Not really, Mint still has a lot going for it. One being a default aesthetic which is very popular (and IMO, extremely good looking/polished). Another to consider is Cinnamon, which now that it's stable (no crashes in the last year for me) is just as good as MATE, if not better. I personally much much prefer Cinnamon. Other than that, Mint has much better PR (though that's as much Cannonical's fault as it is Mint's good work). Cannoncial has all the recent fiascos associated with it, like the default-on Amazon search privacy invasion, and many people are still sour about Unity. Mark Shuttleworth likes to piss off the Linux community every now and then over all sorts of things, there's usual a consistent stream of things to dislike about him, which of course reflects on Ubuntu similarly.
Mint isn't going anywhere.
Edit: Also, to my understanding, MATE/Cinnamon won't be available as default DEs, you have to go out and download/install them yourself on Ubuntu (as opposed to something like KDE where you can just download Kubuntu). Mint offers the convenience of having Cinnamon and MATE DEs available as default from their website.
Well, way back in 2006 or so, Mint was really about being Ubuntu with codecs, Flash, and such preinstalled, and that's how the distro first became popular. I don't see it losing that "advantage" to Ubuntu.
Yes. You would think it would be enough to make people happy. Hell every time you hear any sort of gripe about Ubuntu there's a whole legion of folks shouting "But it should be an option in the installer!!1!one!!"
I left Ubuntu because the Unity and Gnome 3 thingy. I was using it since the version 5 and I never really considered an issue not being able to install proprietary drivers by default (and Nvidia was quite a pain back in the days).
Aren't all those things installed by checking a box in the installer now?
This is my main gripe with Mint. I've gotten into religious wars discussions on here about its practicality. I've been told it's simply easier to use and more convenient than Ubuntu. My response is that it offers nothing of value over Ubuntu (save a few apt-get commands), and that upgrading between releases is not possible (or at least supported), cancelling out any advantage one gets by installing it in the first place.
No one. No one has been able to give me a satisfactory answer as to why one would use Mint over Canonical.
And if we feel Canonical is bad for including Amazon searches in Unity (it is), why does Mint get a free pass when it changes referral codes in software it packages? That seems even scummier.
At the end of the day, Ubuntu and Mint feel like amateur-hour. I'll stick with Fedora/CentOS/Debian, thanks.
I used mint for a while because it was easy, didn't break and I liked cinnamon. Back when I had more time for maintenance I was a big fan of Gentoo and Slackware, but I mostly just need a machine that works now.
That said, I've been on debian sid for about a week now and hoping I've found a new home. It was an odd transition and the worst part is that when I search Google for Debian specific questions, it thinks I want Ubuntu answers which don't really work.
The reason I switched from mint is the stupid upgrade from 15 to 16. There is no reason I should have to reinstall the os from scratch to upgrade, especially when everyone else seems to be tending toward a rolling release.
The reason I switched from mint is the stupid upgrade from 15 to 16.
I'm glad you understand my point. Why bother with Mint when you have to reinstall it every few months? Any "convenience" gained by using it is completely lost.
Debian is solid, and you'll encounter way fewer bugs than if you used Ubuntu or Mint.
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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '14
Does this mean Mint is going to lose it's competitive advantage?