While Ubuntu and Red Hat grabbed most of the Linux headlines last year, Linux Mint, once the darling of the tech press, had a relatively quiet year. Perhaps that’s understandable with IBM buying Red Hat and Canonical moving back to the GNOME desktop. For the most part Linux Mint and its developers seemed to keep their heads down, working away while others enjoyed the limelight. Still, the Linux Mint team did churn out version 19, which brought the distro up to the Ubuntu 18.04 base.
While the new release may not have garnered mass attention, and probably isn’t anyone’s top pick for “the cloud,” Linux Mint nevertheless remains the distro I see most frequently in the real world. When I watch a Linux tutorial or screen cast on YouTube, odds are I’ll see the Linux Mint logo in the toolbar. When I see someone using Linux at the coffee shop, it usually turns out to be Linux Mint. When I ask fellow Linux users which distro they use, the main answers are Ubuntu… And Linux Mint. All of that is anecdotal, but it still points to a simple truth. For a distro, that has seen little press lately, Linux Mint manages to remain popular with users.
Linux Mint is definitely my distribution of choice – they don’t try to change the world, and just want to develop a solid, fairly traditional desktop-oriented distribution, and they’re damn good at it. It’s on my laptop, and the fact I barely even realise I’m using Linux while using Mint tells you all you need to know.
meh based on another systemdOS clone, with a few notable exception Linux is becoming a dangerous mono-culture easy to target with malware…
So just because a distribution uses systemd it is more vulnerable to malware? LOL Malware is still an issue for you? There are still options if you don’t want to use systemd and prefer a good old fashion 5 minute boot up time. Linux has always been held back because resources are spread among a 1000 distributions and fighting over things most end users can care less about but whatever.
init.d never took 5 minutes to boot unless you had a forced fsck– and systemd didn’t change that. systemd has some good features, and some very brain-dead features, but don’t make up fud about init.d to justify it.
Huh? Linus was always so slow to boot until systemd was introduced. It’s multi-trended and init is NOT. There is a lot to not like about systemd but I like the faster boot times.
You really have no idea what you are talking about. Even LP dismissed the startup time as something the systemd really improved.
runit boots in less than 2 seconds on my five year old laptop, and init.d boot time was the weakest ever excuse for making a uniform attack surface and destroying an ecosystem with diversity and distinctive distros…. systemd isn’t just a method of booting, its the kitchen sink built in an adhoc manner by people who blame others for their bugs… not on my hardware thank you…..
I’d like to see more real diversity in operating systems that are not NT or Linux kernel based. A mainstream micro kernel desktop OS! I don’t really see the need for more Linux distributions. I said you don’t need to use systemd and you indicted you don’t so problem here.
codifies,
+1
I’ve never liked sysv init scripts, but way too many arguments for systemd just assume there were no other alternatives, which is misinformed.
It’s good to see another fan of runit! The init system in my distro was partially inspired by it.
Linux in coffee shops? Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Linux computer in a coffee shop, unless you count Chromebooks of course.
Yes, the article is definately overall “anecdotal” – on the best source of distro usage stats we had, old Wikimedia statistics (last one, for Jun 2015: https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm ) Ubuntu had TWO HUNDRED TIMES MORE usage share than Mint, and Fedora had an order of magnitude more… But what about trends, you say? Well when looking back at Jun 2014 report ( https://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2014-06/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm ), Ubuntu in that year increased by over 200M, while Mint has DECREASED by 1.2M…
On the current, less useful report ( https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sites-by-os ) Mint doesn’t even register… (and yeah, Chrome OS has 2x more than Ubuntu)
I worked every day on KDE on Ubuntu since 2008, until X11 crashed into a hard wall, due to KDE rashly upgrading in the following major Ubuntu release …
I installed Mint + Cinmamon since then and did not even considered moving ANYWHERE!
Nevertheless, I do love some of KDE tools, especially Yakuake.
Mint really does sit in the Goldilocks zone – not too heavy, not too light etc.
A relative has an old laptop, upgraded from Win7 to Win10. Trouble is, Windows Update doesn’t behave nicely under extremely intermittent use, which discourages use and makes the problem even worse. Simple solution – install Mint, fix broken defaults (firewall with a couple of clicks and scrollbars with some changes in config files), then show user the basics (turn on, open and close browser, shut down, plus very occasional update). Result – one happy user, who now actually uses the computer more than before.
Tried Mint. Cinnamon is a nice DE, but I got tired of not being able to upgrade between releases. I believe they’ve fixed that issue, but to me, Mint is just another variant of Ubuntu.
In the past year or so, I’ve become a major fan of Manjaro. I’ve always got up-to-date software, I can easily switch between kernels, and generally things “just work”. So far, in 12 months, I’ve had one update break my system– and that was because of a customization I made.
Mint is nice, unless you try to use your own local mirror of repositories. Last time I tried Mint 18.x it constantly reverts from local repos (192.168.x.x) to external ones the moment I try to use GUI package management tools.
Yes, I too use Mint Mate as my 1st choice Linux OS, as many have mentioned it’s just the right mix of function and bling.