What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

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iliketrains
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by iliketrains »

9: Linux Mint is Faster (in Boot and Desktop)
When comparatives are used it leads to the question "compared to what ?". Windows ? Straight-up Debian ?
I like that Mint does things like offer codecs at install, no silly purity barriers. Mint goes the extra mile to get you up and running as painlessly as possible. Mint makes things easier. See, I do that too. :)
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by Lady Fitzgerald »

The biggest reason I chose Linux is it "ain't" Windows or Mac! I never went past Win 7 because of the way MS messed up the GUI in Win 8.x. Even worse were the frequent bad updates due MS choosing to use its users as beta testers, the increasing amount of spyware and nagware MS was attempting, and often succeeding, to foist upon its users, including deceptive attempts to trick users to downgrade to the next version, etc., even on Win 7.

Apple was getting to be just as bad as MS plus they already had the walled garden MS was rapidly striving for and allowed Mac only on an expensive hardware lockdown that also discouraged, and usually prohibited, user mods and repairs.

That left Linux. I chose Mint Cinnamon after a lot of research because it has the shortest learning curve to becoming reasonably well functional at using it for a Windows refugee like me and had the best support for newbies like me. Even after a little over two years on Linux, I'm still not as proficient on Linux as I was on Windows up to Win 7 (I'm a slow learner and I had far more time on Windows) since I had been using Windows far longer than I have been using Linux but I'm confident I'll get to where I was in Windows and beyond eventually.

I'm not a tinkerer. To me, computers are tools to help me keep my life organized and easier. Mint has been working well for me for that and, since I believe in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy, I've stayed with Mint Cinnamon rather than to go distro and DE hopping (BTW, I'm not knocking those who do like to tinker and go distro and DE hopping).
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by cliffcoggin »

Ease of use, ease of installation, reliability, this forum, and escape from Windows were my reasons. The fact that Mint is free of cost was not a factor as I would happily pay for such a worthwhile OS.
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TheyLive
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by TheyLive »

There was a choice Debian or nothing. But later I learned about LMDE. And I am here.

1. Mint is in Distrowatch Top 10

Screenshot from 2022-05-04 21-12-34.png
Screenshot from 2022-05-04 21-12-34.png (26.6 KiB) Viewed 1961 times
2. Mint has old school style forum (this)
3. Mint has long time history
4. Mint has LMDE (Debian direct descendant)
Last edited by TheyLive on Sat May 07, 2022 2:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
>>>>> Goodly Mint <<<<< Only browser addon for this forum
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by RetroRemix »

It wasn't an easy choice for me to make for sure, it was years in the making starting from when I first tried Ubuntu way back.

Ever since that time, when I swung back and forth between Windows and Linux I saw Linux slowly getting better and better. The last few times I tried Linux I installed Ubuntu again, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu Mate but each of them had their own quirks that didn't work right for my laptop. Performance was very good on the Dual Core (apart from Ubuntu) but there were either problems with the menus, strange bugs with standby and none of them really felt right.

Mint Cinnamon is the first distro I came across so far that feels right, it has a menu that doesn't have buggy behaviour, laptop standby is working great, terminal output is fully scrollable, and best of all the integration with WINE seems to work better in LM than it did on the other distros.

I went ahead and even installed it on my desktop too!

Also, another reason for me is that LM is its own distro, it isn't just another flavour of Ubuntu which means that it has fixes, its own desktop environment, its own identity and also the benefit of the fixes already applied to Debian and Ubuntu itself baked into it by the 3 separate development teams. So it's like being stable 3 times over, if the way I'm thinking of it makes sense lol.

I can't wait to see what version 21 will be like. 8)
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by rick gen »

Short answer is because there is a trusted leader behind it.
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by rambo919 »

LM is objectively the best pickupanduse distro based on Ubuntu/Debian which has the largest program focus by devs... that's the whole of my argument.

MX is close but not there yet and Manjaro is hampered by stability (still randomly breaks apparently) and a pretty much half-abandoned AUR.
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by MurphCID »

It just works.
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by Schultz »

When I chose to start my Linux journey, I went with Mint because it was (and still is) the most noob friendly distro out there. And the forum also. I probably would've been run out of town if I asked my beginner questions on some other forums.
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by Pjotr »

It's so easy. And rock solid stable/reliable. And long term supported. Which makes it ideal for the extremely lazy, like I. It's like one's favourite pair of slippers, and I definitely mean that as a compliment. 8)
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by Portreve »

flax57 wrote: Wed May 04, 2022 11:43 am My question is :
What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint from other Linux distros ?
  1. The Linux Mint Team is the creator of the Cinnamon DE
  2. Cinnamon is the best-of-breed GTK-based Gnome 2.x successor
  3. Linux Mint provides excellent stability
  4. Linux Mint — especially when using Cinnamon — provides a professional, mature, and intuitive user experience
  5. It's fundamentally Debian-based yet retains all of Ubuntu's advantages
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by JerryF »

I ended up on Mint after experimenting with different distros. Plus, our desktop with Windows got infected with encryption malware.

I found a few distros I liked but the official forums for each were not very welcoming. I found Mint's to be the best.

Both of us use Mint. My partner didn't mind changing from Windows to Mint because he's a casual user. Internet, email, and CD/DVD playback. I just had to make his desktop pic the same as before and recreate his desktop URL shortcuts.
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by Len99 »

I ended up with Linux Mint about 3 years ago as I just got sick and tired of Microsofs costs and updating system so started looking for an affordable alternative which lasted about 6 months of using many different live linux distros and eventually tried Mint cinnamon, the first thing I liked was the "Look", then the ease of use very similar to windows 7 to me and it felt comfortable to use if I did not have to go too deep, it is also quite customisable for look and feel, I really like the choosable split pane in file manager, the slide out menu, themes and all the free programs to try for any job and Linux Mint just works though some updates not always well but nothing like compared to windows hickups after a update .....
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by MartinW »

My main reason for choosing Mint over another Linux distro was simply that I'd heard good things about it on another discussion forum, and it does have the reputation of being one of the easiest distros to adapt to for someone used to Windows. That was why, when I had an old laptop kicking about and wanted to experiment with Linux, it was the distro I went for. Frankly, I didn't expect much: I thought it'd be far too fiddly, unreliable and difficult to get along with, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to use.

Fast forward a few months, and I managed to bump my main laptop hard and cause an instant and catastrophic hard drive failure. I managed to replace the hard drive (to my surprise, never having opened a laptop before!), and since I didn't have the installation key for Windows I installed Mint instead. That was well over a year ago and I am typing this on the same laptop, and still running Mint - as, these days, is my desktop.

The background to all of this is that I've not liked any edition of Windows since 7. It feels like a constant battle to keep my computer working how I want it rather than how Microsoft thinks it should work (and that's before we get into privacy concerns). With Mint, it doesn't. I do have a Windows machine for work because some of the software I need isn't Linux compatible, but all my personal computing is done on Mint machines and I'm very happy with that. It's easy to use, I like how customisable it is, it's very stable, and when I have had issues the help available via this forum has been excellent. 8)
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by citfta »

Like many of you I also feel like Windows 7 was the last decent version of Windows. I really don't like Windows 10 and refused to let my laptop be updated to Windows 11. Several years ago I tried many different versions of Linux including Mint. None of them could really compete in a lot of areas that I needed to use. But last year I decided again that I had had enough of Bill Gates and his operating system. So I started looking for a Linux version I could use.

I found Zorin 15 and really liked it but could not get my favorite RC flight simulator to work on it. Even some of the experienced gamers could not find a way to get it to run on Zorin. That sim worked fine on POP OS but I hated the DE of POP OS. I upgraded to Zorin 16 but it still wouldn't let me use Pica Sim my favorite RC flight simulator. Along the way I was told about the Cinnamon DE. I installed that on Zorin and really liked it much better than the default DE of Zorin. I was very impressed with the help on the Zorin forum but never was able to get the RC flight sim and several other games to work on Zorin.

Someone on the Zorin forum said he had switched to LM and was going to stay on LM as it just worked fine. So I decided to try it and see how it worked. When I looked at installing it I was very pleased to see it came with the Cinnamon DE already installed. After installing LM i crossed my fingers and decided to try again to get my favorite RC flight sim to work. Using Play on Linux it installed just fine and works great. I have also installed a few other games and all of them just installed and worked. So to make a long story shorter I repeat what someone has already posted. My main reason for using LM is that it "JUST WORKS". And the Cinnamon DE is a nice bonus.
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by Swampthing »

flax57 wrote: Wed May 04, 2022 11:43 am My question is :
What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint from other Linux distros ?
I got tired of Windows, and vira, lack of security/privacy, long boot times, memory and CPU-hogging and then got curious about Linux.
I tried a few Distro's and hated like their DE's(Gnome).
Stumbled across Linux Mint, it looked familiar.
The DE is intuitive, fast and reliable. That's what I care about.
I am here to stay, I don't post much in this forum, but I use it and enjoy it very much.
I work on Windows as an IT-supporter, so I have my fair share of it.
In my own time I use and enjoy using Linux Mint. It's like a breath of fresh air! :D
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by cliffcoggin »

Swampthing wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 12:31 pm
I work on Windows as an IT-supporter, so I have my fair share of it.
In my own time I use and enjoy using Linux Mint. It's like a breath of fresh air! :D
That's an impressive endorsement. I had a new computer built last week by two professionals who run a business building and repairing computers, and though they both moan about the drawbacks of Windows neither has ever looked at alternatives such as Linux for their personal use, despite me promoting Linux Mint. I guess it's a case of "better the devil you know".
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by Moem »

PCDoctor wrote: Tue May 17, 2022 4:13 pm One thing that concerns me about linux security
Is this idea thats its so secure
you dont need to even check it for bad programs
Consider this:
in all the years I have been on this forum, I have never read an account by someone whose machine genuinely, provably, got infected with a virus.
Not once.
Linux viruses do exist but they are exceedingly rare 'in the wild'. And those that do exist almost always have to be installed by the user.
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by casual linux user »

Why do you even need 26 reasons when you can have one solid reason for choosing whatever linux distributions do you use? :?

and that one solid reason is that: it works perfectly for me 8)
Moem wrote:Linux viruses do exist but they are exceedingly rare 'in the wild'. And those that do exist almost always have to be installed by the user.
Linux malwares are quite "common and effective" in a relative sense if you are in a server/mission critical/IOT space though

and unfortunately it will be common soon enough on the desktop/casual userbase if linux gets mainstream to dethrone windows
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Re: What are your opinions, reasons for choosing Mint ?

Post by Nikolai5 »

I like the "stability" and features of Ubuntu and it's packages.

Half the time I'm on my PC I'm gaming and steam recommends Ubuntu, Linux Mint being based on Ubuntu means I have no issues with Steam.
I don't like Snap, don't really like flatpak either, but that decision to disable snap, and other choices made by the LM team is what draws me to it as well.

Another thing is that while I understand I can install any desktop environment on any distro, I also like Cinnamon and that's what LM comes with out of the box. But I'm sure I could install KDE Plasma or something if I really wanted to.

Reputation as well. Mint has been for a long time one of the more popular and respected distributions, though I think people lean to heavily on the "beginner distro" aspect of it and assume that it isn't something someone more knowledgeable would use. Almost as if Mint is a stepping stone to eventually using Arch, when in fact you can do everything you want to do on LM just fine.
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