I’ve been having a big think over Linux distros. See, I’ve been looking back at my still-new Linux experience of nine months, and wondering how my own journey can help other people get started with FOSS operating systems. Whenever the topic of a Windows refugee-friendly OS came up, I would recommend Linux Mint because, first, it’s the one everyone says, and second, it was the Linux OS that I started with, fresh off Windows.
I always follow that up with a comment about how you don’t have to stick with Linux Mint if you don’t want to. You can do what I did, which is to dip your toe into the Linux distro water and find something that suits you better. But if I’m setting up Linux Mint as “my first Linux distro,” why not just skip the middleman and get right into the distros that have a bit more meat on them?
Cinnamon is the reason I don’t recommend Mint to people, but it’s mainly because I don’t like it. The default UI has so much wasted space it’s revolting, they tried to get the windows XP/7 feel with the app launcher and ended up with blocky, boring blank space.
Unless someone is familiar with MacOS and wants to use something similar w/ GNOME, I’ve only been recommending KDE spins or distros with it as default.