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Quick Question for which one to pick

If this question was asked before, I apologize in advance for the redundancy.

I recently switched from Windows to Ubuntu on my laptop. Still getting the hang of Ubuntu, but I see a lot of comments on different posts in which a majority of them point to using Mint instead.

Would the best recommendation, be to switch to Mint from Ubuntu?

33 comments
  • Welcome to... being a normal Linux user

    Switching distro is something every user does, thinks about doing, then does it again.

    It's normal. You just discovered a new way of using your computer, and opened a ton of possibilities in front of you, from customising your current install to the death thanks to the choice in desktops and display managers to just slap an entirely different distribution on your machine. A ton of possibles.

    Try them out! There's Live USB for about every one out there, but my favorite way is to dual-boot and see fully how the install process turns out, how the software management works, how updates occurs etc.

    You'll notice a lot is the same, a lot is different, and most any feature from a distro can be slapped on another!

    To give you a taste, try openSUSE Tumbleweed - not because I think you should switch to Tumbleweed over Ubuntu, but because it's quite different in a few key points, and I believe it is interesting for you: there's this Rollback backup feature, a beautiful and quite simple installer, a polished user interface, a different software format, and a powerful admin tool.

    Have fun with your hardware. Now backup your files and go crazy! So many out there!

    (I started with Ubuntu)

  • Stay with ubuntu unless you have an issue with ubuntu itself, because the grass isn't greener on the other side despite what some people might say. The only real difference that you'll find are different default settings/programs and the time it takes for a software update to reach your final linux install.

    Some distros like Ubuntu prefer slightly older versions that have been proven to be stable/bug free while others like Arch mostly go for the newest everything where available, at the cost of stability. If you like something a little bit more balanced, you have Fedora (which is my preference).

    The beauty of Linux is that most software will work no matter the distribution you use. If the reason you want to use Linux Mint instead of regular Ubuntu is the desktop environment, you can at any time install the Cinammon desktop (the one used by Mint), here's an article that guides you through the process: https://itsfoss.com/install-cinnamon-on-ubuntu/

  • I agree with most folks here that usability-wise, both are truly fine! Mainly I think philosophy is where Mint might have an edge here.

    Ubuntu, run by a corpo named Canonical, has had some controversial decisions in the past, such as inserting amazon ads into the system's search feature, or "opt out" analytics being default, and lately, a system called "snap."

    Snap is controversial because it has a closed source backend, but effectively works just like its open-source counterpart, the "flatpak." It's packaged so the software has everything it needs to run.

    Some people say they work great, others hate them, but Ubuntu doesn't make it very easy for you to have a choice in the matter.

    If you don't like the idea of snaps, it's a bit of a pain to get rid of it. And otherwise, Ubuntu will sneakily use it as the default way to install most software. Philosophically, this can feel a lot like why people left Windows behind!

    Long term, that's why I favor and recommend Mint to most newcomers: It doesn't play those games, sometimes the drivers work even better, the community is fantastic, and the vast knowledge that works on Ubuntu should work on Mint too.

    So that's mainly where the difference will lie.

    Either way, I wouldn't sweat it too much while you're learning, as long as it does what you want! And purple-orange is pretty snazzy. ;)

    Mint just feels a little "cleaner" in my humble opinion. Most software you'd want the latest of, like GIMP or Discord, will be found as a Flatpak in Mint's app store.

    Hope this helps you get a clearer view!

  • I switched from Windows to Mint. Best thing I ever did for myself as It's extremely user friendly.

    Is it the best choice for you? That depends on what you're looking for in Linux.

    Personally I was just fed up with Microsoft and all the corporate shenanigans. But I'm too old and dumb to learn how to properly utilize Linux (not gonna kid myself on that front), and Mint has proven a great "Baby's First Linux" for me.

  • I have mint, ubuntu, debian, zorin, mxlinux, popos, fedora, alma, and rocky8 systems here, oh and one old centos6 system, and I use ubuntu for the majority of my infrastructure. Ubuntu always upgrades from one release to another in place successfully, the others do not. All the Redhat's are always a fresh install. Mint is about 50/50, and debian pretty much always requires a re-install. That and Ubuntu tends to be less problematic, especially after I excise snap.

  • snap is easily excised, snap list, snap remove (everything in list0, apt remove snapd, only thing of importance is Ubuntu's introduction box and firefox, firefox can be installed directly from mozilla's repo. In my view the introductory box has zero value so no reason to install it.

    What you are referring to as the system search isn't, it's only part of the default desktop. If you use anything but gnome you'll never see it.

33 comments