Fred wrote:Being a long time Linux user, I probably came to Mint for entirely different reasons than many/most. The codecs are trivial to me and honestly, I almost never use any of the Mint tools. For me it is the people, the Mint team and its forum users.
Mint has the feel of a small, close knit community. The team seems to genuinely care about what its users want and need, and does a good job balancing need and want. They aren't necessarily the same thing you know.
The users are making a worthy effort to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, so-to-speak, to learn a new system. Most have been long time Windows users and it is not easy for them, but they keep working at it. More experienced users work tirelessly helping each other and new comers.
The Mint community tends to reinforce my faith in human nature. People cheerfully giving their time to help others in need. With no expectation of any kind of reward other than the good feeling they get from helping another.
You can see this same phenomenon in many other forums too but I have never seen one where this attitude was so prevalent and pervasive.
I think everybody understands and appreciates the tremendous amount of work Clem and the CE maintainers do to make the releases as functional and trouble free as they can.
Mint has a secrete weapon that other small distributions don't have. His Name is Husse. I believe he has been key to Mint's success to date. Without him the atmosphere of the forum would not be what it is. He works many hours a week, every week, in the forum helping users and maintaining the helpful atmosphere that prevails here. He also spends many hours behind the scenes researching issues for users, working on the wiki, putting out a news letter, blogging, taking pressing issues to the developers, etc. I honestly don't see how he does all he does and still finds time to earn a living for his family. The single biggest reason you can can come to this forum and expect helpful, courteous treatment is Husse and the work he does here.
Remember that and thank him once in a while. That is the only reward he gets for his efforts.
Fred
I've jumped between Debian, Ubuntu, Xubuntu and Fedora and this post is the reason I plan to stick with Linux Mint. Not only do I want a great operating system, which I seem to have found, but I want to be part of something. The community looks great and my experience here has been outstanding so far. I cannot wait to be part of this community and watch this OS grow.
Thank you.
