Linux Mint Has Three Flavors. Which Is Right For You? 

Don't let the "Perfect for Beginners" description fool you. You can be on this OS forever. Go with Cinnamon.

I like your attempt to catch the windows users in the transitioning phase between windows 10 and 11 and try to get them to at least try Linux. This is the way good sir!

„You can’t even buy computers with less than 8GB anymore.“ Clearly, you‘ve never looked at Microsoft Surface products… Surface Pro 7: i3, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 900$ without a Keyboard…

I fell in love with Cinnamon when switching from Windows to Linux! It is everything I wanted a User Interface to be, it is simple and functional! The performance improvement I got from a 10 years laptop is unbelivable, it works as well as a new laptop!

Linux Mint was the distro that got me using Linux almost ten years ago. I've been using it ever since.

Cinnamon is the best one for me. All I did is I changed the theme from green to dark blue.

Great video, I'm 64 and switched to linuxmint 2 yrs ago, never going back to windows.

I love Linux Mint...thought I'd post a list of the comparisons mentioned on the video: Much lighter than Mac or Windows. Cinnamon: CPU: uses the most, a little bit more. Development: Addition: main addition of Linux Mint. History: GTK based desktop. Team: Linux Mint team probably spends most time on Cinnamon. Drive: benefits most from an SSD rather than a spinning drive. Features: cool. Feel: similar. Flagship. Htop data: CPU usage: ~4-5%. RAM usage: 736 MB. Innovative. Looks: sleek and similar. Modern. Polished. Ram: uses the most, a little bit more. Speed: vs Mate: slower. vs Windows: blazing fast. vs Xfce: slower. Suite of programs: a little different. Alternatives available to all software on Linux. Browser: Mozilla Firefox. File Manager: Nemo. Looks very slick. Software Manager: app store, safe and non malicious software. System resources: requires a little bit more. Heaviest of the 3. Usage: 1st choice with a modern machine >4 GB RAM. Feel right at home if coming from a Windows. Workflow: similar. Mate: Development: Addition: main addition of Linux Mint. History: old fork of Gnome version 2. GTK based desktop. Team: Linux Mint team behind much of the development of Mate. Feel: similar. Htop data: CPU usage: ~1-2% RAM usage: 559 MB. Looks: similar and good. Speed: vs Cinnamon: faster. vs Xfce: slower. vs Windows: blazing fast. Suite of programs: a little different. Alternatives available to all software on Linux. File Manager: Caja. Software Manager: app store, safe and non malicious software. Workflow: similar. Usage: 2nd choice, using an older machine. CPU and RAM usage is a little easier. Fast and peppy. Machines that are older, no chance of running Windows 10 and 11, brought back to life. Xfce: Development: Addition: not a main addition of Linux Mint. History: Xforms tool kit, now using GTK based desktop. Been around for a while. Team: Linux Mint team not behind much of the development of Xfce. Still sees updates, people still working on it. Feel: similar. Htop data: CPU usage: ~0% RAM usage: 516 MB. Looks: similar, good, older, retro and vintage. Speed: vs Cinnamon: faster. vs Mate: faster. vs Windows: blazing fast. Suite of programs: a little different. Alternatives available to all software on Linux. File Manager: Thunar. Software Manager: app store, safe and non malicious software. Workflow: similar. Usage: Fastest and lightest. Resource usage has the most bang for your buck. Speed freaks.

No matter how much I distrohop I always come back to Linux Mint with Cinnamon. It's basically Ubuntu with some of the rough edges sanded off but it just works for me. It's flawlessly installed on every machine I've run it on. I even use the Debian Edition on a 32-bit Core Solo laptop from 2004 with 4GB of RAM and the Cinnamon desktop is still surprisingly snappy.

When I started distro hopping it was like being a kid in a candy store. More than 12 years later I am still on Linux. Great presentation for Noobs DT!

If you are wishing to switch to linux, My only say is " You are going to Enjoy it"

Tried the 3 of them. First was MATE 10 years ago which I loved and stayed withit for many years. When I buy a new box I thought I would try this XFCE that I knew nothing about, but was impressed so much I stayed with it for a year or so. No bugs, lightening fast, and almost zero on resourses. Then a friend tells me how great Cinnamon is so I try it (20.3) and yes, I liked it but found just too many bugs of which the worst was taking about a minute to initialize my internal storrage drive which was a brand new 2TB SSD. Once initialized it was ok untill I reboot and its the same old thing again. After installing a few more apps I notice its using 63GB of space... wow, I felt I was back on win10 againg with space hogging and fans running due to too much CPU. So a month was all I could stand of this and now I switch back to XFCE. After I install all my apps needed, it still only uses 16gb space and like being in a racing car after getting off a push bike lol. Before I just THOUGHT XFCE was the best... now I KNOW it is?

Oh Linux, you have a place in my heart. Prior to graduating, I was stuck at home with a very slow Pentium IV (It was even slower than the Pentium IIIs we used to code in school with). Being the poor dude that I was and having experienced how fast Ubuntu 3 on a live cd was, I looked at Linux for hope. Learned about Puppy Linux, and managed to work on a beat up Pentium III machine that didn't even have a hard drive when the department I worked for didn't even have the budget for a working machine. I'd say it's not so noob friendly to anyone without an IT background. Not to mention that the UI of Puppy Linux 2.15 didn't give it too many fans (thank goodness for the Puplets), but from then on I've moved on to other Linux versions that are heavier, like Ubuntu and Fedora. But making ancient machines run fast? I still have mad respect for Puppy Linux (and the other small ones out there). Bravo!

Mint doesn't receives as much credit as it should; it really does wonders! I'm with Cinnamon, but Xfce is the best. Linux Mint improves laptop battery by at least 3x than Windows; mine could go, only browsing, 10+ h! Windows 10, 3 or maybe 4h... the team did say they've done a new algorithm for this...

"Can't buy machines anymore with less than 8 GBs of RAM..." I guess someone forgot to tell DT about Wal-Mart...

Cinnamon for me. I left KDE a few years back when it started having too many issues to get any work done. I found Cinnamon and fell in love with it. It does things exactly the way I like.

Cinnamon runs great on even 4 gb of ram, I have my laptop which has 4 gb of ram, everything is fine

Out of the three 'Start' menus, XFCE actually looks the best for me. Simple and small, much like the XP Classic menu aesthetic.

One of the things I like about the Linux Mint is the commonality the project team tries to keep across the various versions. For example, each version has a different file manager (Cinnamon - Nemo, Mate - Caja, XFCE - Thunar) but Linux Mint has added the ability to Bookmark files in each of the file managers to increase the commonality between the versions.

Thanks DistroTube, finally i can recommend this video to watch who wants to come to GNU/Linux. Please keep making these videos. ❤

It was videos like these that got me to commit to my first Linux distro over a year ago. It was amazing and I haven't looked back since.

Mate is my favourite. Great balance between lightweight and attractive. It can look old school and pretty modern with proper theming and icon pack. Ubuntu Mate and Solus Mate are also very nice. I like Ubuntu Mate's style switcher that can make it look & feel like Windows, MacOS, Gnome2 (dual panel) and all in between. Also there are two complete theme/icon packs to make it modern old old-school looking. I made my Mint Mate to look like MacOS/Windows/Linux mixture of all the best stuff from all three.

Even on a Core 2 Duo Chromebook, cinnamon still works very well. Has never lagged for me.

I am running Mint MATE/XMonad, and Manjaro with MATE. I installed XMonad using your excellent tutorial.

Great lesson. I’ve been using Cinnamon since I left windows 10 years ago. Love it. Love the info on MATE and Xfce never knew what the difference was

I love your channel, your very instructive videos and your mesmerizing voice. I’ve been using macOS and Windows for 25 years now and looking for a partial transition to Linux now. I wish we had something like a minimal Arch distribution with the Pop_OS! desktop environment. That you be perfect for me, I love that tiling windows manager in Pop.

Dereck Taylor, Thank you very much for the wonderful overview and history of the Linux Mint Editions and their Desktop environments, and to boot I learned I new overviews of Linux Mint. Subscribed

good comparison and bench marks. Love the approach you used for the information.

This was a big help, mate, thanks a bunch. I have suffered under the tyrannical bootheel of windows too long and windows 11 was the final straw. You have eased my mind to some degree about making the transition to Linux and I thank you for that. Keep up the good work.

No comments on the T-shirt? Old school def jam FTW! Cheers Derek!

Thank you! Very detailed. I'll be going with Cinnamon on my old rig.

Thanks to you and all other Linux users who try to help people in transition phase. I can't run windows 11 but found just the look and feel I wanted in Linux , well better than what I would've gotten if I had installed Windows 11 in a shady way. My laptop is just faster now. 😊😊

First time i watch this video on your channel and it is very informative, polished and easy to understand. thank you m8

I used Linux mint for a good while before I started experimenting and trying other distros. I really enjoyed it and it keeper me happy for a really long time. Extremely stable, user friendly Ubuntu base, and a clean DE. Amazing for both new users and long time Linux lovers who just want to buckle down and get work done :3

Xfce is a way of life!

Good video DT - well thought out and presented which is refreshing to see. FWIW, I run LM Cinnamon on a 8 year old I7 with 8Gb of RAM and it flies. Never had the need to use MATE or Xfce.

I am rocking the LM XFCE and its the best XFCE desktop out there.

Why is mint pitched at 'begin' level Linux users? I'm not a Linux guru, but I've been using Linux Mint as my daily driver for about 5 years now (Cinnamon). I find it perfect. I've never had to change anything in literally years. It just works, is really fast, doesn't spy on you, and has no nag ware. I would recommend it even to seasoned Linux users.

Early into this video you've already answered a question I had that was throwing me for a loop. I recently installed Linux Mint Victoria on 2 old laptops. In order to learn more about it, I would watch videos on my main computer, a Windows 11 based desktop machine, and would try out various things that I would see them doing on my laptop, but all too often, I would run into scenarios where things on my laptops looked different from what I was seeing in their videos, and I couldn't figure out why that was. I had no idea that there are 3 different versions of this particular distro. I have the MATE version, so that said, I'll be looking for RU-vid videos that are tailored to what I'm running on the 2 laptops. There are 4 reasons that I decided to try Linux: first off, I like to learn new things when it comes to computers, and this is something I hadn't tried yet; second was that the previous owner had forgotten, the password for one, and never knew it for the other, (which was his dad's machine). The third reason was that I didn't want to pay for Windows 10 licenses on computers that I wouldn't use on a regular basis. The 4th, (and biggest reason) was that they both ran Windows 8, 'nuff said. I tried Lubuntu, Debian, and Mint, and decided that I liked Mint the best.

You are really making a hard effort to teach! thanks a lot! I use Linux since February and I don't wanna change. In part, thanks to you.

Mint Cinnamon was my first linux for long time and finaly when i became full time linux user went with Manjaro KDE..i jump around alot before then to find which one i like.

That was very helpful, although I wish you'd said a little about the programs that come with each version. For example, what type of Office software do they come with? One question, please, for someone who knows nothing about Linux, but is interested in trying it: is it wise, or even necessary to install Antivirus software with Linux? And what about a VPN? Is that desirable or necessary?

You do an excellent job of explaining these concepts. I've been using linux for years, but I appreciate that this video speaks in plain language. You don't use a lot of jargon, and when you do, you explain what it means. Very good content and VERY good presentation. Well done.

- Doesn't have multiple CPU cores - 4 GB ram - hard drive That's not a old PC, that's a brand new laptop you can buy for 500 USD in Brazil, believe it or not.

This made me subscribe! very informative great content 👍

I don't use Mint, I use EndeavourOS but I do use the XFCE/XFWM4 DE/WM. I am very happy with them so far. Super light and easy to use. It lets me set my desktop up how I want it, allows me to set my own keybindings for tiling. If you want to use tiling, you can. If you don't, you don't have to. You can make it whatever you want which I appreciate.

Thanks for breaking that all down in a very simple and coherent manner.

Been using Linux since 1997 (Slack, the joys of compiling your own stuff), basically seen them all, but Mint Cinnamon is by far my favorite flavour for the desktop as its UI is well thought out, slick and easy on the eyes. I have a 32 bit version Mint Cinnamon 14 running on a 14 year old 1.5 GB RAM IBM x41 T with a 64GB SSD. That doesn't do RU-vid too well these days due to RAM constraints, but it works nice for the DOSBOX games on the low res screen. I also like them to be a bit more conservative with the releases and will gladly have the Arch community weed out bugs and spasms. Devuan for servers for sure.

I really enjoy Linux Mint. I am currently typing this from a Linux Mint XFCE VM, my host machine runs Arch with DWM these days, but I will always have a soft spot for Linux Mint. Almost makes me want to buy another computer just to have Mint available again. I could always re install it, but I really like Arch, and Arch is a bit of a time sink, so I don't want to lose all my work, or be limited to older packages like I was in Mint.

Debian or SuSE with Plasma, Ubuntu or Fedora with Gnome, Arch Linux with Xfce, Mx Linux, Artix or Manjaro with Mate and Linux Mint with Cinnamon. This is the right thing i mind.

Mint is the distro for new users and it is stable. I'm sure one of these days I'll go back to it. I'm on Manjaro now but Mint is much more stable and less work to keep running well. In fact it takes almost no effort at all.

One more thing to keep in mind is that if you have Nvidia card and want to use G-Sync in games, Cinnamon has a decade old bug where Cinnamon enforces its out v-sync config upon some fullscreen applications, blocking out g-sync. Wine is definitely affected.

Personally, I love the way Kali Linux configures Xfce and KDE Plasma (with a few minor adjustments - like putting Xfce's horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen). Sadly, my only gripe with KDE Plasma there is a bit of graphical flickering in my experiences. I need to get around to researching that at some point. To me, KDE Plasma looks the best.

2008-2009 laptop with 2GB of RAM. Xfce version works fine.

My 1st distro I installed. A fabulous learning os

Thank you so much, I I swapped my Cinnamon HD into an older (Core Duo, instead of i5) laptop and with 4gb RAM, I thought I'd be fine, wrong, I couldn't find out why it was slow, until I compared with my i5 and was told to try XFCE. I just peeked in here and you confirmed that immediately. BTW, what command, or icon tells you which DE you have?

Of all the full DEs Cinnamon is my favorite, but for a lightweight DE it's really hard to beat Xfce. The Mint team does a great job with both.

Loved this bro, thanks 👍

I've always primarily used Mint, specifically MATE as my primary go-to choice for any system. I always felt it captured classic windows better than XFCE. It's just simply stable, it works and I don't have to fuss with it all that much if at all. It has the best compatibility, most straight forward installation and doesn't try to reinvent the wheel at all, has a good bit of pre-installed software that the vast majority of users will be comfortable using and comes with gaming libraries pre-installed. I've only had to do quirky NVIDIA installations but that's NVIDIA on linux for you. I wouldn't say it's just "good for beginners" because that doesn't do it justice, it's just good for like 80% of desktop use-cases, i mean it's Ubuntu after all, it's pretty much everywhere.

I have an ASUS Vivo notebook with an N4000 pentium, 4GB ram, and 64GB eMMc and Cinnamon still runs great. I have a really old Core Duo notebook (don't remember what it is) and Xfce is smooth as butter.

Mint 20.1 XFCE for gaming is good for me!

I've currently got Mint cinnamon on a Thinkpad R61 from 2007 with 3gig of ram, actually works quite well, not super snappy though. If you've got a laptop from 2010 or newer i find that Cinnamon will work very well.

I started out with Xfce but had problems with the audio on my built-in WebCam. Also, much of the advice I got online assumed that I was using Cinnamon even when I indicated otherwise. In the end I switched to Cinnamon and I’ve had no problems even though my machine is a 14-year-old laptop with Nvidia graphics.

Thank you very much for such a good video. Keep up the good work!

Thank you kind sir! Right now I'm in the process of making security copies of everything and switch to Linux. I've been considering leaving Windows 10 for over a year, but I was afraid to do so. However, since Windows 11 was announced, the future for this OS started to look less and less appealing, so that's actually what I needed to finally try Linux. I'm not as interested in super fast performance, just as long as it is marginally faster than Windows 10 and without all the spyware, I'm happy. I can't wait to try Cinnamon! Maybe I'll convince my dad to finally switch to Linux too.

Currently running Mint 20.2 with KDE. I've been using KDE with various Linux distributions including RHEL for around 20 years.

I opted for MATE. In Cinnamon, the screen darkens in my ASUS ROG laptop. I dug up everywhere but can't find a way to adjust the screen. The MATE GUI is excellent by itself anyway.

I've ran Linux Mint for years. Yet I just went through and tried quite a few different distros in the last month and to be honest I keep coming back to Linux Mint. Why? Because everything works and has been rock solid stable. I've had frustrating issues with other distributions with getting browser video hardware acceleration working with Nvidia graphics driver, network printer and scanner working, Bluetooth issues and extended monitor issues. With Linux mint based on Ubuntu there is a robust support forums where to get help and step by step guides. This doesn't mean you can't get things working in other distributions, just that at least for me it was more difficult and time consuming. Yet after all my struggles for one lingering issue or another I just was not satisfied.

I got 2010 year notebook. 2 cores, 4Gb RAM, SSD. And it runs Cinnamon just fine. RU-vid, browsing, movies etc. All works great.

Thanks for this. I'm running Linux Mint again. I have a question, can I centre the task bar icons, don't like them on the right side, thanks.

I love the Xfce version to revive my old 8 year old laptop. Normally this thing takes 20-25 minutes to boot on an bloated windows 7. Now it only takes about one minute!

I used cinnamon a while ago but switched to Mate because, what I kept reading from others is that it seemed to have a better environment for some of the games I like to play. I quite like it. I dual boot but I try to eliminate my time in windows as much as possible. I also used mint briefly YEARS ago when there wasn't different environments.. I probably still have the burn disk somewhere. xD

Thanks for explanations, versions of Linux for a new user is always confusing thing!

Very helpful sir !

literally got linux mint yesterday for the sole purpose of making my computer run faster, like u said user friendly and I used xfce since my end goal is lightweight arch (on a 4-6 (idk how old, in that range ) year old hp laptop with an i3 and integrated 620 graphics card and 8gb ram, so basically around average.) Wanted to see what mate and cinnamon were like, thank you for the comparison! Learning bash rn and it's way more fun than other languages for some reason (maybe bc I'm used to python/java)

Worth the price of admission just to hear MATE pronounced correctly! Thanks for the video!

I wish this video was made before I install cinnamon on my laptop. I installed cinnamon on my desktop which is a 5-6 year old gaming Desktop. So it runs beyond greatness. My laptop was purchased in 2009. Core 2 Duo, but kinda slow when swapping tabs in Brave and web browsing. I will try Xfce to see if I can save myself money buying an SSD.

I'll always like XFCE not only because it is not a resource hog but it is the first DE I used when I switched to Linux on Manjaro.

Mate can also handle with Compiz with many useful features like smooth desktop zoom and many more, what still not available on gnome or even kde/plasma

People don’t remove applications from Windows once installed ?? That makes no sense.

I’m seriously thinking about switching to Linux as my daily driver, especially with all the efforts being put forth for it to be a decent gaming system too. My biggest concern is that my mass storage drive in my pc (haven’t set up a NAS yet) has been with windows until I decided to upgrade my boot drive. Would I be able to use that same hard drive with everything on it without losing everything?

Great video, thanks

Thank you for the informative video, it was very helpful for me in deciding which flavor to choose. Also, a *HUGE thank you* for dropping the _"Recursive Acronym"_ knowledge! I have always thought the use was very interesting (such as when I first heard of WINE and what it meant, I found it very cool). However, I never knew what the term for it was and my attempts to Google the answer failed. So I was quite surprised to unexpectedly find the answer to my long-held question here. Cheers! 👍

@8:40 - Thank you for that. So many others on RU-vid seem to assume that everyone can read their tiny terminals on their giant desktops. Nice not to have to scooch up to the screen and squint for once. :P

My main pc I run windows but on my laptop I really love Linux Mint Cinnamon. I’ve tried a few and just didn’t click with them always came back to Mint. Wife uses Macs so I’m always hopping all over the different machines for various reasons. I like being familiar with all of them to be honest.

11:42 being recurcive acronym is different than being bacronym. bacronym has nothing to do with "calling itself back"; recursive covers that part. bacronym means that the full form was forcefully formed from an existing short name.

Also how big of a deal is the HHD vs SSD for mint? My HDD is 2tb anyways but just wondering if the type itself matters or the capacity is the issue.

As a long time Windows user i have a couple of questions, i've been trying various distros and DEs in a VM for a while and i've mostly narrowed down my choice to : - Debian/Ubuntu based - Xfce DE So i'm currently looking at Xubuntu, Mint Xfce and Linux Light but i can't quite decide on one of them. As a Linux newbie on the surface they all look the same to me. I was wondering, what are the deeper differences that set those distros apart ? Does any of them actually matter for new users ? As an extra question, i know that you can install applications like powertop if you're a laptop user but i was wondering if there are any Linux distros that are well optimized for laptop use out of the box.

Just a hint - put a link to this video on your "Linux Ad" video from last week. I think its a perfect follow-up.

I have a low budget potatop acer aspire A315-21-22RE with 4 GB (3.7gb)RAM DDR 4 with AMD Dual-Core processor E2-9000 (up to 2.2 GHz) and AMD Radeon Graphic and 1000GB HDD Windows 10 was originally installed currently Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon is installed and it's fast enough . Looking to the future I'm thinking about switching to Mate or Xfce as each new version also gets a little heavier.

Good overview

I absolutely love the Cinnamon desktop environment, but after watching your video, I am wondering what you consider a potato of a machine. I put Cinnamon (version 20.2, 64-bit now) on a 14-year-old laptop running a Core 2 Duo with dual processors running at 1.83 Ghz, and my machine hardware will only recognize 3.2 gigs of the 4 gigs of RAM I have on it, yet this machine flies. It definitely runs better than it did with Vista installed!

Mint was my 3rd distro and fell inlove with it. My complaints are no default remote access, no screensaver, and the support guys have a strong opinion if it's not in mint, you don't need it and it's a waste of resources.

MATE is the best, if the Nemo is the default file manager. Cinnamon is good, but i got flickering displays problem with NVIDIA card. XFCE lack window positioning support. Windows positioning support is a must with a laptop computer.

Great help, thanks a lot. love from india.

I love Linux Mate, it works incredibly well on my 4 core I5 powered Latitude 5400 with Nvme storage. Looks absolutely beautiful too. Sure, this is overkill for nearly any linux laptop out there unless your doing intense graphical demands, it's absolutely fantastic with everything I throw at it and I am a fairly advanced user. I am not just watching RU-vid videos. But if I was just going to do that I believe Mint Mate will work well on a potato. Another point I think is nice it's Debian based so you might get updates to the OS here and there but your not likely to get any unwelcomed surprises like with Arch based systems. Everything moves real slowly with Mint, very stable and well tested updates. Install, update and learn a work flow. Chances are you won't be needing to learn anything different for awhile. Now if your the type that has to have the latest and greatest, Mint really isn't going to be your favorite distro. But I would think for most grounded users coming from Windows, Mints approach is appropriate and appreciated.

I have Linux Mint Cinnamon installed but I also installed i3wm and starting to like that

Please next video on top looking (visually) linux distros

Tried a few Linux distros years ago. Ubuntu, Zorin, back to Ubuntu. Then I installed Mint 17.3 Cinnamon and have never looked back. Cinnamon is the flagship DE for Mint and that's enough for me. I know Mate and Xfce are great for other users but I enjoy using Cinnamon. On Mint 20.2 Cinnamon now. Working flawlessly. BTW, what the aitch is _"windows?"_

Cheers for this.