If you have cutting edge hardware, this might be an issue. But most people don’t and for them Mint will work just fine. If you want cutting edge, don’t use Mint. But that’s not their focus at all. Mint is for people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.
If you want cutting edge, don’t use Mint. But that’s not their focus at all. Mint is for people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.
These don’t seem like competing needs. When I think “just work with minimal hassle”, I don’t think “I need to restrict myself to outdated hardware”.
I’m perfectly happy running old packages in general. I’m still on Plasma 5, and it works just as well as it did last year. But that’s a matter of features, not compatibility. Old is fine; broken is not.
I think Mint is mostly for the “I have a PC that’s a few years old and want something easy and reliable to replace Windows with” crowd. Because it works great for that. It’s the perfect beginner distro.
people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.
Elementary OS. Hassle-free, elegant and polished, distraction-free.
I’d give it a shot if i was on the lookout for something new, but I see absolutely no reason to switch from Mint.
The thing is that Linux has gone mainstream, with young adults and teens trying it out for Gaming and Streaming. The target people has changed so recommending Mint is not suitable anymore.
I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say it’s gone “mainstream” since you still have to be moderately nerdy to know about it. I get your point though. This is one of the reasons I am so happy the Steam Deck exists. Before Valve released the Steam Deck nobody wanted to make games for Linux, so Valve said “fuck it, we’ll do it ourselves” and proved it was not only possible, but a better experience overall. While not all games work, having 78-80% of your game library work on Linux, with no Windows OS performance tax, is a great experience. Even with the Proton compatibility layer games generally run faster than on Windows.
this video from last month has 600k views. Ive seen several recent linux videos with 150k+ views. Brodie, Horn and the Linux Experience constantly pull 50k to 200K views on some of their videos.
If you have to tiptoe around to use it “correctly”, it doesn’t “just work”
