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Comment by madsravn | Hacker News Reader

LinuxMint has been delivering a good alternative to Ubuntu for a while now.

But I feel a lot of LinuxMint users are using it for the simple fact that it isn't Ubuntu, because running Ubuntu isn't hip anymore.

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I use Mint because I feel I have the access to the wide repositories that Ubuntu provides, including easy access to third-party software like Google Chrome, but I avoid a lot of problems I have with Ubuntu. Ubuntu tends to barf on my grub installation, Mint doesn't. Unity randomly crashes and stalls in both normal desktop usage and gaming (such as Team Fortress 2), while Mint doesn't include Unity. For some reason, Ubuntu will sometimes stall on boot when loading the Nvidia proprietary drivers for my Titan. Mint, for whatever reason, doesn't have this problem.

And, I'll be honest, as a long-time Debian and Ubuntu user, Unity saddens me. I really love Debian and Ubuntu, but I feel like Unity and some new decisions they're making is the elephant in the room for me. Progress is great, but it's hurting my desktop experience.

I actually have experienced the opposite. I have tried Ubuntu first, then all others to eventually go back to Ubuntu because it DOES NOT have the problems configuring other devices. Even mint gave me issues on some CPU's with either internet connection and/or monitor drivers.

At risk of being trolled into oblivion, I have not found unity to be all that bad. Keyboard shortcuts seem fine to me. Dock on the left is only annoying when I pick the mouse (actually trackball), which is rare. I use OSX and have found its window system a bit better than that at least (not saying it's the best, but it is what I use often).

the mint interface is a lot like ubuntu before unity...i think that's why most flock to it from ubuntu

That's the exact reason why I changed from Ubuntu to Mint. I really tried to like Unity on Ubuntu, but in the end it was a big improvement to change to Mint's non-Unity interface.

Unity is pretty terrible, and a huge step backwards.

Mint reverts the huge step backwards.

Any Desktop Environment (Gnome 3, Cinnamon, Mate, KDE, Xfce, etc.) that you can use in Mint, you can also install (directly from the package manager) on Ubuntu. So the choice of a Desktop Environment should not alone be any strong reason to switch from Ubuntu to Mint.

The fact you can "install" it is simplistic. Manually adding a desktop environment on top of Unity is not the same as one carefully groomed to work seamlessly, which is what Mint delivers.

carefully groomed to work seamlessly - I don't really know what you're talking about, but many Window Managers work pretty fine.

There are many releases of Ubuntu for almost each DE. For example, I'm running Ubuntu gnome edition, but there's Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntu, and then more specific things like Studio Edition, Mythbuntu, Ubuntu Touch, Ubuntu TV.

I've tried Xubuntu but XFce doesn't seem to work that well with Hebrew keyboard layouts, at least without more tinkering than I was willing to put into it.

Dislike Kubuntu/KDE (I've used Ubuntu/gnome2 for long enough that I can no longer bear the look and feel of KDE).

Maybe I should try Lubuntu... I've lost faith in the Ubuntu project though, I don't think they're capable of making the right decisions.

The alternative Ubuntu flavours also deliver this. Mint isn't anything special here, unless you care that it's not Ubuntu.

Pretty much all of the WMs and DEs I've installed just to check them out over the years (on Fedora, but I would bet on Ubuntu) have just worked out of the box.

I mean they put the package in the repo! The whole WM/DE thing is a derail, that stuff is just claptrap, window dressing, extremely easy to replace and we have a huge selection of choices.

Why else would you download Ubuntu if you didn't want to use Unity? Distributions really only differ in degrees of desktop environments and package management systems anyway.

You can just install (for example) Xubuntu directly, and you'll get Ubuntu with XFCE installed by default. There are also flavours (and corresponding images) for LXDE, KDE and GNOME. Ubuntu isn't a Unity-only shop.

You can still opt for stuff like Xubuntu (which I run on my netbook+desktop). I like that Mint provides an alternative though. The more the merrier.

I've used and loved Xubuntu for a while now, but I've recently installed Linux Mint w/ Cinnamon on a new computer, and I think it's a little bit more polished. Both are much better than plain Ubuntu.

Linux Mint + Cinnamon is probably the distro I'd recommend to most people, especially if they're coming from Windows. If their computer's a bit older, I'd go with Xubuntu, and if it's really old, probably Lubuntu.

I quite like Unity, its way of presenting files and applications is better than stock Gnome Shell, plus I never had UI freezing issues with the former as I had with the latter, although I will admit that GS does allow greater customisation.

The only better Linux global search function in my opinion would be KRunner, but there's no easy way to bind it only to the super key (Windows button) like Unity and GS.

It is only huge step backward for you. Because you are a developer who wants a snappy desktop (and not that half-poisoned koala that tends to go to sleep and do some power saving all the time).

But you are a developer. So you can tweak a few things and get a nice, snappy system out of Ubuntu. Here's a start:

  * install linux-image-xxxxxx-lowlatency;
  * boot it with idle=mwait intel_idle.max_cstate=3
  * #disable ipv6:
    net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
    net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
    net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1
  * # less swappy than default 60
    vm.swappiness = 1
    vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 50
  * install latest graphics drivers to support that 3d desktop monstrosity;
  * disable all desktop effects;

Do that, plus a few more tweaks, and you will have it out of Ubuntu. On a fast modern box your terminal window will finally stop lagging ;)

It's unclear why the desktop effects are on by default in the first place without hardware accelerated drivers. The first boot up of an ubuntu image results in my swearing at an unresponsive terminal.

But at least I can see through the window! We all know that's a usability must.

I agree with everything except turning off IPv6. I suspect you're "fixing" the issue with things trying an IPv6 lookup before an IPv4 lookup and appearing to hang - this should be reported as a bug.

If you don't like Unity, then there a number of official Ubuntu flavours that you can use. Xubuntu gives you XFCE. Lubuntu give you LXDE. Kubuntu: KDE. There's Ubuntu GNOME, too.

Defining Mint as "Ubuntu without Unity" makes no sense.

Running Ubuntu was never hip to begin with. Arch is where it is at.

Or, to really be a hipster, running Linux was never "hip" to begin with.

*BSD is where it's at.

Debian GNU/Hurd m8

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