What if Linux Mint moved away from Ubuntu?

[hexdef101]

compatibility with the Ubuntu repo's is great, but There comes a time when we must look to the future. And yes Ease of installation is an absolute must.

As to Linux in general... we are never going to get the user base higher until we produce good versions of popular and necessary software like Turbotax and Quikbooks (the main sticking point in getting my boss to switch to Linux at work).

[InkKnife]

As a Linux newbie, I would prefer that it remains based on Ubuntu. The installation process of Ubuntu is so much easy and painless for the beginners. That's very important. Also, we have access to all that is compatible to Ubuntu which is great.

Mint as grown as a distro of it's own, not just a spin-off of Ubuntu. It dominates the standings of distrowatch.

I agree.
I think Ubuntu and Mint are complementary and a fantastic example of how excellent the GPL is. Canonical certainly has some corporate aspirations that many of us do not care for but all the work they do is just rolled back into the FOSS community, benefiting us all. Because of the GPL we do not have to worry about corporate control. If a corporation wants to play in the open source world they have to follow the rules, which Canonical has.
It is easy to get distracted by some of the stuff that Shuttleworth says but, leaving that aside, Canonical has contributed a HUGE amount of very good code to the Linux community and they are not "bad people", they just have a different vision.
Free as in freedom, baby...means dealing with people going off in other directions.

[Neil Edmond]

For me, Linux Mint has already moved away from Ubuntu. I run LMDE and as far as I can tell, I'm not missing anything. Installation was just as easy (actually easier than a recent Kubuntu attempt), And who could want more than the 50,000 or so packages in the Debian repo?

[johnsie]

I used Ubuntu since 2006 but somewhere in 2010 they started moving away from their philosophy for free software. Now they are spying on users by default and sending that information to third parties, advertising propriatary products in their app store and trying to get user lock-in with Ubuntu One. It got to a point where everything is a big mess. When i decided to switch I considered Linux Mint because it was the popular protest distro for people wanting to move away from Ubuntu, but using the Ubuntu packages kind of gives Ubuntu some credibility and I don't want to do that. I'll give the Debian edition of this a go, but sadly my Ubuntu days are over.

I would prefer to use a good distro that isn't just another 'Buntu, so I'd have no problem if all the focus went on the Debian edition. For Mint to be competitive it would need to have good packages though. Is the Linux Mint community up to that challenge?

[Nilla Wafer]

Wow, did people start going apecrap crazy when Red Hat did the same thing Canonical is doing (try to make it profitable so development can continue)? Or SUSE? Or Lindspire? Even Mepis is "corporate." So where's all the Mepis hatred, Red Hat/Fedora hatred, and SUSE outrage?

It really is a total mystery to me that only Canonical gets Internet hatred for being "greedy, capitalist, profit-driven, corporate (and therefore eeeeeevil), and destined to power computers of all the forces of evil on Earth!"

Ubuntu isn't "all about free software" so people switch to Mint in protest?!

Ermygherd! Free software is under attack by eeeeeevil wicked nasty greedy capitalist corporations!

Forgive my sarcasm but I simply really truly do not understand how it ever became "cool" to attack and hate the one single Linux distro that has done more than any other ever to bring Linux to "typical ordinary casual" home desktop users. The people who develop and give away for free this awesome Linux for Human Beings are the very ones to whom Mint and about 80 other distros owe their existence. So why oh why is it considered cool and smart and chic to attack them just because they want to make it profitable enough to continue developing it and giving it away?

It's enough to make me want to switch back (to Xubuntu) "in protest" of stupid protesters!

/rant
~nilla

[craig10x]

Big +1 Nilla Wafer

That is so true...that is why i don't understand all the ubuntu bashing...and to the poster right before your last comment, the amazon stuff is NOT spyware, it is sent invisibly to amazon servers which simply make product suggestions....it works similar to target ads you get when you use, say the yahoo search from their homepage...and in return it provides Canonical with some revenue which they use for DEVELOPMENT not corporate profit!

And that benefits us all...You get "target ads" on the Linux Mint forums but you don't complain about that do you? And those ads help mint in the same ways they help Ubuntu...

Also, it is easy to turn those Online searches off..Canonical themselves provide an easy method to do that in the privacy settings (you just hit an off switch and done)...
I'd keep mine on to help Canonical except i am not fond of the clutter it makes in my dash search, so i turn it off but send an occasional donation instead...

[exploder]

Well put Nilla Wafer!