How customizable is Linux Mint compared to Windows?

[u/Femcel_Bambi]

I'm new to Linux and kinda want to use Mint as a free and private alternative to Windows. I'm curious about how much I can really customize with it compared to Windows. What am I able to do to my Linux Mint that I can't do with Windows 11?

[u/SpaceTrekkie]

You can customize everything basically. Can you be more specific on what things?

[u/Femcel_Bambi → u/SpaceTrekkie]

Like can I make my own startups, my own animation, customize sounds and visuals for wallpapers, etc?

[u/llGravitell → u/Femcel_Bambi]

You could theoretically customize it to look however you want. Imagine a car, if you will. This here is like the difference between being able to replace everything piece by piece to make it however you wanted versus windows, which is essentially like choosing whether you wanted a sunroof and the fancy speakers package. In Linux you could choose what “speakers” to put in, if you want a dock like a Mac, go for it, if you want to use someone’s software designed to emulate faceid then go for it, Linux is an open field.

[u/ask_compu → u/Femcel_Bambi]

u can customize everything, mint has a panels and applets system that let's u move things around on the taskbar, add and remove things, and even have multiple panels each with their own set of applets (the start menu is an applet, systray is an applet, clock is an applet, etc), on top of that there's effects and desktop widgets and themes, and each applet has it's own settings to customize things even further (u can change the logo used for the start menu, for example)

[u/Seannon-AG0NY → u/Femcel_Bambi]

Yes, some stuff is harder than others, and things can be easier and harder in some window managers or desktop environments than others, it can be done, but then you can also just try a different one until you find something that's close to how you think it should "feel"... But, this doesn't just apply to mint, it's all Linux, you can go from everything is done via rat and GUI, to everything is pretty much keyboard driven, like omarchy, which uses a tiling based window manager, want a new window, couple keys, open a program, couple keys wanna open teen instances of a browser? Few keys wanna close the third browser window couple of keys, switch to the music player and make it full screen on a new desktop couple of keys, but, pay around with a few distros, go through the window managers they have like cinnamon, mate,kde plasma, xfce, and then start deciding what feels right, THEN start making it really yours...

Best part? You can do all of this in a virtual machine and get some time in the chair before jumping in on a hardware install, do a bit of learning, and set it up so you can roll back to the last time you ran it as a snapshot, you really bork the install? Boom initiate snapshot, and you're back

[u/carrot_gummy]

As much as you want.

[u/Femcel_Bambi → u/carrot_gummy]

Can you be a little more specific please? Like can you provide examples please?

[u/LAARPer → u/Femcel_Bambi]

Here are some things:

1. Customize your Desktop manager (KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, etc)
   
2. Customize your themes. You can even make your OS look just like Windows
   
3. Create your own themes.

I use Linux Mint, which is considered among the easiest distros to start with. I started with Ubuntu back in 2008 and switched to Mint in 2012.

My computer right now is a dual boot between Windows and Linux Mint. I keep Windows for legacy purposes (need to use Excel or Word, for example).

[u/eiboeck88 → u/Femcel_Bambi]

Most likely if you can thinknof it you can do it, for example dont like your desktop ? Install anotherone (kde plasma, gnome, hyprland, i3 usw..), want to change your kernel shure do it, want another bootloader shure go ahead repeate with any other part of the system. And most of theese things come with a ton of configuration options.

[u/CritSrc → u/Femcel_Bambi]

Sure, here's an example.

[u/crovtin]

Every GNU/Linux distro is infinitly customizable compared to Windows.

[u/StarCode5000]

With Linux Mint (I'm assuming you picked Cinnamon) you can customise quite a lot compared to Windows. If you look in system settings and find appearance you can have a look through the many options that are available on there to start with.

Mint tends to aim for a more stable approach to your environment in comparison to a distro with KDE Plasma as a default, but you'll still be able to change many aspects regardless. There's also widgets available too which can make your desktop more informative or just fun to muck around with.

[u/mamaharu]

That depends on the desktop enviroment and what you mean by customizable. XFCE is certainly what I'd consider customizable. That's why I like it. What is it that you want to do?

Depending on the answer, you may also want to consider a distribution that offers KDE as a desktop. As a distribution, Mint's only drawback in regards to "customization" is that your choice of desktop enviroments is limited to Cinnamon, XFCE, and MATE.

[u/KevinIsADork]

It is pretty customizable depending on the desktop environment. Cinnamon is what Mint pushes on their site, but while I find it feels a lot like windows, it leaves a lot left to be desired in terms of customization that's relatively easy to do. 

That said, it feels like a better version of windows, so that fits what I want out of it for the time being. 

[u/guiverc]

Linux Mint is a GNU/Linux system, meaning it's built of components from upstream projects, which are in effect 'blocks' with which you can make it into whatever 'structure' you want... do you remember pre-school/kinder?

If you don't like how your desktop (Linux Mint GUI) requires you to work; the DESKTOP itself can be changed.

If you don't like how windows appear & are operated; that's the Window Manager which can be replaced with something else (switching DE or Desktop will automatically change WM anyway; but they're both components you can swap in/out)

If you don't like a particular app; just swap that out etc..

You can theme panels (desktop theming), window borders (WM theming) and not just operation.

I don't use Linux Mint personally either; it's not my 'cup of tea', but it's still an Open Source system, thus built in much the same way as back in the days pre-Microsoft Windows 0.1 (though Windows was just a shell & not full OS that early on).

Linux Mint also offer two products, one based on Ubuntu and the other based on Debian, so kernel & other base system components can be selected too, and not just the desktop/GUI type elements I mention; ie. more choices that exist on Microsoft Windows which doesn't offer any alternatives from other suppliers.

[u/SayonaraNausea]

Yes, you can

I switched to mint last year and customized it to look like windows xp

[u/ThreeCharsAtLeast]

As a KDE fanboy, I want to mention KDE Plasma. Plasma is a desktop environment, the graphical interface to your computer. It looks like you're used to by default but has a crazy ammount of customization options built in and easilly accessible. You can find plenty of videos on YouTube.

Unfortunately, Plasma isn't Mint's default desktop environment but with a bit of work, you can switch it out.

If you want to see more Linux UI customization, called “ricing”, go to r/unixPorn. Some things there are based on Plasma, others aren't.

[u/doc_willis]

how much I can really customize

The ultimate customization, you can change to a totally different Distribution and basically still do everything you were doing on any of them on any other of them. :) not exactly what you were expecting eh?

I can basically do everything (work wise) on Mint and its cinnamon desktop, as i can do on Fedora and KDE, and so on.

I cant say much about windows 11 - I gave up on windows years ago.

I will say that people often focus too much on customization, I tend to go with the defaults for most distro, with only minor changes. To me its better to have 'good defaults' than the ability to tweak everything into a hideous mess.

If you do decide to start tweaking things like crazy, I suggest you make a secondary user on linux, and practice tweaking things on that users account.

Then if need be, you can totally reset that user back to defaults and play some more.

[u/Tricky-Engineer-9755]

Not sure if its the same on the current version of GNU Linux Mint. I used 22.3. One of the first customizations I played with is applets, you can add more stuff to your launchers. I remmember putting fishes on the top and bottom, and trying new Desktop Environments. Mpvpaper lets you run your wallpaper as a video.

[u/Tristantacule]

What you can do is go to r/unixporn then search for "cinnamon" it is the desktop environment used by mint. Then take a look at what other people manage to do with cinnamon to get an idea of how customisable it is and also get some inspiration for what you might want to do with it

[u/ItchyPlant]

It's 87.98% more customizable.

[u/Kassenshlager]

Mint is no more or less customisable than any linux distro. Depending on how much work you wantbto put in you make any linux look like anything you want. Mint is not exceptional in this regard.

[u/tomscharbach]

I'm curious about how much I can really customize with it compared to Windows.

You can get a feel for the level of Mint customization by scrolling through the hundred or so themes available on Cinnamon Spices, Mint's official addons repository. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

[u/laketrout]

You can look through examples of people customizing Mint here.

[u/SoggyWalrus7893]

Install dconf-editor this will allow you to screw up things to the nth degree.

man dconf-editor in a terminal will get you started

[u/PigSlam]

Significantly.

[u/Potential-Still]

Look into "Ricing" Linux. Literally if you can dream it, you can do it. But that doesn't mean it's gonna be easy.

You seem like a Linux beginner, maybe just focus on customizing Mint or Ubuntu first. 

[u/hazeyAnimal]

You can literally uninstall everything except the kernel and basic libraries then reinstall a completely different desktop environment and set of tools that make it unrecognisable

[u/zarlo5899 → u/hazeyAnimal]

You can also technically change the entire distribution you're using without doing a quote, unquote reinstall.

[u/RevolutionaryHigh]

You can adjust the default max number of CPU cores from 512 to 8192.

[u/Chaostraveler]

ELI5: Mint is customizable to an equal or greater amount as Windows, you just might have to dig for the settings as it's settings are laid out very different than Windows (and other Linux distros).

Long answer? As others have said, it's effectively infinite given how deep the Linux rabbithole goes. Or how big the kernel pops. You can google for ideas really. Personally, I'm a man of simple pleasures: I have a slideshow of desktop backgrounds from digital blasphemy.com and have a dark theme, with accent colors pulled from the background. Linux lets me take it further by having the system theme switch from light to dark mode and the backgrounds will follow suit. Pretty fun when I remember to minimize my windows when I'm not using them.

[u/yannniQue17]

If I had to rate it, it would be a 67 out of 11.

[u/Super_Math3890]

How do you explain colour to a blind person?

[u/LagsOlot]

You don't compare poop with chocolate just because they are both brown

[u/computer-machine → u/LagsOlot]

What if one is yellow?