Brian Fagioli certainly thinks so.
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The headlines of Beta News are often border line ridiculous
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Debian has Cinnamon too.
Mint has XFCE, MATE too.
A distro having a DE the other provides by default does not mean the other is obsolete, I think.
Not to mention, that the DE is not the only attribute in that Mint differs from Ubuntu.
Just think of those ridiculous snap packages, Linux Mint does not enforce you to use snaps like Ubuntu tries to force…
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People may tell you several reasons, but the reality is, many Ubuntu users are just not comfortable with the default desktop environment.
That’s false. Ubuntu had MATE, KDE, XFCE, LXDE (now LXQt) flavours for a very long time, so if someone wants to use Ubuntu with a different DE it’s just there.
If anyone wants my opinion, I don’t like Gnome either, but could choose easily any other desktop…
But the way Ubuntu forces those snaps disgusts me, and if anyone asks for a distro to begin with, I recommend better Linux Mint.
That’s my 2 cents.
I could start with Gentoo, or Void, or Devuan, and make it look exactly like Mint with Cinnamon, but people would still prefer Mint. Why?
Several things
- @kovacslt mentioned snap free Mint
- its about Mint making sensible moves that do not irritate users ie reputation
- the distro you use and like makes a very big rut. Jumping out is hard work
- people often say the mint install process is superior, especially for beginners.
I have not used Mint for one reason… it is systemd
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There are a few assumptions I’d like to have explained. Some people hate snaps. Some people hate flat packs. I’m sure debs and rpms have their friends and foes. How does the average user, who is lost in this discussion, tell the difference? And what does it matter?
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It matters if you are using an under-resourced computer. Snaps and flatpaks consume more disk space, more download Mb, and more cpu and memory when running.
The technical history of this trend goes as follows
- software used to be statically linked. That means the binary file contains , not just the program, but all the library files it calls.
- static binaries got to be too large, so they introduced dynamic linking… library files are only linked to your program’s binary at run time, and only when called. Several running programs can share one library copy in memory
- shared libraries led to package management problems with dependencies, so they introduced Appimage and Snap and Flatpack… which are all really just a move back to static binaries, with all the needed libraries linked in so that they avoid dependency issues.
They are all just a static binary imsge with a wrapper to make them easy to download and install and run. - so we are back to where we started… huge binary files are apparently less of a problem than package dependencies , at least to the distro makers eyes.
There is a simpler solution. Just use static binaries in the package system… No fancy paks just let the package system manage static binaries the same way it manages DLL’s. All library dependencies would disappear, but between package dependencies would remain…
Noone has tried it. Why?
There is one other solution. Dont download binaries at all… download the source code and compile it yourself. That is what Gentoo does, but you can download source code in any distro. Try it. Download sizes for source code are tiny, compared to binary downloads. You get to deal with all deoendencies yourself… the ultimate control over your system.
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The main problem I have with snaps and flatpaks is size
If the software I want is in Mbs from debs (example)
in snaps and/or flats is in Gbs
that is a huge difference.
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Because snaps include
- library dependencies
- other package dependencies
The latter can be huge… for example , if something depends on firefox, the snap includes the whole of firefox and all its dependencies too.
A static binary only includes dependent libraries, not other packages.
Quite a while back experimented with either snaps or flats,
My friend Timeshift got me back to before the experiment and will not ever use snap or flat ever, too resource hungry loading up all that baggage.
I don’t feel it’s right for any Linux distro to force users to have snaps or flats
seems freedom (of choice) and Linux walk the same path
Some people just don’t get it !
:sarcasm
Long Live Ubuntu The Microsoft Of Linux . . .
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I do!!!
Amen. 
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Well said!!!
I don’t like flatpaks either…
Side note to this:
On a fresh Mint install apt purge flatpak* does all the housekeeping.
On a fresh Ubuntu (18,20?) apt purge snap* did it too.
But it seems way more complicated now, and I could bet it will get even impossible one day.
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I agree.
Its OK to offer a number of choices, but forcing one to use snap is bad behaviour for a Linux distro.
but
there is still a choice… you can choose not to use a particular distro if they offend.
Same applies to systemd. Choice of init systsm is a basic freedom too.
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@shamu
Can only use one on likes so these are for you mate.
+ 
Remarkable that some flock to Ubuntu,
Wow had a look at the link didn’t read all, just glanced over the info and wow, be easier to just install a distro eg Debian or a spinoff of MXlinux or SprialLinux
That’s why I use Linux !
With systemd I would prefer to not use it only problem is that this ugh machine does not work well with the other init s
Go figure why ?, no, at this stage in life is too short for those sorts of things for me to bother with.
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I appreciate the arguments. My ISP offers plans from 75 to 1200 Mbps. It’s a rare machine that offers less than 250G of storage and less than 4G of RAM. But some locations and some users are stuck with more meager infrastructure. I think I read that some countries (South Korea and Finland, if my crappy memory serves) provide pretty speedy broadband to everyone very reasonably. There are other locations–thinking of Rosika in Germany–where services are years behind. The flexibility of Linux would seem to make it a boon to those who are getting the splintered end of the stick. Being able to avoid snaps, flatpaks, and init systems and create (Raspberry-like) small systems really helps these folks.
Sure, I’m driving a 10-year-old system, but 1000Mpbs through the fiber optics, 1.5T of disk storage, and 8G RAM means I don’t have to worry about any of these issue. I don’t even have to care if one distro boots in 15 seconds and another boots in 18 seconds. As long as a distro uses debs, I’ll try it. I’d have to do a lot more studying if I had to sip from the internet rather than having a firehose at the other end of the wire.
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Thank you Sir!
(Can you try to cheat??..)
Ubuntu Cinnamon will have no more to do with making Linux Mint obsolete than the Fedora-Cinnamon spin had. The only way any distribution becomes obsolete is if its dev team/community loses interest in (stops supporting) it. I can’t see that happening to Linux Mint any time soon, if ever. The Mint community is very strong and engaged, not to mention welcoming and friendly. Linux Mint/LMDE may come in two flavors (one is based on Ubuntu, the other on Debian), but both share the same user experience/interface. The advantage of this duality is if Ubuntu ever goes away (like Mandrake did), LMDE can still flourish with users experiencing no difference.
My2Cents,
Ernie
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I just said this same thing in another thread recently.
Sometimes a snap/flatpak/appimage can be useful. We have a CentOS 7 server at work. That release doesn’t get some newer updates for openssl maybe or for java or whatever. I was able to get an AppImage of Python 3.11.2. It works dandy for me.
Exactly right.
A distro is more to do with the people who maintain and use it, than with any technical advantage it might have at some point in time.
A distro does not stand still… it moves with the times. Where it moves is driven by
- technical innovations in hardware and software
- what users want
- individual brilliance among its maintainers or creators.
Tomorrow both Mint and Ubuntu will have changed.
Number of users is not the only merit of a distro. Some are designed for special uses and will never have user numbers but are important for other reasons. As Ernie said, Mint has this special position.
Uh that was you
well
you do realize
Copying is the best form of Complimenting 
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