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Linux Mint
Linux Mint is a multi-purpose, Debian-based distribution meant to be easy-to-use and working out-of-the-box. Originally a sole Debian derivative, most of its repos and a fair share of its software suite are now based on Ubuntu's. Its motto is "from freedom came elegance".
Because of its policy of providing an integrated, smooth experience, Linux Mint has been often praised for its user-friendliness and ease of use, and ranks #1 at Distrowatch (as of February 2014), surpassing by far even Ubuntu. However, it has been criticized for the very same reason by freedom advocates because of the inclusion of proprietary codecs needed for Adobe Flash to be working out of the box.
Linux Mint comes with mainly two desktop environments: MATE and Cinnamon, both of which are being maintained by the Linux Mint Foundation. Their popularity is such that they have been repacked in other distros, such as Antergos or Cubuntu. KDE and Xfce versions are also officially maintained.
In short, Linux Mint is one of the best-suited distributions for beginners to GNU/Linux, or anyone wanting to get a desktop up-and-running quickly.
Why use Linux Mint?
- It uses the best .deb based package manager
- It is mostly based on Ubuntu and Debian, meaning nearly all community support found there will also apply to it, on top of its own support.
- It comes with all of Ubuntu and Debian's software selection on top of its own
- It comes with the highly-praised DEs Cinnamon and MATE
- It is meant to be very easy to use for beginners, while still letting advanced users doing extra configuring
Drawbacks to Linux Mint
- Up until version 17, Linux Mint had a retarded policy that forced users to reinstall everything whenever they wanted to do a distro upgrade. That is no longer the case as of Linux Mint 17 (Rebecca), but still applies to users of older versions.
- Like Ubuntu or Debian, packages tend to be slightly out-of-date and you might have to end up using PPAs if you want cutting-edge software.
- Some users used to very lightweight distros may dislike the addition (or bloating) of graphical interfaces for most tasks (software managing, backup tools etc.)
- Firefox comes by default with the Yahoo! search add-on by default
- It includes some proprietary software such as codecs so as to provide their out-of-the-box experience, which freedom-minded users may dislike.
- If you dislike the green color, you're going to hate this distro
