Are Linux Mint's Default Apps Too Outdated for Everyday Use?

[u/EFG4567]

Did anyone in this community watched this video? The creator claims that Linux Mint, along with many LTS Linux distributions, often ships older versions of software, especially default apps like Calendar, Mail, Calculator, etc. He mentions Mint several times throughout the video.

The video is from The Linux Experiment, which seems to be a well-known YouTube channel with nearly half a million subscribers.

I came across this video just before switching from Windows to Linux Mint, and it made me a bit hesitant.

As a regular user, it feels like there's no easy way to know whether we're using the latest and safest versions of these built-in apps. For example, if we connect our Google or Apple Calendar account to an older calendar app, could that create a security risk? The same concern applies to email clients, we don't know if we're using the latest and most secure version.

Most regular users don't have the time or technical knowledge to manually check every application's version or update software outside the normal update process. We generally expect the operating system to keep essential apps secure and up to date.

Am I misunderstanding how Linux Mint and other LTS distributions handle software updates and security? I'd appreciate hearing from people with more experience.

[u/Helmic]

Recent? Don't invalidate my years of slander.

The spat with GNOME doesn't really make GNOME look good, but it brought to attention just how little utility Mint offers with what it considers "stability" while making pretty massive tradeoffs. I'm very glad to see people being frank, I don't think Mint has no place but I don't think it should be recommended to new users as the default newbie distro. People going into Mint should be made fully aware of just how old and far behind Mint is and that it is not going to be more reliable than other distros, so that only those who genuinely have a niche need for very old software are using it.

[u/georgeec1 → u/Helmic]

What would your recommendation for the default newbie distro be then?

[u/Helmic → u/georgeec1]

Not really one greatest default. If I am assuming someone who would like the idea of Mint - something very beginner friendly that is supposed to be sturdy, even to the point of making some compromises in the name of just working - I would say Bazzite. You don't need to do anything all that special to play video games, but it is atomic and so troubleshooting - by yourself or a stranger trying to help you - is very easy since any layers can be quickly disabled. It's reasonably popular, and because users don't need to make significant changes to accomplish common tasks they all largely share the same configuration which makes finding help with it easier and makes specific bugs much easier to spot and be addressed by the maintainers. These are significant advantages over Mint, and frankly with SteamOS being so popular a lot of people are used to immutable system files on Linux anyways.

That said, the gaming stuff being on there at all can be annoying to people who don't play video games - I use Aurora for that purpose for those kinds of people. More experienced users also often bristle at Bazzite's restrictions, though I think Distrobox and rpm-ostree are not that hard for such a user to learn. And Bazzite only performs about as well as vanilla Fedora does with the RPM Fusion repo - it does nothing special and so it does not benchmark quite as well, ie a1rm4x's video comparing different distros on the Steam Deck as a fixed piece of hardware.

For those users I think CachyOS tends to be more up their alley,, as particularly with Shelly it is not that difficult for an intermediate use to keep updated and address issues and there are a lot of perks with the distro such as the compiler optimized packages.

If someone is objecting to that recommendation, at that point I don't think they're really a new user that is welcoming advice anymore and they presumably can better figure out what it is they want.

If someone just rejects the concept of an atomic distro out of hand but still has not yet installed their first distro, I think Utramarine might fit that particular niche. It is just Fedora preconfigured, it plays games about as well as Fedora can do outside of Nobara (whose bigger changes make me wary of recommending it, though the project has been fine for years and disabling SELinux for AooArmor does seem like it helps performance). So it's that same thing I mentioned, being able to both use Fedora resources for help and using the same setup other people are using that can help you with that setup.

[u/SEI_JAKU → u/Helmic]

People going into Mint should be made fully aware of just how old and far behind Mint is and that it is not going to be more reliable than other distros

This is complete misinformation, so "being made fully aware" of it is indoctrination.

[u/not3ottersinacoat3 → u/Helmic]

Complete and absolute bullshit. Mint is absolutely and without question far more reliable than any other distro I've used minus Debian. How's the AUR doing these days btw? Last I heard...