 When people start thinking about moving from windows over to Linux, they are inspired for several different reasons some of the reasons that they may be wanting to leave windows behind and come over to Linux include maybe they want a safer and more secure operating system, or maybe they have older equipment they have machines that are just struggling to run the latest versions of windows or maybe they have enough computer related knowledge that they're ready to try out an alternative operating system. Maybe they're just curious about Linux. So which one is better, Linux Mint or Ubuntu for the beginner? Because I have been a Linux user exclusively on the desktop since around 2008 and I've installed Ubuntu many many times on my own machines over the years. I've installed both Ubuntu and Linux Mint on friends and family members machines many times over the years. Although these days I prefer Arch Linux or at least a distro based on Arch Linux. I still often install Ubuntu and Mint on test machines on my laptops behind me, my test equipment. And as somebody who chooses not to use either Ubuntu or Linux Mint on my main production machine, you know, I think I am in a unique position. I'm confident that I can make a fair comparison of Ubuntu versus Linux Mint for the beginner. Now what makes these two distributions special is that when you ask most experienced Linux users, hey, what distro is the best for beginners? They are almost always going to recommend Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Or sometimes they'll recommend both and I certainly do this for the for most types of new Linux users. If they ask me, hey, what distro should I try as my first distro? I usually tell them Ubuntu or Mint unless that new Linux user is especially tech savvy and is actually interested in deep diving into Linux. Then I may give them some other recommendations, but that's rare. Most new Linux users, though, I tell them go with Ubuntu or Mint. And in this video, what I wanted to do is I want to compare the flagship additions of both Ubuntu and Linux Mint. And then give you some reasons why Linux Mint might actually be the better choice if you are a brand new to Linux user coming from Windows. Because there are a few things that, quite frankly, Linux Mint handles better than Ubuntu out of the box. And it's that out of the box experience that's especially important when you're talking about a new to Linux user, right? Because, you know, experienced users, they're going to find their way around, right? An experienced Linux user is going to find his or her way around and solve all the problems, but it's the beginners. It's the beginners that struggle with even the simplest tasks, the seemingly obvious things. Now Ubuntu and Linux Mint are among the most popular desktop Linux distributions, along with Debian. And I mentioned Debian here because Ubuntu is based on Debian and Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. So in some ways, Linux Mint is also based on Debian. So when we talk about Ubuntu and Linux Mint, what they are are what we call derivative Linux distributions, meaning they're derived from another Linux distribution. They're based on another Linux distribution. Ubuntu is based on Debian and Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. So naturally, some new to Linux users are going to ask this question, why should I use Ubuntu when it's just a Debian derivative? Why shouldn't I just use Debian? And the same thing goes with Mint. Why should I use Mint, which is just an Ubuntu derivative instead of just using the source distribution Ubuntu? Well, the answer to that is that a lot of times the derivative is quite a bit different than the parent distribution. They've really changed some things, right? They've added a bunch of new programs and new features. And in many ways, they make the parent distro a lot more user friendly. Now, I know some hardcore Debian users are going to watch this video and completely disagree with what I just said about the derivative distributions, making the parent distribution easier or new user friendly or better. But the fact is Ubuntu took Debian and made it quite a bit easier to install and easier for a new to Linux user to get into. Because Debian, especially many years ago, Debian was really kind of a difficult distribution to get up and working as you would expect for a daily desktop driver. Same thing with Ubuntu in its early days. When Ubuntu first started, even though it made Debian a lot easier, Ubuntu wasn't the Ubuntu we know today. And that's why we had Linux Mint. Linux Mint was a derivative of Ubuntu. It took Ubuntu and made Ubuntu that much easier to install because now Linux Mint had the codecs, the multimedia codecs and the proprietary video drivers and Wi-Fi drivers and everything out of the box ready to go, where you had to jump through some hoops to get that stuff installed in those early versions of Ubuntu. Now before I start pointing out the areas that Linux Mint does better than Ubuntu, let's talk about some really important areas to consider where really I think Ubuntu and Linux Mint are kind of equal. Let's talk about the installation process. The installation process for both Ubuntu and Linux Mint are actually very similar. They use the same installer. They use the Ubiquiti installer. So that's Ubuntu's Ubiquiti installer. I've got a virtual machine of Ubuntu here. So let me pull up the installer. It's a very easy installer. You click continue three or four times, create a username and a password along the way. And in about 10 minutes, you can have Ubuntu installed. Now, Linux Mint again uses Ubuntu's Ubiquiti installer. It's almost exactly the same install process. So in this aspect, as far as ease of installation, both Ubuntu and Linux Mint get an A+. So bravo on the installation process. I also think when we talk about support, both Ubuntu and Linux Mint get an A+. As far as support, both of them have fantastic support networks behind them. Although Ubuntu has a software company called Canonical behind it. So Canonical is the corporation behind Ubuntu. And Linux Mint is a community distribution, meaning it relies on individual users and companies that use the operating system that occasionally act as sponsors, donors, partners with Linux Mint. But both Linux Mint and Ubuntu have these vibrant community support channels around them. So let's get into the heart of the matter. What does Linux Mint do better than Ubuntu as far as new to Linux users coming from Windows? Well, I think the first thing we should talk about is the most obvious. And that is a familiar desktop paradigm, meaning the desktop looks and acts the way a Windows user would expect. So when we're talking about Linux Mint, the flagship edition, we're talking about the Cinnamon desktop environment. And the Cinnamon desktop environment looks very much like Windows desktop environment. It has a panel and it's got some quick launchers. It has a menu system, kind of like the Windows Start menu. And you can navigate by category of applications or you can search. If you wanted to, you could hit the super key and bring up that menu and just start typing. It's all very similar. It's all very familiar. Anybody that has ever used Windows will be right at home with the Linux Mint desktop environment. By contrast, Ubuntu uses the GNOME desktop environment and GNOME, it looks nothing like Windows. Now, that may be a good thing, especially for experienced Linux users. Experienced Linux users often try to do things in a Linuxy sort of way. They look for doing things, nothing like Windows and Mac. They don't want to resemble those operating systems. They very much want to go their own path. And if that's what you're trying to do, then the GNOME desktop environment makes a lot of sense. But if you are brand new to Linux, you know, it's day one, you're coming from Windows. This is a little strange. You have a panel on the left side of the screen. You have the show application button in a weird spot to me. It's the bottom of that left hand panel. That's just a strange thing to play around with. You have this activities thing at the top, which, you know, if you're brand new to Linux, you may not even know what that is supposed to do. You have this over here, which is your work spaces. But again, if you're brand new to Linux, this is your first time looking at this. All of this is a little strange, right? It's a little foreign. I'm just not quite sure what is going on with Ubuntu and its desktop environment, where I think I would feel right at home in the Cinnamon desktop environment of Linux Mint. Again, if it's day one of me coming to Linux from Windows. The second area I think that Linux Mint gets right, more so than Ubuntu, is system resource usage. And neither the GNOME desktop environment that Ubuntu uses, or the Cinnamon desktop environment that Linux Mint uses, neither of them are exactly lightweight or minimal desktop environments, but Cinnamon doesn't use the kind of RAM, especially, that GNOME does. If I go back over here to this virtual machine. Now, because this is running in a virtual machine, these numbers are probably a little higher than they would be on physical hardware. Typically, I get about 600 megs of RAM and use on a cold boot in Cinnamon and Linux Mint. The VM here is using about 800 megs. So that's a little higher than normal, but let's contrast that with how much GNOME and Ubuntu uses. So GNOME 3 inside Ubuntu is using 1.25 gigs of RAM at the moment. So I gave both these VMs the same specs. Now they are running as a live ISO at the moment. So they are using a little more system resources than normal, but still GNOME always uses more than Cinnamon. It just does even on physical hardware. Typically, the Cinnamon desktop is going to use 6 to 700 megabytes of RAM, compared to usually 1 to 1.1 gigs of RAM for the GNOME 3 desktop environment. Now, why should you care that Linux Mint uses less system resources than Ubuntu? Well, the lower the system resource usage, well, that leaves more of those resources available for the actual tests that you're doing on your computer. And for some things, that's critical, like streaming video like I'm doing or editing video. It requires a ton of RAM. And the more RAM that I have available, the better. So I don't want my desktop environment to be using up all my RAM. I want that RAM available for those other tests. Like playing games, for example, you guys that are gamers and love to hang out on Steam and play the latest video games, you know, you want to have as much RAM available for that stuff as possible. The third area that I think Linux Mint does a better job as far as beginners is the fact that Linux Mint comes with more software pre-installed than Ubuntu. So if I go back to the VM of Linux Mint here, Linux Mint is going to have more applications installed by default. They typically have a full suite of applications where Ubuntu is really quite minimal as far as the install size. It typically doesn't have that many programs. It has enough programs for you to get by. But Linux Mint comes with a full suite of applications. The full LibreOffice suite and, you know, backup utilities and all kinds of other things. It has the multimedia codec you need. The proprietary drivers are already there. Flash and Java and all that stuff where Ubuntu tries to stick mostly to free and open source software. So a lot of the proprietary stuff, they make you not have to jump through hoops, but maybe you have to tick a box during the installer and things like that. Where Mint a lot of times just puts that stuff on there because they know everybody's going to want it anyway. I'm a free software zealot, you know. I try not to use proprietary software at all if I can get away with it, but there's some things you just can't get away from. Like if you're going to use a desktop operating system, you have to have multimedia codecs installed. You just are. Like everybody's going to do that. Everybody's going to need flash at some point. Everybody's going to need that proprietary Wi-Fi driver for their laptop. And Mint makes that stuff a lot easier. On top of that, when you get things like VLC and GIMP and all the LibreOffice applications and everything like that out of the box, it's just so much easier for the beginner because the beginner would have to go out and find that stuff. They would have to figure out how to install it either through the command line or probably through the software center. And by the way, the software center in Mint looks better. It feels faster. It just, it's better than the software center in Ubuntu, which is the GNOME software center. And that thing runs like a dog. I mean, it's just slow and heavy. And it's painful to use. The fourth area I think Linux Mint does a better job than Ubuntu as far as for the beginner is customization. I think that's one thing a lot of beginners are going to want. They're going to want to customize their desktop. And Linux Mint really makes this easy. If you go into their settings panel here, you can change the backgrounds and the effects and the themes. And you can change the window borders and the icons and the control buttons, the mouse pointer. You can change the desktop theme, which is the panel and the menu. And they make all of this very easy and it's really easy to configure the Cinnamon desktop environment the way you want to. By contrast, the GNOME desktop environment that Ubuntu uses is not that customizable. It just isn't. It's gotten better in recent versions of GNOME. The earlier versions of GNOME that Ubuntu was using were very locked down. It was really hard to make that desktop environment your own. The other thing with Ubuntu's GNOME desktop environment is a lot of these, like this panel and everything, these are Ubuntu-specific GNOME extensions. And because of that, you can't really just add your own extensions and remove your extensions. Otherwise, you could actually break some of the functionality here in Ubuntu's GNOME desktop environment. And for this reason, when it comes to customization, I think Linux Mint is better for the beginner. The fifth and final area that I think Linux Mint really outshines Ubuntu as far as beginners is focus. Ubuntu is not focused on the Linux desktop. Ubuntu is a company. Well, Ubuntu is developed by a company, Canonical. Canonical is a large corporation that makes a ton of money. None of their money that they make has anything to do with desktop Linux. Canonical is squarely focused on the server, on cloud, on Internet of Things, on business enterprise. That is how Canonical and Ubuntu make money. They don't care about the Linux desktop. I won't say they don't care about the Linux desktop, but that's clearly not the focus of that company. Where Mint being this community project, they don't even have a server addition. It's not a server operating system at all. Mint, all they have is these desktop additions. So if you want a Linux distribution that is 100% focused on the Linux desktop, then if your choice is between Mint and Ubuntu, clearly Mint should be your choice. So there you have it. My five reasons why Linux Mint may be a better choice for Ubuntu for you if you are a new to Linux user coming from Windows. Now, before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode, Michael, Gabe, Heplo, Nate, Corbinion, Mitchell, Enterprise, UK, John, Arch 5530, Chris, Joe, DJ, Donnie, Dylan, George, Louis, Omri, Paul, Robert, Sean, Tobias, and Willie. These guys, they're the producers of the show. They're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This comparison of Linux Mint versus Ubuntu for the beginner, it wouldn't have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen. This is all my supporters over on Patreon because this channel is supported by you guys, the community. If you'd like to support my work, consider doing so. You'll find DistroTube over on Patreon. Alright guys, peace.