Posted on 11/24/2015 2:30:32 AM PST by markomalley
Is Linux Mint a terrible desktop distribution?
How bad is Linux Mint as a desktop distribution? One redditor shared his...er...frustration with the...er...horrifically difficult experience of installing Linux Mint on his computer.
Itripovermyownfeet shared his thoughts in the Linux Mint subreddit:
This is awful, when I install Linux on the desktop I'm expecting to be able to waste a solid 8 hours chasing down random issues that were solved on all other modern desktop systems by 2008. I went into this hoping and wishing to have to crawl through linuxquestions.org threads from 2006 to figure out why plugging in a second monitor doesn't work with X.org.
I want the peace and quiet that you can only get from spending 45 minutes trying to get alsa/oss/flavor of the week sound manager to work properly. I miss the subtle delicious pain of trying to figure out what I have to do to get Gnome 3 or Unity to provide desktop functionality that came standard with Windows NT 4.
With what you've done here I am no longer able to do any of these things. You've taken the awful travesty of an experience that trying to do anything production on a Linux desktop is supposed to provide and made it usable, sensible, and working out of the box. This is why I can't call Mint a Linux desktop. It's just a desktop... you monsters.
(I plugged a second monitor into my HDMI slot and it just worked. I have literally never experienced that since working with Linux since the days of Redhat 3. You've taken away a cherished time honoured tradition of having a terrible experience using a Linux desktop from me forever.)
His fellow redditors shared their...er...anguish at having to deal with Linux Mint too:
AusMattyBoy: ”Talk about clickbait, was about to unleash the fury, was not necessary lol”
Gandalfx: ”I almost fell for the same trap, but I've been burnt before and the high number of up votes tipped be of. He is not the first who infuriatingly robbed others of the joys of counter hating. How dare he!
Could “reverse trolling” be an appropriate term for this?
@OP I feel your pain (kind of) but there is still hope: You can install an alternative desktop / window manager and still spend some good hours getting it to work the way you want. Bonus points for a tiling wm. ^^”
NotFromReddit: ”I'm so sleep deprived, I got half way into the post before realizing it's a joke.”
Crcr: ”I know what you mean, Mint has been this way for me since version 12 & it's starting to get old, the usability out of the box drives me nuts.”
Bomberokmn: ”A decade and a half ago, I really enjoyed setting up Slackware from almost scratch. I learned a lot, and wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
Now, I have more interests and obligations. I don't have hours to spend hacking away at the keyboard, trying to make some janky kernel module work so that I can run X on an onboard video card. Seeing Linux mature to a point where I can download an ISO, send it to a USB drive, reboot and have a fully functional system in under half an hour is incredible.”
Colonelpanic420: ”Mint is a fantastic distro if you just want to run linux, not spend a ton of time setting it up, and go. It was my go-to for my work machine for a while. Not because I wasn't familiar with other distros, I just because I could set it up and not have to tweak it too much to get to a point where I can do my job, and off I go.
Though Mint doesn't get to take all the credit for things "just working" - a lot of that is because the kernel drivers are so much better than they were when we all started messing with this crap 20 years ago or whatever (well that's me anyway ymmv.)
I got bagged on for using Mint for a while by co-workers who had spent the time to setup their favorite distros just the way they wanted them and I'm like eh I got stuff to do bruh ain't no time to get that i3/config file just the way I want it for my preferred user experience. Xfce will do just fine lol.
That said, Arch and sid are the Sonny and Cher of my heart.”
Foofly: ”I tried to explain to a friend that the installation experience is better than Windows these days. In addition to having way less driver issues in general. He didn't believe me since his last experience was almost 10 years ago”
Introspeck: ”Early Fedora installs used to have me literally screaming in rage. My wife would stay well away from me for the 8 hours it took to finally get it working.”
Okko7: ”Whenever I install on a new machine, I'm bored because there is nothing to fix anymore.”
Rxke2: ”I actually checked his history to see if he was a troll... To discover, no, not at all. (Of course I only had read the title at that point, heehee) ”
Clement Lefebvre publicly renounced his Israel policy several years ago. I think he realized politics was interfering with usage of his product. Before then I used Mint anyway - while I disagreed with him, I use whatever software works best, regardless of who created it.
“veterans tend to like ubuntu for some reason (i hate the ui)”
I don’t like the Unity UI, if that is what you are talking about. Ubuntu offers several other desktop packages besides Unity, such as KDE and Mate. I like Mate the best - it runs faster than Unity and it looks similar to Windows XP.
Due to my increasing distrust and disgust of everything and anything related to MS and Bill Gates, several months ago I decided to dump Win 7 on my laptop and desktop computers and installed Linux Mint 17.2 on both.
I used several Linux distro’s between the years of ‘95 to 2005, primarily debian but when my last Linux box died, I switched back to Windows as I tired of being a “hobbyist” and simply wanted my computers for general internet access and web browsing.
I especially like that package control is handled by apt. Opening a terminal window, su -, enter password then apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade ; apt-get clean, hit enter after the package list has been retrieved and your system is up to date. Yes, I know about the update manager, but it doesn’t remove the .DEB files after installation and I prefer that it does.
Whatever hardware recognition or configuration nightmares that existed in the past are gone and I can honestly say that installing Linux Mint was the easiest and most intuitive OS installation I’ve ever done. I can’t imagine how much more “ready out of the box” it could be.
I’m very pleased with my decision to give Linux another try and I can’t foresee ever going back to Windows or any other MS product. I believe Bill Gates to be an evil man and I don’t ever want to give him another penny.
I watched my son install Mint on the laptop here in less than 5 minutes.
The 17.something version of Mint responds much better than the last version of Ubuntu that was running.
Been using linux to surf the net for over a year now and finally feel like I’ve been deprogrammed from the cult of Windows.
Glad to hear he walked his hatred for Israel back.
I couldn’t find anything supporting such a boycott in the GPL.
Reports are he wrote a “semi-retraction.”
So I semi-agree with you.
If he or you have a full apology for his behavior (which is contrary to the GPL) then I will feel all fuzzy.
Otherwise, I keep awareness up. It is puzzling behavior on his part as Compulab is (or was) an Israeli company.
Forgive but not forget.
Ubuntu and DSL were my firsts.
Slackware is PC free (Political Correctness)?
I’m looking at it now.
No reason to support BLM style c#(p.
I still prefer Mint KDE... Never got around to liking Ubuntu :p
HA! Caught ya!
Linux uses forward slashes..../
Long time Fedora user - also typing this on Ubuntu (at this point in my life I have 4 count em 4 Linux boxen that I either own, user for work, or support).
Mostly things work but when they don’t I know how to get ‘em working again. Pretty much hate windoze (except when run as a VM) and don’t like the Mac cultists.
I betcha there was a Broadcomm chip involved in there somewhere.
I finally got Linux Mint 17.3 64 bit installed on my Lenovo. I had to shrink the Win7 partition and set it up for dual boot.
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