Why is Linux attracting mentally retarded “experts” and users?
I wanted to include a link to The Reg’s article by Liam Proven, Linux Mint 22.1 Xia arrives fashionably late, in a later post, in which I wanted to investigate a specific aspect of Mint. However, the realization of Liam’s incompetence triggered this early rebuke. Not of Linux Mint, but of Lian Proven and of his mentally challenged fanboys.
As I once said, I wasn’t visiting The Reg for the articles, but for the comments. My bad. I shouldn’t have attempted that one. I looked at the comments for the aforementioned article and here’s 🔴 Liam Proven answering the question “So why is Linux Mint with Cinnamon better than Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix?”
There are 3 categories of difference: app selection/packaging, look and feel, & upgrade cycle.
1. Mint removes and blocks
snapd
and uses a natively DEB-packaged browser and email clients. Me personally, I don’t mind snap — it works well these days — but some do, irrationally or not. Mint eliminates that problem. It replaces it with Flatpak but disables unverified apps on Flathub, which leaves very little. This castrated Flatpak is much safer, though.(Zorin doesn’t. It offers both, in their full forms.)
2. Packaging extends to the other apps and accessories. Ubuntu Cinnamon only changes the desktop itself to a Windows-like one. Almost all the other components are ordinary GNOME ones. That means no title bars, no menu bars, just hamburger menus, and a phone-like UI.
I strongly dislike that UI, personally. Many do. Most of the Mint components have the traditional Windows-like UI: file manager, text editor, PDF and image viewers, etc. This makes it more familiar and comfortable.
(Zorin does not do this. It offers GNOME-style apps. Its Windows-like desktop is the only Windows-like aspect.)
Mint also uses very dark and muted colour schemes. Many prefer that, especially older users. I find some distros — almost any with KDE — actively unpleasant to look at. I dislike Fedora’s child-like pastel-hued wallpapers.
Mint also changes and replaces a lot of the accessory apps, bringing related functions together into larger, more function-rich apps: a welcome screen, a backup and system-recovery tool, an update manager which also does release upgrades, and so on. It has a bigger, better app and accessory selection built in, with more traditional UIs.
3. Release cycle.
Only the flagship GNOME Ubuntu has true LTS releases. All the remixes have shorter lifespans. This is not highlighted much but it matters. You don’t get 5Y of support on anything except GNOME. Users get confused between interim and LTS releases. I have often encountered people who can’t remember that only even-numbered years have LTS releases, or who forget that it’s always the earlier release of that year, or accidentally install interim releases and then are trapped in a rapid upgrade cycle.
Mint only does releases based on Ubuntu LTS versions and it supports them for the duration. Point releases are minor and safe. It’s a simpler, easier cycle.
Summary
Mint has been around for most of Ubuntu’s life. In the early days it just did quieter themes, and bundled restricted codecs and drivers that were optional on Ubuntu. It was a little easier to install and looked tamer. That was all.
Then around 2011 Ubuntu moved away from its GNOME 2 desktop and went its own way, and started introducing innovative tech like Ubuntu Touch, Snap, the Mir display server, etc. This upset a lot of people, and the existence of the official remixes wasn’t enough to calm them.
Mint saw a chance. It retained the classic-style desktop, first with GNOME Shell extensions, then a fork, and also stepped up very early to support the Argentinian MATE project that forked and continued GNOME 2.
It positioned itself as the safe, sane, easier choice to the somewhat experimental Ubuntu. Turns out a lot of people wanted that. It’s been very successful.
Ubuntu: somewhat experimental, tracks upstream GNOME closely. Remixes have shorter life spans. Snap everywhere, like it or not.
Mint: simpler more traditional desktop and apps. Slower release cycle. Safer, neutered Flatpak, no Flatpaks installed by default. Always free.
Zorin: simpler more traditional desktop with attractive light, bright themes — but only the desktop, not the apps. Excellent desktop-customisation tools. Snap _and_ Flatpak. Has cut-down free versions, but flagship version is paid. This bundles tens of gigabytes of freeware as Flatpaks, so needs more space than any other distro.
Not everything is wrong, mind you. But one thing definitely is, which triggered my reply.
Oh, wait! There are a couple of things I didn’t comment on:
- Clement Lefebvre (not Clément, that’s the pianist) aka Clem is the benevolent dictator of both Cinnamon and Linux Mint. If this is how Cinnamon has been architectured, developed and released under his supervision, then Ubuntu Cinnamon and everyone else are just showing Cinnamon’s default look and feel! “Default” means “as intended” or “as per design”! The “true” Cinnamon is therefore in Ubuntu Cinnamon, not in Linux Mint Cinnamon! The other components are GNOME’s ones because this is the extent of what Cinnamon offers! In Ubuntu Cinnamon, the Windows-like menu is from Cinnamon (therefore by no means a “phone-like UI”), Nemo is from Cinnamon (and it has normal menus and a normal title bar), but the text editor is
gedit
, because Mint’sxed
is not part of Cinnamon, but part of XApps! Nobody prevented Clem from making the XApps part of Cinnamon, but he just didn’t! Now, whose fault is that? - Those Ubuntu users who fail to understand what an LTS release is, and which one isn’t LTS, should fucking throw themselves in front of a train! They’re too stupid to use Linux. Saying that Mint’s raison d’être is to prevent people from installing a non-LTS release of Ubuntu is grotesque!
Now, the topic on which I did comment, which is “You don’t get 5Y of support on anything except GNOME.”:
Only the flagship GNOME Ubuntu has true LTS releases. All the remixes have shorter lifespans. This is not highlighted much but it matters. You don’t get 5Y of support on anything except GNOME.
You know so much, and yet you fail miserably at times. Ubuntu Pro is free for up to 5 PCs, and it extends the support to 10 years for all Desktop Environments, and even for those codecs from Universe, should they have security issues. DO YOUR HOMEWORK or have the decency to admit you need to perform seppuku.
Generally, I consider people who opt for Mint to be close to mental deficiency. In my experience, Mint only adds bugs to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu MATE is the most versatile choice, should people have the minimum IQ to use MATE Tweak (
mate-tweak
), which allows for a quick change of the layout to any layout that can be mimicked.Mint trying to offer a consistent layout across desktops (Cinnamon, Xfce, MATE) is commendable, but its replacing of some MATE and Xfce tools and apps with its own, including those XApps, is abusive and dumb. If anything, Xfce is “incomplete” when compared to MATE, and this is why in other distros it’s supplemented with MATE apps, such as Atril. But pushing Cinnamon or Mint crap in Xfce and MATE is abject.
Also, from a visual design standpoint, Manjaro manages to create a better-looking desktop (it has abandoned MATE, but it has KDE). If I were to use Mint’s own theming, I’d have to commit suicide within 90 days.
Once again: Ubuntu Pro offers 10 years support to EVERYTHING, including KDE5! And, I repeat, even to codecs. Does Mint do that? NO, and one CANNOT USE UBUNTU PRO WITH MINT. It might be made to work, but it’s not supposed to.
People are too lazy to find out that Ubuntu MATE can be made to look like anything, including Windows or macOS, and they lack the necessary common sense and good taste to recognize the fact that Cinnamon has such a horrendous design guidelines and UX! Almost as stupid as GNOME’s.
BTW, Mint’s customization break MATE Tweak and Xfce’s similar tool,
xfce4-panel-profiles
. As I said, Mint is junk.FFS, a computing expert writing BS. That’s you, Liam.
👎 I got 20 thumbs down.
Good job! Your horrible attitude has convinced me that Ubuntu Pro should be avoided at all costs if you’re the sort of person who likes it.
Association Fallacy: The guilt by association argument to avoid Ubuntu Pro is flawed.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NobleNumbat/ReleaseNotes/Kubuntu
Introduction
These release notes for Kubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat) provide an overview of the release and document the known issues.
Details of the changes in the Ubuntu base, including kernel, toolchain and build options can be found in the main Ubuntu Release Notes.
Support lifespan
Kubuntu 24.04 will be supported for 3 years.
https://lubuntu.me/noble-released/
Lubuntu 24.04 LTS Released!
Thanks to the hard work from our contributors, Lubuntu 24.04 LTS has been released. With the codename Noble Numbat, Lubuntu 24.04 is the 26th release of Lubuntu, the 12th release of Lubuntu with LXQt as the default desktop environment.
Download and Support Lifespan
With Lubuntu 24.04 being a long-term support interim release, it will follow the standard LTS support period of three years, and will be supported until April 2027.
Why don’t you go do yours?
Mental retardation at its best! Wow, he was able to read a couple of Release Notes! That surely makes him an expert! I had to reply:
Why don’t you go do yours?
Liam, if all you can do is to read the release notes of a distro, then you are the most mentally challenged expert I have ever seen! There are tests able to detect early dementia, you know.
You have absolutely NO idea about what Ubuntu Pro is and does.
You couldn’t have been bothered to get informed.
Here, in my Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS, the Ubuntu Pro screen reads:
- ESM Infra provides security updates for over 2,300 Ubuntu Main packages until 2034.
- ESM Apps provides security updates for over 23,000 Ubuntu Universe packages until 2034.
https://ludditus.com/storage/UbuntuPro.png
The official documentation states:
- Security patching for Ubuntu Main repository for 10 years (ESM-infra)
- Security patching for Ubuntu Universe repository for 10 years (ESM-apps) (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS onwards)
- Kernel Livepatch to avoid unscheduled reboots
- Real-time kernel (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS onwards)
https://documentation.ubuntu.com/pro/services-overview
If I run:
pro security-status --esm-apps | grep caja
orpro security-status --esm-apps | grep kate
I get the confirmation that the respective packages (which need to be installed to be checked) are covered by ESM-apps until 2034.You are the acme of incompetence. I cannot understand how people can still trust what you preach on The Reg.
I thought you to be the most competent person from The Reg gang. Now I have absolutely no reason to ever visit this site again.
👎 I got 2 thumbs down.
Meanwhile, other geniuses had commented. David 132:
Downvoted with great satisfaction, for being quite unnecessarily rude, pompous, supercilious, and also highly abusive to Liam, who isn’t contractually obligated to produce articles for you, you know, unless of course you’re paying a subscription to read this site? No? Thought not.
Oh, and the icing on the shit-sandwich of your comment is that you’re apparently guilty of errors yourself, going by Liam’s (admirably restrained, in the circumstances) response to you.
Yes, it’s possible to disagree with an article, or an author. It’s possible to have greater knowledge on a subject, and wish to offer an alternative viewpoint.
But those of us who are mature adults understand that disagreements and corrections can be – and should be – polite and respectful.
plonk, into my (virtual, alas) killfile you go.
I was going to say something similar, but you beat me to it.
“All Mint does is add bugs to Ubuntu.” Yeah right.
And the comment about mental deficiency seems rather telling.
Somebody had a shitty night and hasn’t drunk any coffee yet.
“Generally, I consider people who opt for Mint to be close to mental deficiency. In my experience, Mint only adds bugs to Ubuntu.”
Ultimately it’s all Linux under the hood and if you have the knowledge you can customize it to your hearts content.
That says about all anyone needs to know. You’re a fan boy far too concerned what others run. Clearly people run Mint cause it works for them, same with Kubuntu, or Arch etc.
I answered to the first one:
This has nothing to do with disagreeing, which is a matter of OPINION.
This is about FACTS.
FACT 1: Ubuntu Pro covers all the desktop environments from Universe for 10 years.
FACT 2: Liam doesn’t know anything about Ubuntu Pro. Neither do you.
FACT 3: Neither Liam nor you could be bothered to GET INFORMED about Ubuntu Pro.
I know that Linux Mint is mostly used by people who have absolutely no idea about anything, but to this point?
And to the last one:
Ultimately it’s all Linux under the hood and if you have the knowledge you can customize it to your hearts content.
You missed the part about Mint’s customizations breaking
mate-tweak
andxfce4-panel-profiles
, which can be used to EASILY change the layout of MATE and Xfce in Ubuntu and Fedora and openSUSE, but not in Mint. Not all the layouts work in Mint. I wonder why… Any clue? Is it because Mint is so great that it doesn’t break anything?
Now, what?
People can be stupid. But I already knew that.
People who use Linux aren’t necessarily smarter than people who use Windows. At some point, the users of Ubuntu were considered the least intelligent of all Linux users, because for some “Linux means Ubuntu” (or so the saying went). Nowadays, the Linux Mint users seem to be the collectivity with the lowest IQ.
Or maybe The Reg’s readers. I’ll definitely stop visiting that site. It might be a communicable disease.
You have to recognize you use some language that, for those that do not know you, will consider it as “incendiary”, to say the least. Of course, many will respond with more fuel.
Regarding Mint, I could not stand Cinnamon, no matter how hard I tried. Now, I see why is recommended to newbies; the base is large, so one can find references to problems everywhere. Ubuntu screw it with the first iteration of Snaps… now mostly solved, but Mint users never had the problem so, one could say reliability appears to be better with Mint… although the reason is because Mint is even behind Ubuntu LTS so it can weather these hiccups on time. Ubuntu sticking to a proprietary Snap Store also fuels the hate to Canonical.
The hate for Big corporations in the Linux community is highly deserved. Now, we could include Red Hat as a “Big” corporation (19000 employees and not counting IBM’s 290000), but Canonical with 1600 or SuSE with 2500 are far from it. There is nothing more that Big corporations are afraid more of than those little business that can come up with a solution that eat their cake. Contribution to Linux is disproportionately higher from Canonical and SuSE too. Mint’s cause is honorable and I fully support it, but they would not have a base without Canonical big bet on Ubuntu since 2 decades ago and Mint community should respect that a bit more, specially when they are competing against companies many, many times far more powerful. But, in the larger scheme, Ubuntu (for me Kubuntu) and Mint are in the same mix of ethical and productivity category.
Personally I find FEDORA a bit superior to Ubuntu/OpenSUSE/Arch but refuse to use in order not to increase Red Hat/IBM base, similarly not using Google’s Chromium.
1. Fedora is a big lie. They claim to be dot-release, not rolling release, but during a version’s life the kernel, which is the most important part of an OS, is continuously upgraded. Yes, I had issues with that. And Fedora couldn’t care less about LTS kernels. Arch, EndeavourOS, Manjaro, ALL BEING ROLLING RELEASE, offer a
linux-lts
kernel as an option. Fedora doesn’t and, I repeat, cannot guarantee a kernel line, not even for 6 months! This is what makes Fedora inferior to everyone else, regardless of everything else (because it has its good parts).Also, of course, Fedora is the forefront of Red Hat’s butchering of GNOME*, so…
__
EDIT: *And of Linux, generally. Say,
systemd
. But Fedora has other flaws, too:dnfdragora
is junk. The old YumEx was better, and I really mean the original one, not the newer attempts at its revival. Fedora and RHEL lack a decent GUI tool for packages.2. Linux Mint depends on, relies on, freeloads on, Ubuntu LTS. (There is no proper English equivalent for the French verb “parasiter”!) Ubuntu depends on, relies on, freeloads on, Debian. But while Ubuntu offers enterprise-grade support and solutions (OEM kernels, for one) and is dominant e.g. in containers, so it’s a direct competitor of RHEL’s, Mint doesn’t do the same.
An old saying: “Ubuntu is an African word for «I can’t install Debian».” I merely went on with another one: “Mint is a dumb word for «I can’t install Ubuntu».”
Clem has two major projects to coordinate: Cinnamon and Mint. Both are, in my view, poorly managed. Cinnamon in Mint looks differently from the Cinnamon that’s delivered to everyone else. And Mint, with its too many customizations, and its absurd delays, is just pathetic.
BTW, when Ubuntu 24.04 updates its install media from 24.04 to 24.04.1, then to 24.04.2 and so on, there’s no “wait, we need you to beta-test it, and upgrading can be kinky!” phase. You just apply the updates and everything goes on smoothly. No disruption whatsoever. The same goes for Debian: 12.9 is just 12, updated.
But Mint 22.1 is such a major hiccup over 22! Why? It’s still based on the same Ubuntu version! OK, maybe it includes a newer Cinnamon and some updated tools. But it needn’t be this way. They could add some testing and unstable repos for Cinnamon and Mint’s tools only, and people could enable them and test for bugs; only at a later point the upgraded packages should be moved to the normal repos.
But Clem wants to have “new versions” of his distro to show that he’s working hard, so that the donations be justified. This is so petty.
Finally, Mint’s look, I insist, is ugly. Manjaro’s is much better. And Cinnamon is poor UI/UX. The “traditional” concepts were better. Cinnamon is merely “a different GNOME” with different usability issues.
Mental deficiency… maybe not quite, but you only have to read their forums to find all sorts of idiots, nonsense, bad advice…