Linux Mint

Reader supplied reviews for Linux Mint Average rating 8.9 from 1006 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on Linux Mint? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 22.37-LMDE6-LMDE21.35-LMDE20.34-LMDE19.318.317.316151413121110987654.03.13.02.22.12.0 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 22.3 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-03-11 Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina Votes: 5 Linux Mint is the reason I fell in love with the Linux world. And it all started 14 years ago. I’ve tried many distributions, all the most popular ones. I tried Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch (even before the archinstall script). I used Arch for a long time, and I still run it today in dual boot with Mint, but Mint is something special. Definitely the best out-of-the-box experience. Outstanding work by the developers. My only small complaint is Wayland, but that will soon be sorted out as well. Every version of Mint brings something special—not big changes, but improvements that really enhance the quality of life. Kudos to the developers, just keep up the great work!!! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 7-LMDE Rating: 10 Date: 2026-03-11 Country: South Africa Votes: 3 My first mint experience was on 17.1, and since then I never looked back. Although I cannot make the full switch, I do use linux on all my personal devices. Mint nailed it for me as a user that needed to relearn a new os, that is is the closest resemblance to (back then) windows 10, it was easy to learn how it works. The timeshift was also a nice to have, where I can restore back to a solid known state. I'd easily recommend to start off with mint, just to dip your feet into the linux experience. Then try not to be afraid of trying new things out. I always come back to LMDE because it is debian with the true cinnamon experience, you can do some crazy stuff with it too. The cinnamon DE is great that it is not as restrictive to customising to you need, but not as overwhelming with settings as in the case of KDE or window managers. Hardware challenges you might find on LMDE, you will propably be better off with default linux mint or fedora if you need to use a os that supports newer hardware. Although not recommended, but I do it anyways, I installed proxmox on top of my lmde instance because I am a mad lad, it opens up new possibilities how I can remote into the VMs because you know, life sometimes is unfair. I managed to build a system that suits my needs and keeps corporate telemetry at bay. It is not a perfect solution, but certainly is a fun one. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 7-LMDE Rating: 10 Date: 2026-03-07 Country: United States Votes: 2 Rock solid distribution. I prefer the LMDE version but the Ubuntu version is superb too. I like other distributions like Zorin and Pop!_OS COSMIC and occasionally distro-hop but always return to LMDE. It is reliable and the desktop has all the things you would want/need. The Cinnamon desktop is the best compromise between Plasma and GNOME. In fact it is better. It has tiling available via GTile. The weather applet is native. You can add Google Drive or OneDrive accounts to your Files, Calendar, or email via the Online Accounts feature which is part of the GNOME GTK stack. LMDE makes is better/special because the foundation is Debian 13 Trixie with nothing to remove from Ubuntu. The desktop itself updates when Mint makes updates to Cinnamon since they make Cinnamon. And unlike Mint’s Ubuntu version, there are no point releases that you need to go through an installation/update process. Any updates get processed through the package manager updates/upgrades as regular maintenance. Yeah for some people perhaps the Ubuntu version is a better fit because of the Ubuntu having more recent drivers for newer hardware. But that gap has improved in the past few years since Debian 12 adding non-free software to the Debian repositories. Again some hardware will probably only work with Mint’s Ubuntu version but the recent changes with Debian have really changed that. Also, if you need specific PPAs (Personal Package Archives) then Mint using Ubuntu is the way to go to go but Flatpaks have also diminished the need for PPAs in recent years. And Flatpaks are standard and already installed in both the Ubuntu and Debian version of Mint. Either way, Mint’s Cinnamon desktop using Debian as a base has been what makes me like Linux. Some Linux users have been mislead the Debian is really old. Well that can be somewhat true if what you want has just been updated yesterday and you want that version of some sort of software. First that is rare, and if so, sometimes you can mitigate that with Flatpaks. Regardless, Debian updates about every 24-30 months and sometimes less than 24 months. LMDE is a good distribution - Mint overall, be it Debian or Ubuntu base, is my best choice for Linux for reliability and real-world use. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 1006 reader reviews of Linux Mint...