Is Mint looked down on by those who use more 'advanced' distros?

wouldnt really pay attention to anything that happens on that site.
I know some of the members at Reddit have their moments....and some of those moments are mean/nasty....
However, the Linux Mint area for "noobs" and ordinary users, can be quite eye opening

For example the number of young people joining there to ask for help moving from windows to Linux is positively eye watering. The nimbers really are indicative of the drama cauased by the introduction of win 11 and the ensuing 'relegation' of a vast number of laptops (mainly) to the 'scrapheap'.
There have been figures suggested that the number approaches 80 Million.
The waste is incredible. What company supports putting that type of financial pressure on it users and making damn sure that the resulting e-waste is beyong enormous.

I am not sure that reddit made the various areas available to users in anticipation of this happening, or if they are simply reacting to the monumental increase that has resulted.
Either way, they are doing a good job. The young people, as well as the older members will be thanking them, for saving their Laptops and a whole lot of money.
 


Obviously I'm not an IT pro. And I have Mint Cinnamon installed on all three computers. But. I have VirtualBox installed on my "main" desktop. I have 11 virtual machines. 12 if you count the win 10 virtual machine that is rarely started.
Those machines are one each of Mint 22, Lmde6, Mint XFCE, Mint Mate, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora, Bookworm, Debian Plasma, Arch, and Arch Cinnamon.
From where I sit, for the most part, they are all the same OS. The desktops differ, the package managers differ, the preloaded programs differ. But underneath the bling, they are all running Linux. Open a terminal, whatever terminal emulator the OS was installed with, type ls, and every one will display a directory listing.
For going on 3 years now I've been using Linux. I like it, no matter which bells and whistles are packaged around it. To me, arguing about which distro is "best" is silly. It's all Linux folks. Embrace it!
 
Hi, hello, alright?

I was doing some Reddit
...
somebody had commented something along the lines of "Mint has been dead for years". That had a lot of upvotes on it, and a load of people agreeing with this.
...
As mentioend above I am no stranger to distros such as Arch among a few others and those are something I really enjoy, but|
...
If one thing is clear after 27 years punching stuff on so many Linux boxes is that there are a lot of users that go really toxic the moment you give them the chance. And they can be found on Reddit quite consistently.

And honestly, nobody should even care about their opinion. Opinion is not knowledge.

There's no such thing as "advanced distro", and if they look anybody else down I think that speak more about them having some confidence issues in other areas of their life. There are different users with different interests, period. Arch? Bleeding edge, for tinkerers and for hobbyists, and for some that have very neat backup strategies and patience and that also rocks their boat. Many other distributions? For people that want to produce on Linux --people that turn on the computer to get things done. Other things: their tax returns, study, application code, documentation, video editing, whatever where tinkering on the system is not part of the workflow.

I can do the same nerding on Mint than I did on LFS if you push me hard enough.

Linux is the end only for some, for the most, it's a means to an / whatever other end.
 
Hi, hello, alright?

I was doing some Reddit browsing last night and ended up on a Linux sub. It was mostly serious posts and people asking for help with a few things but there was the odd post that was more for poking fun at Windows users and those who have never heard of Linux. Whilst reading through a few of these posts and the comments, I came across a thread of replies where somebody had commented something along the lines of "Mint has been dead for years". That had a lot of upvotes on it, and a load of people agreeing with this.

Now, Im using Mint on this laptop, and I also have 2 other laptops both running Arch, but I only use this one because of how stable Mint is and the fact nothing ever seems to go wrong. Whatever you do on Mint it just runs without issue and that is what got me thinking about that post. With how stable Mint is, everything just working and the fact that there are clearly still enough people using it to warrant anybody maintaining and updating it, is this view something anyone else has heard others have?
As mentioend above I am no stranger to distros such as Arch among a few others and those are something I really enjoy, but knowing I can just turn this laptop on and have it do as I want without it fighting me or making any sort of fuss is a huge selling point for me - Im past the point of being entertained by system maintenance when I have the option to just power on this laptop and have it all doing its job without issue.
Mint just released 22.1 so it's certainly not dead, but some folks seem to have funny opinions. I'm not a psychologist, so I can't say what the issue is and as long as you're happy using Mint then go right ahead and use it and stay happy!
 
Serious question here. I have nothing against Mint, I used it for a while.
But... to someone who doesn't "know better". I admit it, I just don't know.

Why Mint over say Ubuntu, or MX, or really even Debian?
To someone who doesn't use them everyday, they all look the same to me,
yeah, the desktops might be different (you can pretty much get any desktop for any distro these days).

But other than that... really, what's the difference.
I don't want answers like... "because that other distro sucks". That's just an opinion,
What is something quantifiable that Mint has, that no other distro has?
Can you back that statement up with statistics, facts, evidence?

I'm not trying to dis or offend anyone, I just really don't know the difference.
I want to stick to Debian based distro's here.


redhat/centOS/fedora/arch/kali/openSuSE/Gentoo/Puppy is another discussion for another time.
I hang out a bit on the Linux Fans group on facebook and the things many of the "fans" seem to be most proud of are not their distros or configurations so much as their wallpapers!. I just shake my head and wonder "why" - do they never have any applications open, so their wallpaper is always in front of them?
 
One of my favorite things about this site is... for the most part there is no distro bashing.
I won't say it never happens.
There is still Windows bashing every now and then but I'm glad that has gotten a lot less.

But typically no one cares what anyone else is using. As long
as you like it, and it works for you, why would you care what anyone else thinks?
Except in a few highly sensative topics such as systemV vs SystemD since calling a distribution that uses systemD as "not pursists" kind of points out that you do care what someone else uses.
 
@MikeRocor, you are so right !...it is all about the 'look'

people sometimes get that strangled look on their face when they ask me....what is your wallpaper?....and I answer, 'You're looking at it.......
1737608873866.png


what the hell is that?...is their next question

Microsoft Blue ...says I
 
There have always been those who think they are better than everyone else but I don't give a stuff what they think.
1737608229804.gif


It's most disapointing that many Linux Forums are full of know it alls and morons whos only purpose in life is to bash everything.

I don't know who these so called advanced users bash Linux Mint...maybe it's jealously because you don't have to be an expert to use it.
1737609745235.gif
 
@MikeRocor, you are so right !...it is all about the 'look'

people sometimes get that strangled look on their face when they ask me....what is your wallpaper?....and I answer, 'You're looking at it.......
View attachment 23744

what the hell is that?...is their next question

Microsoft Blue ...says I
Ooof! I don't find that blue at all relaxing - probably not even if just a little of it were peeking out between application windows.

I use a wallpaper from a theme at lonelymachiines.org - the wallpaper from the "envane" windowmaker theme, that was used in one of the DSL 3.x releases that I particularly liked and I've used it ever since. Nothing distracting about it, noting glaring. The color looks a little moldy, TBH, but I like it anyway. I had to stretch it to fit a 1920x1080 monitor without wrecking the aspect ratio of the round swirly looking part in the middle. I've also occasionally tried swapping in the moon, Pluto or the deathstar for the middle part but I always end up going back to the original. For me, the point isn't to have something exciting, or even necessarily "pretty" to look at so much as to have something "pleasant" (subjectively speaking) that doesn't jump out at me and doesn't obscure functional features like the tray, menus, icon bar and conky display. It's an integral part of my desktop, but it's definitely not a defining feature of the desktop.

envane1920x1080.jpg
 
LOL Linux is run by corporations. In fact, the controllers of the project are an incorporated entity. The kernel itself is written by people paid to do so, doing so for profit. There's no altruism. Even the other distros, those with any degree of popularity, are making money from the donations they get - meaning they work on the project for pay.

I am not sure that there ever was any altruism. Linus was quick to capitalize on the whole thing. He cashed in his name pretty hard, even using his clout to become CEO of Transmeta (among many other financially beneficial moves). In 2022, Linus made about $1,700,000 USD.
I'm aware that "free" software doesn't exclude getting paid for services or receiving donations for development, even non distro groups like KDE accepts donations, and that's understandable and fine, why would anyone deny taking donations or having a sponsor.

It's not receiving money that presents an issue, but instead that corporations have tendency to do things which can be considered less private or secure in order to increase their revenue or popularity.

Unfortunately this tendency seem not to be unique to corporations either, as you can see from the link I posted before (if you've read it).
All distros are affected, some more some less, so I'm in favor of those which are the least affected, and disliking those which are most affected.

If some distro X forces a user to install non-free software and gives no options to the user, then I won't recommend it, and that's why I dislike such distros, not because they receive money.
 
Even linux Mint can't overcome that !!!
 
Well over 1000 visitors... looks like another bot attack
 
Hi, hello, alright?

I was doing some Reddit browsing last night and ended up on a Linux sub. It was mostly serious posts and people asking for help with a few things but there was the odd post that was more for poking fun at Windows users and those who have never heard of Linux. Whilst reading through a few of these posts and the comments, I came across a thread of replies where somebody had commented something along the lines of "Mint has been dead for years". That had a lot of upvotes on it, and a load of people agreeing with this.

Now, Im using Mint on this laptop, and I also have 2 other laptops both running Arch, but I only use this one because of how stable Mint is and the fact nothing ever seems to go wrong. Whatever you do on Mint it just runs without issue and that is what got me thinking about that post. With how stable Mint is, everything just working and the fact that there are clearly still enough people using it to warrant anybody maintaining and updating it, is this view something anyone else has heard others have?
As mentioend above I am no stranger to distros such as Arch among a few others and those are something I really enjoy, but knowing I can just turn this laptop on and have it do as I want without it fighting me or making any sort of fuss is a huge selling point for me - Im past the point of being entertained by system maintenance when I have the option to just power on this laptop and have it all doing its job without issue.
Man, and what do you do? On this forum I see constant bashing of Arch users contrasting this with how good Mint is. Jeez if you don't like any aspect of specific distro use different one. These are just tools and I don't see a point of whining.
If you are no stranger to different distros none of this would be a problem. Use it don't use it does not matter but please stop complaining (not you OP specifically but all who complain). This is not bringing anything useful to the table.
 
It's not receiving money that presents an issue, but instead that corporations have tendency to do things which can be considered less private or secure in order to increase their revenue or popularity.

Linux is itself, that is all the Linux IP from copyright to trademarks, are owned by a corporation.
 
Linux is itself, that is all the Linux IP from copyright to trademarks, are owned by a corporation.
I won't debate that since I don't have enough information, need to read about it.
My only understanding is that Linux, the kernel, is subject is governed by it's license, not owned by some entity.
Linux Foundation, I'm not sure if they own IP of the kernel.
 
Short answer, no. I've been using Linux since 0.9x kernel and FreeBSD and various version of Research Unix, Plan9, etc. Mint's beauty is that it tends to just work. Sure some folks experience challenges, but by and large it works. It's systemd but other than that it's just a recent version of the kernel plus a bunch of gnu utilities and a desktop -Cinnamon that's quite good. If you want you can use Mate or XFCE or whatever else you want. It's built on Debian and Ubuntu, that means if it works for them, it's likely to work on Mint, too. It's no more Unixy than any other Linux distro, but that's probably a good thing at this point in our OS evolution. Personally, I prefer how FreeBSD works, but I use Mint for my desktop cuz, well, it tends to just work. I run tons and tons of development and data tools on it.
 
Just goes to show how popular Linux really is.
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