What made you switch to Linux Mint?

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BlackJackMarcus
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by BlackJackMarcus »

My experience echoes many posts here. I was a long time Windows user, tried various Linux distros over the years but driver issues always sent me back to Windows. Win10 came along and it was time to have another look, tried Mint 17 and immediately thought wow this works, tried several other distros and kept coming back to Mint, it set the standard. Can't remember the last time I booted into Windows. Spyware and bloat has killed Windows for me. Windows has served me well, a year ago I transitioned to Linux Mint XFCE, its simple (well maybe permissions with file sharing caused a bit of head scatching), however I won't be going back to the MS environment. Mint XFCE rocks!
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Pjotr
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by Pjotr »

BlackJackMarcus wrote:tried several other distros and kept coming back to Mint, it set the standard.
Same for me.... It's currently the best that desktop Linux has to offer.
BlackJackMarcus wrote:Mint XFCE rocks!
It certainly does. :)
Tip: 10 things to do after installing Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia
Keep your Linux Mint healthy: Avoid these 10 fatal mistakes
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All in all, horse sense simply makes sense.
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TeaSwigger
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by TeaSwigger »

While it can't be said enough that Mint couldn't offer what it does without countless others contributing to scores of other aspects of linux (debian, apps...) to my perception, Mint is doing a fine job on many oft challenging fronts that affect my choice of distro:
  • Devs and community being friendly - not just claiming to be.
  • An emphasis on stability and safety that extends to working with those upstream.
  • Oriented to providing for effective sensible desktop usage.
  • Trying not to let the needs/wants of commercial software, mobile and gadget-oriented aspects in today's environment swamp the above points.
  • Making financial and commercial considerations work for them and us - not making themselves, what they create and its users work for commercialization.
It's proven a fine choice which I'm very grateful to have. Thanks to many contributors to linux software including those working with Mint, Mint 17 & 18 versions to date have been, overall, the easiest, best and most reliable systems I've ever had the pleasure to use, from installation to daily use.
“You can make a strong business case for equality but not everyone wants to hear it.” - Prof. Kate Pickett

Mint 20.2 xfce w/nemo - AMD A10 7700K APU - spdif to Bifrost DAC - Dell U2415
some favs: Zim, deadbeef, kid3, gimp, artha, deluge, handbrake, mc
MrSnoid

Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by MrSnoid »

A friend of mine had a laptop that he couldn't finish installing windows . He asked if I knew how to wipe his hard drive? I said " I bet I can figure it out" and brought it home. I spent many hours of trying to finish installing windows (without a disk) and finally gave up and formatted his hard drive. I made a live OS on a USB stick. I tried several different ones and then found Linux Mint Cinnamon 18 ! I fell in love and installed it on his laptop, my laptop, and now have it along with Windows 7 ( i have quit using) and another Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.2. I love it and will never stray very far!
idle

Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by idle »

I did it for the babes. Geek is the new sexy :lol:
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by jimbobs »

I was running Lubuntu on an old laptop but wasn't happy with the loaded programs and the performance of some of them. Firefox was really bad: watching a YouTube video in Firefox was very hit and miss - sometimes just frozen video and perfect sound. Tried Mint Xfce and had much better results but had wireless dropouts which eventually got fixed with help from these forums. Then I decided to run Mint Cinnamon on better hardware (this old laptop) and very happy with results.
Dell Inspiron 1525 Core 2 Duo T5850 4GB Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia Cinnamon 6.0.4
ArtGirl

Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by ArtGirl »

I was desperate to get away from Windows' ever-increasing invasiveness and the abject misery of using it. Every month I was having more difficulty getting updates and the (win8.1) system was getting more insecure. All kinds of new problems were coming up that, with me not being technically able to remedy things or able to deal with the stress, often meant a reformat. At my wits end, I noticed Linux Mint, and, after too many dual boot difficulties too, I joined and asked here about my main concern, which was pressure sensitivity for Ugee 2150 monitor, as art is what I mainly do (Huion 1060Pro works perfectly too, plug and play). People were very helpful; thank you for that, as it reassured me to try the live version of 18.1 and then a full install. I loved it straight away ... everything just worked, and really well, plus it looked lovely, and I was amazed at everything it contained too.

I'd made the leap as soon as I knew I could continue art, just over 2 months ago, and love that I can easily scan in traditional work (just needed an extra cable for scanning, and WF2630 printer discovered and works very well from the start), follow instructions to use Gimp to make a transparent png, then colour in MyPaint, whenever needed. I've been amazed since day one at how much more there is to LM; stability, ease of use, beautiful, updates go without any hitches ... it's wonderful, and I'm very grateful for it every day. I've been able to learn some basics, am good at copy/paste for the terminal, lol, and feel at home. I'd also enjoyed gaming before, but made the leap anyway (plus bought an old PS3 and knew I could use the ipad for some games). I've been amazed to find GOG frequently sells great games very cheaply, and that games work through Playonlinux, even larger fps (thanks Booman!). I rarely even look at the ipad now, except for using Dukto, and have used the PS3 once and now put it away. The ability to install other kernels and upgrade mesa is wonderful too. Was more than happy to donate; thanks to everyone involved, truly.
Last edited by ArtGirl on Fri Dec 01, 2017 8:18 pm, edited 4 times in total.
eddier

Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by eddier »

Clem sent some of his boys round to knock my door.No Problem.
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Arch_Enemy
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by Arch_Enemy »

eddier wrote:Clem sent some of his boys round to knock my door.No Problem.
Dressed in black?
I have travelled 37629424162.9 miles in my lifetime

One thing I would suggest, create a partition as a 50G partition as /. Partition the rest as /Home. IF the system fails, reinstall and use the exact same username and all your 'stuff' comes back to you.
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by Oreally »

long time windows user,gamer, tech & admin (since 95). did not like where win 10 was going.. fall 2015 i tried mint 17.2 cinnamon on an old gaming PC i had (EVGA 680i motherboard from 2007 with a GTX 260 video card), just for fun/test. I was impressed because 1 of the fastest and easy installs from DVD i ever did and things just worked. I had tried Ubuntu & some other distro's before, never liked the interface, or had problems with hardware,used some at work over the years (knopixx, hirens, smoothwall,dBan, etc) Using old video card, was able to update nvidia driver and use a gtx750 ti. used to clear out about 40 old harddrives from over the years and move photos, music, doc etc to external drive. (used dban on old drives then destroyed them) I installed steam and was able to game (War Thunder native) mothballed my win 7 box in case i wanted to play an EA game or something. just starting using this "test machne" with mint 17.2 for every day use, seemed to work better/faster with Mint 17.2 than it did with windows. Went to KDE 18 & used the machine until couple weeks ago when the mothballed win 7 had 18.2 xfce installed on it, for everyday use, also changed my girls machine from win 7 to cinnamon 18.2, she loves it. dug out an old HP 8530p laptop (from 2008) wiped windows with Mint 18 KDE and just worked, and again better than with windows,
On the desktops i have at home, SSD drive with root,home, swap and secondary drive for data and steam library works for me. external back up drives on the daily use machines.
For me, clean installs have been good and stable,not missing windows, and very impressed with breathing new life into old hardware and the learning along the way.
Windows free home. Thank you Mint Team,Easy Linux tips project,forum and users.
20.1 Cinnamon Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H i7 3770-k 32Gb ram GTX 1660 6Gb Super OC
19.3 Cinnamon Intel DZ77BH55K i7 3770-k 32GB ram GTX 1660 6Gb Super OC
19.3 Cinnamon Lenovo All in One C-5030 Touchscreen
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Arch_Enemy
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by Arch_Enemy »

Oreally wrote:long time windows user,gamer, tech & admin (since 95).
I was the OS "Guru" at a help desk for a large company. OS Expert means DOS, Win 3.X Win 95 and Novell. I had heard about Linux but figured it was for geeks. 1999 I tried it. Yup...for geeks. Tried again in 2001. By 2004 I was running Linux 50%, by 2006 85%.
I have since forgotten a lot of what I knew about MS products, but still a n00b at Linux :D
I have travelled 37629424162.9 miles in my lifetime

One thing I would suggest, create a partition as a 50G partition as /. Partition the rest as /Home. IF the system fails, reinstall and use the exact same username and all your 'stuff' comes back to you.
jeschur

Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by jeschur »

eanfrid wrote:First, I did not switch to Mint for myself because I am a long time Debian and BSD user. I will stick to these OS even if I run a few other OS either in virtual machines or on some spare real machines.

1/ I did this for my mother (who is 75) to switch from Windows 7 to an easy to use and stable Linux distribution. I chose LM13 and will upgrade her machine to LM17 after a few weeks when it is ready, hence probably during next summer.
2/ IMHO Mint is less geeky and more "get-the-job-done" than Ubuntu
3/ the way Mintupdate works is a great idea
4/ Cinnamon !
+1 here. Granted I can't say your #1 was a reason for me. Been running a combination of Windows 10, FreeBSD server(s), CentOS 6/7 servers, CloudLinux 6, and now Mint 18.2 (virtualbox for now until I switch to dual boot or it's own system once I have time to at home).

I am definitely enjoying the stability of Mint 18.2 and how well it runs in a virtualbox (including the video and audio playback working well virtualized even). Looking forward to when I have a moment to test it out on a dell optiplex I have sitting at home waiting on getting something put on it :)
lastromantic49

Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by lastromantic49 »

I'm a writer and retired drafting tech who also uses CAD fairly regularly. I'm also a total cheapskate. Windows XP and Vista both worked very well for me but paying for an upgrade wasn't an option. I had heard about Linux at different times. All of my computers are older ones as well. I get an occasional older laptop given to me, and have bought used and reconditioned ones as well over time. I liked the idea of free and open source software. Especially the "free" part. I knew XP was soon to be end of life and my main personal laptop suffered a hd crash. I got a new hd and looked for a Linux distro to put on it. I had been trying different ones on an old Asus EEE Pc that someone had given me. It had a bad battery and very little storage. Ubuntu seemed to work well. (It currently has Bodhi, though it gets little use.) I had been reading about Mint and decided to try it. I also had an old desktop.
I put Mint Cinnamon, I think it was around 16 on the desktop in a dual boot situation with XP. I was hesitant to dump XP entirely, it was still supported at the time and I am a constant user of Word and Autocad and a few other older Windows programs I liked. I also put Mint on the previously mentioned laptop to use for writing fiction and browsing the internet, etc. A few hiccups with the wireless card, I think we all have experienced that. Otherwise it was great! I found myself using the XP side of my desktop less and less, especially when I figured out how to run ACAD and such in Wine. (Actually running those mostly through Play On Linux. Makes it a lot easier to set up.) My wife's laptop was running Vista with no problems but when it developed hd problems at some point I put Zorin OS on it. That one seemed to work a little better with that laptop. Now I have several laptops around with Mint 17.3 and 18.2, mostly Cinnamon with one Mate.
That old Compaq desktop still has XP in a dual boot with Mint Cinnamon 17.2. For some reason 17.3 wouldn't quite work on it. I still boot up the XP side now and then when I need to access something, but I keep the XP isolated from the web. I also have an instances of XP and Vista running on my main laptop on VMs, so it is pretty rare I need the desktop.
The desktop also has a video card going out I think, so I'm possibly going to just retire it, though I may do something else. Media server or something.
I sometimes check out another distro through Live USB or CD. It's fun to look, but Mint remains my OS of choice.
Main main "home" machine now is a Dell Inspiron M5010 that stays on my desk with a dual monitor. It's running Mint 17.3. I have a backup for that one that is a Toshiba Satellite C655D running Mint 18.2.
My "travelling" machine (I sometimes spend the day in town writing at coffee shops or whatever) is a Dell Inspiron 6400. That's my Mint Mate 17.3.
I have an old beat-up Dell Latitude D600 I use sometimes in the workshop running Mint 17.3 Mate. It seems to run fine for a 14 year old machine.
My wife's laptop is a Dell Latitude E5400 currently running Zorin OS.
My step-son's laptop is a Dell 6420 with Mint 17.2 Cinnamon on it.
My personal computer history goes back to the Radio Shack Color Computer. I learned BASIC on a TI99/4a and my first PC was a custom 386SX running MSDOS.
gamerperson

Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by gamerperson »

My brother showed me Mint, and I really enjoyed using it. After that, I installed it on all my computers. 8)
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by SuperSapien »

I was scared off by the Lenovo BIOS malware so I switched to Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition.
watermint
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by watermint »

I wasn't a fan of Windows 8 (still have 7 on my other partition for when I absolutely need Windows), but I used to use Ubuntu. My reason for switching from Ubuntu to Mint is, admittedly, a little shallow; I like GNOME, and am very much not a fan of Unity. It's not even a performance issue, though of course it's nice to not have all those effects running. I just strongly prefer how I can organize things in Mint. I could probably alter Ubuntu to my tastes if I really wanted to, but that seems a little silly when Linux Mint is already essentially everything I liked about Ubuntu but with a GNOME shell. I am not afraid of the occasional command line.

...I'm not old enough to be the old man yelling at clouds yet...
MintBean

Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by MintBean »

watermint wrote:I could probably alter Ubuntu to my tastes if I really wanted to, but that seems a little silly when Linux Mint is already essentially everything I liked about Ubuntu but with a GNOME shell. I am not afraid of the occasional command line.
Mint doesn't use Gnome Shell. It forked off years ago and is quite a different beast now. By contrast, Ubuntu 17.10 onwards WILL use Gnome Shell as the default GUI.
sphyrth

Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by sphyrth »

MintBean wrote:Ubuntu 17.10 onwards WILL use Gnome Shell as the default GUI.
Yeah, right! :lol:

Canonical's erratic decision-making concerning the shell (Gnome-->Unity-->Gnome) gives me very little basis to believe it.
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by modele62 »

I had been "just a normal" windows user until i bought a Toshiba laptop in the spring of 2009 that was sold with Vista installed.
I really disliked Vista (obviously i wasn't the only one at the time !) and since i was thinking about trying linux since a while it made me switch to Ubuntu then, first with 9.04 then 10.04 and finally 10.10 but i liked Gnome2 much more than Unity so i did a second switch, to Linux Mint 13 Mate first, and since then i have become a real fan of Mint, using it mainly with a Cinnamon DE and occasionaly with XFCE.
Nicolas

Custom laptop (i7 / 16 Gb RAM / 256 Gb NVMe + 2 Tb SSD) LM 21.2 Cinnamon, LM 21.2 XFCE, Fedora 39 KDE
Clevo W670 (i5 / 8 Gb RAM / 2 Tb SSHD) LM 20.3 XFCE
Acer Swift 1 (Pentium N4200 / 4 Gb RAM / 128 Gb SSD) LM 21.2 XFCE
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silfox2000
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Re: What made you switch to Linux Mint?

Post by silfox2000 »

What made me to switch to Linux Mint? Windows 10! As simple as that! I have tried several times in the past to migrate to Linux (SuSe, Fedora, Slackware) but every time I switched back to Windows, because I was used to it. This time, pissed off with Microsoft, I was very stubborn to stay with Linux. I started with Cinnamon and it was very nice, but it was sluggish on my old laptop, so I tried Xfce on it and I LOVE it! Now I'm with Xfce on all my machines. For the very few things that I need and works only on Windows I use VirtualBox. Still can't use amdgpu-pro drivers but the video works flawless with the open source drives as well.
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