Why not Ubuntu?

[Prooz]

I'm using both Mint and Ubuntu, I enjoy both. Why do you prefer Mint, or do you prefer Ubuntu.

[JOS]

I prefer mint for it's GUI. I love the look, feel and logic of it.

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[lmintnewb]

The Magic Mint developers make ubuntu's stuff much more user friendly than it comes from plain buntu itself. Outside of that ... not sure how they stack up in a side by side performance comparison. Only that my impression of Mint 10 ... was a lot better than that of ubuntu 10.10. Am just guessing Mint would come out with a performance edge too. That's just a guess ... w/o anything factual to base it on. Just wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that way.

Plus I just don't like ubuntu. For both performance/technical reasons and moral one's. Think they've gone a lil off the deep end with ubuntu's success. Don't acknowledge Debian's contribution and give it the credit it deserves from them or prominently display the assoc as they should.

Ubuntu is but a hair upon Debian's buttock's. Which Debian has been the foundations and grandfather to who know's how many great linux distro's to date. Ubuntu being just one such variation that managed to amass recognition.

Guess that's all inter-distro politics and nit pickin though. If ubuntu had performed anything as well as the hype surrounding it suggested it would. Might not be so resentful towards canonical/buntu. As mentioned though, by comparison buntu is bloated, low performing, resource hogging, clunky junk and don't see how it amassed the acclaim it has.

Plenty of distro's that put it to shame in all regards. Mint's buntu based stuff ... imo, is just a better ubuntu ( or ubuntu made much easier to use.) So I can't help but admit the people behind Mint are very talented folks. Like Linux Mint and the Mint community.

[karashata]

I like the Mint Menu (and other tools offered by Mint, such as Mint Update), the software choices (saves me uninstalling a lot of packages 'cause they're not what I want and installing what I want for specific tasks), slight ease in tweaking the overall look and feel to my personal desires (not having to remove a panel and rearrange most of the applets onto the bottom one, all I have to do is add the disk-mount applet between my window list and the show desktop button, plus altering the appearance to my desired theme and such...)

Overall, I feel Mint is a little less bloated and provides a somewhat nicer starting point to make my OS exactly (or very nearly) what I want it. To make Ubuntu what I want would take more steps and more time. (Plus, these days, with Unity..? Come on, no way! Do not want!)

[casey972oo]

Yeah ! ... ' Ubuntu ' ain't bad ! ... but ' LINUX Mint ' is just better ! ... (more bad) ! ...

[tdockery97]

I've tried Ubuntu before they came up with the Unity interface, and still felt that it was lacking, more complicated, and boring. I do have to admit that I think the Kubuntu devs have done a great job with that offshoot. It is fun to use and very, very stable. At the moment I'm trying out Debian 6.0.1 KDE, and so far it is quick and stable. For Gnome, nothing beats Linux Mint 11 Katya for me. It is fast and stable and runs whatever I throw at it.

[barko]

I like green.

[spider2097]

This is a question I was asked by an online friend when I first started using Mint, and not one I can give a definitive answer to other than "I prefer Mint" - it's look & feel drew me in from the start. Admittedly, this was around the time of Mint Gloria and Ubuntu was brown! Now, I have nothing against the colour brown - some of my favourite things are brown - but I just did not like the look of Ubuntu at all. With later editions it came down to being put off Ubuntu by hearing about things not working right & making the decision to wait for Mint to come out since things just seemed to work out of the box with Mint. Now with Unity, I think it's too late for me to be thinking about going to plain Ubuntu at all. I'm extremely interested in seeing how the Mint team deal with Gnome 3. It's my hope that a "proper" desktop environment wins the day

[proxima_centauri]

Yeah ! ... is realy a Question of color ! ... of course it's psychologique ! ... green is just friendly ! ...

[REMOVED]

anyway ! ... ' Ubuntu ' ain't bad at all ! ... I like it ! ... ' Ubuntu 1o.1o Maverik Meercat ' ! ...

casey972oo

.

[Kendall]

I actually don't mind either one and am not really picky about which one is on my system so long as it's not using KDE (no offence to KDE, it's just not my thing). I really do like Unity and am looking forward to the continued development of the environment, but I almost always use LXDE nowadays except for my dev box (which bounces back and forth between Gnome, LXDE, and Fluxbox with no real rhyme or reason). I also very heavily use Peppermint (for obvious reasons). Should something happen and I was no longer able to contribute to any sort of development/maintenance, then I'd mostly likely set up another Arch or aptosid install as my primary system.

[pan]

Because of LMDE -> fast, good looking, rolling,...

[Dr.m0x]

Because I have to change a bunch of stuff in ubuntu to make it to my liking. By coincidence the setup for Mint is very similar to what I used to do to ubuntu anyway. Saves a lot of hassle.

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Sent from my Leedroid Gingerbread love machine.

[phredbull]

Ubuntu was my introduction to Linux, so I guess it was good enough to make me stick with Linux.

I like Ubuntu as a base, particularly for the PPAs and general availability of a wide variety of cutting edge software.

I don't like Canonical's development for the desktop; recent initiatives that have put me off include:
-Gwibbwer/"social desktop", (inspired by the popularity of Facebook/Twitter?)
-speeding up startup times, (inspired by the popularity of netbooks, instant-on devices, but didn't significantly speed up my system)
-Unity, (inspired by netbooks, mobile devices, but didn't function for me in 3d or 2d mode)
I feel like their roadmap is extremely whimsical, influenced by trends rather than a philosophy. Introducing a Unity that is not release-ready, with plans to go to Gnome Shell for the next release, is a good example. I feel that in their quest to be the leader in bringing Linux desktop to the masses, they try to be too cutting edge, and end up releasing beta-quality software that gets very little maintenance before moving on to the next thing, leaving a trail of broken packages in their path. (Pulse Audio?) I think if they really adhered to their philosophy of "Linux for everybody" that they would be more focused on stability and compatibility with older hardware. Ubuntu's development path seems to me to be all about Mark Shuttleworth wanting to establish himself as a revolutionary in desktop computing.

For me, Mint takes the good parts of Ubuntu and trims the bloat, keeping and polishing the parts that make a usable desktop while ignoring the shiny and new, but broken additions. As a matter of fact, I'm really loving LMDX, and experiencing a non-Ubuntu-based distro has sparked my interest in non-Debian based systems as well. But I still won't completely abandon Ubuntu-based Mint, due to the PPAs. It's all about graphics drivers and software availability. (Sound familiar? )

[exploder]

It's all about graphics drivers and software availability. (Sound familiar? )

I might have heard that mentioned somewhere. Nice post phredbull!

[monkeyboy]

It really comes down to familiarity for me, having used the Mint releases long enough to use them effectively I am happy. When Unity made its way to Ubuntu I used it long enough to get things done but it was just not what I was used to.

[lmintnewb]

For another thing, I have this growing suspicion that ubuntu is actually some dead african lang's word for poo poo. I mean think about it. Ubuuunnnnntuuuu, sounds like it could mean poo to me. Plus they are brown. Too much coincidence and similarities, correlations and so forth going on here for it all to be just a fluke. Then take a close look at the software they make. I rest my case.

lmao at monkeyboy's Sig.

[MALsPa]

Why do you prefer Mint, or do you prefer Ubuntu.

I prefer Ubuntu. A few reasons:

- I use Synaptic, and I don't like that the "Mark All Upgrades" button is removed from Mint's Synaptic.

- The Minty Firefox Google search thing is a turn-off for me -- and I don't really even use Firefox anymore!

- In the past, I thought that Mint was a lot quicker and easier to install that Ubuntu, but with my last few installations, it seemed that the gap had narrowed enough that it was no longer a factor.

- I've had them both installed for a number of years now on the same computer; as far as the things that are important to me, Mint's no better than Ubuntu. Same repos, almost the same distro under the hood. So I figure I might as well go with Ubuntu. (Yeah, there's LMDE, though; as far as that goes, I already keep Debian installed, so there's no advantage for me to install LMDE.)

- Ubuntu's documentation is superior. In fact, most of time it's been easy for me to find solutions for Mint issues using Ubuntu's documentation and/or forums.

The "green" and the "brown?" Complete non-issues here. Default DE? Also a complete non-issue here.

Having said all that, would I recommend Mint -- especially to a new user? Yes. It's a fine distro, and it's great for getting up and running quickly. Good community, too. But with either Mint or Ubuntu, I would not recommend following the 6-month release cycle. Just seems to lead to problems and dissatisfaction. For me, the LTS versions are the way to go.

[lmintnewb]

MALsPa, exploder just posted a link to a thread in which the author says synaptic is soon to be replaced in ubuntu by the ubuntu software center. Seems to me, it's ubuntu's attempt to copy Mint's software manager. According to that article though. Synaptic is on the chopping block with canonical as a redundancy to their new USC thingy.

Well whatever the case, fact that people like MALsPa like it. Means I may not like ubuntu. But am fully capable of liking many of the people who use ubuntu. I need to stop ragging on them anyway. Kinda pointless huh ? I don't and won't use anything buntu. Other people enjoy it and a great thing about gnu/linux ... Whichever one ( or several someone prefers ), we're all have da good taste to like linux.

[MALsPa]

Synaptic will still be there in the repos, though.

I really have mixed feelings about even saying that I prefer Ubuntu over Mint, especially here at these forums. I'm a long-time Mint user and a long-time Mint fan. I didn't start using Mint because of any dissatisfaction with Ubuntu; the fact that Mint was based on Ubuntu was probably a major attraction for me. Mint has been one of my favorite distros since 4.0 (Daryna).

I can't speak for anyone else, and I'm not at all trying to influence anyone one way or another. Ubuntu simply works out a little better for me, I guess. I hope nobody takes offense at what I've said here. I think other people have had some less than favorable experiences with Ubuntu, some experiences that I haven't had, so I can understand their not being happy with Ubuntu.

The whole thing about the colors, though, kinda puzzles me. Default appearances don't matter to me at all, and I don't quite understand why people have ever had issues with the "brown," or whatever colors Ubuntu currently uses on the default desktop. But it certainly seems to bug a lot of people! Kinda fascinates me that it's even an issue.

I really appreciate the kind words, lmintnewb. I thought I was gonna get crucified for saying how I felt. But I've spent a lot of time using both distros, and I guess over time I just found myself liking Ubuntu a little better.

[lmintnewb]

Not by me ya wouldn't. Can tell you're a long time nix user and have mucho experience and insight to offer into whichever communities you take part in. I hate M$ with a passion. Doesn't mean I would ever transfer that onto people who use and/or even enjoy the OS's they produce. lol ... would have to hate myself and 90+% of PC users for no good reason.

I make fun of the brown cause well ... many reasons. No point in listing them cause it's just opinions. But sure there are many great people who use ubuntu. lol ... have no problem mud slinging at canonical ... The users of their software though. Have as much a right to their preferences, opinions etc as I do or anyone else. If I didn't acknowledge that I'd be an ahole.

Stops being all sissified and mushy, lol. This post is so politically correct and nicey, nice it makes my inner child feel dirty. Of course meant it though.