this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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Linux Mint isn't the answer for Windows refugees anymore (www.xda-developers.com)
submitted 15 hours ago by cm0002@literature.cafe to c/linux@programming.dev
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I've been having a big think over Linux distros. See, I've been looking back at my still-new Linux experience of nine months, and wondering how my own journey can help other people get started with FOSS operating systems. Whenever the topic of a Windows refugee-friendly OS came up, I would recommend Linux Mint because, first, it's the one everyone says, and second, it was the Linux OS that I started with, fresh off Windows.

I always follow that up with a comment about how you don't have to stick with Linux Mint if you don't want to. You can do what I did, which is to dip your toe into the Linux distro water and find something that suits you better. But if I'm setting up Linux Mint as "my first Linux distro," why not just skip the middleman and get right into the distros that have a bit more meat on them?

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[–] Durandal@lemmy.today 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It's not that people generally say "basic" ... they say "boring". It's designed to just work and be stable with some nice features but it has a slower release speed and the dev, intentionally, keeps things slow so that they can polish up all the features before they go mainstream on it. So it isn't doing anything revolutionary and it isn't giving you bleeding edge everything... it's just nice and stable. It's become one of top recommended distros for a reason.

The main hiccups I see with it is that they are lagging behind on Wayland support... which is slowly becoming the defacto standard for desktop display tech. If you aren't really up on the x11 vs wayland debate... this likely isn't even an issue for you. Suffice to say they've tried to hang back on x11 for a while, which is the older but much more thoroughly tested way of doing the user space display. Secondly would be... because it's a slow burn on updates, you might not get the latest greatest updates for the kernel with the display drivers. So for gaming that could make things a little more finicky. People do use it for gaming... so don't think it can't be also used for that, just might run into hiccups.

Good thing is you can test it out, and if it doesn't work out, try something else.

[–] noretus@crazypeople.online 10 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Dude, "boring" is what I want from an OS. No surprises. No sudden changes. I'm 40.

[–] Durandal@lemmy.today 11 points 14 hours ago

Exactly. Like I said... it's a top recommendation for a reason. There's still tons of bleeding edge stuff to play with... but Mint has really nailed down "here... this will install painlessly, and your laptop is going to work fine".

[–] Novocirab@feddit.org 6 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Then I especially recommend Linux Mint LMDE edition. It's built on Debian, which is known for its stability, instead of on the flashier Debian-derived Ubuntu.

https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

[–] d0ntpan1c@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 13 hours ago

I'm looking forward to the day LMDE just becomes the only Mint flavor and they ditch the Ubuntu middleman entirely. They haven't said thats their goal with LMDE, but given the trend of other distros swapping to Debian from Ubuntu (VanillaOS as another example), it wouldn't surprise me.