I love Mint!

[cbennett926]

Ok,

So I have been using Ubuntu since 9.10 and I have always loved it; I recently started dabbling into Mint more. I have used Mint many times and have always liked it, there were some cosmetic flaws that kept me away (I know I'm shallow), such as the ugly title bar at the top of we browser windows (that was a big one for me). Now I have installed Chromium/Chrome and found out you can turn them off! It makes a world of a difference! So now that I am past that I am seeing how much I love Mint!! Fantastic! Just thought I would praise this! Thanks Dev's!

[Catbuntu]

Welcome!
Here we love Mint too... I really think it's much better than Ubuntu, specially since the Oneiric Disaster. While most of the distros are completly changing their looks, my Mint 14 with MATE looks exactly as the old Mints, until 11, looked
Hope you have a nice time with Linux Mint!

Cat

[dee.]

I fell in love with Mint!

I've been using Ubuntu since 11.04, and really liked 12.04, but I guess I kind of grew out of it. All the small stupid things about Unity started to bother me way too much, so I finally went and replaced it with Mint 13 Cinnamon. I love it! Everything feels so much smoother and nicer and just works and it's still faster than Ubuntu. No need to wait for a few seconds for the dash to appear just to launch programs. Not to mention how smooth the transition was - I kept my home partition from ubuntu so I could pretty much just continue my stuff where I left it.

A slight criticism though: why isn't gparted included in the default install? Seems to me if stuff like gimp is installed (which I had to remove so I could install the 2.8 version) then why not gparted, it's one of the most useful things ever. It's a small annoyance, and not a big deal to install it from the software center, but still, seems a bit weird to me not to include it.

[Orbmiser]

"A slight criticism though: why isn't gparted included in the default install? Seems to me if stuff like gimp is installed (which I had to remove so I could install the 2.8 version) then why not gparted, it's one of the most useful things ever."

Useful to one person is not so for others.
As most users only deal with partitions during installs and installing new hardrives and such.
And no need for it after that.

My situation even installing 5 different distros so far setting them up and then backing them up with Redo backup.
http://redobackup.org/. And all the partitions remain the same without a change. Just new flavor OS gets installed in them. Many are a setup partitions once a year kind of affair so not needed when live CD is available and recommended way to use gparted. And it is not recommended to use it installed in the system as much easier to muck things up.

I find Thunderbird,Gimp and most of LibreOffice unneeded except for writer. Email web-based no need for full blown email program. And Gimp hate with a passion. And prefer darktable http://www.darktable.org/ for image editing.

Also don't need VLC as way over complicated for my needs for video playback. And don't IM so Pidgin is a waste. Same goes for skype and Irc. But for others all apps listed are crucial and needed for their environment and needs.

One persons want may be another's unwanted.
.

[dee.]

"A slight criticism though: why isn't gparted included in the default install? Seems to me if stuff like gimp is installed (which I had to remove so I could install the 2.8 version) then why not gparted, it's one of the most useful things ever."

Useful to one person is not so for others.
As most users only deal with partitions during installs and installing new hardrives and such.
And no need for it after that.

My situation even installing 5 different distros so far setting them up and then backing them up with Redo backup.
http://redobackup.org/. And all the partitions remain the same without a change. Just new flavor OS gets installed in them. Many are a setup partitions once a year kind of affair so not needed when live CD is available and recommended way to use gparted. And it is not recommended to use it installed in the system as much easier to muck things up.

I find Thunderbird,Gimp and most of LibreOffice unneeded except for writer. Email web-based no need for full blown email program. And Gimp hate with a passion. And prefer darktable http://www.darktable.org/ for image editing.

Also don't need VLC as way over complicated for my needs for video playback. And don't IM so Pidgin is a waste. Same goes for skype and Irc. But for others all apps listed are crucial and needed for their environment and needs.

One persons want may be another's unwanted.
.

Well I just think it's kind of weird, gparted is generally such a useful tool it should be included. Not everyone needs gimp, xchat, pidgin, or libreoffice, either, yet they are still included because they're useful to many people.

For example, a lot of people might migrate from windows and try out mint in a dualboot configuration first. Later on they might find that they don't really need windows anymore so they want to get rid of it, and get that diskspace for mint's use. And there are tons of other scenarios where gparted is useful. Want to duplicate your entire system to another hard drive? Gparted. Notice that you made your home partition too small and are running out of space? Gparted. To me, it's just such an obvious tool, I can't see it taking that much space that it couldn't be included in the default install. But maybe that's just me, and maybe most people really don't need it, what do I know...

Why you hate gimp I really don't understand though. Gimp is awesome, and darktable really isn't a comparable application. Gimp is more multi-purpose and good for other stuff besides photo processing.

[xenopeek]

Linux Mint comes with a selection of default applications, for common tasks that most user (especially also users new to Linux) would need to get started. Generally one application per task. So the image editor, office suite, and instant messenger are included as those are common tasks (common ≠ everybody). These would also be applications that users coming from other operating systems could already know, as these are all cross-platform. XChat is included because that is default way you can get real-time support from other users of Linux Mint.

There's no pleasing everybody when it comes to the default selection of applications, hence it is made so easy to install or remove applications

And as you can't resize a partition while you have it mounted, installing GParted wouldn't work for most of your examples. Hence it is included on the Linux Mint ISO, as you'd normally boot from that to resize your Linux Mint partitions safely.

[dee.]

And as you can't resize a partition while you have it mounted, installing GParted wouldn't work for most of your examples. Hence it is included on the Linux Mint ISO, as you'd normally boot from that to resize your Linux Mint partitions safely.

That's a fair point, but there's still some things you'd use it on the actual desktop. Like managing external drives, if you have more than one. Well, like I said it's not a big issue, it's just something that I was wondering about.