Why people like Linux Mint so much? What LM users have to say about it?

[mudassir]

Linux Mint is one of the most stable and popular Operating Systems for personal computers with a large user-base of personal, professional and business users. This Linux distribution is the best choice for those moving from Windows or MacOS as it offers extremely user-friendly interface and classic desktop experience. It's also among the fastest running operating systems with ability to run smoothly without consuming too much system resources. And the best thing is that Linux Mint is highly customizable and free to use.


Above are just a few lines I had to say about Linux Mint but the actual user experience is far more pleasant. Let's see what other users of Linux Mint says about it. This thread I would like to dedicate to all Linux Mint users to share their experience with Linux Mint.

• What you like about the OS?

• Why you prefer to use it?

• How you switched?

There are about 41257 registered users on this forum at the time updating this thread and plenty of guests. All sharing their experience of using Linux Mint in different posts, I see enormous topics with lengthy text. Let's make one motivational thread for people who might want to migrate to Linux Mint. Please share your experience and try to make your input as short as possible. Thank you.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I'm surprised this thread isn't already full of responses.

The two primary reasons I switched to Linux Mint four years ago was I was fed up with Microsoft's shenanigans and NO way was I going to downgrade to Win 8.x. Mint Cinnamon was the one recommended the most for Windows refugees.

There are a lot of things I like about Mint. Mostly, it doesn't spy on me and it's reliable. I own my installation, not rent it, and it doesn't own me. It is less hardware "particular" than Windows. The few objections I had were pretty much all solved by learning new software and adopting new workflows. These are also the reasons I prefer it.

I started the switching process by replacing my some of productivity programs with ones that had versions for both Windows and Linux. This gave me time to get familiar with the new programs before I made the switch so I could hit the ground running (OK, waddling; I'm old) when I made the switch. I went to various forums (this one was the most beneficial and is now the only one I go to) to learn more about how to make the switch and use Mint. When I did pull the trigger in Mint, I installed it on an older notebook I had so I would still have a computer I could use to get help when I borked the Linux installation (which I succeeded doing several times). I was surprised how quickly I got familiar enough with Mint to make it my daily driver and, shortly before Win 7's EOL, I went full time with Mint and gave MS the bird.

My only serious complaint is with software and hardware developers that can't be bothered to make versions of their software that is compatible with Linux (or are too incompetent).

[CloneWerks]

For myself, every Windows update was making way too many unnecessary little changes especially to the UI. It was like being nibbled to death by guppies and I was sick of it. Patches for security are one thing. Patches that constantly reset your browser preferences and add pop ups "encouraging" you to use other Microsoft products... nope, done.

After I'd been running Mint for a while, I started migrating some of the "older folks" I support (parents, friends parents, etc) and other than some calls because they were stopped dead in their tracks (mostly trying to do something they shouldn't have been doing in the first place) my overall "tech support" call volume from the folks dropped by about 80%.

[ytis]

Well the upside of Mint is that it breaks stereotypes. Most Windows users (I used to think so too) think that Linux is some kind of server software that has been somehow squeezed onto a home PC. All that's out there is an free but ugly parody of paid software.
I'd have to say that was true in 2004. But things have changed and now people who have been knocked out of the saddle by the new Windows 11 release are coming to Mint and feeling at home surprised at how much better it is.
Everything here is made to work out of the box with no unnecessary surprises.
I think that anyone who wants to get to know Linux should start with Mint.

I guess the main drawback is that it has too tight pants for those who want more. There's too much of Ubuntu in it. Also the repository supplies such junk that it's easier to go to the site and download the deb package. Or if one wants to get into the KDE ecosystem, one will have to find something else.

It seems to me that the next stop after Mint is Arch. Just to see if user is ready to build his own system. If not, then go back to Mint or put something medium like Fedora.

[magic_missile]

As a former Windows 7 user and gamer... some of my reasons are these (in no particular order):

• It feels like Windows from its golden era
• The cinnamon theme (and wallpapers) is really nice, and many useful/important things can be done from the GUI instead of the terminal
• Gaming on it is very good, and if you encounter the problems you can just update your kernel
• It's pretty lightweight and it works well on my old & weak system
• I don't have to tinker with it a lot, which is great, because I hate troubleshooting
• If problems arise, the fact that it's based on Ubuntu helps me find answers more easily
• Drivers & software installation through the GUI is very easy
• It's popular enough to assume it will still exist years from now, and the community seems really nice/helpful
• Flatpak is already installed
• Timeshift is a very useful backup tool, if you actually make a restore point (I sometimes forget to make one)

Some things I'd personally like to be added are:

• Include WINE + Bottles/Lutris/HGL in Mint by default
• Replace the default Sound applet with Sound150, since it's basically Sound, but improved
• In the update manager, a GUI choice for whether you install flatpaks as user or system (right now I have to do this through the terminal)
• A GUI option to quickly export/import your flatpaks in a .zip along with all their preferences in one click (would be so great for backups & data/app migration to another PC)
• A "Driver Extras" .iso and "Software Extras" .iso, containing various important drivers, codecs, and misc. software like image editors, password managers, archiving software, game emulators, and so on, all of them for the purpose of offline installation (will be very handy in the future on old PCs)

[spamegg]

Might be a minority opinion here, I don't like or dislike Mint much either way, for me it just works. I switched from Win7 and did not feel an improvement or the opposite.

I don't care about a distro itself, its features, packages etc. all that much. To me most distros are very similar. They are all Debian / Fedora / Arch in some way. There are a few unique / special distros but I don't really care.

I care a lot more about the people behind the distro, what kind of people they are, what kind of thinking / approach / attitude they have, how they interact with / listen to their users, and the community.

Mint devs don't seem to be chasing the latest, coolest things, don't make big changes; instead do slow and small improvements. For example they didn't jump on the Wayland bandwagon too quickly, but also did not listen to the loud "abandon Ubuntu switch to Debian" protesters either. They disabled Snaps, but still continued using the best parts of Ubuntu to their advantage. They make good, balanced decisions for the most part, and listen to users. I can talk to them directly, report bugs etc. very easily.

That's what I care about.

[wwblm]

It just works along with about 41,000 other reasons. Mint is supposed to be the most Windows like -- whatever that means. Super menu, Windows menu, taksbar, panel? I don't know. I just want to use a computer to get things done, learn things, or be entertained. For thirty plus years that meant Mac for the most part. Although, that was split into two distinct ecosystems the later based on BSD Unix so perhaps that made the Mint transition easier? For the most part, whenever I used Windows, it seemed like the Windows OS was deliberately designed to frustrate or annoy me.

Out of the box I found Mint easy to use to accomplish almost anything I wanted to accomplish. This list is the 41,000 other reasons that make Mint such an excellent system. The more I interact here or just try to learn how to accomplish something the more I end up learning and finding better ways to accomplish what I want to accomplish. My current Mint Cinnamon setup has some Mac OS theming and Plank so it may be somewhat like a Mac but of course it also has the Super Menu, customized to my taste, that makes it somewhat Windows like as well. It may be a little like either OS and at the same time is actually better than either.

Paying the Apple premium used to make sense for me. Those days are long past. Not only is Mint good enough to be as productive for what I want to do but Apple keeps getting more and more aggressive at destroying perfectly functioning equipment and requiring you pay them more and more money just to be able to continue to work. Mint works wonderfully well on hardware that Apple expects to be E-Waste for which they escape all responsibility for! An added bonus is that there are lots of other solid systems that don't carry the fruit company premium that Mint shines on as well!

[all41]

My only serious complaint is with software and hardware developers that can't be bothered to make versions of their software that is compatible with Linux.

I'm with you here 100%
I predict little change for us though

[Lady Fitzgerald]

My only serious complaint is with software and hardware developers that can't be bothered to make versions of their software that is compatible with Linux.

I'm with you here 100%
I predict little change for us though

Sad but true, at least in my lifetime.

[ivar]

• What you like about the OS?

• Why you prefer to use it?

• How you switched?

I really like how Mint stays out of my way - while Microsoft seemingly goes out of its way to find new ways to shove ads and nagscreens in my face

I use it for all my home use, work is still mostly windows. It just works so I wont have to fix computers when I'm not at work, lol!

I switched close to 3 years ago - my win10 laptop lost its fan bearing and I got tired of the noise. Found an old lenovo laptop in the scrap pile at work , installed Mint 20.0 on it. And forced myself to use it instead of the win10 machine. Took a week or 2 to get past 30 years of windows muscle memory

[mudassir]

After using MS products personally and professionally for more than 26 year, I tried Linux Mint as an alternative to Windows 7. As MS started imposing forced updates to the users and converting their O/S into a spyware and a beast to consume system resources. Like, the other (fruit named) company, MS also forced their consumers to trash perfectly working computers and keep investing money on new hardware in order to run their OS. The worst thing to me were the frequent stupid & frustrating changes to Interface

My first thought was to try Linux Mint because of it's sleek interface while the interface of most other distros looked weird or mimicking Mac. And my first experience was awesome.... I really liked Linux Mint just upon my first boot because:

• It was much much faster than Windows

• Running smooth while consuming less than half of the RAM and CPU compared to Windows

• The interface was really awesome, and highly customizable.

• It was packed with all the basic utilities, disk tools, management applications

• The File Manager looked complete and capable.

• Installing applications was super easy with The Software Manager

• Themes section was packed with cool color schemes and Icon packs with the ability to download more

• Unlike Windows, documents, downloads, music, pictures can be stored to separate Home partition

• I could run almost every Windows application on Linux Mint using Wine

• Office Suite, Media Players, Picture Viewers / Editors, Firefox and email Client came pre-installed

• It was super secure without spying on me

• And above all, the community, forum, the people behind it are always there to help if we stuck somewhere

I can do everything on Linux Mint I used to do on Windows. I removed windows on my second installation of LM as I got no reason to go back to it. To me, LM is a perfect operating system for home, study, entertainment and business. You just have to choose the correct application to accomplish your everyday tasks.

Should I say more? Well, yeah I can but there must be something left for people to experience themselves

[Hoser Rob]

Many Mint users are pretty new to Linux. Mint is good at attracting new users, and it is indeed very well suited to them. So there are a lot of honeymoons going on. With no viruses.

[Coffeeee]

Using linux ~14 years
After Ubuntu switched to Unity/Gnome 3 I switched to Cinnamon after much distro hopping. The next time I installed an OS on any PC, it's Mint Cinnamon.

Mint Cinnamon layout can be customised. Rarely breaking applets. I hate rounded corners so I use legacy themes.

I want to reduce mouse travel distance so I move panel to top of screen and window buttons left. I move hamburger menu left in firefox. Hot Corners.

I use legacy window applets. It's faster. (yes you can drag and drop them, reorganise)

Cinnamon is easy and comfortable. Excellent design. I've tested other desktops for months and always came back to cinnamon.

KDE does have some good customisation but I dislike many KDE core software. Xfce is fun to play with if you have time.

Mint being based on Ubuntu has the advantage of deb packages available for most software.

Mint makes sane choices.

[mudassir]

Many Mint users are pretty new to Linux. Mint is good at attracting new users, and it is indeed very well suited to them. So there are a lot of honeymoons going on. With no viruses.

I've been married for 11 years but could not get it literally... how could someone have honeymoon with an operating system

[Human_63]

I like Mint because it's stable and robust, and it just plain works. I started playing with Linux about 15 years ago (hard to believe), but it was always on secondary computers--and pretty shabby ones at that. Although I could be productive with the various other Linux distros I've used (OpenSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, Xubuntu), I never really felt like any of them were good enough to fully replace my main computer, which for most of that time was a Mac of some description. At some point in all that, I switched to Mint, and suddenly Linux began to look more viable, severely outdated hardware notwithstanding. After a few years away from Linux, I somewhat impulsively decided to plunge back in last fall, but with better hardware this time. It was still an experiment, but I quickly called it a success--and myself a convert. I'm using my Linux laptops daily and seldom even thinking about what operating system I"m on. I'm just using the computer intuitively and getting stuff done. I even took it to work one day and used it all day in place of my employer-supplied Windows laptop. Nobody even knew, and it felt so natural, I barely considered the fact that I was using a different operating system from everyone else. Even though using Linux almost exclusively is still kind of a roguish thing to do, I feel like my latest foray into Linux Mint has proven that it is truly ready for prime time. Now, if the rest of the world would just wake up and realize that.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Many Mint users are pretty new to Linux. Mint is good at attracting new users, and it is indeed very well suited to them. So there are a lot of honeymoons going on. With no viruses.

I've been married for 11 years but could not get it literally... how could someone have honeymoon with an operating system

It was a metaphor.

[Neophyte]

1.) User Friendly
2.) Cinnamon feels familiar to Windows users, unlike some other distros that go out of their way just to be "different" from Windows, regardless of whether it is "better or not"
3.) Friendly & Helpful community
4.) flatpaks built right into the software manager by default

Proton is also a real game changer since most games now work on Linux too. The only program I still can't use in Linux at all is CSP.

[happnatious1]

A computer is a tool, like a hammer.
Microsoft keeps changing the shape and color of my hammer, sometimes mid swing.
It makes it very hard to bang in a nail let alone build a house.

drax.png (148.5 KiB) Viewed 2063 times

[MurphCID]

Let me see why do I like Mint:

Hmmmm. Ok, here are my thoughts:
1) It installs easily.
2) It finds my printers and installs them automatically
3) Software (flatpaks) are updated with regular .deb packages
4) Cinnamon fits my mental "map" of how a DE should work.
5) New Cinnamon looks nice (I am a font and clean icon snob).
6) Stable
7) Allows me to install more modern kernels and run them without crashing constantly
8 ) To install Mint on a new system, or do a clean installation on a current computer takes me about 45 minutes total. Total, that includes all software I use installed, configured, files added, DE look with themes and ready to use.
9) Wireless connectivity is excellent and few issues with WiFi cards.
10) I can install it on a spare laptop or someone elses laptop and give them Cinnamon Mint and I have almost NO tech support questions, other than the usual; "Can I use Photoshop, iTunes, etc?" Or is "X" available in the software center? 95% of the time it is. I have never had someone I gave a Mint installed laptop, tell me "I want to go back to Windows". The usual response is: "Why did I not know about this Linux stuff years ago?"

I have used and always come back to MInt:
1) Mandrake Linux (my very first Linux distro Mandrake 7.0)
2) Mageia
3) Fedora
4) Manjaro
5) MX Linux
6) POP!_OS
7) Ubuntu
8 ) LMDE

I have tried to install and could not make them work:
1) Slackware
2) Arch

I might be unfaithful for a little while, but I always come back to Mint.

[brlfq]

I've been a Windows user since 3.1 and currently have a gaming PC with 10 on it. I use it only to game.

Because Microsoft is Microsoft I moved to a Mac Mini a few years ago for regular computing. Currently it's a Mac Mini M2 Pro that easily runs three 32 inch 4K monitors for my daily tasks

For many years I was also a PCLinuxOS user with KDE. It worked really well but I started having issues with KDE, updates causing loss of system and then reinstallation was required (a few times). I found that frustrating so I went looking for something else.

I also wanted to move away from a dedicated traditional desktop sized Linux computer to a small, Mac Mini sized PC and a new Linux OS so I bought a used HP Elitedesk Micro PC to install a new distro on. My plan was to use it in parallel with the Mac Mini during the workday morning and then go to Linux the rest of the time.

I created new bootable USBs for Mint 21.2, MX, Elementary, Endeavor, Majaro and Zorin (probably a few others). When I ran them I found that Mint 21.2 was the smoothest and a good fit for me and the little HP. I installed Mint dual booting with Windows 11 (previous owner installed it fresh) and I have really grown to appreciate the stability and usability. I did have one issue with the audio using the Display Port but found a solution here.

Updates are simple, software is easy to find using the Software manager or Synaptic and it just runs great - I'm very happy with it.

Since becoming a satisfied user I have installed Mint 21.3 on two other computers - a Dell 3040 Micro i5 PC that is in my garage/shop and an LG Gram i7 laptop that also has Windows 10 in a dual boot setup. Both computers run fantastic with 21.3 & the latest kernel.