5 Reasons Why Linux Mint is Better Than Ubuntu

[Cyberbleuet]

Very interesting article from Foss

https://itsfoss.com/linux-mint-vs-ubuntu/

Salutation!
Cyberbleuet

[Pjotr]

Yeah, well, in the end Mint is "simply" Ubuntu LTS with some smart improvements, coupled with a refreshingly sensible and conservative attitude towards the user interface. I used to hate the frequent wild UI changes in Ubuntu.

For me, the Mint "killer apps" are mintupdate and mintsources. I love those.

[MartyMint]

I used to hate the frequent wild UI changes in Ubuntu.

That was just Canonical chasing market space.

[Pjotr]

I used to hate the frequent wild UI changes in Ubuntu.

That was just Canonical chasing market space.

Well, they chased me away.

[exploder]

Mint has evolved over the years. It started out as a better looking Ubuntu with codecs. Today it is so much more! Who would have imagined the Cinnamon DE back then? Tools that make challenging tasks like removing old kernels, sharing files, etc, very easy for beginners. Ubuntu itself has evolved too though. Ubuntu used to be that ugly looking brown distro, lol. Today Ubuntu is a very attractive Gnome Shell distro with some tweaks that make it nicer to use.

I see innovations coming from both, just in different ways, Mint has always stayed on it's original path, to be elegant and user friendly. Ubuntu tried going with Unity, some liked it, some didn't. Ubuntu in my opinion, did the right thing allowing the community to create it's theme and icons. Gnome Shell looks pretty dated in it's default state, Ubuntu has a lot of appeal with the new theme.

You really can't go wrong with either distro, they are both extremely nice at this point in time. I really can't say that one is better than the other, I like using both! Mint and Ubuntu are very popular and both get a lot of praise and criticism any time they try anything new. MInt took a lot of heat for not including snaps, Ubuntu took the heat for including them...

I have participated in many Ubuntu development cycles over the years. Mint is based on Ubuntu after all, so Ubuntu development was important to me. Ubuntu puts a lot of hard work into making Debian unstable usable for the masses. Mint's development is equally important. Cinnamon development is never dull! Both Mint and Ubuntu make huge contributions in their own ways.

People like to argue all the time about what distro is better but it all comes down to choice. Be thankful you have both these great distros and appreciate them for the great contributions they make.

[Pjotr]

People like to argue all the time about what distro is better but it all comes down to choice. Be thankful you have both these great distros and appreciate them for the great contributions they make.

Yes, well, of course you can't love Mint and hate Ubuntu at the same time. Because Mint literally is Ubuntu LTS, for more than 90 % or so.... The official Ubuntu repo's are in the Mint sources list.

But the fact remains that Mint contains a lot of sensible and nifty improvements over its (already excellent) Ubuntu LTS codebase. Mint is a good thing (Ubuntu LTS) made even better.

[MartyMint]

Mint is a good thing (Ubuntu LTS) made even better.

That would be as good as anyone can describe it.

[antikythera]

Actually that write up misses 6th and arguably just as important reason why Mint is better, this forum and the community of users are much easier going and willing to help without being snarky for the most part

[scjet45]

Mint's creation of the Cinnamon Desktop, as well as for bringing Mate/(previously Gnome2) back into the limelight,
instead of those dark days of that ugly GNOME/3 sHELL.

[exploder]

Mint's creation of the Cinnamon Desktop, as well as for bringing Mate/(previously Gnome2) back into the limelight,
instead of those dark days of that ugly GNOME/3 sHELL.

I think Ubuntu fixed the ugly in Gnome Shell now, well the community did. Some years ago, when I nearly lost my sight, Gnome Shell had the best accessibility features out there. I hope I never need to use them again but it's nice to know it's there! If it hadn't been for Gnome Shell and the PCLinuxOS community I would not have been able to use a computer for months.

Try turning on accessibility features on anything else with 20/300 vision and see how far you get! Fortunately my vision was restored but I have never forgotten that experience. It gave me a whole new point of view on Gnome Shell!

Mint does an amazing job of keeping the traditional desktop alive for those that want it. Gnome Shell is not without it's good points too though.

[scjet45]

Mint's creation of the Cinnamon Desktop, as well as for bringing Mate/(previously Gnome2) back into the limelight,
instead of those dark days of that ugly GNOME/3 sHELL.

I think Ubuntu fixed the ugly in Gnome Shell now, well the community did. Some years ago, when I nearly lost my sight, Gnome Shell had the best accessibility features out there. I hope I never need to use them again but it's nice to know it's there! If it hadn't been for Gnome Shell and the PCLinuxOS community I would not have been able to use a computer for months.

Try turning on accessibility features on anything else with 20/300 vision and see how far you get! Fortunately my vision was restored but I have never forgotten that experience. It gave me a whole new point of view on Gnome Shell!

Mint does an amazing job of keeping the traditional desktop alive for those that want it. Gnome Shell is not without it's good points too though.

Gnome3/shell took a long time, several years to finally catch up to Gnome2's already far better accessibility support, complete keyboard control of desktop, screen magnification, onscreen keyboard, ..., Gnome 2 invented the open accessibility architecture AT-SPI (Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface).

[BrianI]

I'll admit I recently tried Kubuntu again.

KDE Plasma is very impressive with the amount of customisability, but I found the memory usage of KDE plasma on Kubuntu 20.04 was ~150mb less than Cinnamon on Mint 20, the cpu and gpu usage of KDE was a bit more.

So I eventually did a clean install of Mint 20 Cinnamon again. There is lots to be said for a stable LTS based distro like Mint as well

[antikythera]

Plasma has too many stability issues at present, even in the LTS build used for Kubuntu. The reporting tool also says that the information generated cannot be submitted because it contains no useful information regardless of the debug packages being installed.

[MartyMint]

KDE Plasma is a big bucket of parts and doo-dads.

If tinkering and poking around settings and configurations endlessly is your thing, you'll be in heaven.

There's something to be said about having a stable, sensible OOTB experience like Mate and Cinnamon provide.

[BrianI]

In a fit of boredom on a wet weekend, I gave Kubuntu 20.10 an install.

Note to self, never touch a running system , especially when you have a deadline to get some images processed for a hand in for my photography club. KDE Plasma is very fancy, very customisable, but I think in all honesty I prefer the simple stability of a LTS based distro, with a stable desktop environment. Especially when the amdgpu-pro drivers I need (for open-cl acceleration), haven't been released for Ubuntu 20.10 based distros yet!

Thank goodness for timeshift to recover my previous Mint 20 Cinnamon install!

[MartyMint]

I've been an Ubuntu user since 7.04...and even I won't bother with the standard releases.

[tuxedlinux]

Yeah, well, in the end Mint is "simply" Ubuntu LTS with some smart improvements, coupled with a refreshingly sensible and conservative attitude towards the user interface. I used to hate the frequent wild UI changes in Ubuntu.

For me, the Mint "killer apps" are mintupdate and mintsources. I love those.

Indeed. The mint* apps are very useful.

[Termy]

I'm a huge Ubuntu fan -- not that I accept everything Canonical do -- and I don't actually use Linux Mint on anything other than a virtual machine for TeamViewer and software testing, but I've had experience living in Mint for a little while. Anyway, my view might be different and less skewed, at least towards Mint.

1. Linux Mint caters really well to new users to Linux, offering GUIs for this and GUIs for that. They take care of their users and it's hard not to respect that, even as a terminal nut. Ubuntu, I feel, for the most part, leave it down to the user; while I prefer this, a new user probably won't.

2. For the most part, I can't fault this community, which is one of the reasons I stay; that and to help out users getting started with Linux. I have no experience with the Ubuntu community, beyond my channel and some stuff on GitHub, I guess, but the very fact that I hear good things about this more than I ever do the Ubuntu one is a good sign.

3. I might be completely off here, but Canonical have plenty of financial obligations, whereas Mint don't, at least nowhere near to the same degree. This, I believe, changes the general attitude and goals of the development team, for the better. Put simply: more time is spent thinking about the user's experience, and less on their pockets.

4. I realise point 1 covers this, but I'm just going to point out the ability to change kernel versions with absolute ease, thanks to that part of the mintupdate utility; it's really cool, I can't lie. While it's easy to sudo apt-get install an image, some headers, or whatever else you might wind up needing, the GUI does make it a lot simpler.

5. I like the theming of Linux Mint. The colors, the style, the backgrounds; it's all just quite nice, even offering my preference of darker themes for those who don't want their eyeballs falling out.

6. They don't support Snaps in Linux Mint! This hit me today, so much that I had to talk about it on YouTube, and I'm honestly just so grateful there are distributions out there not afraid to stand up for their users. This is an easy point to the Linux Mint development team.

Beyond that, I'm afraid it comes down to a simple case of Linux Mint being based on Ubuntu.

[BrianI]

In a fit of boredom on a wet weekend, I gave Kubuntu 20.10 an install.

Note to self, never touch a running system , especially when you have a deadline to get some images processed for a hand in for my photography club. KDE Plasma is very fancy, very customisable, but I think in all honesty I prefer the simple stability of a LTS based distro, with a stable desktop environment. Especially when the amdgpu-pro drivers I need (for open-cl acceleration), haven't been released for Ubuntu 20.10 based distros yet!

Thank goodness for timeshift to recover my previous Mint 20 Cinnamon install!

lol.

Out of curiosity I tried Kubuntu 20.10 (again). Suffice to say, I still prefer the goodness that is Mint 20 Cinnamon!