Ubuntu vs. Mint

Please explain to a noob who is about to install Linux where the difference between Mint and Ubuntu is. So far nobody could give me a straight answer. I've heard people say Mint is polished Ubuntu, others said it's Ubuntu in old and bloated. And then others said they are basically exactly the same except for the DE.
Let's say we have Mint XFCE and Ubuntu with XFCE, so the DE is the same. I want to know about the rest. What is different and which one is preferable for a beginner coming from Windows?

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>Ubuntu
developed by a faceless corporation who hate their autistic community
>mint
made by a small team led by a depressed boomer who hates himself and his autistic community

Ubuntu latest version is on kernel 5, mint is still rocking 4.x
go with Ubuntu less chance of it being crippled by two double whiskeys and one shotgun blast

Okay you seem to consider both of them shit. Would you recommend something else?

When people are comparing the two they are usually comparing the default environments. Ubuntu’s gnome environment is a lot less like windows, whereas cinnamon feels more traditional, so a lot of people went to mint for that reason

But you want to know the difference is both are XFCE. To be honest, there aren’t many. Mint is built on top of Ubuntu’s LTS release, so you are getting access to all of those repositories. At the same time this also means that mints kernel is a bit older than the current latest releases of Ubuntu.

Generally, I find Mint to be a bit smoother and more refined, although people may have different experiences with that.

Install Gentoo.

Oh no both of them are quite good, I use Ubuntu w/mate DE myself

It's just that the differences between them are actually rather small

>So far nobody could give me a straight answer.
Because they are so similar it’s hard to give an answer. Think of it like this, Mint could have easily been marketed as Ubuntu cinnamon

>Mint could have easily been marketed as Ubuntu cinnamon
Okay, that is an interesting way to look at it. But let's say I want XFCE, what do I pick then? Xubuntu or Mint with XFCE?

>tfw want to switch to Linux
>want system that just werks out of the box without much setup which requires deep knowledge
>also want it to let me learn a bit about the details, maybe by allowing or even forcing me to fix some small issue here and there and solve a problem
>read a lot and conclude that Manjaro seems to fit these criteria perfectly
>plan to install it
>find video about "X things you must do after installing Manjaro"
>lists things like configure GRUB, configure Firewall, configure Swappiness, activate TRIM for SSD

Fuck lads I think I need to start lower than that. Those things seem important but I never wouldve thought about them. I don't want to accidentally miss something important when installing that leaves my system vulnerable or running sub-par. I just want something that is 100% ready to use and THEN slowly start learning linux by learning bash, wiki, etc.

Ubuntu, the installer is very simple and user friendly and it just works

Xubuntu, 100%. every single answer that you will google about Linux will be about Ubuntu. everything just works on Xubuntu. well, I guess it probably just works on Mint too but I'd still recommend Xubuntu just because Ubuntu is like the "default" Linux.

Just fucking install some flavour of Ubuntu, it does pretty much everything you could want it to, you can play around with arch or manjaro when you want something for power users but as a windows replacement Ubuntu with your de of choice a best

> I just want something that is 100% ready to use and THEN slowly start learning linux by learning bash, wiki, etc.
That's Mint/Ubuntu, Mint just being a spinoff of Ubuntu.
For most people who aren't weirdos, Ubuntu and its derivatives will be sufficient forever.
To be honest, the only thing you need to decide with both is which DE you want to use, as that's the only thing you'll care about initially.
>LXDE/MATE/XFCE are more like Windows XP than anything, stable, lightweight, but also doesn't have as many frills as Windows, though with a few themes it can look bretty good, see pic related
>GNOME is entirely unusable to a Windows user
>KDE is the closest thing to a Windows 7/8/10 desktop
For a total and utter beginner I recommend Mint XFCE

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MATE is closer than KDE to a windows desktop. It has a panel display option called Redmond that feels practically indistinguishable from windows

Mint is basically a better and easier Ubuntu.
Manjaro is basically an Arch based Mint.

If you want Xfce, Cinnamon, Mate - use Mint
If you want KDE - use KDE Neon or Kubuntu
If you want GNOME - use PopOS
If you want LXDE, LXQt - you don't. Use Xfce or KDE

Mint is much more user friendly and unified. Compared to Xubuntu:
Mint has included the latest window manager by default, thus getting rid of screen tearing on Xfce a couple of years ago. Xubuntu LTS still hasn't fixed this and won't fix it until they include xfwm4.14 next year. Also, Mint includes several other wm and compositor combinations if you still have tearing.
The default UI and theming is much better.
Super key (windows key) opens the app menu instead of doing nothing.
Includes Timeshift for backups, Redshift for blue light filtering, Mintstick for making bootable USBs.
Has better default software (Xed is better than Mousepad, and whatever Image viewer they have is better than the Xfce one).
Mint update manager is better and has the option to update the kernel.
I can't speak for Cinnamon and MATE, but Mint Xfce is years ahead of Xubuntu.

These days, Mint is basically Ubuntu with green themes and no botnet or snaps.

It was initially Ubuntu + proprietary codecs with a different name..

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Ubuntu MATE is very good and probably their most polished flavor. I’d say it’s superior to Mint’s. It comes with different compositors and lots of layout customization

Install Gentoo

>The default UI and theming is much better.
That’s pretty hugely subjective, I think Xubuntu’s theming is a lot cooler. It has a kind of style to it whereas mint is kind of just “boring standard XFCE”.

>>GNOME is entirely unusable to a Windows user
bullshit. Just because it has a bit different layout doesn't mean it's hard, by any means. Anyone who isn't mentally retarded can figure out Gnome within a few hours, it's extremely simple.

Attached: GNOME_Shell.png (2560x1600, 1.53M)

>Super key (windows key) opens the app menu instead of doing nothing.
Really? On Ubuntu gnome the super key opens up the application and search menu. It’s basically required to use it without going insane

I just pasted an older post, but yes I agree the Xfce default theme is good. It's default panel layout is shit though.

>comes with different compositors and lots of layout customization
I'm pretty sure Mint does too (since they do the same on Xfce which isn't even their flagship DE), but I've never used their MATE edition as I dislike the DE.

Xfce has different keyboard shortcuts. From what I remember the super key is used for switching between software and launching software. Example, Super+W would open the browser. A lot of distros change the shortcuts into "standard" ones, but Xubuntu leaves them as they are. Which is ok, but the reason I'm less likely to recommend Xubuntu over Mint.

Why are you so set on XFCE? I would recommend cinnamon over XFCE to a beginner

I'm not, it was an example to get the DE out of the equation and compare the rest. I couldve also said Cinnamon Mate vs Ubuntu Mate

Xubuntu has horrible default windows. The buttons to press in the top right are so tiny

I am thinking of using fedora as my desktop(i am using it to learn assembly and other shit) is it good?
Is there any alternative to fedora good enough but that doesnt use systemsjw?

More generally I dislike ubuntus judgement.
When vista was a shit show, gnome 3 also was a shitshow with ubuntu launching the greatest shit of unity while mint was maintaining mate and cinnamon the fork of gnome 2 that was gnome 2 and the fork of gnome 3 that was gnome 2 respectively and was the light of during the dark time.

Ubuntu was part of the problem, mint was a temporary solution

>Cinnamon Mate vs Ubuntu Mate
I meant Mint mate vs Ubuntu Mate obviously

i know dude i hate tiny buttons, you can change the default theme.

you can enable snaps on Mint in like 2 minutes. I used it to get Notepad++

what is so bad about systemd? seriously, i want to understand. seems like a hot topic.

Hating it is mostly a meme. But people dislike it because
>it's doing way too many things for "just an init system", making it against UNIX philosophy and it's large code is difficult to maintain and audit
>some of new software depends on systemd
>it's "infected" popular distros and almost has a "monopoly" due to how popular it is

However, Linux itself has a fuck ton of shit built in and is bloated. systemd is convenient as fuck for a lot of things and fixed many problems previous init systems had. You don't need systemd, but a distro without it is probably either a minimalist distro or not a desktop distro.
MX Linux doesn't use systemd and I haven't noticed any issues on it. So it's definitely not an essential part of Linux nor is it becoming one.

i feel the same as you, hence my question. because people here act like it's literal botnet garbage and must be avoided like the plague

Install CloverOS Minimal

>Ubuntu latest version is on kernel 5, mint is still rocking 4.x

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kek, last time i tried xubuntu kde just kept shitting the bed on me with anything i wanted to do. updates, browse internet, whatever, kde freaked out and crashed.
absolute trash.

Mint still installs with the 4.x kernel and that is the kernel that is still meant to be used. It's based on LTS after all. You're not really *supposed* to update your kernel in mint to the latest version

yea but i was using wine staging for games and it updates every couple weeks or so, and i wanted to keep a current kernal for that.

was, because after staging 4.12 or something they changed an audio dependancy that broke updating for me. and i broke it totally when i uninstalled wine to try a manual reinstall of 4.16. it gave me the same error.

might be ditching mint after all if i cant get wine staging to work after a fresh mint reinstall.

If I'm getting a 5700 XT do I pretty much have no choice but to use Ubuntu over Mint? What I'm reading online seems to be that you can kinda get the drivers working on Mint but you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and it's not really a safe setup right now, and won't be for quite a while.

>5700 XT
>Ubuntu over Mint?
Neither: both are on a six month release cycle.

For gaeming, it's generally recommended to use rolling release (latest kernel features, fixes, etc). You could try Manjaro if you're not autistic about minimalism.

I've heard good things about pop os, too.

I've found multiple people online talking about getting it to work fine in Ubuntu though, shouldn't it be ok for it even if it's not perfect? I tried out Manjaro in a VM and didn't like the interface so much although I guess I could just get a different DE. Do you know what else is really different between Manjaro and Ubuntu/Mint besides the default DE and how frequently it updates?