
Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet - jalan
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/review-mint-17-3-may-be-the-best-linux-desktop-distro/
======
mattlondon
+1 to Cinnamon being great.

I've found Ubuntu's Unity to be really non-intuitive and awkward to use ...
even after several years of using it I've never got used to it and generally
found it frustrating to use. Cinnamon is an absolute joy to use in comparison
- just does its job and gets out of the way.

Sounds like Mint is a sort of "unbuntu-without-unity" which is worth its
weight in gold in my opinion. Wish I could change my work's distro to use it!

~~~
t0mk
how about {x,k,l}ubuntu?

~~~
VonGuard
All the Ubuntu's have terminal GUI problems. They just keep tinkering and
changing things. Gnome did this to itself, too, and thus, we're left with all
these weird GUIs that aspire to be Windows 8, or Mac OS, when Gnome 2 was
fucking perfect and shoulda been left alone.

~~~
noir_lord
> All the Ubuntu's have terminal GUI problems. They just keep tinkering and
> changing things.

Xubuntu doesn't. 4.12 in 15.04/15.10 was much the same as 4.10 in 14.04 (other
than bug fixes and some small tweaks to fix stuff they where near identical).

The XFCE folks reached rough parity with Gnome 2 in terms of desktop usability
then just focussed on small increment improvements and bug fixes and that has
been a _major_ win imo as I can use a desktop that supports modern linux
distro's, is fast on everything and rarely surprises me.

------
SwellJoe
I understand the appeal for sticking with what you know (because ease-of-use
is most often just "what I'm used to"), but I don't really find the modern
Gnome UI and desktop problematic. It has some pretty big annoyances, in terms
of notifications (some of which are seemingly impossible to disable), and the
screen dimming thing that it does when using any menus (which also effects the
secondary display, meaning you simply can't use a Gnome desktop for any
professional video or presentation task).

Nonetheless, I'm not choosing a distro based on the desktop; Fedora has spins
for every major desktop I'd want to use (though no good tiling WM options,
with good integration, unfortunately, but nobody seems to build something like
that).

I do like that they're building based on the LTS release of Ubuntu. The life
cycle of a standard Ubuntu release is too short for comfort, IMHO. (Fedora,
too, though security updates stick around long enough for me.)

------
SeldomSoup
As someone whose desktop needs are pretty simple, I agree with this
assessment. If you want a *nix that's point-and-click configurable, looks
nice, makes it easy to install software, and generally doesn't get in your
way, Mint is definitely the way to go. I've tried all the popular distros,
from (X/K)ubuntu, to Debian, to Fedora, to Arch and others, and I inevitably
keep coming back to Mint. Just my 2 cents.

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xorcist
Last time I looked on Mint there was no support for upgrading the system. It
doesn't matter how easy installs are, I'm not going to tell my mother-in-law
to reinstall twice per year.

This review consists of someone who clicks through an installation and tell
what it looks like. That's not very interesting. You only install once, and
colors are configurable, if you care about those things. Supported hardware
must work without configuration or drivers, but that's mostly a solved
problem.

Casual users care about longevity. Will my software stop working because of an
upgrade? Will something move because of a redesign, so I don't know how to use
it anymore? Are those things there for Linux Mint yet?

~~~
sampo
> _Last time I looked on Mint there was no support for upgrading the system._

Some years ago, the recommended way to upgrade Mint was indeed to do a full
reinstall [1]. For a couple past years, there has been a simpler way,
involving a bit of command line acrobatics [2]. Still not good for your
mother-in-law.

Apparently [3] only in 2015 Mint finally started to have the "normal" way,
where you just click on an upgrade button, and the system upgrades itself. But
even now, this does not upgrade the kernel. Weird.

[1]
[http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2](http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2)

[2]
[https://gist.github.com/hgomez/7074150](https://gist.github.com/hgomez/7074150)

[3] [http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2871](http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2871)

~~~
xorcist
Weird indeed!

> Level 4 and 5 updates are not recommended unless they bring solutions to
> issues you're facing

What's a level 4 update? And how do I know if it solves an issue I'm facing? I
haven't got the faintest idea what they are talking about and I dare say I'm
an experienced user otherwise. What could my in-laws possibly do with that
information?

> Upgrade for a reason

> "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it".

So don't upgrade it is. Will then bugs continue to be fixed to my system? Will
there be timely security fixes? As an end user, I only want things not to
break.

> Should you decide to upgrade to 17.2's recommended kernel you can do so

So not only are you encouraged not to upgrade, but to mix kernel versions as
well. Not helpful. Their users must run an awful lot of combinations.

I think I'll pass, again. But thanks for digging this up! It does indeed look
like the project is moving forward, and looks a lot improved. There is still
room for an easy-to-use Debian for end users, which Ubuntu managed to be for a
number of years.

~~~
ymse
These concerns are exactly why I don't install or recommend Mint to others.
Terrifying that they haven't fixed it after all those years. It seems more of
an attitude rather than technical issue.

> _There is still room for an easy-to-use Debian for end users_

Does it have to be Debian? I'm looking forward to the inevitable "non-free"
Guix fork that my grandmother can use. That will surely be the year of the
Linux desktop.

~~~
xorcist
> It seems more of an attitude rather than technical issue.

Indeed. All the above concerned what looks like official communication from
the project only, not what they choose to spend their time on. But it's
important to give a fair picture of yoru project to the outside world, if not
for other reasons than simply to avoid hordes of thankless users demanding
support.

It's a bit unfortunate when articles like the Ars one paints this as a desktop
operating system for end users. It's clearly not what they're aiming for, and
it only reinforces the commonly held view that Linux is somehow for nerds
only.

Ubuntu seems to still be the desktop operating system to recommend for non-
technical users, but between Unity and the shopping lenses we desperately need
a plan B.

> Does it have to be Debian?

No, but Debian does bring so much of the solid foundation "for free" that I
feel it is probably the easiest way to get there. Debian has had a mostly
working upgrade path for some 20 years now, which is simply outstanding.

What's missing is mainly a well polished default GUI, including the ability to
discover and install new software. Debian is simply too flexible for a non-
technical user. It must probably also take care not to break the most non-free
software.

------
justinsaccount
I run cinnamon on one of my thinkpads. It's interesting to me how there are a
ton of things is does usability wise better than my work OS X laptop:

* The desktop overview 'expose' like thing gives me a large 2x3 grid of mini desktops, each containing mini windows that I can drag between different desktops. OS X displays a tiny 1x6 list of desktops and you can't drag windows between desktops directly.

* When I click the date in my panel I get a mini calendar popup.

* When I click the volume applet it has a entry right there for switching output devices. on OS X you have to option click the volume thing to get the hidden menu. Right click on an external mouse does not work.

Those are just the ones I notice on a daily basis..

~~~
jrcii
You can fix the calendar popup problem with an app called Day-O, which I agree
should be the default.

~~~
justinsaccount
Cool.. That didn't end up working for me since I use dark mode, but I followed
their suggestion to try
[http://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/](http://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/) instead
which is working nicely.

------
pixelperfect
I installed Mint 17.3 Cinnamon a couple weeks ago. Every time I've installed a
Linux distro in the past 10 years, I have run into major issues with drivers,
and this was no exception. It's related to having both an onboard Intel
graphics card and an Nvidia video card. If I disable the Nvidia card,
performance is fine but I am unable to hookup a second monitor. If I use the
Nvidia card, I can hook up a second monitor, but there are major issues with
screen tearing. If not for this issue, I would be quite satisfied with this
OS.

------
nickpsecurity
I was using Mint for over a year. New one is really glitchy on windowing or
graphics. Sometimes it makes a weird pattern while keystrokes dont do
anything. Also, dragging file save dialog to see a title in background causes
entire window to unmaximize & hide behind dialog. Huh!?

About to ditch it entirely if I dont find work-arounds in a few days.

~~~
VonGuard
MATE or Cinnamon? Want to know before I install. I get weird ass errors like
nobody when I install Linux. Currently, my Ubutntu 10/14 machine randomly
decides to ignore keyboard inputs and replace them with random other letters.
Happens right in the middle of me typing, and I do a lot of interviews. I've
literally had to reboot the damn thing in the middle of an interview because
my typing was onscreen as akusfhlasiuryieuhfisuhefuishfiushefiluhsufh. Never
found a single forum post or bug report anywhere near this...

~~~
nitrogen
It sounds like you may have accidentally triggered a shortcut for switching
keyboard layouts. Try looking through the keyboard shortcut settings for
something too easy to press by accident.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Appreciate the tip. Ill check. You have a guess on why moving a Save File
dialog messes with window for application itself? That's a new bug to me for
Linux in general.

------
Sniffnoy
> it'd be nice to have a keyboard-based way to do this as well, perhaps using
> "enter" rather than return to trigger it

Does F2 not work for renaming files? Maybe that's only a Caja thing, I don't
know...

~~~
barrkel
F2 for rename is a Windows idiom - as is the slow double click mentioned in
the article. I'd be surprised if F2 didn't work, given the way Cinnamon apes
Windows idioms.

(Not that that is a bad thing. I use Cinnamon by choice on Ubuntu 14.04 in my
day job. I far prefer Windows idioms to the Mac conventions that much of Unity
is aiming for.)

------
illuminated
I echo most of the author's excitements but for the ElementaryOS.

I've just stopped looking at any other distro after installing the latest,
Freya, which is also based on 14.04.

Elementary doesn't have many of the UX shortcuts that the latest Mint has, and
has far less developers working on it, but it's still such a joy to use.

------
drdaeman
Not for many laptops as GTK doesn't handle non-integer scaling well, so it
doesn't really support MidPPI-screens. It can work normally and work for HiPPI
with x2 scaling, and that's it.

I'm unaware of any simple way to set larger widgets - I think GNOME had some
knobs but in their quest to "simplify" UIs they were removed long time ago.

There are no theme-based workarounds in Mint (i.e. theme with larger widgets),
either. Their theming team suggest if one's got a 13" FullHD screen they've
just got to have small widgets ([https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-
themes/issues/90](https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/issues/90))

Qt has somewhat better support for such displays, but I think the last Mint
KDE release is 17.2.

------
VeilEm
Reading this post I am reminded just how much more work it is to have a
functional linux desktop that ends up running worse than a Mac or windows box.
More for less. Less battery life, less games, less driver support. Old
hardware. I've been running OS X for many years now but I think in the future
I see myself going back to windows and using docker toolbox to get an easy to
start and maintain linux development environment.

Lot's of Windows tools have matured and there are good terminal options now
for sshing into a local lightweight vm to do dev. On the hardware of my
choosing, no more being locked into overpriced boring silver apple hardware.

~~~
wtbob
> Reading this post I am reminded just how much more work it is to have a
> functional linux desktop that ends up running worse than a Mac or windows
> box.

I'm extremely happy with stumpwm. It runs, it switches between emacs, Firefox
and a good console just fine. It's infinitely more work to get Windows or an
OS X box to the same level of functionality, because neither of them properly
supports all of these key features: POSIX; a Common Lisp tiling window manager
(which means I always have a REPL a slime-connect away); native X11.

I literally _never_ miss Windows or OS X.

~~~
codezero
OS X is POSIX certified, no Linux distribution is but that's a minor point I
assume.

~~~
wtbob
True enough; I edited my comment to indicate that I mean all those features at
once.

~~~
codezero
mostly unrelated – but I wouldn't have known/cared about POSIX compliance
until I ran into it:

On OS X, getopt is POSIX compliant. GNU utilities tend not to enforce POSIX in
getopt, as a result you can do things like ls _.txt -la

On a POSIX complaint system, the optional arguments must come before any file
arguments. This is super annoying to me, after having been using Linux for 15
years :)

Personally, I've been super happy with OS X for all purposes except servers,
but to each their own, and that's where Linux (and the _BSDs) shine – giving
you access under the hood, which is awesome, but some of us just want the car
to drive itself, so to speak.

~~~
wtbob
> Personally, I've been super happy with OS X for all purposes except servers,
> but to each their own, and that's where Linux (and the BSDs) shine – giving
> you access under the hood, which is awesome, but some of us just want the
> car to drive itself, so to speak.

I can understand that, but I just can't live without a tiling window manager.
Every time I have to use a UI with movable windows I feel old-fashioned and
clumsy. If you think about, tiling is the interface folks are used to with
their phones and tablets already.

There's good UI research potential in discovering the ideal ways to indicate
how to split, move &c. windows in a tiling WM.

~~~
codezero
There are a bunch of decent tiling window managers on OS X but I don't know if
any support a Common Lisp connection. Which one do you use on Linux, I'd like
to check it out.

I've tried tiling wms in the past but they never stick for me, probably
because most of my work is isolated to the browser and email, and I typically
have each maximized on separate displays. I've always preferred my terminals
to be backgrounded when not in use and to have all the tabs consolidated.

------
SFjulie1
I migrated from mint/ubuntu/debian insanity to FreeBSD for working and windows
to play and share obediently my private data with criminals (government,
marketing people, companies and VC included).

I stopped fixing stuff because it works, and since then I am happily bored
again doing the minimum work expected from me without stress. Some stuff I
don't have anymore (like weired chars in the console). But I never thought of
it as a good idea in the first place I want ";" to be ";" not a greek question
mark.

Bye bye linux(es). You are becoming an unusable bloatware.

------
fit2rule
I have to admit that the prospect of Ubuntu's future looking not so bright is
a bit disconcerting. Does anyone have any insight into why the author of this
article makes this claim? I know that there is a lot of controversy about
Ubuntu's changes to try to build 'something new' that will compete with the
big players, but I didn't think this meant that Ubuntu has an uncertain
future.

I guess nobody has a time machine, but as a long-time user of Ubuntu, I'm
intrigued by what those in the know feel about its future. Is Ubuntu jumping
the shark?

~~~
tdkl
Probably the fact that after they made Linux much user friendly and popular
they focused on mobile and didn't really touch the desktop significantly
again.

------
giancarlostoro
I don't think I've ever used Mint, or if I did it was brief. I've used
Netrunner which was really nice, but ultimately fell in love with openSUSE. I
may someday give Mint a try though. This is interesting news but the article
is confusing to me at first glance as to what Mint is actually doing. Cinnamon
isn't really for me though. I loved Gnome 2 because it was highly customizable
but now that it's gone my only alternative is KDE or XFCE but XFCE feels like
it's missing something everytime I use it.

------
hsivonen
What's Mint's sustainability model? Does it have many developers? How do those
devs make money to pay their bills?

~~~
qbrass
mint-search-addon tacks their referral code to searches you make using it.

------
Estragon
What is the upgrade path like on mint these days? I ran into real problems
with it when I tried it a few years ago.

~~~
nitrogen
The Mint updater has a menu option for upgrading. You click it, and it
updates, reliably. The KDE version gets the update option later than the
others, though.

------
jamespo
A distribution I'm keen on is the Arch / Gnome Shell based Apricity.

------
twic
I've been out of the desktop Linux world for a while. How does Arch compare to
Mint? I rather like Arch's rolling release model, but Mint sounds like a
seriously polished piece of work.

~~~
collyw
Mint also has a rolling release based on Debian.

I looked at Arch but the install looked difficult, so I ended up on Manjaro.
Arch based with an easy to use installer and package manager. Works great on
the laptop I am currently typing on, but its a bit crashy on my Gigabyte brix
(though Mint had problems on that box as well).

~~~
tomjakubowski
> Arch based with an easy to use installer and package manager.

What's different about Manjaro's package manager? Is it a porcelain for
pacman?

~~~
collyw
There is a graphical one available, which wasn't available when I looked at
Arch.

------
burntcookie90
I've actually just installed Gnome + PaperGTK on a chromebook pixel LS running
arch and I've never been happier with a linux box. Migrated over from a
thinkpad x1 2015

------
scurvy
In 17.3, is Flash still a dependency of the main codecs deb? In previous
versions of 17.x, it was impossible to remove the Flash deb without
uninstalling everything useful.

------
sampo
Does Cinnamon allow for vertical panel placement?

------
callesgg
Thats Mint.

------
nkhodyunya
No, I disallow it.

------
tootie
ChromeOS is the best :p

~~~
evv
Hopefully you still like it when it evolves into Chromandroid

