What made you switch to Linux Mint?

[tacoz]

A chance encounter with a Cassandra CD got me using Mint.

Back in 2007 I was a MCSE and in the workplace I was obliged to use XP. Up until then I was experimenting with Caldera at home and then started with those early versions of Ubuntu (prior to Unity). That Cassandra CD changed everything. I still have it.

I became that Linux Mint user... until Lisa. The wheels started falling off for me when Mint in response to GNOME 3 created MGSE which was soon replaced with Cinnamon. Those early days of Cinnamon were enough to make me reconsider using Ubuntu again... and Unity. For sure, it took some getting used to but I plodded through two versions of Ubuntu before reverting to Xubuntu--just to get away from the seemingly weird stuff that Unity was doing at the time. Besides for me XFCE had that familiar old-school GNOME 2 feel to it. I was still watching the Mint forums... but as a spectator.

When Olivia was released, I decided to give MATE a try and a few months later when XFCE was released, I moved over. There wasn’t anything wrong with MATE, in fact my wife still prefers that as a DE while I simply prefer XFCE and have been with it ever since.

And I still use Windows in the workplace, moved from XP to 7 then to 8 and now 8.1. It pays the bills. I'm playing with 10 in VMWare. I don’t dislike Windows per se--or Ubuntu for that matter--but here’s the thing, the more I use Linux, and the better the experience that each release brings with it, the less favorable I am towards Windows or having to use it.

I just promote Mint and using Linux that much more these days, even in the workplace... and that's it.

[var]

I got old and bored with tinkering. I was a Slackware user and I just got to the point where I just wanted to get things done. I tried Ubuntu but didn't really like it (the flavors all use standard desktops and lets face it LXDE and XFCE are dead-ugly by default). I tried Mint as the customized desktop looked nice, and it works with everything.

So here I am.

[Fred Barclay]

I was introduced to Linux by a friend who installed Kali as a virtual machine on my new Win 8.1 machine. I was actually put off by Kali at first--all I had ever used was Windows, and the Gnome desktop was counter-intuitive to every instinct I had. Then I started exploring the Linux world a bit more and came across Ubuntu--I believe it was 12.04. Liked it, but the Unity desktop seemed so strange. I then tried more distros--all as Virtual Machines. Tails, Fedora, newer Ubuntus, etc, and found I really liked Debian-based distros the most. The terminal had a lot to do with this--commands seemed easier in Debian and I understood them more. I kept exploring and ran across Mint in a video by Nixi Pixel while researching TAILS. It seemed interesting, and the Cinnamon desktop was a big temptation due to its similarity to the Windows desktop. that I decided to try it.
Do not, I repeat, do NOT try to install Mint in VMWorkstation 9. The screen stays small and is hard to see. I wasn't that drawn to it, but after a lot of squinting, I found how user-friendly Mint was. Loved its responsiveness and how I was able to understand it.
Finally made the plunge and dug an old computer out--wiped Windows XP off and installed Mint 17 Cinnamon. Loved it, loved it, loved it (still do, actually). I became Microsoft free that day and have no plans of going back. I know I will continue to be a distro skimmer but I have found my /home.

[mintjay]

My reason was that XP's support ended and I had a 9 year old laptop available to mess around without the fear of losing data. I tried Mint mate 13 first (installed twice, alongside ) on that old laptop and found it was faster than my new win7...I messed around with it for a month and decided to install Mint 17 cinnamon on the two year old laptop. so far so good...

[ktheking]

Here's a reason why you'd want to switch to linux. Windows is as leak as a sieve ,and no antivirus can protect you :

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/security/1000131 ... know-about

"When the pop-ups are sent, the Java script calls the PowerShell executable in a hidden way, using inline expression (IEX)," Michele Orru, a penetration tester at security firm Trustwave, said.
"With this [the hacker] can start PowerShell and ... send function calls to download the payload from a malicious URL. This is all done in memory - nothing touches the disk - which makes it very unlikely an antivirus would catch it," said Orru.

[NeoGeo64]

Linux Mint 17.1 is such an amazing, easy-to-use, powerful workhorse of a distro and an operating system. I get more work done on Linux Mint 17.1 than I ever did on Windows. I'm in love. Is it legal to marry a Linux distro?

[tek_heretik]

Windows is as leak as a sieve ,and no antivirus can protect you

I have a theory about that, starting in the late 1990s, MS discovered they could make even more money turning you and your computer in to a demographic marketing tool. This would require the browser and OS to be purposely 'Swiss cheese' security wise to allow their corporate partners certain liberties with your browsing and shopping habits. It's no surprise the NSA can find out your political leanings in minutes, if not seconds. MS are the same people that brought you Digital Rights Management (you can't play a legal store bought DVD movie on your own legal Windows computer) and watermarking of videos and pictures to track them (this is to bust you with Hollywood movie downloads, not just kiddie pr0n). They want your money but have no problem spying on you and treating you like a criminal.

Here's a scary example, back in the early 2000s I scanned a $100 bill to photo-shop a friend's picture over the 'queen' for a joke, a huge scary looking warning popped up about counterfeiting, etc, I'm like, what-the-frugg?!

Bottom line, MS has BILLIONS of dollars and armies of code writers, they could have fixed their Swiss cheese years ago, they have the resources to do it, they CHOSE to let you be a victim. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action law suit because of this.

[MartyMint]

I have a theory...

...they could have fixed their Swiss cheese years ago, they have the resources to do it, they CHOSE to let you be a victim.

Your theory is crackpot nonsense.

Disseminating screw-ball conspiracy theories about Desktop Linux's "competition" doesn't help to advance the plot of Desktop Linux one bit. It's just embarrassing.

[r00t]

Simple reminder: Insulting people is never the answer. It's ok to disagree, but do so in a way that does not attack the person(s) whom you don't exactly see eye-to-eye with.

[Fred Barclay]

Simple reminder: Insulting people is never the answer. It's ok to disagree, but do so in a way that does not attack the person(s) whom you don't exactly see eye-to-eye with.

Thank you r00t!

[tek_heretik]

I have a theory...

...they could have fixed their Swiss cheese years ago, they have the resources to do it, they CHOSE to let you be a victim.

Your theory is crackpot nonsense.

Disseminating screw-ball conspiracy theories about Desktop Linux's "competition" doesn't help to advance the plot of Desktop Linux one bit. It's just embarrassing.

There's not enough room in this forum to post all the 'proof' links. I speak from experience, you just call names. You're entitled to your opinion, even if it is 'blind'.

Ever hear of stuxnet? Have you noticed it was WINDOWS machines that were attacked and taken over? You know NOTHING.

[Fred Barclay]

Let's all be courteous here. As long as we respect the rights of others to disagree with us, and us with them, that's good. But there shouldn't be any name-calling or disrespectful words. And even if someone is rude to you, please don't be curt back to them.

[tek_heretik]

Slashdot Win 10 beta built in keylogger (NOT 3rd party)...
http://beta.slashdot.org/story/208101

A few examples of MS's NSA 'friendliness'...
http://zatz.com/outlookpower/2013/07/16 ... -skydrive/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/j ... -user-data
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/07/12/ ... n-snowden/
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/MSA-Data-Mi ... 17088.html

Should I go on? I can find far more links than that. You can apologize now, not just to me, to anybody you accused of sporting a tinfoil hat.

[lexon]

Ubuntu, just after Mint 6 came out.

Wish I could find something better.

Videos, slide shows, maybe jifs run automatically now with Firefox and I am up to date.
Flash blocker and ad block don't seem to work very well anymore but still better than Windows.

L

[tek_heretik]

Ubuntu, just after Mint 6 came out.

Wish I could find something better.

Videos, slide shows, maybe jifs run automatically now with Firefox and I am up to date.
Flash blocker and ad block don't seem to work very well anymore but still better than Windows.

L

You need AdBlockPlus and NoScript, search them in ad-ons, and disable any 'search enhancers', they're snoopy 3rd party revenue generators.

[Spinner912]

A simple answer: pure logic.

But having made the switch, I am plagued with the odd Windows dependent application which was written for Windows and simply will not run on Linux. Even using a Win Emulator. Or on a VirtualBox Virtual machine.

These Apps are indispensible and as such, a running version of Wiondows must be maintained. This is a dreaful shame, but unfortunaately the vendors/writers of that Windows software simply will not listen to reason and make no attempt whatsoever to provide a Linux version of the App.

This of course is yet another reason to avoid Windows like the plague, and to search hard for equivalent Apps which will run on Linux. But that is not always possible.

Having said all of that, I have used Windows since the original Windows version (way back in the 90s), and up to XP Pro SP3. But the more Windows was updated the more cumbersome it became. Then I discovered Ubuntu 7.0 I believe it was. I installed it beside Windows, and it soon became clear that apart from when specific proprietary Windows dependent software was required, Linux was the only way to go.

I persisted with Ubuntu until 14.04. That particular user interface started to become too complicated and so I went looking again. I was actually referred to LinuxMint on an Ubuntu Users Forum.

For the present at least, there will be no return or change.

[Hoser Rob]

I switched 2 boxes, a laptop with Kubuntu 12.04 and a netbook with Lubuntu 14.04.1, to Mint 17 Cinnamon and Mate respectively.

The main reason with the laptop was that I wanted to upgrade KDE to 4.10, and I think Mint does a nicer KDE implementation than Ubuntu does. But I tried booting the Cinnamon live USB and, to my surprise, quite liked it. PLus it's just inevitable for me to end up with a ton of GTK programs and dependency libraries on a KDE setup, which slows things down.

And Ubuntu 14.04 lts does not use an lts linux kernel, so it's just not as stable as I'd like. So the more conservative method in Mint Updater, and the later kernel etc updates, work for me.

I like the "holding pattern" approach Mint is taking with the 14.04 base. If things ubuntu don't go well I can always bite the bullet and switch to Debian stable. Which is a relative pain in the butt to install but is genuinely stable. Why the hell Ubuntu doesn't have a version based on the Debian stable rather than testing ... at least for the server edition ... is beyond me.

With the netbook, well, Lubuntu 14.04 is a travesty. I just can't believe they released it like that. And 14.04.1 wasn't any better than 14.04 re bugfixes as far as I could tell. I think the problem is that the LXDE development team is one or 2 guys and they're busy porting it to LXQt. It's a shame because I actually like LXDE.

It's running Mate now. I consider Mate a little dull perhaps but it works well. It's actually just as fast as XFCE was and it's a lot more sorted.

[Reorx]

I like the "holding pattern" approach Mint is taking with the 14.04 base. If things ubuntu don't go well I can always bite the bullet and switch to Debian stable. Which is a relative pain in the butt to install but is genuinely stable. Why the hell Ubuntu doesn't have a version based on the Debian stable rather than testing ... at least for the server edition ... is beyond me.

There is a version of Mint (LMDE - for Linux Mint Debian Edition) that is currently based on Debian testing. The next version (coming in the not so distant future) will be LMDE "2"(.0?) (Betsy) and it will be based on Debian stable - Jessie. (http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2014/08/u ... med-betsy/) It was originally scheduled for release in 11/2014 but the folks at Debian only froze the package base on 11/5/2014. It appears as though the exact state of the freeze won't be written into stone until 1/5/2015. I expect to see LMDE 2 released some time in February 2015 (my speculation).

I believe that the Mint versions based on U 14.04 will be the last Ubuntu based versions (this has NOT been stated by the Mint team - it is just my speculation). I believe that new versions of Mint beyond 2019 (the end of support for 14.04) and perhaps beyond 4/2016, will be completely based on Debian stable. We'll have to wait and see...

[3fRI]

I've also wondered whether Clem & co. might consider switching to a Debian base in the future. CrunchBang and Watt OS used to be Ubuntu based and are now Debian based. If Mint (and not just LMDE) should be based on Debian stable, more adventurous Mint users might consider changing their source files to Debian testing or unstable (sid) for a semi- or rolling release.

[InkKnife]

I've also wondered whether Clem & co. might consider switching to a Debian base in the future. CrunchBang and Watt OS used to be Ubuntu based and are now Debian based. If Mint (and not just LMDE) should be based on Debian stable, more adventurous Mint users might consider changing their source files to Debian testing or unstable (sid) for a semi- or rolling release.

Ya, but Mint is intended as a very easy to use Distro and even though we might debate other issues, Canonical does a lot of refining towards ease the Mint team works on top of. The PPA system is an advantage, just being "Ubuntu Compatible" is a huge advantage.
Ubuntu and Mint, as a compatible duo, represent the majority of desktop Linux installs and that means we always get the new stuff first.
A pure debian base might intrigue the technically adventurous but Mint is not for the technically adventurous, there is no shortage of distros aimed at the tinkering crowd.