Linux Mint 20.1 Released With Web Apps, IPTV Player, Cinnamon 4.8 Integrated

[danmcgrew]

@kneekoo--

Keep up the sterling work; we continue to learn about you from your comments.


“I well understand the gentleman’s desire to speak on; he needs the practice badly."--Winston Churchill

"I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence."--William F. Buckley, Jr.

[kneekoo]

Oh, it looks like I was trying to have a conversation with a forum quote bot. Yay, me!

[Charlie68]

Linux Mint is yet another OS. There's no reason to throw crap at anything just because it's not your favorite OS/DE/etc.

@danmcgrew: I assume you don't use Linux Mint, which is probably why you don't know why and how they have a new release each 6 months. They only used Ubuntu LTS releases as the foundation for Mint since 2014. Each "point release" is an update for those LTS-bases releases, which are good to have as separate ISOs when you have to do fresh installs. They're largely bug-fixing releases with a few new stuff like kernel updates and others. So they only release BIG stuff on major versions. The point releases are usually only significant for Cinnamon, which is a great DE for a lot of people (just as KDE and others are great for others).

Surely you understand that not everyone likes or needs the same things. That's why there are so many distros out there, and why people keep using them.

I understand your speech, however it is undeniable that the derivatives damage the parent distribution on which it still depends, fragmenting its development. This inevitably leads to a decrease in both the contributions, which will be fragmented, and the quality of the distribution itself, damaging both of them. Nobody wants to deprive users of Cinnamon, which could be distributed by Ubuntu as Flavor, just like KDE, XFCE, Mate etc. , but creating a distribution for a DE makes little sense to me.

[kneekoo]

Linux Mint gave us Cinnamon, elementary OS gave us Pantheon, Solus gave us Budgie.

Does Ubuntu damage Debian just because it's based on it? They released plenty of buggy releases, some of which aggravated their users so badly that they gave up and switched distros. Then Ubuntu 17.10 even damaged hardware. Did all that affect Debian users? Nope. It was on Canonical and their fixed release schedule, which obviously allows for more serious bugs to get into a release just because there's not enough time for proper testing.

Having the luxury to delay a release can save a lot of people from a lot of issues. Having the luxury of not being constraint to various other policies about branding and others is also a good thing for derivative projects. So there's no problem with having different teams working on similar projects. This kind of freedom has the potential for other good results for the users. What other distros have such a tight release schedule? Pretty much everyone delays to come out with a smoother release. So no, Cinnamon being confined in the Ubuntu ecosystem doesn't look appealing nor productive to me. Non-LTS releases are what doesn't make much sense to me, considering how easy it is for less knowledgeable users to mess up their systems with PPAs that don't migrate well post-upgrade to a newer Ubuntu release just 6 months later. Mint dropped that madness years ago because it was an uphill battle too big for a small team - although their flexible release dates came in handy because by the time they put out their releases, some fixes were already solved in Ubuntu. But then they also fixed stuff on their own, and even contributed upstream.

Now Cinnamon is of course the main thing Linux Mint does. But they also have the X-Apps, which are available in all Mint variations. For your average "Linux connoisseur" this might be unimportant, but the Linux desktop marketshare is tiny and new people constantly show up to try some distro. Having the same set of programs across different editions is a user friendly thing. How do others do it?

Simple text editors:
Gnome: Gedit/Pluma
KDE: Kate
Xfce: Mousepad
LXDE: Leafpad
etc

For your average Windows user who knows Notepad from their early Windows days up to this day - without having changed almost a bit, having the same basic set of programs is much better when you switch to another DE. Is that enough to warrant a spin? Not in theory, but in practice... it's there, and people use them. And the good thing is that if a newbie wants to try another DE, Mint is a very nice choice - at least to start with. The users are supposed to choose what fits their needs best, regardless of distro or DE, so Mint is not magically the best because of some software choices that they made. But it's a great OS in its own merit and given the Mint team's track record, I think it's safe to say that it will remain user friendly and useful in the future.