Unpopular opinion: Linux Mint sucks ass and there are so many great distros to choose from, which aren’t Linux Mint. It looks like Windows XP and functions like Windows XP. Still uses X11, which doesn’t even have proper support for 1:1 touchpad gestures and handles multiple displays with different scaling factors and refresh rates in a way that is, well, hacky and janky at best or non-functional at worst.
I get that Linux Mint is easy to use because it’s made specifically to be as convenient as possible to users coming from Windows but jeez, it looks and feels like something from 2005, especially on a laptop…
I’ve just started to daily drive Mint, after finding Fedora confusing and Ubuntu somehow slow and stuttery.
Every few years I try out Linux desktop and this is the first time I’ve found it usable enough for me. For the first time I’m not delving into forum posts from last decade to get simple stuff working.
What distro would you recommend that does desktop usability better than Mint?
Linux Mint might look outdated but it’s stable as hell. Especially LMDE. Any time I mess around with arch/arch-based derivatives or any rolling release distros I’m quickly reminded why I chose to run Mint as my primary OS. I’m long past my distro hopping days so having something that works without question and doesn’t require any mucking around is huge for me.
I’ll take something from 2005 as a compliment to Linux Mint. Having installed it in 2006 you are absolutely correct. It’s shockingly boring lack of constant UI paradigm shifts almost makes me forget about the OS completely. I’m at the point in my Linux journey where I see slow adoption of new things as good. I accept others have setups that mint does not work for, but I would wager there is no Linux DE better suited as a first suggestion to try depending on the newness of the hardware. If you have 5 monitors of differing resolutions and frame rates then sure, there are better DEs.
It’s s gateway drug. It’s ok to let them come in on Mint and Ubuntu, they’re scared and confused. Give them creature comforts. Once they’re warm and fuzzy, they’ll get inquisitive and branch out.
Regale to the Mint users the virtues of your better choices, but tell the windows users come on it and use whatever they’re comfortable with.
I love Debian 12 with GNOME, and the things Ubuntu has done to make what would be by far the best desktop UX across Linux. After 6 years of Ubuntu, I am not particularly very attached to the Start menu paradigm.
Mint is very meh. Zorin is way better for the whole Start menu paradigm and Windows XP/7 aesthetic. If you have to pick Mint, atleast pick LMDE with GNOME, not KDE.
I used Mint when I first started playing around with Linux about a decade ago and it was pretty good. But I recently tossed it on a laptop that I primarily just wanted to run a web browser and have minimal faffing about and I’ve been extremely impressed with how it’s matured.
The DE is snappy and unobtrusive with extremely sane defaults. The software center is extremely usable and has very nice flatpak integration, their replacement desktop utilities for the Gnome utilities they once used are very full featured and don’t get in your way, and in most cases where Canonical built their own tool that nobody else uses, Mint has already swapped it with the standard tool. If your goal is to just get a Linux desktop going with minimal faffing about Mint has really become a brilliant choice to do so with
Just do it now, you won’t regret it, or install mint in a virtual machine and full screen it and get use to it, you’ll find yourself using windows less and less every day. My personal go to is Kubuntu, because I like the customization capabilities and lower memory footprint than Gnome. I hate tiling windows managers, so don’t recommend those please.
im planning to switch from windows 11 to linux mint in 2026
Unpopular opinion: Linux Mint sucks ass and there are so many great distros to choose from, which aren’t Linux Mint. It looks like Windows XP and functions like Windows XP. Still uses X11, which doesn’t even have proper support for 1:1 touchpad gestures and handles multiple displays with different scaling factors and refresh rates in a way that is, well, hacky and janky at best or non-functional at worst.
I get that Linux Mint is easy to use because it’s made specifically to be as convenient as possible to users coming from Windows but jeez, it looks and feels like something from 2005, especially on a laptop…
I’ve just started to daily drive Mint, after finding Fedora confusing and Ubuntu somehow slow and stuttery.
Every few years I try out Linux desktop and this is the first time I’ve found it usable enough for me. For the first time I’m not delving into forum posts from last decade to get simple stuff working.
What distro would you recommend that does desktop usability better than Mint?
I use debian and am very happy with it. It runs just fine on an 3-4 year old laptop (thinkpad).
I don’t daily drive Linux myself yet, but I see a lot of people talking up Pop!OS
Linux Mint might look outdated but it’s stable as hell. Especially LMDE. Any time I mess around with arch/arch-based derivatives or any rolling release distros I’m quickly reminded why I chose to run Mint as my primary OS. I’m long past my distro hopping days so having something that works without question and doesn’t require any mucking around is huge for me.
I’ll take something from 2005 as a compliment to Linux Mint. Having installed it in 2006 you are absolutely correct. It’s shockingly boring lack of constant UI paradigm shifts almost makes me forget about the OS completely. I’m at the point in my Linux journey where I see slow adoption of new things as good. I accept others have setups that mint does not work for, but I would wager there is no Linux DE better suited as a first suggestion to try depending on the newness of the hardware. If you have 5 monitors of differing resolutions and frame rates then sure, there are better DEs.
It’s s gateway drug. It’s ok to let them come in on Mint and Ubuntu, they’re scared and confused. Give them creature comforts. Once they’re warm and fuzzy, they’ll get inquisitive and branch out.
Regale to the Mint users the virtues of your better choices, but tell the windows users come on it and use whatever they’re comfortable with.
I love Debian 12 with GNOME, and the things Ubuntu has done to make what would be by far the best desktop UX across Linux. After 6 years of Ubuntu, I am not particularly very attached to the Start menu paradigm.
Mint is very meh. Zorin is way better for the whole Start menu paradigm and Windows XP/7 aesthetic. If you have to pick Mint, atleast pick LMDE with GNOME, not KDE.
linux mint is working on wayland
I used Mint when I first started playing around with Linux about a decade ago and it was pretty good. But I recently tossed it on a laptop that I primarily just wanted to run a web browser and have minimal faffing about and I’ve been extremely impressed with how it’s matured.
The DE is snappy and unobtrusive with extremely sane defaults. The software center is extremely usable and has very nice flatpak integration, their replacement desktop utilities for the Gnome utilities they once used are very full featured and don’t get in your way, and in most cases where Canonical built their own tool that nobody else uses, Mint has already swapped it with the standard tool. If your goal is to just get a Linux desktop going with minimal faffing about Mint has really become a brilliant choice to do so with
Why not sooner?
because if i say it it’s gonna be 2026 then it’s gonna hard to make me say 2024
Just do it now, you won’t regret it, or install mint in a virtual machine and full screen it and get use to it, you’ll find yourself using windows less and less every day. My personal go to is Kubuntu, because I like the customization capabilities and lower memory footprint than Gnome. I hate tiling windows managers, so don’t recommend those please.