Just installed my second Mint machine for desktop work yesterday. Really cannot complain. The difference in desktop responsiveness between this 7 year old Mint machine versus a brand new PC or Mac is night and day.

Every modern OS needs a major GUI refactoring, I swear. It takes a full minute for my Mac to open control panels. Mint can do it in microseconds... Silly that this is the case.

It's what I installed on my parents' computer. Cinnamon by default has the Windows look and feel; it comes with codecs available out of box, and it just works.

I think the article is over the top, but in terms of thoughtless lowest common denominator user experience I don't think there's a better choice. I use it on several machines accordingly.

I don't know about now, but a year or so ago it was the most popular distro yeah.

Elementary OS seems to be on the path to take over for best desktop distro though.

That’s what I setup for my siblings whenever I can. I’m starting to get bored of doing full upgrades from scratch for them, but I only do them once or twice a year.

For Archlinux users like myself of course I could care less about Mint, but it cannot be denied that “normal” users appreciate intuitive and good-looking interfaces.

I don't know if "people" do. I have since about 2009, although not exclusively, and using Mate instead of Cinnamon.

I think it's funny that they mention running it on a "vintage" 2011 Lenovo. I've got it running on a 2009 Lenovo Netbook and a 2002 IBM R-series laptop too.

Mint's pretty great. I use it because it's basically a lightweight Ubuntu.