Elementary OS seems to be on the path to take over for best desktop distro though.
- khedoros1 9y agoI don't know if "people" do. I have since about 2009, although not exclusively, and using Mate instead of Cinnamon. I think it's funny that they mention running it on a "vintage" 2011 Lenovo. I've got it running on a 2009 Lenovo Netbook and a 2002 IBM R-series laptop too.
- RaleyField 9y ago> I've been using Linux Mint for years now as my main desktop. It's amazing considering he signed himself under article reporting Mint containing malware.[1] Fool me once.. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/has-your-linux-mint-desktop-been-hacked/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/has-your-linux-mint-desktop-bee... EDIT: I dug a few more. http://www.infoworld.com/article/2703044/does-linux-mint-need-better-security.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/2703044/does-linux-mint-nee... https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1osyn5/linux_mint_creator_clement_lefebvre_responds_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1osyn5/linux_mint_cr... Just stay away from this train wreck of mismanagement.
- leeoniya 9y agoManjaro (Arch) w/xfce is pretty great, too. https://manjaro.org/ https://manjaro.org/
- interfixus 9y agoIt is indeed. It finally made a Debian defector out of me.
- jnbiche 9y agoEh, I don't know. I like Arch but it can be a lot of work. For my main dev machine, I use Ubuntu to just get shit done, particularly given the fact that many open source projects have a Debian package if not an Ubuntu PPA. Arch did make me a bit more open-minded about systemd. I still think it's a bad move architecturally, but it does make a lot of things more convenient.
- jcoffland 9y agoThere is very little difference between Mint and straight Debian. I prefer Debian because it's more stable and has a continuous rolling release cycle. Ubuntu pissed a lot of people of when they forced Unity down our throats. This is why many moved to Mint in the first place.
- frik 9y agoMaybe it's time to label "Ubuntu Mate" as the new default Ubuntu, and the current one Ubuntu Gnome3. Ubuntu Mate comes with the nice Gnome 2 look&feel but based on GTK3.
- rlpb 9y ago...when they forced Unity down our throats. Alternative desktop environments such as Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Kubuntu have always been available on Ubuntu. Unity was never forced down anyone's throat; it was made the default; that's all.
- sandGorgon 9y agoThe desktop that has the maximum number of core developers - including kernel, desktop, ux and userland is Fedora. And it shows.
- old-gregg 9y agoMeh... and this army of developers still hasn't figured out how to ship a distro with a proper font rendering. Having to do [1] is insane. And every time you bring this up, there's always "looks fine to me" or "a matter of taste" argument. Nope it's not. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/5ea3bx/font_rendering_in_fedora_25/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/5ea3bx/font_renderi...
- vetinari 9y agoI understand your frustration, but the difference between freetype and freetype-freeworld is exactly one define: FT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_RENDERING I'm sure you know why Fedora didn't enable that. It's not because they wouldn't want it.
- MisterKent 9y agoSorry, I don't know why. Care to explain?
- schoen 9y agoApparently https://freetype.org/patents.html https://freetype.org/patents.html
- ZenoArrow 9y agoDidn't know about that. Thanks for the link. When is the last of the ClearType patents due to expire? Is the patent expiry date based on the Publication date/Filing date/Priority date + a fixed number of years?
- Mikeb85 9y agoI've never understood the love for Mint. All it is is Ubuntu with a Gnome 2 style desktop and things already configured for Linux newbies. I installed it long ago and it was way buggier than Ubuntu. Right now on openSUSE Tumbleweed with Gnome Shell, couldn't be happier. And if I were to give a vote for most 'desktop ready' system, I'd go with Fedora (the only thing I dislike about openSUSE is how PackageKit and YAST are always fighting over updates and stuff, they need to just get rid of one, but then again the thing I love about openSUSE is YAST).
- leggomylibro 9y agoSince 17 or so it's seemed extremely stable to me. It also tends to have drivers for just about anything, but that's also true of Ubuntu. It is sort of configured for Linux newbies, but it's also configured to just be A Desktop with as little crud as possible, besides that necessary to maintain its broad compatibility and ease of installation. Its popularity came around the time that Canonical started doing things like inserting a 'shopping lens search' into default installations' desktop UI, pushing insane and bulky window managers, bucking Wayland to make their own X replacement, and generally making people uneasy about their monopoly on 'easy' Linux OSes. So Mint is a solid 'No-Frills Give Me A Linux Now' installation. Sometimes you don't want to spend hours tinkering, okay? The last time I installed Fedora (21 and 22), it was consistently a ghastly, slow and buggy nightmare that approached a stage 3 Gentoo install by the time something functional was up and running. I was floored at how bad it was on such a popular distro, and once installed, it was also a lot of effort to get simple things like yum working properly. It could have just been me, but this was fairly standard hardware; I came away with the impression that it was not even close to an easy or pleasant install experience for a broad range of users, and nothing I'd be interested in using again.
- bitL 9y agoIt kept "normal" desktop paradigm when everyone around was submitting to (IMO insane) design experiments everywhere. Then it was the only Linux distro that was handling HiDPI correctly and made it look better than Windows on retina displays.
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- neverminder 9y agoBest distro is the one people complain most about because they use it most. That would be vanilla Ubuntu. Also you have to appreciate the irony now that they are returning to Gnome there are people out there unhappy about that just as there were people unhappy about switch to Unity.
- bitL 9y agoSome issues with 18.2: - Nemo has huge issues handling icon spacing in HiDPI mode; this is a major regression and the reason I only upgraded one of my computers to 18.2 until this is resolved - Cinnamon still freezes/stops responding/windows disappear with alpha barely above 0 on Intel HD either randomly or when switching to another logged in user
- stryk 9y agoI remember reading (this was around when version 17 launched) about a couple serious issues people had with Mint. Have these been fixed/addressed?: 1) the mixing and/or renaming of Ubuntu and Debian packages - resulting in the maintainers just blacklisting upstream packages when something breaks because of this (even security updates! which, if I remember correctly, were set to 'optional' by default which is just stupid) 2) Mint, at least at the time, didn't publish any CVEs (what the hell is with that? seems nutty)
- jethro_tell 9y agowhat about the time that they published ISOs with a back door for a while? That was a classic, aslo handled really well as I'm sure you can imagine.
- EddieSpeaks 9y agoObligatory "HYUK HYUK HYUK, WINDOZE IS SO BAD LINUX IS MUCH BETTTER HYUK HYUK" comment
- shady-lady 9y agoNo, it's not. Used it for years due to the hype. Switched to Fedora & Gnome - delighted ever since
- dunpeal 9y agoFor an experienced Ubuntu user, who knows how to configure their system to their liking, including switching the DE if desired - what exactly would be the benefits of migrating to Mint?
- dnautics 9y agoNot having to do all that.... I wouldn't migrate to it just to migrate. Migrate to it when you would have migrated anyway.
- dunpeal 9y ago> Not having to do all that... I maintain a script that configures a pristine installation of Xubuntu to my exact preferences. Migrating to Mint wouldn't save me the trouble of writing / updating the script. While I'm sure Mint works out of the box (IMHO, so does Ubuntu), it won't bundle the exact shortcuts and settings tailored to my workflow. I don't even need to switch desktop, I just use Xubuntu that runs XFCE out of the box (and kindly discards the Canonical commercial / user-intelligence "features"). Not sure why a programmer would need anything more than XFCE as their DE, but you can also get an Ubuntu "flavour" (i.e. edition) for any of the popular DEs, including Mate. > Migrate to it when you would have migrated anyway. Indeed, I suppose Mint would be at the top of my alternative list if I absolutely had to get off Ubuntu for any reason (which seems implausible). Otherwise, seems like it's a more newbie-friendly (and somewhat bloated) rendition of Ubuntu.
- Lagged2Death 9y agoMint 18.2 ran like a champ on my work desktop. This is an older Dell XPS 8300. It has a 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, 8GBs of RAM, and an AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card. This fellow has a very different idea of what an "older" computer is than I do.
- pjmlp 9y agoNot really, I am pretty happy with Ubuntu in what concerns using GNU/Linux. No longer have any patience to play around with distributions.
- thisisadumb 9y agoArch Linux is best Linux!