For me it’s PeppermintOS.
I started my Linux adventure a few years ago, and haven’t owned a Windows PC since.
I currently use Arch on my main rig, and I wanted to install Linux on two old laptops that I found laying around in my house
I then remembered the first distro I ever used, which is PeppermintOS, and I was amazed at the latest updates they released.
They even have a mini ISO now to do a net-install with no bloat, with a Debian or Devuan base.
Sadly, I believe the founder passed away a few years ago, which is why I was really happy to see the continuation of this amazing project.
Mint is surprisingly loved and disliked from what I have seen. Having used it since 2007 I am in the category that likes it for what it is. But I am somewhat surprised by the open hostility it gets for simply existing. Main arguments being that it is a dinosaur, uses X11, should not exist because anything not KDE or GNOME is just diluting desktop Linux and is part of the problem. It has no fancy corporate sponsor, it has a small team, and it for sure has warts, but you can claw Linux Mint from my cold dead hard drive because I have distro hopped like an addict and it just checks the boxes for me. It shows up and works, even on newer hardware with a little tweaking here and there, but I can use Nvidia, find network printers without effort, scan, install and update flatpak, backup the system, game, and get actual work done that is not fiddle farting around with esoteric configs all the time. I can post on actual forums with actual users on it and not some discord where someone will just post memes over my questions. I have a strong feeling it will exist for a long while given it’s history. And it is mind numbingly borning as an OS. I just sit down and compute, what a concept.
If there was only a way to get automatic tiling on cinnamon it’d be my favorite desktop by far. Everything you need, nothing you don’t, sensible by default. It’s the right option for most people I think
Excellent - I’m about to install it for my aged mother, because windows keeps moving her cheese.
I want something that doesn’t change the workflows once she’s learned how to do a task, and that local techs can help her with, and that I can VNC to when I have to.
You can configure the system for backup and auto updates which is handy to keep it secure without any interaction. Only reason I ever had it fail was entirely me screwing it up, usually by distro hopping and formatting wrong.
How can someone speak such truth. Agree it is not perfect. But it just works and really well. Only big controversy I can think of is the website being hacked a couple of years ago, but they were open and transparent in my opinion about the hole thing. Also disto hoped a lot but I am always brought back to “green Ubuntu”. Can Mint team get ontop of Wayland please
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Speaking as a relative linux noob, Mint is probably the most recommended distro I’ve seen now that Ubuntu jumped the shark. Not sure how anyone could think it needs more recognition.