Two popular Linux distributions are Linux Mint and Ubuntu. My Linux articles are all about Linux Mint, so I figured I'd write down why, given that Ubuntu is actually more popular than Linux Mint.
Summary: there aren't any particularly strong reasons, and it's mostly a matter personal choice.
It has "Linux" in the name
This may sound like a petty reason, but if you're going to write articles about how to use Linux, you're going to want to put Linux in the title of your articles for SEO and because it just makes sense.
If I were writing articles for Ubuntu, there is no doubt some of them could apply to Linux in general, so I'd have to write Ubuntu/Linux or something like that. Being able to write just "Linux Mint" saves me the trouble.
Personally, I'm not a fan of how fragmented the Linux world is. Having used Linux for a while, I just think there is way too much volunteer effort wasted reinventing the wheel. Maybe the reason Windows is better than Linux isn't that Windows has more money, but just that it spent all its effort developing a single file manager instead of having 10 different file managers none of which having all the features that File Explorer has.
I don't really care about Linux, the kernel. I just want an operating system. So if I wrote an article for Ubuntu, I wouldn't want to care about other Linux distributions. For example, many tutorials about Linux include a different command for every single package manager of every single distribution, so you get apt get for Ubuntu, dnf for Fedora, pacman for Arch, etc. I don't have experience with all these systems. I just use Mint. Mint is the operating system I'm talking about. Not Linux. Because Linux isn't an operating system, so I can't write a tutorial for it.
I don't trust Canonical
The organization that manages Ubuntu is called Canonical, and I don't really trust them. My impression of them is that they're essentially the Microsoft of Linux. I guess you could say that about any organization that makes money off distributing Linux, including Redhat, but I can only give my personal impression about it, and I don't have a bad impression of Redhat so far, I only have a bad impression of Canonical.
What burned me with them was when they included Amazon ads in the dash. You could disable them, and of course I understand it was there to help monetize the distribution and pay the bills, but I don't like adware. This is the sole reason I compare them with Microsoft: ads in my operating system.
If they harvested telemetry data and sold it, like Microsoft probably does, I probably wouldn't even notice it, and I'd only care if I saw a popup saying it's sending a crash report without asking for my consent first (something that happens on Windows 11, by the way). But having Amazon ads in my system was just a huge no-no. And this was when I was still using Windows 7 and I didn't know how intrusive Microsoft's adware had become on Windows 11.
Yes, you could disable the ads, and some people may be fine with it, but that's not the point. The point is that if you start using my Internet to connect to Amazon to download ads to put in my start menu, I don't want anything to do with your software anymore.
And they have removed that shortly after, years ago, but I'm still not going to use it.
By the way, do not buy a Samsung smart TV. They have ads in them.
Now, you may be thinking, okay, you don't trust Canonical, but do you trust whoever is behind Linux Mint? That's a very good question to ask.
It's possible that Mint will start placing ads in the system one day. It's even possible that it has added them in the past, but I wasn't using Mint at the time so I just never encountered them.
It's possible that Mint is just as bad if not worse than Canonical, and I just don't know about it yet.
But so far I haven't had any problems with Mint yet, and I have had one problem with Canonical, so I think Mint is the winner for me. Maybe this will change in the future. Maybe it won't. Who knows!
Snaps
On Linux there are 3 different formats for distributing software without depending on a distribution: appimages, flatpaks, and snaps. I don't know why so many different formats, but I do know they're all worse than just having an .exe. Anyway, Ubuntu promotes the snap format.
This snap format has faced some criticism for not being as open as the other two formats. If I understand correctly, the problem is that while the format itself is open, the only snap store is owned by Canonical. This may have changed since then but it's not really relevant to me.
As I said before, I don't care about Linux, the kernel, or its ecosystem. I only care about an operating system. If snaps worked perfectly on Ubuntu and I used Ubuntu, it's not really my problem if they don't work on other Linuxes because I'm not using them.
However, snaps are incredibly slow, or at least they were when I used Ubuntu. The system installed software like Firefox as a snap and didn't tell you about it, so you would be wondering why your browser took over 10 seconds just to load.
Mint, although based on Ubuntu, removes the snaps from the package manager, so when you install Firefox it just installs it in the system as you would expect instead of as a snap.
why choose Debian over Ubuntu?
I administer Linux installations for regular people (family, friends, colleagues) and for about a decade, my go-to was Ubuntu. [...]
[...] one day I was taking a look at his system to make sure everything was running smoothly and up to date and noticed the automatic updates hadn't applied to certain packages in weeks. Turns out that a lot of the packages in Ubuntu are Snaps and the upgrades could only be applied if no Snap processes were running. So we had to kill basically all the apps (including the snapd process itself), run "snap refresh" in the terminal, and then reboot just for good measure. This was not sustainable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/12e8ly0/why_choose_debian_over_ubuntu/jfa5bp6/ (accessed 2025-02-10)
Why not other Linuxes?
You may be wondering why I don't use other Linux distribution X or Y instead of Linux Mint. I did use Fedora in the past and my conclusion from that bitter experience is that if a Linux isn't based on Debian you don't want to use it.
Again, I'm not a fan of how fragmented Linux is. Maybe I'm not knowledgeable enough about Linux to understand why it's so fragmented, but I don't really care. I just want a platform that can run a web browser, VS Code, and maybe Slay the Spire. I don't think I should ever need to know about systemd, wayland, or all the GNU tools. I've used Windows for years, and the only low-level things I can name is the PATH environment variable and regedit. Why Windows doesn't have systemctl? Because there is a GUI for that. Why would you type systemctl restart service, when you can just look at a list of services running in a GUI and right click on the one you want to restart? In fact, why none of these distros have a GUI for this? But I digress.
The point is, although I only care about Mint, because Mint is based on Ubuntu, which in turn is based on Debian, it's possible that what I write about Mint applies to these other distros. If I make a tutorial for Mint, it's possible someone using Ubuntu can benefit for it.
However, if you use Fedora, you are on your own. Commands for certain things are different, packages may be missing from the repository, SELinux is going to get in your way all the time, etc.
Since I'm not knowledgeable enough to see the benefit of Fedora, Gentoo, or Arch over Mint, all I can see is the demerit of not being able to follow a tutorial for Debian and have things just work.
Cinnamon is not great
Finally, I'd like to note that while I ended up using Linux Mint, I'm not particularly found of its desktop environment, Cinnamon. Of all the DEs I used, Xfce is still the best one. But if I'm being honest, none of the desktop environments strike me as particularly good.
There is always something that is buggy, functionality that is missing, something that should be configurable but isn't. After trying a few of them it just feels all very tiresome.
In fact, it's so tiresome the only reason I still use Cinnamon and haven't switched back to Xfce is because I'm too tired of switching to bother switching. I've been tired of switching for one year now. The problems I saw in Cinnamon a year ago are still here. Actually nothing really seems to have changed now that I think about it, so I'm not even sure if it's under development. I mean, at least it works, so I'm thankful for that, but I can't help but feel it could all be so much more.
And that's my feeling for Linux desktop in general. Could be so much more. Not really seeing any progress. Tired of switching and distro hopping. Grateful it at least works. Disappointed things aren't better.