A review of Mint by Dedoimedo

[MurphCID]

His review is 6 out of 10, and he was not impressed with many things. Here is the article: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/lin ... tessa.html

[Hoser Rob]

Too bad, I actually think he's one of the few good reviewers of these things. I'd probaby stay with 19 unless I had a hardware support issue that was fixed in 19.1. WHich, BTW, is the whole point of these intermediate releases.

[smurphos]

WHich, BTW, is the whole point of these intermediate releases.

Except 19.1 offers no new hardware support, and ships with the same default kernel and hardware stack as 19. It's an update to the Mint specific tools and artwork and for Cinnamon users a fairly major version bump in the desktop environment and window manager.

[gm10]

Decent review though. A few factual inaccuracies (e.g. there's no hardcoded Adwaita theme in mintsources) but generally speaking I'd agree with most he says.

[AndyMH]

One of his big beefs is the fonts, as an average user (with average to worse eyesight), can't say I'd noticed or really care. Would appear from his review that he had /home on a separate partition.

Overall tend to agree, I didn't get excited by 19.0, I liked 18.x and thought it a lot better than 17.3 (where I started) and the only reason I upgraded from 18.3 was for a better/later version of evolution. I'm not upgrading to 19.1 until they fix the bug with virtualbox and seamless mode.

BUT not about to move to another distro, I'm comfortable with mint, know how it works, how to install stuff, etc. Might have a look at his 'best distro' MX-17 Horizon in a VM when I've nothing better to do.

[gm10]

Might have a look at his 'best distro' MX-17 Horizon in a VM when I've nothing better to do.

MX is one of my favourite distros, so do that.

[AndyMH]

And one thing which is really important with mint is the support - is there a better or more friendly support forum than this one? If I have a problem, I know nine times out of ten that I'll get an answer here. Worth more than all the bells and whistles in the latest super-whizz-bang distro.

Edit - no it's ninety-nine out of a hundred!

[BigEasy]

Why so many people care more about what Dedimedo see than what they see by own eyes?

[Moem]

is there a better or more friendly support forum than this one? If I have a problem, I know nine times out of ten that I'll get an answer here.

That also reflects positively on your own attitide... from what I've seen, on forums like this one, people will often get out what they put in. If you get good results, you probably ask your questions in a smart and friendly way.

[redlined]

That also reflects positively on your own attitude... from what I've seen, on forums like this one, people will often get out what they put in. If you get good results, you probably ask your questions in a smart and friendly way.

perfect.

can we sticky this? (lol/not)

[thx-1138]

Why so many people care more about what Dedoimedo see than what they see by own eyes?

...Good question.
I guess it's due to the fact that people are getting more & more socially accustomed to somehow feel a supposed 'inner need',
for an 'authority' (often self-proclaimed expert online) to tell them what they should do or not.

~A review of Dedoimedo from thx-1138 (like that matters...)~

Not sure what all those 'professional' youtubers / bloggers / reviewers think that they achieve with such activities after a certain point...
Just how many yrs does he complain about Linux this Linux that...did anything changed by him posting? No.
Then what's the point - a public confession of sorts?
Or is it a matter of getting followers, ads clicks, the vanity of gaining recognition / status online?...

"A place to learn a lot"...heh - he appears to have a very modest idea of himself, sin number 1
Not just by the header bar, but from various other ramblings over there.
"I'm too smart for my own good - just so you know"... ehhm, yeap, fine, then again...
who cares (especially of what you think of yourself...) - not me for sure. Next (blog?), please.

What's more annoying though is...that he is indeed smart:
there are indeed some pretty interesting insights & very good tidbits on his blog here or there.
Juxtaposed frequently with the i'm too certain-for-myself attitude though, they often fail quite short of convincing:
is it 'enough' just replicating the current state of affairs in social networking (read = professional blogging)?
Or even more the Linux world? Because by the end of the day, well,
it eventually all boils down to yet another 'professional blogger' out there:
meant for people to 'identify' with such, 'praise it's wisdom' and all that jazz...
Hence, moving on...

No biggie - would claim pretty much the same for other semi-famous bloggers / youtubers in the Linux 'community'.
However, him being actually smart (& overtly self-conscious i'd say),
i'd expect that he should know that as well...and somehow attempt to find a way to take it a step further.
Know thyself is one step, but doesn't make the groundbreaking leap by itself though -
not for oneself, not for the rest of us (in the Linux world).
Such however will certainly not be achieved by blogging per se & it's (inherent?) self-indulgence...

Another (very common) sin is trying to pass personal taste for...'common sense',
which becomes even more awkward (every now & then) specifically on his social commentaries...
A practice that by definition is always set to defend some subjective opinion,
by indirectly raising it up to some...a priori set abstract 'universal truth'.
Add some extra sauce of (pseudo-)historical value on top of such,
and even more some banal generalized comments about 'human nature'...and bingo, It Works!
You know, pretty much exactly the way religious & ideological mechanisms work actually,
yet in personalized, internalized manner if you will.

Now if only i had a penny for every time the supposed 'common sense' cult,
gets thrown around as a justification of sorts...especially in the latest yrs ('polarized world' blah-blah yada-yada etc):
banal statements that re-enforce & reproduce the current status quo,
yet passed as some kind of all-people-encompassing 'wisdom'.
That's because under a certain light, it is indeed all-people-encompassing:
a series of tired old pop-style arguments meant for wide consumption from the masses...
re-assembled & expressed for equally banal reasons:
most frequently it's the need of the 'Other(s)' to somehow exist out there in order to recognize them,
(their 'identity' actually...see, there's a reason so-called 'identity politics' thrive today).
Or, in it's worse variation, they're simply hunting out there to find...'followers' -
(illusions of grandeur, attempts of becoming leader of the pack, or just to earn bucks - to each his own).

So - good with Linux (& physics i wouldn't doubt), but maybe consider letting sociology & philosophy for others please?...
Yes, i know i might sound harsh now a bit on that...but hey, so does he

Conclusion:

He certainly pinpoints quite well the pros & cons of this or that Linux distro (or software).
He is knowledgeable, and also, with a pretty good sense of humour. So, in this short life of ours,
it does worth a visit from time to time to pick this or that tidbit or to evaluate his point-of-view. But:
"A new year is upon us. This means more distro testing. More fun, more tears, fresh hopes, resurging desperation."
More from the same thereby? More...complaining? A place to...die from repetitiveness &...boredom eventually?
Are we to believe we're dealing with a hopelessly romantic down at heart - who is still distrohopping & fighting for Dulcinea?

I'd personally expect better & bigger things from certain people - especially when quite a few yrs have passed
(he's been blogging for more than a decade), and even more, when they're certainly capable of doing such.
As it (currently) is, I'd rate his site 7/10 myself...ie. i'm probably more generous than he was when he rated Tessa

Cheers.

[smurphos]

Cheers.

That made me smile.

[gm10]

Why so many people care more about what Dedimedo see than what they see by own eyes?

If we cared "more" then we wouldn't be using Mint, which I assume most of the forum members here actually do (not all though). My own choice aside, the world doesn't revolve around me, so other people's opinions - in particular if they took the time to write a balanced review - are of interest, also since I'm contributing to Mint's software (although his statements about the tools I'm currently contributing too were either incorrect or incomprehensible to me, so I didn't pull anything of value from his review in that respect).

Are we to believe we're dealing with a hopelessly romantic down at heart - who is still distrohopping & fighting for Dulcinea?

<3

[[rua]]

I've followed him for years. He hates Debian and writes dystopian fiction, so he's not your usual easily pleased optimist.

[Redact]

I am one of those who has poor eyes, and fonts make a huge difference. Furthermore, the ability to resize panel and menu items/fonts makes a huge difference.
And the solution is not to use the rather ugly (imo) high contrast themes..
Look, I understand developers have their target audience. I understand that developers have limited time and resources to provide options for every type of user.
But don't then at the same time denigrate and mock reviewers who have honest problems.
They may not be your problems, but they sure are for others.

[MurphCID]

I am one of those who has poor eyes, and fonts make a huge difference. Furthermore, the ability to resize panel and menu items/fonts makes a huge difference.
And the solution is not to use the rather ugly (imo) high contrast themes..
Look, I understand developers have their target audience. I understand that developers have limited time and resources to provide options for every type of user.
But don't then at the same time denigrate and mock reviewers who have honest problems.
They may not be your problems, but they sure are for others.

I have a similar problem, and the fonts and font contrast is a big deal for me. Which is why I harp on fonts all the time. He is one of those whose site I use to get an idea on things but I am a professional skeptic.

[MurphCID]

And there is this review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR1srbvslN0 I love this guy, he is so informative!

[michael louwe]

Yes, it seems Linux Mint has been getting worse with every new version since LM 17x. Seems, "change just for the sake of change or novelty" is not good for LM. Like they say, "do not fix what ain't broken". New versions of LM every 2 years should only contain new features, programs and hardware device support that are essential.

The non-essential fluffy new features in new versions of Win 10 twice per year should be avoided or not to be copied by Linux. M$ imposed not-needed new Win 10 versions twice per year by force mainly to stop Win 10 from being used for "free" for up to 10 years until EOL.
....... Computer software and hardware technology has already matured = no more major leaps or advancement or no more Moore's Law. Some software developers do not seem to recognize this fact.

[gm10]

M$ imposed not-needed new Win 10 versions twice per year by force mainly to stop Win 10 from being used for "free" for up to 10 years until EOL.

Hardly. They are not charging for the upgrades. The real reason is that by forcing everybody to be on one of 2 builds the cost of supporting the OS goes down significantly. No more having to write and test security patches for X versions of the OS with Y versions of service packs installed. Mind you, they even stopped testing it seems = even more cost cutting.

[Pjotr]

Well, I disagree with Dedoimedo. I think Mint 19.1 (all editions) is probably the very best that desktop Linux currently has to offer. Possibly even the best of *all* desktop operating systems, up to and including Windows 10 and Mac OS.