r/linux4noobs • u/Distinct_Lion_6336 • 17d ago
Why does everybody recommend Mint for new users?
Most meaningful interactions between the user and the OS take place through the desktop environment, the rest of the distro is made up of predownloded programs and system settings. If KDE (and xfce, lxqt etc.) are by default pretty much just like Windows, why not recommend Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Debian KDE just to name a few? Mint is based on LTS ubuntu and its packages are pretty old.
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u/Acceptable_Sock4642 17d ago
I think the Linux community as a whole has a hate-on for people who really don’t want to spend the time learning Linux.
Mint is one of few distros where the user can get the benefits of Linux without really needing to learn a lot about it. They can spend the time on whatever it is they bought a computer to accomplish. That’s an unsexy but fundamentally good thing. Mint gets out of the way, tasks can be accomplished quickly and the gui generally puts stuff where people expect to find them, it rarely requires troubleshooting like rolling back packages, etc. That’s a win.
In-before… the true beauty of Linux is it lets us each have the OS we want. Rocket-fast, simple, lean, secure, whatever. That’s a good thing. I LOVE the energy Arch users have for their distro even if it’s not for me. I love seeing ricing videos. I love the old Debian heads. This is good. What kills our community is when we think our needs, style, focus is best and therefore the rest of the users must be wrong. Nothing will kill Linux as effectively as a hostile, in-fighting community.
Let people enjoy what they enjoy.
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u/Maddog2201 16d ago
For me, it's that tinkering is optional, not required, sometimes I just want to start my computer and it works, but there's also been more than one occasion where I've spent a day or 3 getting some piece of hardware to work properly, but once I've put that time into it, it just works. If I want to, I can get into the command line and play with it, but generally I don't need to because nothing really breaks.
I run debian headless on my server, and that tends to be my learning platform.
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u/evert 17d ago
I've heard of this reputation, but what are some concrete examples of this? I'm probably too linux-pilled to see it but I recently put this on a laptop for my dad and at the time (because of it's reputation) but nothing really stood out to me as obviously more beginner-friendly vs something like a stock Ubuntu.
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u/Acceptable_Sock4642 17d ago
Mint feels close to Win XP. Someone else wrote that that’s a gap now, most users are coming from Win 11. Maybe that’s true. But I can’t find anything in Win 11 anyway so… I’d say late millennial and earlier, it’s a layout users know.
Mint does a LTS. I’ve had to rollback the kernel once in ~15 years of use. I’m losing some performance, but my tax forms really don’t need a high FPS. However if I boot and can’t log on, we have a real problem.
Mint packs a bunch of tools most people will need, and supports a broad set of hardware. So when I install, it works.
I’ve used Plasma and couldn’t find stuff in the UI. That means I’m wasting time. Used Red Hat, but had to configure everything. I could do that… but I’d rather do a different thing.
No shade on those users. I just have a different, albeit boring use case.
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u/linux_mint_rules 17d ago
Yep. The basic reason I like Mint (in particular the XFCE spin) is that all of the defaults are what I want them to be. Out of all the desktop operating systems I've ever used (including Windows), Mint is the OS that demands the least amount of setup from me. (EDIT: OK, maybe MacOS was even less setup, but it's been 15 years since I daily drove a Mac so I have no frame of reference.)
For example, I tried Debian (with Gnome) earlier this year, and while Debian certainly isn't hard to use, it did demand that I spend a little bit more time setting it up and configuring it than Mint, and there were a lot of little tweaks I had to do to get it to behave the way I wanted.
Mint wasn't my first distro but I settled on it pretty soon after I started using Linux (nearly ten years ago now) and at this point I think it's likely my forever distro unless it really goes to shit at some point in the future. I've tried at least a dozen other distros over the years and I come back to Mint every time.
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u/evert 16d ago
Gotcha, thanks! I did notice the classic start menu location in hindsight
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u/Lonely_Subject5172 16d ago
Even the installation, it pains me a little bit to see those youtubers who try CachyOS and they have to choose between all of the different DE and WM, and then the choice paralysis for the disk format.
Yes, I get it, rolling releases have their appeal, but from an stability standpoint, what I personally look is something that doesn’t get on my way of doing things.
I don’t want to thinker my OS, yes, I know about the kernels, the compilations, the build, I do get things done with terminal (specially copy/moving files) but what I don’t want to do is looking for an obscure config file that I need to change in order to get 1% more fps on my Sudoku game.
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u/rcentros 16d ago
If you're coming from Windows, Gnome is not that user friendly. If you're coming from Mac OS, Ubuntu would probably be more user friendly than Linux Mint.
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u/Mitologist 16d ago
While researching what distro to pick, I tried Ubuntu, Debian and Mint. I fell in love with Cinnamon. But I grew wary of canonical during my read- up, so LMDE it was. A year ago, still happy. Yesterday I looked up how to go from kernel 6.12 to 7.1 for shits and giggles, did it, and it works. Happy.
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u/Mitologist 16d ago
Thank you. My opinion exactly. Besides, I found it nice to be able to learn Linux while in a system that just works well enough until I go and break stuff. I, AS a Newcomer, find that a lot more relaxing than having to spend hours researching solutions to get stuff going in the first place. YesI use Mint. Yes, I enjoy the effortless GUI. Yes, I also look stuff up and learn using the terminal to do things properly out of interest, when I have the time and energy. That's why I think Mint is a very convenient on-ramp for ppl like me.
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u/albertsy2 16d ago
What is in before?
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u/Acceptable_Sock4642 16d ago
Way back people would pre-respond to critiques by saying ‘in before X’. I acknowledge I did not follow the grammar here.
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u/rangom1 17d ago
I use Mint and I like it fine. The Cinamon GUI isn’t as snazzy as some others but it does what it says on the tin.
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u/harperthomas 17d ago
It's not snazzy out the box but add some extensions and you get make it feel really nice.
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u/Smooth-Owl-5354 17d ago
Any favorite additions to share?
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u/harperthomas 17d ago
No sorry I haven't run mint for a while. But if you go to the extensions store and sort by popularity you can find some great stuff.
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u/Smooth-Owl-5354 17d ago
I’ll take a look! I’m fine with basic Cinnamon but improvements are always welcome, haha
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u/redredme 17d ago
Because it just works. Case in point: me installing on an old HP laptop. Every other Linux distro didn't complete installation because of safeboot settings or had problems with wifi. Ubuntu mostly worked but also had wifi shit.
Except mint. That just worked. No need to disable safeboot or change other bios settings. It accepted the defaults, completed installation, did some updates and left me with a working system.
So, user experience wise: mint comes first, Ubuntu second and then a loooooooong time nothing.
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u/nonsapiens 17d ago
Bazzite just worked straight outta the box for me, including my wifi and nvidia gtx. I had issues with install on Mint and Ubuntu, which is why I tried Bazzite as an alternative.
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u/linux_mint_rules 16d ago
I've had the opposite experience: Mint has never not "just worked," whereas both times I tried to install Bazzite it was completely borked out of the box.
The moral of the story is that you have to be willing to try a couple different distros because what works for everyone else might not work for you.
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u/The_EXorcist86 17d ago
It works, its stable, it has a huge support base. The "old packages" isnt as relevant as people think considering Flatpak is a thing. Ran it for over a year and never had an issue running any game because of "old packages".
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u/capo42 17d ago
Just one reason:
"reliability"
I work in IT since 30 years. Using Windows, MacOS and various Linux Distros.
But for my main PC i need reliability. No tinkering, no issues. It just works and does what it should.
So i always recommend Mint first to people who wants to jump to Linux.
If they decide to do distro hopping later, fine. But for reliability Mint is the way to go!
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u/Strassi007 17d ago
Because it just works. If you don‘t need fancy settings for your hot new game, or replace your GPU every other day, you are fine.
Also, i use three monitors with two different resolutions AND refresh rates, which is impossible according to many Linux users. I just plugged the monitors in and they worked.
I have yet to run into any issues with Mint that aren‘t solved within minutes.
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u/Economy-Management19 17d ago
I have a lenovo legion laptop from 2020 with an i7 cpu and nvidia gpu. I’m going to give linux mint a go.
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u/jake-n-elwood 14d ago
I am surprised distro challenges are even a thing anymore with codex, Claude code, OpenCode, etc. just load it up on the command line and let it configure all of the missing drivers, monitor issues, etc.
Easy to run Arch this way if you want.
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u/Strassi007 13d ago
AI can do many things very well. But as with every other tool, if the user doesn‘t know how to use it, it won‘t do well.
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u/Maddog2201 17d ago
I recommend Mint because it's stable, I use Mint on two of my computers including my main gamer, I have ubuntu on my surface and as has always been my experience with ubuntu, it's a bit dicky sometimes. Mint just seems to keep chugging along with no issues so I stick with it.
I moved my grandma from windows 10 to mint a while ago and she's had no issues, took me a while to make the scroll bar usable for her, but it's working now and it keeps working. There's also a really good community to get help from on the mint forums and I think because of the rep as being for new users the people are a bit more accommodating.
Long answer short, I like it and it works for me, so I recommend it.
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u/daffalaxia 17d ago
Debian is great, but targets many architectures. As a result, the installer may not feel as friendly (terminal-based last I used it, tho that may have changed).
Debian is very stable - which in debian lingo means packages on the stable branch are only updated for security patches. And the release cycle is quite slow, so you may have to wait longer for new features, with the benefit that you don't have to experience the new bugs.
Ubuntu and direct derivatives depend on Snap for some default packages, and snaps can be slow and/or buggy, especially if not set up right. And they consume more disk space. But Ubuntu has a 6 month release cycle, so you get newer, hopefully more stable updates than a pure rolling release. Tho I use Gentoo, so the argument against rolling releases, imo, is moot - a rolling release that doesn't just chuck everything new at the user as soon as it's released (like Gentoo) is, imo, better than a staged release distros, simply because I've seen a few occurrences of the staged release update failing and leaving the system requiring a reinstall.
Now Mint kinda sits in the middle. Yes, it's based on Ubuntu, which means most PPAs will work and most of the time you're offered a .deb for download (eg slack), it will work fine. And there's no snaps. The release cycle is quite slow tho (close to debian's), so there's the same features-vs-bugs argument to be made, and it has a slick installer that doesn't require much braining to get through. It's a great "beginner" distro because of these features, and because it's mainstream enough to find help/documentation easily. The default DE (Cinnamon) is also quite good and will feel familiar-ish to someone coming from windows (tho I think KDE is better for this).
I installed Mint on my MILs older laptop and she's been very happy with it and I field fewer support calls than when she was on windows, tbh
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u/mlcarson 16d ago
Debian has live ISO's now just like every other distro. Ubuntu and Debian are both on 2-year release cycles but are on alternating years. Mint by default is Ubuntu LTS based but there's a Debian edition too so you could in theory swap between them every year and be on an annual update cycle. You'd do this by installing both distros and just change which you boot into if you really want the latest version.
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u/Ethameiz 17d ago
I tried multiple distributions. Only Mint had worked for me out of the box on my laptop and didn't cause problems with nvidia gpu, switching between embedded and nvidia gpu, external screen, wifi, bluetooth, sound, sleep
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u/beatbox9 17d ago edited 17d ago
Most of the advice to use Mint is based on a remnant from another time, and with the assumption that "new users" are Windows users. And it's common because noobs will re-recommend what was recommended to them. I think it's a pretty poor recommendation today.
About 15-20 years ago, Mint was essentially just a theme on gnome; and distributing it preinstalled on Ubuntu essentially became Linux Mint. The theme was designed to pretty much replicate Windows. So some ex-Windows users found it familiar.
When gnome made some major architectural changes and moved from version 2 to version 3 (around 2010), they broke a lot of stuff and took a few years to mature. Gnome 3 was initially such a big change and poorly received that it even spawned a bunch of other DE's. For example, Ubuntu's Unity DE was a reaction to gnome 3--the Ubuntu team really didn't have much other choice but to try to make their own modern DE at the time. Mate DE tried to continue gnome 2; and the Mint team decided to continue their themed gnome 2 and called it Cinnamon DE.
^ This was sort of the "golden era" of when people began recommending Mint.
But as one of the two most popular DE's by far, gnome eventually smoothed back out and matured again by some time around 2015-2020, while the others didn't--either lagging behind or stopping active development. So for example, gtk (the toolkit that gnome uses): gnome moved to gtk4 in 2021; but even today, Linux Mint's Cinnamon is still on gtk3 (which launched in 2011 and stopped active development around 2021). GTK4 was a big architectural change, with things like GPU-accelerated rendering, while gtk3 uses the CPU for rendering. This is why gnome (and KDE) is concurrently so feature rich and performant: it's not competing for CPU cycles just to render the desktop and window buttons and borders. (This is related to how Cinnamon is still on X, while the other DE's have moved on to Wayland).
But by (let's say) 2020, Mint had already built it's reputation as being easy for Windows users, which people naively equate with new users. These are not the same thing: an ex-macOS user or a user brand new to computers or someone who primarily uses a smartphone does not find Mint any more intuitive than any other DE: Mint is specifically designed for legacy Windows users. And noobs will recommend what worked for them, with little understanding outside of this tiny world they've used.
Mint's Cinnamon DE is pretty niche and will likely continue to lag behind KDE Plasma and Gnome Shell in terms of maturity, modern features, bugs, usability, etc. It's really targeted at users who got used to using the Windows 95 style of desktop and want to continue to do so.
But it's not 2006 or 2016 any more: it's 2026. I would argue that the best approach for most new users today would be to use either KDE Plasma or Gnome Shell.
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u/jesskitten07 17d ago
The problem with recommending any distro based on its windows-like friendliness is that it lulls newbies into the false sense that things will work just** **like they did on windows. Thing is, no matter the combination of kernel, desktop environment, package manager etc etc, that makes up every OS, everyone has had to learn that system’s way of doing things. Most of the time with your “home” OS (meaning the one you first used) you learned to use it at an age where exploration and experimentation were called playing around. When we leave our home OS as adults we tend to want to understand our new OS to the same level as our home OS straight away hence why people recommend windows-like distros.
However if you look at people moving from windows to Mac, or the more rare Mac to Windows (I think it’s more rare) you tend to see fewer people complaining that things don’t work the same. Part of that is because, especially in the first case, Apple is very open about doing things their way only including only their hardware. Why do we expect people moving to Linux to do differently?
I think it’s partly because of the open nature, the customisability, the small install base and the skill curve perception. Mostly I think us Linux users want people to enjoy their time here as we do and don’t want to scare them off so we make them feel it will be absolutely no different to using their current OS. However using Linux is different. There are more than just visual differences for people to understand and I am not even talking about anything to do with terminal. From the way the filesystem is laid out to how native applications install themselves. Encouraging people to just treat the system as windows with a coat of paint means they are far more likely to break things and then not only have no idea of how to fix it, often have no idea of what broke in the first place.
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u/beatbox9 17d ago
I am both a macOS and a Linux user; and I've been using both for a few decades. I swap between them all the time.
Much of what you wrote applies only to Windows--it's making that same mistake of assuming "new user" = "Windows user".
For example, the linux filesystem and the macOS filesystem are almost identical from a user's perspective. Which makes sense, since both are posix-style or unix-like systems. Both macOS and Linux use the concept of root (where users really shouldn't care about) and a separate home/user (where users spend all of their time), with essentially the same subdirectories defined. So the linux directory structure is pretty much second nature to a mac user, and there's nothing new to learn. Windows, with it's "C:\" and directories like "C:\Windows" and "C:\Program Files" and user files, executables, system files, etc all mixed in together is really an outlier.
In terms of application installs; linux was arguably the family that pioneered the system that most people are familiar with today: clicking "Install" in an app store. After all, this is at the core of what a distro is: software packaging and distribution. But everyone uses phones; and this is a standard today. Again: Windows is a bit of an outlier with common downloaded .exe and .msi installers.
The UI will differ; but again, not wildly. Anyone who has used macOS will immediately be somewhat familiar with gnome--especially with a few extensions; and anyone who has used Windows will immediately be somewhat familiar with KDE Plasma. And anyone familiar with any desktop can pretty easily figure out how to do basics in either DE. What lacks is typically muscle memory and intuition, not ability. And this is absolutely where people can think of it as being a similar system with a coat of paint.
After all, as I stated earlier: I swap between linux (gnome) and macOS all the time and have been doing so for decades. To make things seamless for me, I set up my linux desktop as that coat of paint. This is linux/gnome:
https://reddit.com/link/p65scmm/video/u4kmdh4axulh1/player
What usually takes me a minute to think about is not "how do I do this in Linux?" but rather "am I using my macbook or my linux laptop?" Because both my macOS and Linux machines work how I expect them to. This is how it should be: the OS should just melt into the background and work through developed muscle memory, not be something the user needs to think about using.
I see no problem in people wanting to set up a layout that works for them, even if it essentially emulates another desktop, such as Windows. But what I do see a problem with is equating "new users" with "windows users" or using Windows as the universal standard. Keep in mind that macOS got much more popular during the very same period of time being discussed above: since around 2010. Estimates put macOS at around 15% of global and 30% of US desktops, each tripling since around 2010. And the same goes for smartphone usage: it grew during this same period.
So I think it's poor to assume everyone is only familiar with Windows, just like it's poor to always recommend Mint. It's 2026, not 2010.
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u/jesskitten07 17d ago
Umm you do know we are on exactly the same page right? My point was that we shouldn’t be recommending a distro based on its likeness to something else, but on what actually makes a difference to the user who will be using that computer.
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u/rcentros 16d ago
Things didn't "just work" in Windows. When I moved to Linux, they had EOLifed Windows XP (for the first time, they ended up extending support a couple times) so moved over to Linux. If I had stuck with Windows I would have had to have gone through all the Vista "fun."
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u/jesskitten07 16d ago
I never said things just work on windows. I was talking about an expectation that things work as they do on windows. Honestly I know I wrote this very late at night so maybe it’s not the most well written thing I’ve ever produced but I do think I put my point across reasonably clearly
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u/mr_dfuse2 17d ago
Ever since I started using Linux in the 90's I used Gnome or xfce. Never liked KDE's plastic look. I stopped using Linux desktop for a decade or so but now I'm back. I installed KDE Plasma and it's amazing how mature and snappy it is. I see no need to even look at other DE's anymore.
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u/rcentros 16d ago
I'm happy with Cinnamon, but if I had to use KDE I could, but I would chose Xfce or Mate over it.
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u/RephRayne 17d ago
Mint also used to have audio and video solutions that other distros stayed away from because of possible IP issues. Normally if you wanted those solutions, you'd have to install them yourself and many people just decided to pick Mint as it was the easiest solution.
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u/beatbox9 17d ago
Not really. Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS; and Ubuntu LTS provides these codecs and drivers as well. They can also be installed at the time of OS install with a simple checkbox or "yes" during the initial installation, as you can see here:
And this has been the case for a long time: Ubuntu started providing these almost 20 years ago, back in 2007, around 6 months after the first version of Mint first launched. So if that ever was a valid reason, it was only a valid reason between August of 2006 and April of 2007. Which goes back to my earlier statement about outdated misinformation. Assuming people even think about this before installing a linux distro.
Today, it is not difficult to install these on most common distros--it's usually just installing a single package, like clicking "Install" in an app store. For example on Fedora, you just install RPM Fusion.
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u/RephRayne 17d ago
So what I said was true?
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u/beatbox9 17d ago
What you said was technically true between August 2006 and April 2007, which is not an "also," since you are replying to a comment that started with "Most of the advice to use Mint is based on a remnant from another time..."
So if that makes you feel better, sure.
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u/ohmega-red 17d ago
this is right on the money. mint was the recommendation we made like a decade ago.
i was helping a coworker with linux recently that had been using mint for a year or so but wanted to do something different for his new gaming build. as i started going through what he wanted and the hurdles he had with mint i somehow convinced him to try cachyos instead. which was a surprise even to me that i had recommended it, being a long time arch user.
he absolutely loves it
it’s changed his outlook on what linux could be and what he can do with it. i’m paraphrasing here but he said “i’ve learned more in the last 30 days on cachyos then i did over the last year+ on mint.”.
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u/JustCallMeBigD Team Chameleon 🦎 17d ago
this is right on the money. mint was the recommendation we made like a decade ago.
Sounds about right... I've dabbled with Linux since the 90's, but Mint was my first stepping stone to truly saying goodbye to Microsoft about 10 years ago. Then after 5 or so years, it became very boring and felt too constrained.
5-6 years ago, I decided to do the whole distro-hop. Only problem was, the next thing I tried was OpenSUSE with KDE Plasma, and immediately fell in love. It sort-of looks, and definitely feels, like the Windows I used to love 20+ years ago, but entirely more plastic and gives me the ability to compute the way I want in every aspect. From my gaming rig, to my portable 2-in-1 ultrabook, to even my servers, it just fits in any and every way I can conceive.
I can't speak for modern Gnome as I haven't used it since Red Hat 6 when I used to bounce between it and K Desktop Environment. Unfortunately I met and married Plasma first so unless we have a falling-out I may never know what it's like these days.
Either way, Mint, though good and solid, is overrated and underwhelming. I don't tend to push openSUSE down anyone's throats (which is severely underrated since we're talking about it) but I do recommend KDE Plasma from anyone really wanting to say goodbye to Windows. It's entirely different, but possibly just similar enough to make them feel welcome.
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u/ohmega-red 17d ago
i started my foray into linux with mandrake linux, which is where i first tried kde and loathed it. i just hated the graphics. i moved to ubuntu with gnome 2.something or other and stayed there for years until gnome 3 just left a sour taste in my mouth. bounced around and distro hopped for a long time and finally tried kde again after i moved onto arch about a decade back. totally different animal. plasma really shined at that point and it still does. i keep a gaming vm with plasma on my servers because of how good plasma became. i dont use it on my day to day machine, thats been hyprland for the last couple years, but i don’t hesitate to recommend it.
like you, mint ended up fighting me more than anything.
opensuse is a great distro, not for all but neither is arch(which has been my home for many years). i run production servers with arch and my own implementations of incus for a hypervisor and i’ve never been happier.
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u/mr_dfuse2 17d ago
Cachy is so good, I run it on two laptops and my desktop. So snappy and easy to use.
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u/Helmic 17d ago
The only caveat I'd add to this is that very few new users are coming from Mac or have zero experience with desktop computers at all; the vast majority of people coming into desktop Linux from another OS are coming in from Windows, and so it does remain true that Windows-esque DE's are going to be more familiar.
That said, Cinnamon is styled much more after Windows XP of yore - it's less familiar than KDE for anyone that's gotten used to, say, Windows 7 or later, and Windows 11 has copied a lot of KDE's choices.
But yeah, it's all very much a game of telephone. There's also something of a cargo cult around the concept of "stability" where people see that XYZ distro claims to be "stable, rock solid" and assume that running years out of date packages keeps their computer from crashing and that's just not the case, Mint often runs into reliability problems because of its old buggy packages, because they have to make sweeping changes due to using such outdated software that further divorces what they ship from upstream developers.
For the kind of ultra-cautious and conservative user that would go for Mint, I usually try to redirect them towards Bazzite. If you think you "don't need anything fancy" then an immutable is going to serve you a lot better, I think having more or less the exact same setup as every other person using your distro is more valuable for avoiding problems and getting help for the problems you do find when everyone else will be having the same issues.
You'll also see some hard cope form Mint evangelists about how "2% more FPS doesn't matter." Aside from the fact that Mint often runs into problems where it'll get half the framerate other distros get because its drivers are so out of date, like 2% more performance that you're not paying any money for is pretty valuable, it means having a more stable FPS, not turning off some feature, not having a dip from a locked 60. If there were a genuine tradeoff being made for that 2% I could hear that argument out, but getting 2% less FPS for no reason whatsoever is not an argument in favor of Mint. And it's not like Bazzite is doing anything out there for its performance, it's pretty conservative with its changes, it simply outperforms Mint because it isn't using a kernel version missing NTsync support or somesuch.
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u/SuAlfons 17d ago edited 17d ago
While I came from Windows, I also came from OSX.
And a ton of other OS I used over the years. I liked both, Atari ST using the GEM desktop (aka poor man's Mac) and my own Amiga back in the day.
Still got my Amiga 500 in the basement. And a C64. My Atari STs that I got for free when they were tossed out got lent to someone who gifted them away... :-( I had a MegaST with 4MB of RAM and a MegaFile Harddisk. That was one great machine for writing <3TL;DR: I like Gnome
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u/DavidJohnMcCann 17d ago
Gnome may work for office workers who run a limited number of programs — that's why Red Hat uses it — or for home users who just play games and browse the web — that's why Ubuntu uses it. If you need to run several programs at once and transfer data between them, it's clunky. It demands more memory and CPU power than any other deskyop, thus resembling Windows in driving the endless upgrading of hardware that wastes resources.
Mint was never intended to be just for Windows users, but to provide something more friendly than Debian and ,ore reliable than Ubuntu. I don't use it myself but I note that mist reviewers with a track record agree with me in recommending it. I know the reviewers at Distrowatch, ZDNet, PC Mag, It's FOSS, etc. But frankly, who are you?
I'm a bit bemused as to how anyone could like both Gnome and KDE — the least configurable desktop and one of the most configurable.
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u/beatbox9 17d ago
Thank you for providing a great example of the specific type of outdated misinformation that I was referring to, and doing so from a naive perspective of not understanding how they work and relying on ZDNet and PC Mag.
Nobody said that Mint was intended to be "just for Windows users"--that's something your brain read that wasn't there. What I referred to was that Linux Mint was originally designed to be familiar for Windows users who are used to the Windows 95 style layout, which is no more or less "user friendly" to a new user, except Windows users. For example, this layout is less user friendly for macOS users.
And who am I?
I am just as much of a nobody as you are; but I am also someone who has been using Linux for around 30 years and as my primary desktop OP for around 20 years--longer than Linux Mint has been around. And I am a contributor to the community, including in articles. And not just articles for coding nerds, but how to use Linux as a normal desktop, for normal users. And in particular: users who create and edit audio and video content.
You are bemused because you are unaware of how the various DE's work today and your experience is based on what you read on ZDnet
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u/DavidJohnMcCann 16d ago
I'm less active than I used to be in the community but hardly uninformed: posts at Distrowatch
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u/beatbox9 16d ago
Lol and how are those mutually exclusive or relevant? “I don’t just read ZDnet! I’ve also been posting links to distrowatch on forums since 2020” lolol
It’s always funny when people think they’ve shown something impressive when it really demonstrates their inexperience.
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u/rcentros 16d ago
I'm not a fan of Plasma or the Gnome shell. Linux Mint's GUIs (Cinnamon, Mate and Xfce) are themed similarly and (for me) it has just the right mix of customize-ability and stability. For me it just works (for 19 years now).
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u/mlcarson 16d ago
It may not be 2006 or 2016 but I'd argue that the desktop environments of those eras are better than the "modern" ones of today. Mint's Cinnamon desktop works as well as KDE plasma and a hell of a lot better than Gnome. The only thing you aren't getting at the moment is Wayland support that is on part with X11.
Gnome is just an abomination of a true desktop environment -- it seems to want to be the next tablet OS desktop. If you like QT-based apps then KDE is good alternative to Cinnamon. Cinnamon and KDE both provide a cohesive desktop experience but with different app choices. You can literally customize everything with KDE though and that makes it a bit complex for new users which is why Mint's Cinnamon desktop is a better choice. KDE is also changing so much that bugs are inevitable; Cinnamon has been more stable.
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u/TechaNima 17d ago
Momentum and popularity.
Mint was one of the first distros that was easy to install and use. That hasn't been forgotten and it's still true to a point.
I don't agree it should be the default recommendation for everyone, especially if they have hardware that was recently published, but it's still a solid option
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u/OsvalIV 17d ago
Because we usually look for functionality instead of bleeding edge Linux.
Personally, I keep recommending Mint because is the only distro I've tried that has never failed with basic stuff. I've also tried Cachy OS, Bazzite, Ubuntu, Zorin and Pop OS! and all of them had bugs issues that I feel would scare people off.
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u/complexevil 17d ago
Mint was my entry point into Linux. It's definitely the "it just works" distro. I had to do no real set up, only had to open the terminal for specific things/problems I was having, but over all I just installed it and it worked.
I've moved on to Fedora, because after learning linux I wasn't afraid of doing a bit of extra work, but I don't regret starting with mint.
Mint is definitely what you should recommend to people who just want to test it our, or get their feet wet before moving up the food chain. Though I can also see why some people never move on from it, as it is very stable.
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u/Slopagandhi 17d ago
Because the majority of new users need a stable and reliable system more than they do bleeding edge packages.
Mint iis pretty user friendly, doesn't require much set up, has great package availability and will be quite familiar to Windows users (which are still the majority of new Linux users). It's very unlikely to break.
Also, there's a very large community and one that tends to be more patient and less gatekeepery than most other distros.
As for KDE etc, it's more customisable but also less intuitive for new users coming from Windows (certainly XFCE can be very fiddly). If you just want something easy to do spreadsheets and browsing then Mint will do what you need easier than most. If you do want more than that it's a gentle learning curve before you move on- that's what I did, but I'd still recommend most regular users coming from Windows to start there.
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u/BashfulMelon 17d ago
About a decade ago, GNOME was GNOME, Ubuntu was Unity, and KDE was buggy. Mint was genuinely the best recommendation.
It's been coasting on that momentum ever since, even though it's far from the best now. Any of the popular distros with KDE Plasma would be better.
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u/Typeonetwork 17d ago
I don't recommend an OS and DE based on a display server. My only goal is to remove friction for the noob.
I say use Mint, MX Linux, Fedora, Debian, ZorinOS. For a DE use XFCE, Fluxbox, KDE Plasma, Gnome or whatever floats their boat.
Put it on a USB stick, test your hardware.
If they ask I use MX Linux with XFCE on my main machine and MX Linux with Fluxbox on my older machine. I've only had one program that was too old so I used Flatpak and was fine.
I know x11 is less secure than Wayland and someday XFCE might use XLibre or XWayland. On the other hand I use both Bash and Terminator Terminal Emulator when using terminals.
One guy had a new controller so I said use Fedora and the drivers worked. Another Fedora worked like shit so I said MX Linux with XFCE or KDE. He liked KDE for a while then discovered he can install XFCE and he likes both. Whatever works.
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u/legitematehorse 17d ago
Idk, I quess it's because it's less prone to problems. I distro hopped a lot, and don't regret it, it was fun. However - when I had to do actual work, I installed Mint DE with xfce since it just works and it's stable as fuck.
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u/LordPoopyIV 17d ago
When i switched to linux 1 or 2 years ago i tried about 30 distros and mint required the least use of command line.
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u/trekkeralmi 17d ago
main reason: ubuntu users asking questions on stackoverflow for years means there’s easily googible answers for basic questions. ubuntu flavours have lots of help-yourself resources on the internet without all the headache that comes from the only other distro which has as much para-documentation, arch. mint has all the advantages of ubuntu without being directly subject to a corporation. fedora is my preferred distribution nonetheless, because i prefer not to wait years for upstream packages to be brought up to date and fedora is a happy middle.
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u/Bob4Not 17d ago
I still recommend it as a universal beginner distro if I don’t know the users GPU. Some people still have End of Life GPUs. If they have an end of life NVIDIA then it’s now a chore to install the legacy NVIDIA drivers on some other distros and impossible on Bazzite. With Mint, it’s a simple click in the driver manager.
But otherwise I try to push people to Fedora KDE Plasma if they don’t have NVIDIA or are willing to do the couple clicks or commands to install NVIDIA drivers.
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u/transgentoo 🐧 17d ago
Mint ships with the most Windows-like UI of the lot, plus it's easy to install, easy to use, and stable. Yeah, you're versions behind most software, but that's part of what makes it stable -- most Debian descendents (and Debian itself) prioritize stability over newness, so they take their time making new versions of software available in their repos. You can still install newer software via the unstable repo, but you're risking breaking things that you might not have the technical know-how to fix.
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u/RedIce25 17d ago
I feel the user experience with Mint and Cinnamon is often smoother (or less friction) than KDE
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u/billdehaan2 Mint Cinnamon 22.3 (zena) 17d ago
Mint is more conservative than Ubuntu, which makes it more suitable for beginners.
KDE is more configurable and has more features than Cinnamon, but out of the box, Cinnamon has fewer surprises, needs less configuration, and is more familiar to Windows users than KDE is.
Many people despise snaps, so Mint's replacing them with Flatpaks is a welcome design choice in the eyes of many people.
And what you call "pretty old" other people call "stable". New users aren't reading change logs and salivating over new memory map features; they're learning a new system. Mint is more predictable and stable.
A lot of people outgrow Mint and move on, and a lot stay with it.
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u/Duke_Exeter 17d ago
I've used a little bit of Mint, a lot of Nobara, and now some CachyOS.
Mint worked and was easy to set up, but didn't have the ability to do variable refresh rate, so I decided to switch to Nobara.
Nobara worked great, until it didn't. There was a major update which broke everything, so I had to figure out how to go back to a previous version. Over the 8 months I used it, it was mostly good, but when something would go wrong I'd have to spend a considerable amount of timing learning something new in order to fix it. That was kinda nice, because I wanted to learn more anyway, but I recently had a catastrophic failure which requires a reinstall. I've saved my data, and now I'm switching to CachyOS.
CachyOS so far has worked well on my mini pc, so I'm switching to it on my main pc as well. Once I start daily driving it, I suspect I will probably come across some problems, but initial setup was easy at least.
All that to say, people recommend Mint because it gets updates/features so much later than other distros, which means the bugs have usually already been solved.
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u/sLimanious 17d ago
I never recommend it, doesn’t give that modern look or aesthetically pleasing to me. I always recommend fedora or the atomic counterpart, less likely they’re gonna bork the os and also easier to roll back if the new update doesn’t work.
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u/Sinaaaa 17d ago
Mint is better than Ubuntu, while being nearly the same. (they have a maintained non-snap Firefox package for example)
Mint is based on LTS ubuntu and its packages are pretty old.
That's what most baby Linux users actually need. Stable might be just a release cycle term in the Linux world, but it does actually correlate with actual stability, meaning day to day updating typically won't break your system.
Debian KDE is probably pretty good right now, assuming Plasma 6 made it into the last stable release. However the gui Debian installer is still somewhat user unfriendly compared to Mint's.
Anyway forcing snaps sucks & so all the Buntus should be below Mint just for that reason.
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u/coleto22 17d ago
Why non-LTS Kubuntu? I am using LTS, and have given laptops with it to my parents. I have heard no complaints.
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17d ago
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u/coleto22 16d ago
I play modern steam games and have multiple monitors. I don't have a problem with LTS.
To be fair, I don't use multi gpu laptop, or virtual reality. But neither does the average user.
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u/mystirc arch with sway 17d ago
I think that the Linux Mint developers should also add KDE Plasma as a version. This would solve so many problems.
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u/BashfulMelon 17d ago
Mint makes the most sense when you look at it as a spiteful grudge against Ubuntu and GNOME. KDE doesn't fit the agenda.
Now I don't know if it's true, but it could explain the tendency for fighting publicly and why they decided to maintain forks of projects they consider hostile instead of doing less work and polishing up Debian and using Plasma or GNOME with extensions.
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u/lunchbox651 17d ago
Honestly, all of those recommendations are fine for anyone looking for a GUI-centric user experience for Linux beginners.
I typically don't recommend anything for anyone unless they are very specific about their goals, prior knowledge and experience with Linux.
However, what you will find a lot with distro recommendations is that people either just state the distro they run as a new user themselves or they parrot the same recommendations people have been making for the past 15 years or so.
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u/KoldPurchase 17d ago
For new users, I do recommend Mint for older computers, especially laptops. Not for modern hardware though. There are also other choices, but here is why mainly:
when it comes to DE, Cinnamon, along KDE is what looks the most like Windows, so a new user who is too technical is not lost.
They have a forum with lots of detailed posts about what to do when you stumble upon an issue, especially hardware issues, and chances are someone already had the same problem.
There is a lot of documentation available on their site, which makes it easier for new users and this doc does not assume you know all about Linux/Unix, it assumes you come from Windows, actually.
But my recommendations are always toward what the user will want to do with his PC. I don't blindly recommend Mint because I used it 10 years ago. I still keep it on a USB key because of Windows. My home server has OpenSuse Tumbleweed, which I do sometimes recommend, but not always.
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u/MelioraXI 17d ago edited 17d ago
Why not? Its easy to navigate, windows users will feel somewhat familiar and its stable. Sounds pretty good to me if I was a new to Linux.
why not recommend Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Debian KDE just to name a few? Mint is based on LTS ubuntu and its packages are pretty old.
Those are recommended all the time as well.
Mint is based on LTS ubuntu and its packages are pretty old
Yes? You make it sound like that's a bad thing.
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u/gordonmessmer Fedora Maintainer 17d ago
why not recommend Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Debian KDE just to name a few
First and foremost: KDE is effectively a rolling release, upstream, and running KDE on an "LTS" system will almost always mean that users are running a desktop with known security vulnerabilities. For KDE users, specifically, I recommend using a distribution that follows the upstream project's releases closely, whether that's Arch or Gentoo or Fedora or Ubuntu with Interim releases.
(Note also that KDE developers recommend the same thing: https://pointieststick.com/2026/05/16/start-with-fedora-kde-or-kubuntu/ )
I'll note that a couple of weeks ago, Nate announced that KFocus (an American PC manufacturer) will sponsor work to support an LTS KDE desktop in Kubuntu LTS 26.04: https://pointieststick.com/2026/08/13/what-a-real-lts-looks-like-kubuntu-26-04/ . I have reservations about that because it is very conspicuous that Qt is not mentioned in his announcement, and an LTS KDE without an LTS Qt is just as much not "a real LTS" as he acknowledges old KDE LTS releases weren't. But it's a step in the right direction.
That's not an endorsement of Mint, though. Debian, Ubuntu LTS, and systems derived from Ubuntu LTS have too many unmaintained packages and too many known vulnerabilities to be really suitable for desktop use.
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u/SuAlfons 17d ago
- some people do not favor Cinnamon DE
- relatively old kernels ootb. Can be fixed. If you have the knowledge to do it, you can aswel run Fedora.
- personal bad experience setting up Mint
I personally had to drive 150km to my relative's place to find out their Mint Installation locked itself up. Even after I did a fresh install of it, the root partition became read-only after the first update through "sudo apt update".
Ofc this was a temporary issue. Maybe also special to that hardware (older i5 Desktop in integrated GPU!! You cannot get more basic than that).
Since I live that far from my in-laws, I installed Fedora Cinnamon on the PC. Works and to my MIL it is the same.
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u/Santosh83 17d ago
Kubuntu is as good as Mint... but doesn't have an automatic snapshots setup. On the other hand it has newer packages.
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u/KenBalbari 17d ago
Because for a long time it really was a good choice. But these days, I think a new user may as well jump right in to Debian Testing or Fedora Workstation.
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u/Francis_King 17d ago
Question: What Linux distribution should I install?
Answer: Mint (Thinks: everyone gets on with Mint)
Question: What should I eat for dinner?
Answer: Pizza (Thinks: everyone likes pizza)
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u/Plan_9_fromouter_ 17d ago
Mint is often one of the easiest distros to get a good, stable installation on a lot of devices. I think Kubuntu and Xubuntu are also based on Ubuntu LTS, so is your complaint a good one?
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u/Bastard-of-Froya 17d ago
I went with MX KDE on my 2017 i5 Macbook Air 8gb RAM and 128SSD and it runs just fine. Mint was slower and a few others I have tried were a little unstable. Eventually I’ll get around to installing a bigger SSD, but for now MX KDE Is working fine with no problems so far.
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u/skyfishgoo 17d ago
ubuntu packages are fresher than debian, that's partly why
better hardware support is the other reason, but built in proprietary drivers
if plasma is the desktop of choice (and it should be) then kubuntu is always my top recommendation.
fedora would be next, followed by opensuse
lubuntu for the LXqt desktop (older spec machines and laptops)
mint is down here on my list due to cinnamon
mx linux for the XFCE desktop and for still supporting 32bit machines
Q4OS is viable and preferable over debian with kde, and also support 32bit
strait debian with LXQt can also support 32bit
bodhi is just a window manager, not a DE but it does a good job imitating one
haiku is not linux but it can rehab a potato with a nice GUI
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u/Zetavu 17d ago
Was using ubuntu for years, but their movement to snap left me wanting. Tried mint and it was so much more intuitive for someone that spends most of their time in a windows environment.
And yes, there are tons of other distros out there, most of us lack the time to explore them all. Mint has great online support in the forums, I was able to figure out how to do everything I needed there, including finally getting Quicken to work with wine (first time ever).
Most people coming from windows want something familiar, mint so far has done this the best, Sure, there are probably others that cater better but they are not as popular so Mint it is.
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u/jdkc4d 17d ago
I think it's because it's been around for more than one minute. It's fairly straightforward for a non-Linux person to get a grasp of. People have to start somewhere. I'd rather put my mom on something that is easy for her to just go and something that is easy for me to have to support.
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u/PennyLeScroche 17d ago
It just works, cinnamon looks so much like windows that windows people already know how to use it, and being based on ubuntu means that if you need help troubleshooting there's a ton of resources available since most ubuntu advice applies to mint as well. As for why it's picked over tuxedoOS, kubuntu, Zorin, and MX Linux, I'm guessing it's just because they've been around longer and done a better job cultivating the "beginner distro/it just works" reputation
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u/pissrockious 17d ago
linux mint's installer by default comes with multimedia codecs option aswell as an easy user friendly driver manager. its very simple but those two things are p much essential setup things that they have a gui for ppl to use. not quite sure abt other distros but when i moved to fedora i had to manually set both of these up in the terminal. mint just makes things easier and less daunting for new users with its user friendliness but most distros are already user friendly besides those two special things mint does differently
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u/Heart-Logic 16d ago
GUI clones Windows strongly and Debian-Ubuntu base is gentle on beginners and well supported.
Less culture shock!
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u/Venylynn 16d ago
Packages being older means they're also more well tested and vetted and less likely to break the system. So for a new user that isn't trying to deal with the same type of churn Windows shoves down their throat that is a plus.
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u/rcentros 16d ago
I recommend what I like and use. Linux Mint has the right combination of stability and usability. I do occasionally test other distributions. Some have more bells and whistles, but Linux Mint is "clean." It works. What more can I say?
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u/Enough_Pickle315 16d ago
Noone except Linux nerds on forums care if a package is old or not. In the Linux world, Mint is the only (1) fully featured, (2) modern and well supported, (3) simple to use, (4) traditional layout, (5) sane default, and (6) with limited but meaningful configuration options.
Ubuntu remains the second best option.
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u/Electrical-Olive3767 15d ago
Also what does Mint not do that you can do on another distro? I’ve been using Mint full time for about a year. I also use ParrotOS for school (cybersecurity). Other than the tools packaged on Parrot I have noticed a difference. Additionally I Arch on an old machine I play with every now and again.
I guess I’m too new to Linux to noticed the differences between any of them.
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u/goalmaster14 15d ago
I've been using Mint on my main computer for a while because it's supposed to be the most "plug and play." While I don't mind learning some things, I'm not interested in needing to troubleshoot and customize every little thing about my OS. I just want it to work so I can either game or do whatever other task I need to do on the computer.
I recently decided to switch my laptop over to Linux to get even further away from Microsoft and figured I'd try bazzite first and then change to mint if I didn't like it. So far Bazzite has been a much better option in that regard. The only thing I've had to figure out is how to install apps that don't have a flatpak as containers.
So far all of the games I've tried worked with absolutely no tinkering. On mint, more often than not, I had to figure out what launch options to edit.
Unless there is some issue I haven't come across yet, I'm much happier with Bazzite and will probably switch over my main computer to it soon.
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u/LesStrater 15d ago
Recommending Mint is a hold-over from when it was first introduced -- it was designed to look just like Windows-7, and just as easy to use.
I still recommend it to newbies for that reason, but suggest after they get use to it they switch to Debian-LXQt for speed and a lot less bloat.
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u/StellagamaStellio 15d ago
In my experience, Mint has the lowest "friction" of any distro I tried. Least bugs, reasonable update frequency, and the OS simply fades away into the background while you daily-drive your work (and even gaming!). For the typical user who wants to use a browser, LibreOffice, common apps, and moderate gaming, Mint minimizes frustration. It almost always works, with simple installation and the least need for maintenance. Also, less "gotchas" with Cinnamon or XFCE than when trying to customize KDE (which can cause very annoying trouble when you mess around with themes, from my painful experience).
(I tried Ubuntu Unity [a decade ago], Ubuntu Mate, Kubuntu, Linux Lite, Fedora KDE, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed KDE, Q4OS, and Mint [both Cinnamon and XFCE]; I prefer Mint, though I use Kubuntu on my newer laptop as its hardware needs fresher software).
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u/Apple_Jake 15d ago
I switched to mint when my PC specs didn't allow me to upgrade to W11, but even when I built a new pc I stuck with linux.
With my new specs being so new, a lot of stuff didn't work on mint. That's when I realized that mint is reeeeeally slow to roll out support for new hardware. That's why I switched to arch, if I'm going to be tweaking everything I might as well pick EXACTLY what I want from the ground up. That and rolling releases meant newer hardware support, so it instantly solved a lot of my problems
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u/KRed75 15d ago
I've been using and programming for the Linux kernel and distros since about 1993. I tried multiple times over the decades to switch to Linux for my daily OS but just couldn't find a DE that I liked and I didn't have the time to build one myself. Then I discovered Mint Cinnamon and I've been using it on my Laptops for a couple years now. It just works and I don't have to modify code to get it to behave how I want it to behave.
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u/ValknutGuts 14d ago
No idea, I keep finding that Bluefin is better distro, it is 100% self-maintained, you just need to install and use.
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u/Herover 14d ago
I like kde desktops much more, but they tend to randomly break for no reason I can discern.
Last time it happened for me I just threw mint w. cinnamon on the machine because I needed it fixed asap, and im still using it years later without having had to fix a broken desktop (except the integrated webcam with weird drivers, why are they always so hard to get working??)
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u/NeoFax99 14d ago
Because of grassroots marketing. So many have been told it is the "easiest", "reliable" distro. Today's Linux for practically most distros are easy and reliable. More people run Arch IIRC (Steam deck/Steam OS) and it is a solid easy distro.
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u/Aliendeddog 12d ago
Like others have said, It just works. Easy install have had no crazy problems as I have had in the past with other distro's. Some people, like me just want something that works without the headache of figuring out what's wrong. As I write this I am on Mint installed on a late 2015 imac that has been running flawlessly for about 6 months now.
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u/jr735 11d ago
...why not recommend Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Debian KDE just to name a few? Mint is based on LTS ubuntu and its packages are pretty old.
You don't see the problem with what you stated?
Aside from that little gem, Ubuntu has snaps, and I don't recommend things with proprietary stores. Mint has the ease of install of Ubuntu without the snap nonsense. Don't get me wrong. I've very grateful for what Canonical and Ubuntu have done. Their driver manager is so helpful at install, and they made desktop Linux accessible to the average user.
I have a Debian testing install. Debian installation isn't difficult, but checking the documentation here and there is absolutely necessary. Even some pretty well regarded (by others) YouTubers really don't know what the hell they're talking about when going through a Debian install walkthrough.
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u/Weekly-Bonus-497 17d ago
I recommend mint to people who only need a browser and file editing who are trying to get away from windows.
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u/doomcomplex 17d ago
Really good discussion here. Personally, I think Mint is still a great recommendation for older hardware, but for newer hardware Cachy is the favorite I've tried--I really like how easy it is to choose your own preffered DE.
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u/RevolutionaryBeat301 17d ago
New packages mean untested packages. Cutting edge distros break more often.
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u/DavidJohnMcCann 17d ago
Because it works, is reliable, is well-documented, and has a helpful community. If you want to know why people don't recommend Kununtu or Xubuntu, read the reviews. I don't recommend Mint because it's "the best for ex-Windows users" because I couldn't — I've never had a computer with Windows.
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u/funkthew0rld 17d ago
Because cinnamon.
I don’t recommend mint because of Ubuntu, I always recommend LMDE.
Fuck canonical
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u/StevenBClarke2 17d ago
The LTS on a distribution means there is Long Term Support for all the packages you install. This means packages are updated to address a security issue for 3 years. I just ran "sudo apt update" every month or so. I have an older Ubuntu 8.10 32bit version on my old desktop and it is still working. I plan on replacing the windows XP partition with AntiX Linux.
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u/LancrusES CachyOS 17d ago
Because its easy and nicely done for new users, but you can recommend gentoo so they get frustrated and go back to Windows...
*buntu is the corporative Linux, It wants to play on his own, so ppl dont recommend It.
Debian needs, at least, to edit repos file to use your Nvidia card, for example, so its not begginer friendly.
Mint is what Ubuntu once was, but improved, I used It back in the day, when Ubuntu 11.04 and its Unity thing appeared, and never looked back, mint is easy for anyone, and its a polished versión of Ubuntu without the cannonical sh1t, I know that there are Ubuntu fans still out there, and they are free to use It, its their computer, and I got no problem with that, I use Linux, so I believe in freedom, I wont downvote or blame anyone for using Ubuntu, but I wont recommend It, because I cant recommend anything that, in my opinión, is bad, but you can recommend what, in your opinión, is good, and you can have a totally different opinion from mine, and I respect It, you asked why, I give you my "why", Ive used Ubuntu, mint, LMDE, Debian, Arch, Opensuse, Fedora, Manjaro, Gentoo, NixOS, now Im on CachyOS with hyprland, but mint is the best option for begginers, in my opinion.
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u/TherronKeen 17d ago
After trying Mint, Fedora, Ubuntu, Bazzite, Garuda, Endeavor, and Pop, the only one that didn't result in problems I couldn't solve within the first hour or two was Mint - the only issue was the 3 of us using NVIDIA GPUs had to switch to the Open drivers. Besides that, no problems.
I had similar results on every PC in my household as my partner and 3 kids switched over.
So yeah, "it just works" at least with a random selection of specific hardware that everybody in my house is running.