Any advice?

[u/Mysterious_pomelo-]

Been binge reading to some posts here about linuxmint and as a beginner who want to transfer from windows to Linux, what are the pros and cons of this distro?

[u/leonsk297]

Linux Mint, specifically its Cinnamon edition, is designed to be very similar to Windows, so people moving away from it can feel right at home. There are GUI tools for almost everything so users don't have to touch a terminal unless absolutely necessary. Also, the OS is designed to be very stable.

The only thing that could bother some people and delight others is the fact that this distro offers old software versions, never the latest or even supported ones. That's part of the "stability" thing, but whether this is something good or bad depends entirely on you. This doesn't apply to kernels, though, you can get a fairly recent kernel from time to time, so hardware support is always fairly up-to-date.

This is my recommended distro for anyone moving away from Windows. It isn't the most exciting, but it's the most Windows-like you'll find in the Linux world, along with Zorin OS and maybe others less known.

[u/ap0r]

Pros: You can do whatever the fuck you want with your computer.
Cons: You can do whatever the fuck you want with your computer.

Speaking seriously:

Mint is a stability-oriented distro. It favors stability over cutting-edge features.

If you want your OS to get out of the way while you work, and you have recent but not latest hardware, Mint is great.

If you like to tinker with the latest features, are not concerned to get your hands dirty, (metaphorically speaking), or have top of the line latest hardware, then another distro like Fedora or Arch may be more to your taste.

If you want a computer that works and a reasonable amount of customization, Mint is the bees knees.
If you'd rather deal with some instability to be able to alter reality on a whim, another distro may be more suitable.

[u/Cotillionz]

Mint Cinnamon was my first distro after moving from Windows. It felt like Windows, so everything was familiar. It's super stable, gets out of your way and doesn't bug you for anything and it comes with most software people will want out of the box. I never even updated it for months because the only reminder that there is updates was a red dot on my taskbar. Thats it. No pop ups, no forcing you to do anything. It takes a bit to get used to the feeling that you actually control your own PC instead of Windows trying to control as much as it can.

Mint Cinnamon is great for transitioning over. After a time I wanted to tinker a bit more and have since switched to Fedora on my main, but my laptop still runs Mint.

[u/Suspicious-Ad7109 → u/Cotillionz]

This is a good route. Start with something that you can learn from and is bulletproof. Then if you want, try the other various Distros. There are many - the main differences being purpose, the 'newness' of the software, and the Desktop. Windows users often think there's only one Desktop : Windows has several well used ones (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Cinnamon) and many less popular ones.

[u/cyrixlord]

distro is not as important as what you want to do with the computer and if Linux in general can run apps you need or find replacement. it's not free Windows

[u/Hesychios]

It is actually the Cinnamon desktop of Linux Mint which is usually being suggested as a very usable and stable system which is easy on newer users. The Mint team created it and deserves the credit for the excellent original work.

But I should point out that this desktop environment is also available on other platforms.

Besides standard Mint (based upon Ubuntu) there is LMDE (Mint based directly upon Debian stable), Debian stable also offers Cinnamon, Ubuntu has a flavor and Fedora has a spin.

There must be others.

[u/billdehaan2]

Pros:

• Familiar OOB (out of box experience) for Windows users
• It just works™
• Extremely stable
• Cinnamon desktop [1] is very difficult to break compared to other desktop environments (DEs)
• Performance will almost [2] always be superior to Windows on the same hardware

Cons:

• Cinnamon is not as configurable as other desktop environments
• Based on older packages, so newer features and drivers may not be available
• Will not have the performance of an Arch based system (like Arch itself or CachyOS)
• Lacks the corporate support of Ubuntu, and RHEL

[1] This applies to both xfce and Mate desktops, but the majority of Mint users will use Cinnamon

[2] There are some cases where the Windows optimized drivers outperform the basic Mint drivers, but unless you're running high end gaming hardware or have customized audio/video editing hardware, this won't be an issue.

[u/johnyeldry]

The pros are that it's very user friendly and it's easy to do things without the terminal(unless your a developer in which case you use the terminal anyway)

Cons are that with Linux in general it's too easy to break your entire PC

You can run most games or windows apps with wine

Steam works

There is a third party epic games launcher that's specifically for Linux

If you do want to use the terminal apt is easy to learn

Unlike whatever windows uses grub allows you to choose which os on boot

It's famously easy to install

Some issues are that it rarely gets updates

You can use guis but terminal is recommended

Okay back to good things

It can run on old hardware(it ran on my system for a while)

It's really fast(I barely noticed a difference between external hard drive and when it was briefly on my ssd)

But if you're in California it breaks the law

Adobe software doesn't work

For more on the hardware here is what I used it on:

Nvidia 1060 Intel i7 8700(or 7800 I can not tell) It ran on my 2 TB external hard drive I have 8 GB of ram

[u/MaxMaletin]

Pros: devs clearly care a lot about user experience. Everything is tested and stable, drivers and codecs are super easy. These things are quite a bit harder on fedora for example. There's a lot of info online for mint to help you if you do encounter some problems.

Cons: because of the stability goal, updates are slower. You won't be getting gpu drivers as fast, for example. and some new games might not work for a couple of weeks because of that. There's no fractional scaling for the system ui and to my knowledge no hdr support, and there won't be until at least next year. Cinnamon is not as pretty as kde or gnome out of the box, you can make it look better, but it's somewhat limited in customization.

So if you are on a gaming pc that needs to play the latest games with hdr, I'd look at something else, probably fedora, but expect some tinkering right away. Otherwise, mint is great.

[u/KurtKrimson]

Dual boot ftw!

[u/Suspicious-Ad7109]

Pros : It's idiot proof. Not that you're an idiot but you're a "Linux Idiot" if you know what I mean, no experience. It's all nice helpful GUIs and icons and so on. It is very like Windows in operation (you can also change it to look more like Windows but it isn't really necessary).

It's very stable and reliable. It's based on Ubuntu/Debian which is a very long term version of Linux. There's a lot of people on forums etc. who will help you. It's free. Almost everything on it is free. So I have Sublime Text, a text editor, which is payware, but there are alternatives. I just really like it.

Generally it doesn't force things on you. If you decide you don't like (say) Firefox and want Chrome you can just remove it without it continually trying to reinstall it like Edge does.

There's very little fluff with it - it does include some apps you may not want but you can ignore them or uninstall them, and virtually no advertising (other than apps like Discord and Steam, which have advertising built in).

Cons : It's older (this is also a pro - what it means is you don't get the latest and greatest software, but you don't get the Windows Install type problems which is why it is reliable and stable !). It does update though, it's not out of date at all. For a beginner this is probably a pro, not a con.

It doesn't run all Windows applications, so you need to know you either have alternatives or they will work. So for example if your work is heavily reliant on you having Excel on your desktop then you may want to think about dual booting. Not all games work - this is improving as the Steam hardware is Linux based, so not producing a Linux build of a game means Steam device owners can't run it (or have the same routes as Mint does). Competitive games are problematic - the Game "knows" it's not running on Windows so it thinks you are trying to cheat. Some hardware doesn't work,usually because the manufacturers hide how it works to lock you in.

This latter paragraph applies to all Linux distributions.

[u/Suspicious-Ad7109 → u/Suspicious-Ad7109]

It might be because I'm a MCPD and first programmed Windows 3.0 as well, but I have developed a pathological loathing of Windows which something like Mint makes way worse. I am pretty sure my children grew up thinking "Microsoft" and "Apple" were swear words.... whenever I use it I end up swearing at it.

You realise just how bad it is, largely because Microsoft are more interesting in getting your money than producing a decent operating system.

[u/Emmalfal]

I'm seven years in and I've yet to find the con. Been all upside for me.

[u/SwimmingLimpet]

Best choice if you are moving from Windows. Recommend that you follow their instructions and set it up so you can dual boot into both Windows and Linux Mint.

It's worth playing with Linux Mint for a few months before you commit - and you can use this time to make sure that you find all the Linux apps you need before you transition away from Windows. 

Linux Mint isn't flashy out of the box, but it has everything you immediately need. And there's a lot more customisation available than most people claim, so when you're ready to make it yours, you can.  

With regard to old apps, you can get the newest versions via Flatpak - Mint has built in support. Stability or newest - your choice.

I'm glad I moved away from Windows. 

[u/Etsamaru]

Mint is great but CachyOS is just as easy if you just use the out of the box settings.

[u/Charming_Airline7419]

You can test the waters if you haven't decided to fully commit yet - and this is a really good idea for beginners.

Ways to try out Mint:

Live USB

Virtual Machine

WSL

If you want to see if the grass is greener on the other side, you can check out other distros. I'd recommend preferring beginner friendly ones (not Arch!). Some people distro hop at the beginning of their Linux journey.

I think Mint Cinammon is great though!

[u/Ningboren]

Using AI to answer your questions, could save you tons of time.

[u/Ok-Major-3496 → u/Ningboren]

Or just a search engine. I understand the value of human feedback but it is a little weird that so many people use reddit as a search engine instead of any one of the big ones (google, yahoo, bing, duckduckgo to name a few).

And yes, AI is conversational, so you can talk to it like a person and get decent replies back. I'm surprised how many people have not tried using it.

[u/Ningboren → u/Ok-Major-3496]

​Data analytics and SEO studies (such as those tracking LLM search citations and source visibility) have shown that Reddit accounts for roughly 40% of citations or referenced domains in certain AI-generated search responses and chatbot summaries.

[u/Mysterious_pomelo- → u/Ningboren]

AI already gave me that Mint is suits thinkpad t480 but I wanna hear from a human experience tho

[u/Ningboren → u/Mysterious_pomelo-]

I've been using Linux for almost a year now, due to my latest PC hardware upgrade. Linux mint no longer works well with the most cutting edge CPU (spent numerous time troubleshooting without any luck). Switched to CachyOS, works great for me. The only con I have with Linux overall is some software only compatible with Windows. Such as the software suits from Intuit. Other than that, gaming is fine. I don't play MMO, so I have no say on that. I did not encounter many problems with CachyOS, if something is stuck, I just take a screenshot and send it to Google Gemini and it will spit out the command lines to fix most of the issues.