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

[MiZoG]

I like MInt for reasons already mentioned by other users
It is unobtrusive, it retains the classic desktop paradigm, doesn't try to reinvent the wheel.

Switched from Ubuntu soon after I first tested MInt. Though I had been an Ubuntu user since Breezy, I never really felt comfortably with "Unity" and I was surprised by the fact that Mint based on the very same Ubuntu base was much more stable. Though I still have a soft spot for Ubuntu Mate community flavour, I find all Mint variants (Mint Xfce, Mint Mate, LMDE) equally dependable.

[Doug Linux]

What's not to like-it does it's job very nicely and gets out of the way so I can get my work done.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

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

Nailed it! You hit the head on the nail (or is it the other way around .)

[Hoser Rob]

... 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 can't blame you for moving on but I've used KDE as my daily driver for years and I suspect you had a problem with PCLinuxOS rather than KDE. AFAIK PCLinuxOS was a very solid independent distro until it wasn't.

[mudassir]

could not get it literally... how could someone have honeymoon..

Sorry, that was just a joke but looks like I'm not the only one here to take things literally

[Hoser Rob]

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

Nailed it! You hit the head on the nail (or is it the other way around .)

There's a lot of truth to that, though there were many Gnome 2 users who might not agree. They by and large hated Gnome 3 with a passion. Quite a few switched to Mint to get the Mate desktop, which is probably still the closest thing to Gnome 2. Before that Mint was just another Ubuntu based distro.

But one of the reasons I like KDE is that they've never tried to reinvent the wheel. KDE's look and feel hasn't really changed, it just keeps getting better. Admittedly slowly ... this is FOSS development we're talking about here. I mean, Wayland is over 15 years old now and while IMO it's superior to X11, it's not developed enough yet that I'd want to use it.

[brlfq]

I can't blame you for moving on but I've used KDE as my daily driver for years and I suspect you had a problem with PCLinuxOS rather than KDE. AFAIK PCLinuxOS was a very solid independent distro until it wasn't.

Yeah, KDE usually worked well but for some reason the bluetooth became erratic with my Logitech K850 keyboard & K720 mouse, had real issues connecting & maintaining a connection. It might have been a PCLinuxOS issue but I didn't explore it further after trying Mint and it working so well.

[MiZoG]

Sorry KDE fanboys. KDE 3 was passable. Gnome 2 was simply better. KDE 4 was a disaster. KDE from 5.00 to 5.20 was "alpha", from 5.20 and onwards "beta" and only since 5.27 LTS has been something we could call "Release Candidate"...

[Hoser Rob]

Sorry KDE fanboys. KDE 3 was passable. Gnome 2 was simply better. KDE 4 was a disaster. KDE from 5.00 to 5.20 was "alpha", from 5.20 and onwards "beta" and only since 5.27 LTS has been something we could call "Release Candidate"...

I largely agree to tell you the truth. This is why I always suggest not to jump on new KDE releases, though there are lots of examples of that in the FOSS world. including most desktop environments. Certainly Gnome in the last decade. And now that more are becoming Wayland compatible that's even more, including Cinnamon.

I've been running Plasma 5.20 for almost 2 years now in MX 21. It's been more solid and reliable than any other desktop I've ever tried on a number of distros. I'm going to install Debian 12 KDE with 5.27 very soon. Having the last Plasma 5 release supported until 2018 sounds pretty good to me. And while I am definitely a KDE fanboy I won't be installing Plasma 6 until it gets to probably 6.20 or so. I'll be switching KDE to X11 mode for a while, put it that way.

Also I'm actually not sure how 'passable' KDE 3 was really, you didn't have the option of disabling Baloo or Akonadi at all . OK for an office, not so good for others.

[MurphCID]

I remember the early Gnome and KDE from the Mandrake 7.0 days when you could get both on the distro, and I recall how many people were upset at both Gnome 3 and KDE 4. But I thought KDE 5 was good and stable and I have not seem to many complaints compared to KDE 4. I am very impressed with how Cinnamon has evolved, and it is very nice and stable. But then again I abandoned Linux from 2000-2016ish, so I missed many of the middle KDE and Gnome implementations.

[Hoser Rob]

I remember the early Gnome and KDE from the Mandrake 7.0 days when you could get both on the distro, and I recall how many people were upset at both Gnome 3 and KDE 4. But I thought KDE 5 was good and stable and I have not seem to many complaints compared to KDE 4. ...

KDE 4 was great once I changed the office oriented defaults that bloat it too much if you don't need the advanced file search capability. That was in Kubuntu, I think starting with 12.04. But again I didn't jump in too early in the dev cycle (though in this case that was more luck than anything).

I ran KDE 5.8.something in Mint 18.x. Much better, the code pruners had definitely been at work there. And the defaults were more sensible for non enterprise users.

I've seen videos with the newer Gnome releases and I really think I'd prefer the look and feel of Cinnamon over it even though Gnome has some serious strengths. But I still prefer KDE.

[brlfq]

TBH Cinnamon has really impressed me.

I have installed some KDE apps that I am used to and they work just fine.

[Hoser Rob]

TBH Cinnamon has really impressed me.

I have installed some KDE apps that I am used to and they work just fine.

They should work fine. Though most of the apps I install in KDE are Gnome/GTK bases. I don't think most KDE apps are as good as the DE itself. A few are.

[TaterChip]

Around Mint 14 I tried to make the switch. I couldn't get my printer/scanner to work even with help from the IRC Community. I went back to windows.

Mint 17 rolled around and I tried again. My printer worked, but couldn't find suitable software. Back to windows.

Back in 2008, both me and my wife ran win7 machines. One night she left hers on and connected. Microsoft took it upon themselves to change her win7 machine to win8. I woke up to a very confused and pissed off wife. I went searching on my phone to see if it could be reverted, thankfully it could. I got her fixed then went into my machine, found the .exe program responsible for updating and deleted it before connecting back to the web.

In around 2019 I learned about FOSS thanks to Quickbooks forcing me to create an online account to access my business's local data. I'm not playing that game when I shell out over 3 bills for desktop only software. I started learning cross platform software. I knew at some point I would be able to make the switch.

In 2020 I had to replace my win7 laptop with Win10 laptop. Before it ever connected to the web, I took ownership of the system32 folder, and spent days researching every .exe in System32. I deleted everything related to updating and microsoft spying (there was a LOT. They were even tied into the web cam.)

In early 2022 my win7 media server computer bit the dust. The mini PC I purchased came with Win11. I knew it would be a cold day in hell before I'd run win11 so I started my Linux journey. I installed MX plasma straight out of the box. I never even activated win11. That machine is still running MX. I got a little comfortable with that machine then decided to try and change my daily driver again.

I purchased a new drive for my win10 laptop, and installed MX Plasma. I couldn't get my external monitor to work and the nail in the coffin was being forced to use KDE Connect's convoluted way to connect my android phone. I started distro-hopping.

I tried straight ubuntu and debian, peppermint, kubuntu, POP OS, Mint, Manjaro and others.If it was on Distrowatch I probably tried it. The only ones I can say for certain I didn't try was Arch and Kali.

If I used the VM in POP OS the I had to reboot to hear sound from the browser when I was done with the VM.
Manjaro, my printer wouldn't work out of the box.
Mint, I couldn't use my existing encryption password, and I wasn't going to dumb it down for mint. (one of my special characters wasn't allowed, even though every other distro allowed it.

Back to windows.

When Mint 21.1 came out I tried again. MY password now worked, my second monitor works with a little screen tearing, and everything else just works. I started off with 21.1 XFCE, and now I'm running 21.1 Cinnamon on my daily driver.

What you like about the OS?

One of the main things I like about mint, is I control the updates... not the OS. Once mint started nagging me about them, I just unchecked a box so update manager doesn't start on boot-up. Thanks to 30+ years with MS, and more recently with Thunderbird and SpeechNote I have a huge distrust in updates.

Why you prefer to use it?

I got fed up with Microsoft's continually pushing to control or spy on a machine that I spent almost 2 grand for. I knew the only way it would stop is if I divorced them after 30+ years. It was getting worse with each new version of windows. It had gotten so bad that they pissed off my 75+ year old parents running win10 and they asked me to come install Linux on their computer. They are still using 21.1 XFCE.

I am glad I was able to make the switch, I only wished it could have happened sooner. I guess better late than never.

[MurphCID]

And part of the issue with Windows is the every single "feature" update re-installs, re-enables the spyware. I used the tip on CyberCPU Tech's video to block "feature" updates.

All my Linux laptops have Mint except for one on POP!_OS which I use for tech support for the guys I have given laptops to, since I need to be able to look at what they are seeing.

I started back in the old days (1999/2000) with Mandrake 7.0 and loved it. It was amazing, but I did not have enough knowledge to install things like printers and get networking going. So when I asked on the then internet via my wife's Windows 3.1 computer, I was treated..poorly to say the least. So I told Linux to kiss off, swearing I would never go back to such a toxic OS and spent the next 15 years as a Windows user since "things worked" under Windows. But around 2015/2016 with Microsoft pushing spyware harder and harder, I installed Ubuntu 16.04 (?) did not like the DE, but I found something called Mint (17.3, I found my install disk as I am cleaning for the move), and have been using Mint ever since on laptops. My WIndows 10 Pro desktop is as locked down as I can make it which sometimes causes problems.

I love how Mint just seems to find my printers, and connects to my network seamlessly. Plus the Linux forums, with few exceptions have gotten far beyond the RTFM of the old days.

[Hoser Rob]

And part of the issue with Windows is the every single "feature" update re-installs, re-enables the spyware....

That's very annoying and also the fact that with some Windows updates, they won't tell you what is being updated. This is partly why in Windows they tell you that you're the Administrator, you may think you are, but you aren't. Microsoft is. Whereas in Linux you really are the administrator. Of course, there's some responsibility involved there.

[mudassir]

...in Windows they tell you that you're the Administrator, you may think you are, but you aren't. Microsoft is. Whereas in Linux you really are the administrator...

+1 to that... that's a huge difference between Windows and Linux system.

[t42]

Plus the Linux forums, with few exceptions have gotten far beyond the RTFM of the old days.

The situation is really changed but I think there is some distortion when RTFM thing is mentioned as it is always something bad or unfriendly. Many of those old days Linux users where hackers, sort of, who could troubleshoot code and what else and they replied to questions the way how they used to think. Unlike it is now, no chance you could stumble then on someone with degree in pedagogy. But the process involves several parties, and now more often you can see on the forums novices from "the client is always right" party albeit there are no existing obligations of any sort in any form whatsoever.

[Hoser Rob]

Plus the Linux forums, with few exceptions have gotten far beyond the RTFM of the old days.

The situation is really changed but I think there is some distortion when RTFM thing is mentioned as it is always something bad or unfriendly. Many of those old days Linux users where hackers, sort of, who could troubleshoot code and what else and they replied to questions the way how they used to think. Unlike it is now, no chance you could stumble then on someone with degree in pedagogy....

Or any interest in pedagogy at all. Remember that many of the of the more expert users on many Linux forums have real paying computer jobs that have nothing to do with any user forums. And they're used to dealing with peers.

[TaterChip]

And part of the issue with Windows is the every single "feature" update re-installs, re-enables the spyware.

That's why I went in and deleted every .exe associated with updates (there were multiple in the version of win10 I had). I spent a lot of time removing the spyware, and I didn't need them putting it back.

That is the BEST thing about being on mint. I don't have to worry about my OS spying on me.