Hi, how’s it going? I’ve been daily driving mint with i3 for a while now, (takes like 500mb idle ram) but I always hear mint being called a newbie distro, I know arch is harder to set up and more customizable for example, but overall im wondering, in which cases one would go from mint to another distro? what can make other distros “better” than mint? i’ll end up using a window manager (i3 or if thats not availible some other lightweight one) so differences in desktop environments i dont really care that much about
After using Arch and Debian (two great distros) I have been using Mint for the last 7 years or so and I have yet to feel any desire to change distro: it’s just what I was looking for.
‘Better’ only exists in regards to specific needs: what do you think is not as good as it should be with Mint? Then ytou will be able to decide if this or that other distros offering it are indeed better ;)
Does it work for you? Yes? Then you have no need to swap distros. When people say a ‘newbie distro’, it means it is simple for newcomer users to learn it, not that it is akin to a tutorial or stopgap.
You only swap distros if you have a use-case your current distro can’t actually fulfill for one reason or another.
And about arch being more customizable, Mint is just as customizable. You can swap the desktop just like Arch, you can change bootloader theme, gtk theme, icon theme, etc all normal
Don’t customize shit. Once your tweak one thing it might work for a month or 6 months or longer but at some point it WILL be the domino that fucks your system. I’ve tweaked everything endlessly for years. Now I run damn near stock. Tired of fixing shit.
Edit: doesn’t matter if you document what you tweaked. Files and folders move, layouts change, code changes. You lose items, updates happen. There is no stable tweak ever. Eventually something will happen.
Source: I’ve ran most common distros and tweaked every one of them. All to wind back up on stock mint. Shit just works.
yea I don’t wanna change just to be hip, I literally don’t know the differences between distros, I’m just wondering if I’m missing out on something, not in like the way gui and animations works, but the other stuff
I literally don’t know the differences between distros
Its just what they come packaged with. Its all the same kernel. Do you like the software Mint comes with? Have you felt a need to replace a bunch? Does your computer do what you want it to?
Thats really about it. Debian is “good for servers” because it comes with software for running servers. Kali is “good for hackers” because it comes with software for hacking. Mint is “good for newbies” because it comes with software newbies expect.
Thats really pretty much it. Theres nothing stopping you from installing the software you want. If you start to feel like your distro has a bunch of stuff you dont need, then maybe you can look to other distros that dont come with that stuff.
the other thing is the release cycle, if you’re constantly fighting that then maybe switch distros
Even if the distro has a bunch you don’t want, uninstalling is pretty easy now with the package managers I’ve used. Just strip some things away and see if that’s good first.
Also good advice.
If your computer runs smoothly and youre not having a bunch of headaches, you’re generally better off tinkering with what youve got than going through the hassle of installing a whole new OS.
If your computer runs smoothly and you’re not having a bunch of headaches, you’re better off NOT tinkering with what you have. No point fixing what’s not broken.
Fair, I meant it more in the user space sense. If your OS came with Blender and you never use Blender, uninstall it.
If you’re happy with things and nothing is acting weird or badly, You’re more or less golden, like folks are saying.
Where you might find that one day you want a newer kernel or packages (which is why you’d switch to Arch or one of its derivatives), is if you ever have very new hardware (or very old hardware that just got a driver pulled into the kernel - I own a Digidesign 002Rack that is ancient, but someone finally wrote a driver for it, and it’s still a great piece of audio hardware) that only has drivers in the latest kernels.
But if you’re just doing web, Office type stuff, even Steam games, you shouldn’t need anything more than you have already.
I am a fan of the KDE desktop, myself, and I recommend that everyone try it out at some point. But you should be able to install it onto Mint and just choose it when you login, again, no need to change distros.
Just a warning, installing too many WMs or DEs can cause…… issues. Two will probably be fine, but before you go wild and install all of them, just be wary as it can cause conflicts between apps and shit. So yeah, just be wary.
On Debian I have freely installed Gnome, KDE, and one or the other of the LX ones, and had no perceptible problems.
However, I just tried to shortcut installing KDE on a vanilla Ubuntu, and boy, they don’t handle that well.
As others have said, if you’re happy with it, no need to change. I switched out to Arch (BTW) because I like to pull my OS apart and tinker with it, but if you’re not into that then there’s no issue with going with something stable that just works.
Mint is good if OS tinkering isn’t where you want to spend your time and you want something with sane defaults that just works. Immutable distros like Bazzite, Aurora, or SteamOS are arguably more newb-friendly and turn-key, whereas Mint is more readily customized (and broken).
Of you like Mint stay with it. A friend of mine has been using it for 10+ years probably.
There are so many distros and you might find each one has something positive or negative about it.
Just use what you like.
The desktop environment (cinnamon) is mostly why it’s considered beginner friendly. And it’s considered beginner friendly because it is similar to Windows.
If you try a different distro, it’s not gonna have cinnamon. If you like mint and it’s not causing any issues, you should probably just stick with it.
If it works for you, stick with it. It also doesn’t cost anything try others.
Other than being able to do a minimal install? Nope.
