I’ve been having a big think over Linux distros. See, I’ve been looking back at my still-new Linux experience of nine months, and wondering how my own journey can help other people get started with FOSS operating systems. Whenever the topic of a Windows refugee-friendly OS came up, I would recommend Linux Mint because, first, it’s the one everyone says, and second, it was the Linux OS that I started with, fresh off Windows.
I always follow that up with a comment about how you don’t have to stick with Linux Mint if you don’t want to. You can do what I did, which is to dip your toe into the Linux distro water and find something that suits you better. But if I’m setting up Linux Mint as “my first Linux distro,” why not just skip the middleman and get right into the distros that have a bit more meat on them?
I’ve used Mint, popOS, and some others. I always recommend new people use the desktop version of Bazzite now.
It’s super newbie friendly. So much stuff is installed and set up for you that the average person won’t even need to touch command line. Also, the Bazaar has pretty much anything someone would need for day to day stuff.
Obviously, if you are the type of person to make serious changes at the OS level then it’s not great for that, but most people just need something to browse the internet, play some games, and maybe do some word docs and stuff.
I don’t get why everyone and their mother has to shit on Mint. I started my Linux journey on servers, but my first home computing distro was Ubuntu 16. It wasn’t what I needed so I stuck with Windows 10. After migrating my homelab server to Almalinux 9 and realizing how much better life could be if I just purged Microsoft from my household, I installed Linux Mint on my laptop and have used it ever since. If I had any less of a warm welcome into Linux for home computing, I might have just stuck with Windows 10.
I consider myself somewhere between a layperson and a power user. I’m pretty comfortable with BASH since I work with servers a lot, but low-level stuff is still black magic to me. I’m aware that KDE Plasma has a ton of cool bells and whistles (I use Nobara on my gaming rig), but other than KDE connect for sharing clipboard, I don’t really need any of that fancy stuff on my laptop. And I think the typical layperson probably won’t even set them up in the first place.
I think Mint gets shit on because it’s based on Ubuntu (which already gets shit on a lot) and only gets a new release when the Ubuntu LTS does, so it’s kinda out of date.
Rolling release distros get recommended over it a lot because having a newer kernel gets you better gaming performance and a lot of the techy people who’d even care about switching, also like gaming. And nowadays, immutable distros get recommended a lot so you can’t fuck things up with a weird config change. Mint just doesn’t do anything significantly better than any other distro, it’s lukewarm.
I don’t think the desktop environment actually has much to do with why people dislike Mint. It’s just fine IMO. I’ll take it over Ubuntu, but these days I’m on OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Rolling release, and comes with snapshots configured straight out of the box so when I fuck something up, it’s fairly quick do undo.
If there’s one thing the majority of people that are still on windows won’t care about is “being as up to date as possible”. Hell, even people on android phones complain about updates, “they changed everything, I have no idea where is what!”
Mint being based on a LTS that lasts a while is a desired feature for a lot of people, the kind that don’t follow tech news and don’t want to bother understanding computers.
The people who don’t want any change aren’t going to move to Linux anyway. I meant more the people who stayed this long for games, but are now giving up.
But also these updates very rarely change the UI significantly in most applications and desktop environments. It’s more bug fixes and performance improvements that you’re missing out on by being on Mint.
I’m on TumbleWeed and I don’t remember the last time the UI for my desktop or any application I use, had a significant change. But I’m always on a new kernel and new graphics drivers, which makes playing newish games using Proton a smoother experience.
It’s all linux. I distro hopped because I heared another distro handles the problem I’m facing much better than the current one.
I haven’t had problems in years - or I simply don’t care anymore. I’ve got my base system and I don’t fuck around anymore. It works like a charm.
I’ve seen a similar thesis in video form yesterday, I feel like in both cases the author forgot the fear they had before making the choice and think that sidestepping the solution to that part is no biggie.
But we’re talking about people who are afraid of a black box where you type text, they need as little friction as possible.
Hindsight is 20/20
ZorinOS ?
I think it really depends on the type of refugee we’re talking about here.
If they’re interested in tinkering, the starting point doesn’t really matter that much. Just let the refugee know that distrohopping is allowed. If you hear that some new distro has an awesome feature, give it a go.
If we’re talking about a person who hates tinkering and tweaking, the first distro suddenly begins to matter a lot more. That’s the distro they will be stuck with for several years, so Mint is definitely a solid option. Actually, most distributions that are Debian or Ubuntu based should be fine.
The vast majority of users don’t need “more meat” in their OS. They need stability. Linux Mint works great on that front, I don’t see the need to loose focus with multiple new distros. Not everyone needs to jump distro every month.
Disclaimer: i’ve been using Linux Mint for over 10 years without ever hopping to something else. And I’m a software engineer, not a casual user.
I’ve been on Ubuntu for the longest. Mint looks cool. I tried it today. Its good. I had to do some fsck on my drives. I’m going to try pure Debian first. I’m tired of all the closed source drivers not working. I’m going to use old hardware and proven drivers.
Much as I love KDE’s beautiful themes, Mint is just… easy. I’ve spent so many years hunting dependencies like lost scrolls in ancient tombs and beseeching ancient wizards of the right incantation to fix my Bluetooth that I just quit. As soon as it stopped being broken, I stopped trying to fix it. Mint hasn’t broken on me. Everything works exactly as intended, right out of the box, with few exceptions.
I have been dreaming of this day for ten fucking years. For now? Hon, I am good. I’m not having to spend hours digging for old posts on AskUbuntu or some other forum for the solution to errors no one else has had since Obama’s era.
Are there actual computer scientists with some hard evidence what works when switching OS? Because this article is just making stuff up to say anything, ie filler content/debate.
I will move to KDE when they add cross app online account support. Specifically being able to sign into my Google Calendar and getting my appointments and scheduling thing from my PC without using a browser.
Until then gnome/Cinnamon is my de
But wait, you can link your Google account since like… Forever now.
Last I checked KDE’s desktop calendar is just that, you can book appointments or see events.
There was a widget but it fell into disuse
It doesn’t sync to KDE’s calendar app, unfortunately, but it does sync to Gnome’s. It’s one of the pain points I had swapping to KDE.
It does. It does perfectly. At least since I’ve been on a KDE stack (2020).
I’m not sure how you managed to get that to function, I’ve tried many times to get any calendar to work with the one in KDE and given up every time
Well, it’s very easy.
I assume you have already linked your Google account with your Plasma user through the “online accounts” setting.
Then, you just go to the calendar app, or widget, and ✅ whatever Google Calendars you’d like to see from all the ones you have.
I would recommend Linux Mint because, first, it’s the one everyone says, and second, it was the Linux OS that I started with, fresh off Windows.
Both are bad reasons to pick a distro to recommend. Better reasons would be
- You got some experience with that distro and you’re willing to help the newbie in question, with issues that they might have.
- The distro offers sane out-of-the-box defaults and pre-installed GUI software.
- The distro is reliable, and won’t give the newbie headaches later on.
why not just skip the middleman and get right into the distros that have a bit more meat on them?
Because a middleman distro is practically unavoidable.
You don’t know the best distro for someone else; and if the person is a newbie, odds are they don’t know it for themself either. So the odds the person will eventually ditch that distro you recommended and stick with something else are fairly large.
Cinnamon vs. KDE Plasma
I have both installed although I practically only use Cinnamon (due to personal tastes; I do think Plasma is great). It’s by no ways as finicky as the author claims it to be.
Plasma is more customisable than Cinnamon indeed, but remember what I said about you not knowing the best distro for someone else? Well, you don’t know the best DE either. You should rec something simple that’ll offer them an easy start, already expecting them to ditch it later on.
So, why don’t I just recommend Linux Mint with KDE Plasma? Well, the cool thing about abandoning Cinnamon and embracing KDE Plasma is that it unlocks a ton of distros we can pick from.
That’s circular reasoning: you should ditch Mint because of Cinnamon, and you should ditch Cinnamon because it allows you to ditch Mint.
Bazzite, Novara, CachyOS
Or you can install all those gaming features in any other distro of your choice.
I use Fedora myself but for people new to Linux I still usually recommend Ubuntu. I know it’s likely to stick around because of the company backing and if an application is built for Linux it’s pretty much guaranteed to work on Ubuntu. I’m sure Mint is great too but for a beginner I want the distro to be as well supported as possible.
Once they get the hang of open source and develop a healthy hate of Snap I drag them down into my Fedora cave though.
is Mint still using old kernels? That could hurt hardware compatibility especially with newer hardware
You can install actually something called Mainline kernels. Which is a simple GUI app. That works also very well under Mint. Allowing you to install even newer kernels.
that sounds cool
although I guess that won’t help you if the Mint installer can’t boot on your computer, or if your wifi driver isn’t available and then you can’t download newer kernels
Depends on your definition of “old”, I guess. 6.8 is considered “current”, 6.14 and 6.17 are available on the list. So far, hardware support on 6.8 has covered everything I’ve thrown at it.
if you wanna put Linux on a brand new Christmas gift laptop, I think 6.14 could definitely be too old
in some cases even 6.17 might be too old
If the Mint installer uses 6.8, can you even install it on brand new hardware? missing a laptop’s wifi drivers would be a huge pain cause then you can’t update it without a usb->ethernet adapter
that would be enough frustration for most users to turn back to Windows
I’m running 6.8 kernel on current Mint for a new PC I built last year. I remember that being a big deal that they were using more recent kernels to improve hardware support. So far it’s supported everything I’ve thrown at it without any effort on my part.
That’s awesome! Mint definitely sounds great if it supports your hardware without issue. I think it’s less of a concern with custom builds, and more of an issue with OEM prebuilts and laptops especially
FEDORA
