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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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If you're already using Ubuntu, I don't think it's worth it. They're fairly similar. Then again, I didn't even get to install Ubuntu in the first place, the installer kept crashing.
Unless the laptop is a potato and you don't have a better computer, you can try Mint, or any other distro in a VM to see for yourself.
And welcome to Linux. If someone recommends you Arch Linux, Gentoo or LFS as other newbie-friendly option, it's a joke.
Then again, the archlinux wiki and forums are the best places to get every kind of help a linux user might need. And this is true for every distribution, to some extent.
Thank you for the reply. Nobody has recommended Arch Linux, Gentoo or LFS, yet lol. But Im happy I switched from Windows to Linux. However, Ubuntu is taking me a bit to get used to. It took me a few days to get Ubuntu to even work. Thankfully, I don't have anything on my laptop. I kept it blank for a reason to fly around and try out this OS.
It's like a favourite drink, there's no correct choice.
I quite like xubuntu. I know that linus tech tips recommended mint to people coming from windows.
Many have a live USB option, that's great for trying them out.
Thanks for the reply, do you happen to have any recommendation to any specific tutorials for adding windows programs or how to customize further?
Still getting the hang of Ubuntu, but I see a lot of comments on different posts in which a majority of them point to using Mint instead.
Ubuntu should be okay; it's not necessarily a bad pick. However, the community has been upset with some of its past decisions and (more recently) the implementation of its vision, i.e. their enforcement of Snaps. This has eventually led to our current situation in which it has become popular to hate on Ubuntu.
Would the best recommendation, be to switch to Mint from Ubuntu?
Personally, I've stopped recommending beginners to Ubuntu. This is primarily for how the above mentioned enforcement has lead to ~~broken~~ unintuitive interactions. However, if you've already started using it and are content with what you have, then the negative sentiment by itself shouldn't warrant a switch.
Though, granted, (I think) most Linux users have indulged in distro hopping; some have even made it their hobbies. So you shouldn't feel bad about switching either. Though I implore you to practice best practices while at it:
Thank you for the reply, luckily I kept my laptop basically blank. Nothing on there, so I can fly around the OS and check it out. I may give Mint a try, if I hate it, I'll just come back to Ubuntu. But I appreciate the indepth response.
Welcome to... being a normal Linux user
Switching distro is something every user does, thinks about doing, then does it again.
It's normal. You just discovered a new way of using your computer, and opened a ton of possibilities in front of you, from customising your current install to the death thanks to the choice in desktops and display managers to just slap an entirely different distribution on your machine. A ton of possibles.
Try them out! There's Live USB for about every one out there, but my favorite way is to dual-boot and see fully how the install process turns out, how the software management works, how updates occurs etc.
You'll notice a lot is the same, a lot is different, and most any feature from a distro can be slapped on another!
To give you a taste, try openSUSE Tumbleweed - not because I think you should switch to Tumbleweed over Ubuntu, but because it's quite different in a few key points, and I believe it is interesting for you: there's this Rollback backup feature, a beautiful and quite simple installer, a polished user interface, a different software format, and a powerful admin tool.
Have fun with your hardware. Now backup your files and go crazy! So many out there!
(I started with Ubuntu)
I also love Tumbleweed and rock it as my daily driver!
To complement this point, OP, you can also get that sweet rollback functionality in any distro! Usually the easiest way is selecting BTRFS as your file system on install, and installing a software called "TimeShift" that will manage snapshots for you.
BTRFS can be complicated, but basically, it allows remembering the changes in files, without needing to copy the ENTIRE file. This saves a ton of space. (You don't need to get into the weeds deep diving if you don't want to. Snapshots are great, everything else is great, as long as you aren't doing crazy specific RAID setups or something lol)
Otherwise, on EXT4 for instance, your rollbacks would just literally be copied files, which can eat your storage fast. :)
Tumbleweed is known for rolling (heh!) this in quite smoothly by default, but this is just an example how any distro can be tweaked how you like! (Highly recommend setting up Timeshift on ANY install.)
I absolutely second the advice in this comment: Try some live USBs or virtual machines and just play around for what feels right. Distro hopping can be lots of fun, but you'll find one that "feels like home."
:)
@MonkeMischief @reallyzen NIS is seriously broken in Suse and I've had a bug report in four at least four years and they won't fix it. So no good in a network.
Thanks for the reply, you're the first to actually recommend Tumbleweed. I will give it a look. I appreciate the suggestion and information.
I agree with most folks here that usability-wise, both are truly fine! Mainly I think philosophy is where Mint might have an edge here.
Ubuntu, run by a corpo named Canonical, has had some controversial decisions in the past, such as inserting amazon ads into the system's search feature, or "opt out" analytics being default, and lately, a system called "snap."
Snap is controversial because it has a closed source backend, but effectively works just like its open-source counterpart, the "flatpak." It's packaged so the software has everything it needs to run.
Some people say they work great, others hate them, but Ubuntu doesn't make it very easy for you to have a choice in the matter.
If you don't like the idea of snaps, it's a bit of a pain to get rid of it. And otherwise, Ubuntu will sneakily use it as the default way to install most software. Philosophically, this can feel a lot like why people left Windows behind!
Long term, that's why I favor and recommend Mint to most newcomers: It doesn't play those games, sometimes the drivers work even better, the community is fantastic, and the vast knowledge that works on Ubuntu should work on Mint too.
So that's mainly where the difference will lie.
Either way, I wouldn't sweat it too much while you're learning, as long as it does what you want! And purple-orange is pretty snazzy. ;)
Mint just feels a little "cleaner" in my humble opinion. Most software you'd want the latest of, like GIMP or Discord, will be found as a Flatpak in Mint's app store.
Hope this helps you get a clearer view!
Mint has a more noob friendly approach with almost everything having a ui and it is Ubuntu under the hood so there wouldn't be extra to learn after switching. Popularity wise mint is one of the best stable distros with Ubuntu as its base with community support as well so if you have doubts you can most probably find the answer just by searching
Also, I experienced better driver support with Mint than with Ubuntu, so it also worked better out of the box.
Though that may (no longer) be an issue for OP.
Stay with ubuntu unless you have an issue with ubuntu itself, because the grass isn't greener on the other side despite what some people might say. The only real difference that you'll find are different default settings/programs and the time it takes for a software update to reach your final linux install.
Some distros like Ubuntu prefer slightly older versions that have been proven to be stable/bug free while others like Arch mostly go for the newest everything where available, at the cost of stability. If you like something a little bit more balanced, you have Fedora (which is my preference).
The beauty of Linux is that most software will work no matter the distribution you use. If the reason you want to use Linux Mint instead of regular Ubuntu is the desktop environment, you can at any time install the Cinammon desktop (the one used by Mint), here's an article that guides you through the process: https://itsfoss.com/install-cinnamon-on-ubuntu/
@Doodz no harm in switching. Mint offers great GUI tools. Almost everything that can be done on Mint can be done on Ubuntu and vice-versa.
If you find Mint's GUI simpler go with it. Happy exploration.
The big thing to consider is how much are you going to customize it and how many external apps are you going to install, because with Mint when the next release you are more likely than not going to have to re-install, with Ubuntu you will be able to upgrade in place. Snap is trivially easy to get rid of, I'm typing this from a Ubuntu-Mate 24.04 system with NO snap.
with Mint when the next release you are more likely than not going to have to re-install
First time hearing this. Got anything to back that up?
@lancalot Only that I've run just about every debian derived distro there is and Ubuntu is the only one that has reliably upgraded in place.
Fair. Even if some may dismiss it as anecdotal (N=1), I do think it's valuable. Thank you.
@lancalot I run an ISP so quite a few servers thus though anacdotal, not a super tiny sample. And again I think it's an important point to consider but a lot has to do with how much effort you are going to put into customization. If your use is very generic, install and go, then no big deal, but if you spend a lot of time fine tuning and installing apps you have to get from third parties and compile yourself then a re-install is a big deal. I find myself often in the latter situation so it is important to me, to someone else perhaps not. For me windows is like the former situation, all I do with Windows is play games, and it takes me maybe 1/2 hour to install the games so do I care about a re-install of Windows? Not really.
Important elaboration. Much appreciated.
I'm mostly oblivious of what's required to run an ISP. But you mentioned servers yourself. Do you install Linux Mint on your servers?
@lancalot Consider things like setting up mail servers and web hosting configuration, when you've got hundreds of virtual domains, when you've highly optimized apache compiled from scratch and modified to your needs, that is the kind of thing I'm talking about that is time consuming and I don't wish to do from scratch more often than is necessary.
@lancalot And for the record, I don't have anything against Mint as an OS, it's Ubuntu with some pretty GUI admin apps thrown on top. I rarely use the GUI's so updates aside it's six of one or half dozen of the other. From a command line perspective, except when things break,they are identical and admittedly the aesthetics of Mint are in my view superior.
I have mint, ubuntu, debian, zorin, mxlinux, popos, fedora, alma, and rocky8 systems here, oh and one old centos6 system, and I use ubuntu for the majority of my infrastructure. Ubuntu always upgrades from one release to another in place successfully, the others do not. All the Redhat's are always a fresh install. Mint is about 50/50, and debian pretty much always requires a re-install. That and Ubuntu tends to be less problematic, especially after I excise snap.
snap is easily excised, snap list, snap remove (everything in list0, apt remove snapd, only thing of importance is Ubuntu's introduction box and firefox, firefox can be installed directly from mozilla's repo. In my view the introductory box has zero value so no reason to install it.
What you are referring to as the system search isn't, it's only part of the default desktop. If you use anything but gnome you'll never see it.