Also, as the README file in the adjustments directory says you can also create a .preserve file there to stop any of the changes being applied, if you want to stop it applying its branding to Firefox etc.

I apologize, I had forgotten that there is a KDE version of Linux Mint. I've never used a KDE desktop; so I have no idea if my write up will work on a KDE desktop; my steps were written under the (mistaken) assumption that you were using Mint MATE wanted a MATE desktop. In a Cinnamon desktop my steps wouldn't be necessary because the Advance MATE Menu is more-or-less identical to the base Cinnamon menu.

I do a lot of graphical & audio/video work in Ubuntu so I prefer the latest versions of GIMP, Krita, Inkscape,Scribus, AVIDemux, Handbrake, Hybrid Encoder, Audacity, VLC, MAME, QMC2, WINE, PlayOnLinux, etc... It's just easier for me to do that having my repos synched to the latested versions of Ubuntu instead of the LTS based versions of Mint.

I'd be really irradiated if my my OS made it difficult to set my Firefox homepage.

But you know of get-deb, webupd8 and oibaf ppas? Playonlinux basically does not need system wine presence at all, so long there are dependencies to run it, one can fetch any version within PoL and it will work. The kernel is backported in LTS as "hwe" kernel, basically same as Debian backports (-bpo). Cheers!

Mint switched to the LTS releases mainly because Canonical reduced the support period for the non-LTS releases. In my experience it's not been an issue, as PPA maintainers usually provide packages built for the LTS releases in addition to the latest non-LTS releases.

I'd be irritated too, but that isn't what's happening here - all this is doing is changing the default and setting the branding.

I gave up on Mint some time ago.

Not only is the apt system just so incredibly slow, but due to Mint being a spin of a distro (Ubuntu LTS) of a distro (Debian) known for slowness as a feature, but the various other problems others have mentioned in this thread lead me to switch back to my old friend and standby, Fedora.

Fresh enough to enjoy new features and fairly frequent updates (unlike 6+ months down the line), but not so bleeding edge that you can see the flesh forming. Some consider it to be the Goldilocks zone.

The greater part is, if I really do want to be bleeding edge, I could switch to testing or rawhide repos.

The DM for Linux Mint is shiny, that' I'll give it.

But it has been so fun experimenting with various workspaces, such as WindowMaker, FVWM, TWM, and several other obscure WMs and such. Currently I've got the Gnome3. As in Gnome, Cinnamon, and Mate. I'm thinking I'll give Budgie a go as well.

I recently gave Plasma 5 another go, but realized it wasn't running Wayland just yet (which was the reason I was giving it another try.).

I voted XFCE off the island for being retro in a bad way.

The Arch wiki has been such a delight for finding DEs. I'd love to give CDE a whirl, but I think that's a step beyond the effort I'd like to make.

I'd like to give Hawaii's UI a try, but due to a minor difference in QT versions, it refuses to run.

Rolling releases are one of the dumbest ideas ever. It's bad enough that Linux is just a kernel and not an entire system, but the rolling releases just gives them excuses for the system not properly stabilizing.

It's been at least 5 years since bluetooth audio worked correctly and you still can't use a bluetooth headset's mic without serious hackery.

The Linux Mint addon to Firefox annoyed me at first too, but thankfully it's real easy to change/disable. Apparently the customised search gives them a little income, but I don't want that stuff so have disabled it. Yahoo is hardly much better, but not having Google as default is a good move in my opinion. I never used those buggars, and wouldn't recommend anyone else to use them either (although of course almost every person on the planet does, meaning everything you do is known to Google).

Linux Mint may not be the best distro for experienced Linux users, but for new-ish users like myself it's been great. It's pretty easy to make the change from Windows to Linux, and most things are fairly user friendly. I've tried a lot of other distros over the years, and none have been as easy to learn as Mint. And without the phoning home features of Ubuntu (and horrible UI).

Going back to the search in Firefox, this is easy to change yourself, like adding default search with whichever search engine you prefer.

Although much software etc isn't the newest gadgets, I prefer to have a stable system over the absolutely newest stuff. Usually there are small differences anyway, which most users probably won't even notice. One of the reasons I went to Linux was to have a stable system that I am in control of myself, and for those purposes Linux Mint has served me well for several years now.

I think the best and most supported linux distro is Ubuntu.
I try to only use that because I think the worst thing of Linux is that there is no official linux distro and no official linux DE. I still know how to use any distro (for a month I was a ArchLinux user) but I prefer standard and supported things.

Of course right now my main OS is not linux at all (it's mac os), but I like to be free to change anytime so I continue to use both linux and windows to be able to switch to any OS if I want to switch.

Is Linux Mint a good distro for games? Does it use PulseAudio or something else?

Ubuntu (including its derivatives such as Mint) is the de-facto standard distro, at least when it comes to gaming. Ubuntu & Ubuntu-based distros have the largest share of users and are most widely supported by developers, plus they're officially supported by both Steam and GOG (Valve also recommend that developers target Ubuntu if planning SteamOS support).

I tried using Mint, I've actually liked Cinnamon, but in the end I went back to Ubuntu Gnome because of various issues. Now I'm still using 14.04, might switch to 16.04 at some point but I feel no real need yet.

And that's why I use them. Still it would be better to just formalize that Ubuntu is the official linux distro so that a normal user will be able to choose the better supported product without getting lost in the "sea of distros".
For a normal user is already difficult to change the default OS.
Power user will still be able to change if they want.

Also for a developer it's different to support one distro (the most used) or to support the official distro.
Finally right now there are incompatibilities between the various distros and between desktop environments, with a official Linux distro it would be easy to know what choices will be pursued for the future and what are only experiments of unofficial distros.

Software on Linux have not at all a common design pattern. There are no clear guidelines on how to be design interface on Linux (everyone uses the library they like). Even this can be confusing and makes the OS a mess.

Something like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation
is not possible on Linux. But it is the most important thing in designing a modern application. (just look at Gimp, that nobody want to use just because the GUI is not good and intuitive at all).

It seems silly, but the reason why Linux has problems to establish itself even if Free is its super-freedom (there is nothing official).
In fact, even if Windows is still the most popular system, many have tried linux but then turned back because some problems (due in most cases just to the confusing and not standard graphical interface).
And, despite the mac are very expensive, the spread of mac os remains higher than that of Linux (always for the same reason). Even some programmers prefer mac os since there is a Unix-terminal like on Linux.

For me it's not a problem. I can switch OS anytime, and if I need to use a software exclusive to a system (usually games) I use wine or a virtual machine.
Sometimes I even try to challenge myself with some strange OS like FreeBSD...
But not everyone can do that.

There are many successful open source program:
Firefox, VLC, Blender etc...
There are successful because they are good for people that use them (Blender is not easy to use, but since it is a professional application it's ok to be not as easy as VLC).

Formalise with *who*? Noone has any right to declare that any particular distro is "official" - the closest we have is what's most widely used and supported, and that is the Ubuntu family of distros.

It's for this reason that there are standard/common package sets (e.g. things like the Linux Standard Base) and abstraction layers such as SDL that eliminate most of these problems.

Anyway with Ubuntu and its derivatives effectively being the standard as they're so widely used and widely supported (as well as being amongst the easiest to use), developers can (and do) simply target those.

Other distros will need to either use similar setups, provide a means for Ubuntu compatibility in one way or another or risk being incompatible. Valve's solution to this is the Steam Runtime, which essentially provides a large collection of Ubuntu libraries along with a start script to have things use those libraries instead of the ones provided by the system. There are also things like and [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snappy_(package_manager)]Snaps for more self-contained solutions.

Linux Mint = Ubuntu plus Extra PPA. This PPA overrides a few things with own version of packages, mostly cosmetic changes and provides more software for convinience.

Also, Canonical was kinda sick in recent past with Unity, Upstart vs Systemd, Bazaar vs Git and Contributor License Agreement (CLA) which allows them to replace license with anything for whoever signed that.

Ubuntu's only plus is large amount of softwares in PPA in binary form.

With Mint, you don't depend upon Canonical. Thats a big plus.


Debian Stable with Backports is really really good (and based, like Solyd). But they have no PPA. Debian CAN auto-compile any package from Ubuntu PPA directly into binary DEB package (apt source), but its not as convinient as binary install. If Debian figures that one, it would be a killer.


I would use Debian Stable with Backports enabled as standard base for developers who release or test stuff for Linux. Ubuntu or Mint are ok for users due to software size though, as said.


Linux can't "establish" itself because the consumers are lazy. :) They move over only after MS excessively beats them with a stick. :) Thats about it.