 Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. Today is going to be a little bit of a Rambo League type video where I give my opinion on something that I have been thinking about for a little while. So no tutorial or watching Matt failout tutorials today. Instead, I'm going to talk a little bit about Linux Mint and what I think about Linux Mint. So while we do this, you can actually look at Linux Mint because I do have Linux Mint installed in a virtual machine. This is the Cinnamon desktop that we're on right now. This is the latest version that is released as a stable version, version 20, and it is running the 5.4 kernel, which is quite behind. And I believe this is based on Ubuntu 1804. It might be 20.04. I'm actually not sure. It doesn't matter to me. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't really matter to the point of the video. So my argument is this, why did Linux Mint shouldn't exist anymore? It's a complete waste of developer resources. And even the developers half the time, if you read their blog posts or their listen to their podcasts, they're very cynical about their own distro. They don't seem like to enjoy it. When you listen to like Martin Wimpress or like when Ikey Daughtry or I don't know his pronounces name, but he used to do Solace, they were very passionate about their projects. Linux Mint developers so much. And I can understand why because Ubuntu or Linux Mint doesn't offer anything unique to the community at all. It really doesn't. So the thing that I compare it to most because there's a lot of Ubuntu based distros out there. And a lot of them really shouldn't exist because they don't really offer anything all that great or unique. But one that does is Element 3 OS. So I'm not a big fan of Element 3 OS, which people who know me know. I think that they are create their own like silo of Linux software and it makes it harder for Linux software to be ran on any other distro other than Element 3 OS, which is not a great thing because one of the things that Linux is great about is having software that's developed for Linux run across every distro. That's the reason why all these distros can't exist. If software was siloed into specific distros, it'd be much harder for, you know, random distros to exist because they wouldn't have as much software or developer support. But outside of that, you can't deny that the design and functionality of Element 3 OS is a unique contribution to the community. They have their own specific custom desktop environment. They do their own thing with their application store, where they provide ways for developers to make money and they support flat packs out of the box now, which is something that Ubuntu doesn't do. So Element 3 OS has their own reason to exist. They've developed their own niche and their own fan base. And that's great. And Linux Mint, on the other hand, could have had that argument because they have this desktop called Sentiment, and they developed this desktop, just like Element 3 does Pantheon. The only problem is, it's basically Mate. It's a GNOME 3 version of Mate, or not a GNOME 3 version of Mate, but a GTK 3 version of Mate when Mate now is GTK 3. So if you look here, this is Sentiment. This is what Sentiment looks like. And it's whatever. You can do your panel, add, remove panel. I mean, you can do things here that you can't do in Mate, panel edit mode. You can change themes and stuff, which is a little bit different. That's weird. If you type in settings, why doesn't it just go to settings? Because it doesn't have a dedicated settings application? It does. Why isn't that at the top? That's really weird. Anyways, completely beside the point, this isn't all that unique because it's going to look exactly like the one from Mate, I think. Because these are system settings. It doesn't offer anything. This is what Sentiment looks like. Now let me log out here and show you what Mate looks like. You're going to be shocked. They look exactly the same. This is what Mate looks like. Looks the same, right? You want to add a panel? Adds a panel. I'm sure you don't have that fancy you get to choose where it is, but you can move it in different ways. I mean, not all that unique. Does it have a similar menu? Yeah. It looks exactly the same. What about settings? Let's look at the settings app. System settings. Again, why do they hide the system settings? System reports. System monitor. Okay. As you can tell, I don't use Mint all that much because I don't think it's whatever. It doesn't matter. The point is they look exactly the same. They both offer the same functionality and it doesn't offer anything new and exciting that one or the other doesn't offer. What's the point? Is it more stable than Ubuntu? No, because it is Ubuntu. The only thing that differs between Ubuntu and Linux Mint is that the Linux Mint guys don't like snaps, so SnapD isn't supported out of the box. That means that you have to deal with PPAs or the weird software. The software manager, which turns out to be GNOME software. This is just straight up GNOME software. I mean, it's not even customized even a little bit, which GNOME software is, you know, probably the best app store out there. But still, it's just GNOME software. It's the exact same thing you get on Ubuntu. Only this is going to provide you probably packages. Whereas the one in Ubuntu provides you snaps, which is better because I mean, I hate snaps. Everybody knows I hate snaps, but snaps will update better because they have all the package, the dependencies right in there with them. You don't have to worry about things breaking like that. So every time I come back to I just don't see what Linux Mint has to offer the community because it's basically offers everything in Ubuntu offers or worse. Where this could go, where Mint could go better, or what Mint could do better is they have a version called Linux Mint Debian Edition, so LMDE. And that's based on Debian. Now, there are not a lot of good distributions out there that are based on a Debian install. Now, Ubuntu is technically, technically based on Debian. But it's diverted so much that it's not really not really anymore. I mean, it's it's it's own thing. It uses some some of the packages and stuff like that. But canonical controls Ubuntu. And nothing really relies on Debian. So there aren't a lot of great Debian based distros that are just actually just forks of Debian. So that could be a that could be an option for people who don't like Ubuntu and canonical tight control over everything. But it's a side project for them. It's mostly ignored comes out once a year. Seems like they put most of their effort into the regular standard Linux Mint. And you know, that's fine. Developers can do whatever they want to do. But in my opinion, I just don't think that Linux Mint should exist anymore, because it doesn't provide anything unique or compelling for the Linux community to do. Now, one of the arguments that everybody uses for Linux Mint is that Linux Mint should that Linux Mint is good for the the new user for the new that is better than Ubuntu for a new user. I'm not sure that's true. And the reason why I don't think it's true is because Ubuntu might exists. Ubuntu Cinnamon exists. Regular Ubuntu exists, obviously. And all those things are just just as equally as good for the new user as the next minute is what I mean is Linux Mint so good because it offers a similar experience to Windows because it has this menu. I mean, really? I mean, is the menu really the thing that that Windows users need in order to feel comfortable? Is this their binky? Is it? I mean, what exactly is it about this menu that is the only thing that when new Linux users need to feel comfortable? It's weird. And if that's the only if this menu here is the only reason why Linux Mint exists, wow, weird. And not really all that, you know, a great thing, right? It's just very, very odd that that argument still exists. Because Ubuntu is the one that I mean, most people when they say, I'm gonna try Linux out. I don't know a lot about Linux. I'm going to try it out. What's the distro they're going to think of? They're going to think of Ubuntu and every every almost every blog posts, those list of blog posts out there and videos and everything. What Linux distribution is good for new users, top five Linux distros for new users? Number one is almost certainly Ubuntu. I mean, almost universally. And I agree to disagree with that as a Linux person that, you know, knows things about Linux. It's still the truth. That's what is being recommended most to new users. So again, why does Linux Mint exist? It doesn't make any sense. It's just it's a waste of their time. Now, if they wanted to continue to develop cinnamon, that's fine. Cinnamon does not need its own fork of Ubuntu thing. Now, the only argument I could see is that the reason why they want to continue to develop Linux Mint based off Ubuntu is because they want an Ubuntu version that doesn't rely so heavily on snaps. Is that a good enough reason to continue to develop it? I'm not sure it is. Mainly because you don't have a good replacement for snaps. I'm not I'm not sure if it uses flat packs out of the box. That might be a possibility that might that might dilute my argument just a bit. If it uses flags back, that packs out of the box, fine. That packs aren't as good as snaps. I don't think I like flat packs more. But for the new user, they're not as easy to use. So really, if you're going to get rid of snaps, and we'll just assume for now that flat packs isn't here, what exactly is your alternative? Because you're going to need an alternative because otherwise you're stuck with PPAs and synaptic and dead packages and all this stuff. That is 20, 25 years old and kind of crappy because you have PPAs that are no longer being maintained. And you have PPAs that contain malicious software out there a lot of the times. I mean, it's the Wild Wild West. Plus, it's not easy to discover. I mean, you have the Ubuntu software or the GNOME software manager, I guess. And that's going to have the most thing for the most people. But I mean, when you need something that's not in here, you'd have to go out and find it and stuff. It's a big pain to ask. So we'll just wrap this up here. This is, like I said, it was a rambly video. Personally, if I were the Linux Mint developers, I would scrap the Ubuntu versions completely. I just say, we're done with these, we're not developing anymore. We don't agree with Ubuntu's direction. We want to take things our own way. We're going to make Linux Mint, Debian Edition, the area that we focus on, we're going to make it great. And if you want something that is easier to install than Debian is, because I'm sure they can make that, you know, use Calmaris or whatever, even the Ubuntu installer. I think that's ubiquity installer, right? Whatever. Just say, we're going to focus on this, we're going to make this the premiere Debian distro, or distro based on Debian. And that would be just enough to to pick my interest because Debian is great. I mean, don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is great too, but Ubuntu exists. And Ubuntu has all these flavors, it doesn't need you know, more development on top of that, you know, outside of that, just because of reasons, you know, reasons that we don't know, because they're weird. So that's what I would do. But I'm not a Linux Mint developer. So they'll probably just continue on this, but it just seems like it's a waste of effort, in my opinion. Anyways, if you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. If you didn't like this video, give it a thumbs down. Let me know in the comments whether you agree or disagree. Maybe there's an argument out there to be had that I didn't think of. Maybe there's, I mean, the argument can be just be, well, I like Linux Mint. That's a good argument. I mean, sure. You know, I like Arco. Arco is an art space distro among hundreds. I mean, it doesn't provide anything really all that unique other than it has window managers, you know, out of the box. So I mean, it's just an Arco distro that's easy to install. And there's tons of those. So I mean, the argument of, you know, I like this thing, it can exist. It's a good argument. So let me know in the comments what your argument is about what why Linux Mint should exist. Make sure you hit the subscribe button if you want to hear more about Linux and open source and stuff like that. And hit the notification bell icon so you don't miss a video. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.