 One of the most common questions that I get from viewers of the channel is, hey DT, why do you use this particular Linux distribution and not that particular Linux distribution? People really want to know. People want to know why I don't use their distribution, meaning the distribution they're currently using. Hey, it's fantastic. I'm using it. Why aren't you using it? And, you know, typically I don't respond to those questions because I have literally gotten that question thousands of times over the six years or so that I've been doing this YouTube channel and that it's kind of a pointless question. I'm not going to waste my time answering it. But I did want to address one particular Linux distribution and it's fanboys. And that is Linux Mint. And the reason is I want to address this is because most of the people that ask me this question, it seems, are specifically asking me why I don't run Linux Mint. They want to know why I choose to run Arch Linux and ArchBase Linux distributions for the most part. Why do I choose Arch and not Linux Mint? What is it that I have against Linux Mint? They want to know that. Or sometimes I get much more general question like, hey, DT, why does it seem like you and all of the other YouTubers that are popular? They're all using ArchBase systems. I see guys running Manjaro, you're running Arco. Some people are running Mainline Arch. It's always these ArchBase distributions that these Linux YouTubers are using. Why aren't they using Linux Mint? I don't see any of the popular Linux YouTubers using Linux Mint, DT. Why aren't you? Well, the answer to this is actually kind of simple. So they're right. You don't see a lot of big Linux YouTubers using Linux Mint. I'm sure there's some out there. But for the most part, a lot of us are ArchBase Linux distribution users. I use Arco, Brodie Robertson, I think uses Mainline Arch, the Linux Cast, he hops around, but I know he's kind of an Arch fanboy. I know Chris Titus Tech has been an Arch fanboy. He's also used Rocky Linux, which is a server distribution. He's also used NixOS. They're kind of all power user kind of distributions. All kind of similar in that you build your own operating system, mental outlaw was using Gen2, I think. So yeah, you know, we're not the kind of users. None of us, none of those Linux YouTubers I just talked about are the kind of users that probably would want to use Linux Mint. Not that Linux Mint is a bad distribution. It's just Linux Mint is not necessarily built for users like us. People that want to customize and configure things we want to be able to have a really flexible operating system that we can rip out all the pieces that we don't want to use. We can put back all the pieces that we do want to use. We can essentially just build our own operating system. And Arch Linux is actually built with that in mind, right? If you've ever done an Arch Linux base install, at the end of the day, you run through this quick like 10 minute installation process. And then at the end of it, all you have is a TTY, right? All you have is a cursor. And from there, you decide if you want to install a display server like Xorg or Wayland, depending on if you are actually going to use it as a desktop computer, if you are install Xorg or Wayland, depending on what desktop environment or window manager you choose. And whichever desktop environment or window manager you install, it's not going to be configured in any way. You customize it, you configure it, you theme it, you decide what suite of applications to build around your particular desktop environment or window manager. And since I'm that kind of user, it makes sense for me to use something like Arch rather than Linux Mint, which was not built with that purpose in mind. With a distribution like Linux Mint, and I would also say like the flagship edition of Ubuntu, their standard GNOME edition of Ubuntu. And really most Linux desktop distributions, they're built around a desktop environment that's already been configured for you. They've already set it up. They've already sent all the preferences. They ship with a suite of applications, and it's basically built with the idea that you could just use it as is and you never really need to change anything. And that's great. If you're one of those people that actually want to change everything, though, it's horrible because literally you have to remove everything. And some of these desktop Linux distributions make it really hard because like with Ubuntu, with their customized GNOME desktop environment, that whole thing is like one big meta package that gets installed and trying to rip out individual pieces of their GNOME desktop environment. Maybe I like some applications or some parts of that desktop environment, but I want to rip out others. And a lot of times you can't because trying to remove that one part of their customized GNOME desktop would remove the entire desktop. That's an issue, right? That's the kind of issue you would run into on something like Ubuntu or probably some of the desktop editions of Linux Mint with their Sentiment Edition, their Mate edition, their XFCE edition, right? They've already got it themed. They got all the preferences set. They've got their suite of applications they ship with. And what if I don't even want to use that desktop? Now, Linux Mint only has three ISOs with three desktops, right? What if I don't want to use either Sentiment, Mate or XFCE? Maybe all I want to use is the awesome window manager just throwing that out there. Right? Well, what I would have to do, of course, is install awesome and configure it myself. I have all of my own config files. That's not a problem. I'll pick and choose the suite of applications I want to install to use with awesome window manager on Linux Mint. But then I've still got Sentiment still installed on the system. Let's most assume that I installed the Sentiment edition and then put awesome on that. Well, I want to rip out all the Sentiment stuff. You know, how hard is that? Right? I installed essentially a desktop only. The Linux Mint is not a server distribution of the desktop Linux distribution that shipped with a particular desktop. Now I want to rip everything out the desktop. All the applications that are tied to it. All the applications they shipped with it that aren't tied to it. I've got probably hundreds and hundreds of things I need to try to get in there and remove because I'm not ever going to use what they shipped with. So it would be like the entire wrong process of doing this is using something that was already built that is not built in any way to the way I want it and then try to tear it all down, rip out everything and then replace it with all the things I want or I could have just started with a blank canvas, which is Arch Linux and then do it that way. And honestly, what I just described, 10 times easier on Arch than a distribution like Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Now, again, that doesn't make Linux Mint bad and doesn't make Arch necessarily good. It's just different, right? And for someone like me, Arch is much more suitable for me than Mint. Now, other people, they don't tinker. They don't go in and customize things. They pretty much whatever is on their desktop environment, whatever the distro ships with, they just use it as is. I know a lot of people like that. I install Linux Mint on a lot of computers, actually. I install Linux Mint all the time on friends computers, family members, computers, people that want me to install Linux on their computer, their laptop that was running Windows. Now they want to try Linux because Windows is buggy, it's crashing all the time, whatever it happens to be. And I've got a variety of distributions I'll put on people's machines, but Linux Mint is actually one I put on machines all the time for certain kind of computer users. My mom, my mom runs Linux Mint or has run Linux Mint for a number of years at one point. Sometimes I swap it out. Sometimes I put her on Ubuntu there for a little while. I had her on MX Linux. It didn't matter. They were all the same to her because she's not the kind of person that goes in and changes anything about the desktop environment. She doesn't even change the wallpaper, right? As long as there's an easy way to open the web browser so she can go to Facebook, she's happy. I think a lot of the people that asked me this kind of question, especially a lot of the Linux Mint users that asked me this kind of question, they think maybe that there's something fundamentally wrong with Linux Mint in my eyes, that's why I won't use it. And that's not the case at all. At the end of the day, if we strip out the GUI, the desktop environment that ships with various distributions. At the end of the day, they're pretty much all the same underneath the hood. So for somebody like me that's been using Linux for a long time, the big difference between the various distributions, the biggest difference really is kind of the desktop environment that ships with it because once you get rid of that, it's all the same bash shell and shell utilities. And, you know, for me, it's all the same underneath the hood for the most part. So it's all about that desktop. So if I'm not going to use your desktop, why am I using your distribution? And again, that's just me. Now, for some people, there will be under the hood things that do make a difference. Like when we talk about ARCH, one of the biggest reasons people say they use ARCH is the AUR. It's all the packages that are in the AUR. And I get that. I could certainly say I'm a fanboy as far as the AUR. I love the AURs. Definitely one of the big selling points. But you know what, Linux Mint and pretty much any other Debian slash Ubuntu based distribution, you can find all the software you want on it, too, because the Debian repos are very full. The Ubuntu repos are very full. And then now you have the additions of snaps, flatbacks, app images. You can pretty much get all the software you want. So really at the end of the day, because it's all about that desktop, that's why I'm not a Mint user. That's why I've never been a Mint user. I've never been a desktop environment user. So it's not like I have anything against Linux Mint. If I'm not a desktop environment user, then I'm really not gonna use pretty much most Linux distributions out there that are designed primarily for a particular desktop environment. When I was an Ubuntu user, oddly enough, I almost never installed mainline Ubuntu. I usually installed a Ubuntu server and then built my own desktop environment essentially around whatever window manager I was on at the time. I based that off of a Ubuntu server. I imagine that's why someone that works in the IT field, somebody like Chris Titus, probably loves a Linux distribution like Rocky Linux, right? Because it's a server distribution. It's a blank canvas. He can then build it into whatever he wants. Having said all this, as a power user that likes to customize my own particular desktop environments and build things from the ground up, just know this. Just because I don't use Linux Mint doesn't mean I don't like Linux Mint, right? It's just not for me. It's not a distribution that was built for me, right? It was built as strictly a desktop Linux distribution that includes either Cinnamon, XFCE, or Mate. Three desktop environments I don't plan on ever living in. Now that doesn't make it a bad distribution, right? I've already said, I love Linux Mint. As far as I recommend Linux Mint all the time, I sit on camera many times. Linux Mint is one of the best Linux distributions out there, especially for new to Linux users. I've already said, I've installed Linux Mint dozens of times on other people's machines, never on my machines. So it's a fine distribution. And what does it matter whether I'm running it or not? If you're running Linux Mint and you really love it, hey, man, keep rocking it, it doesn't matter. What you run doesn't matter to me. What I run really shouldn't matter to you, right? If you are on a particular Linux distribution, whatever it is, and you're loving it, man, keep using it. Don't let anybody try to sway you in some other direction. I don't let people do that in my software choices. I run what I wanna run. You run what you wanna run. Peace, guys.