The popularity of Mint

[lmilano]

Hi,

In the last weeks I tried a couple flavors of Mint, so I downloaded the iso's with KTorrent, and of course I am seeding them to share the love. I was really surprised with the number of people that has uploaded mint from my computer, below is a screenshot. Roughly speaking, in a few weeks, I uploaded, alltogether, around 37 copies of mint!

[vinnywright]

Re: The popularity of Mint

I happen to be runing mint9-fluxbox on a 128-RAM laptop........it is slugish .....but with just 128Mib-RAM I'm happy to have a GUI at all.................LOL

it dosent do bad ....you just dont do more than 1 thing at a time

VINNY

[lmilano]

Re: The popularity of Mint

Well, now I know my brain capacity, probably about 128 Mb's RAM (I can hardly do more than one thing at a time)

[arochester]

Re: The popularity of Mint

(Dear me, these Mint fanboys get everywhere.)

Vinny, have you tried Antix Linux? It is said to run on 32Mb. It's not like DSL so it doesn't just load into RAM. http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Antix in IceWM. A cut down version of Mepis. Based on Debian. There is even a 486 version.

...a good blog to watch, with info about small distros and underpowered laptops is http://kmandla.wordpress.com/...

[vinnywright]

Re: The popularity of Mint

(Dear me, these Mint fanboys get everywhere.)

Vinny, have you tried Antix Linux? It is said to run on 32Mb. It's not like DSL so it doesn't just load into RAM. http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Antix in IceWM. A cut down version of Mepis. Based on Debian. There is even a 486 version.

...a good blog to watch, with info about small distros and underpowered laptops is http://kmandla.wordpress.com/...

No I havent.......but I will

VINNY

[rfakhrai]

Re: The popularity of Mint

Mint is second to only Ubuntu on distrowatch which, considering that kubuntu is way down on the list, is an achievement. I may try it in vbox. I don't think I could ever leave the wonderful KFN community though.

[vinnywright]

Re: The popularity of Mint

Mint is second to only Ubuntu on distrowatch which, considering that kubuntu is way down on the list, is an achievement. I may try it in vbox. I don't think I could ever leave the wonderful KFN community though.

I think distrowatch's count goes by hits on the links.......witch dosent necessarily mean that more people actually stick with it.......but I dont really know

and I could never leave hear eather

VINNY

[verndog]

Re: The popularity of Mint

Mint is second to only Ubuntu on distrowatch which, considering that kubuntu is way down on the list, is an achievement. I may try it in vbox. I don't think I could ever leave the wonderful KFN community though.

I think distrowatch's count goes by hits on the links.......witch dosent necessarily mean that more people actually stick with it.......but I dont really know

and I could never leave hear eather

VINNY

Exactly. I wouldn't count Distrowatch for any true measure stick. There was a time in fact when someone had a bot pounding away to increase the PCLinuxOS hits. The admin Ladislav questioned their intent. All other forum polls show Ubuntu head and shoulders above anything else.

[arochester]

Re: The popularity of Mint

Could it be something to do with the issue cycle? The *buntus have a new issue every six months. A new, clean install is recommended over an upgrade. Lots of people must log on (again and again) to get the latest edition.

Distrowatch does not seem to differentiate between "Mints" - Ubuntu based or LMDE. Someone with a true rolling release would have no reason to keep downloading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_release

There are Debian issues further down the Distrowatch list like Crunchbang and Aptosid. Could it be that people just don't need to log on for a fresh version every 6 months?

Does the Distrowatch list give a false result?

[kapil]

Re: The popularity of Mint

...Distrowatch does not seem to differentiate between "Mints" - Ubuntu based or LMDE...

exactly. it has a single url to go to.. and then from ther you can go to linux mint kde.
unlike ubuntu and kubuntu.org. moreover.. from personal experiance i can tell one gets really confused whether to go for ubuntu or kubuntu. since ubuntu is well heard of.. everyone goes to ubuntu site first.. and if the need be.. to kubuntu.

about linux mint.. mint gnome is lot better than LMKDE. LMKDE is mess of the kde and gnome apps.
but personally i like ubuntu and kubuntu more than LM and LMKDE.

[ScottyK]

Re: The popularity of Mint

Tried to load Mint 10 when it came out in a virtual computer, with no success. Might try later once some updates come out.

[lmilano]

Re: The popularity of Mint

]Exactly. I wouldn't count Distrowatch for any true measure stick. There was a time in fact when someone had a bot pounding away to increase the PCLinuxOS hits. The admin Ladislav questioned their intent. All other forum polls show Ubuntu head and shoulders above anything else.

True. OTOH, and this is the point of this thread really, there seems to be a LOT of people downloading Mint. I've never uploaded so many ISO images in so little time, and I always seed the ISO's that I download. Me? I tried both the KDE and LXDE versions of mint. LXDE looks amazing for a light distro, but it had two main issues:

* no "control panel" type admin center, like we have in KDE. It is more like Ubuntu, with dozens of entries in a System menu, pretty caothic
* I couldn't get wireless to work on the live USB image (even if trying to activate hardware drivers)

The KDE also looks nice, but it's not cleaner than Kubuntu. The main advantage is a better default selection of sofware out of the box, not enough to win me over.

[claydoh]

Re: The popularity of Mint

Outside of the mint-specific package manager and other software, Mint's KDE is still simply a re-themed Kubuntu + preinstalled codecs, drivers and other restricted items. Default software selections are too personal to be a deciding factor for me as well, though having Songbird as the music player was, shall I say, a bit of a strange choice at the time

Mint itself has grown by leaps and bounds, but I wonder how much the differences will be if/when Ubuntu ever decide to ship the restricted bits. Already, you can check a box to download and install the codes/flash stuff during the install if there is a connection to the 'net. I don't see why there couldn't be a choice for hardware drivers as well in the future.

Back on-topic, though: the popularity if mint isn't too hard to figure out really. I believe it started with the built-in hardware support most distros can't/won't provide. Word-of-mouth steps in with all the well-deserved positive comments in forums, even though Mint then was just Ubuntu-With-Restricted-Bits. Google Juice kicks in, and therefore imo Distrowatch page hits increase. That's how it started. Keeping it going though has to be attributed to keeping the product enjoyable, as well as having a vibrant set of communities.

That and the fact that it doesn't quite have the stigma of being Ubuntu, perception-wise. It is the Third reason why I chose Kubuntu over Ubuntu when I decided on my main distro in 2005 after Lycoris went away. The first first is that it is KDE ; the second is that it is a single-cd distro which imo forces more though into what is installed by default (not the application choices themselves, but rather how many/what types).

Mint seems to hit a spot that satisfies a lot of people

[kapil]

Re: The popularity of Mint

@claydoh: and add to it, mint is not going to adopt unity in this release. so those who are quitting ubuntu just coz its unity have mint as an option.

[claydoh]

Re: The popularity of Mint

yes, they have to keep differentiating themselves as ubuntu evolves

I kinda like unity and gnome shell, it will make it hard/interesting for people to choose which one. Will be interesting to watch, having been through the kde3 - kde4 transition