Linux Mint to overtake Ubuntu?

Many of the things mentioned here are based off my own opinion and how I like things no real research has gone into this.

I also want to say that It's not going to take over in popularity, But in usability, options, prepackaged software
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First off I would like to say that I do know that Linux Mint is just a beefed up version of Ubuntu containing many Codecs and it's own theme. I mostly use OS X 10.8 (as it is a school computer and I use it during the school week) And then Windows 7 on weekends for gaming. I do like using Linux and hope to one day have it overtake Microsoft.
I also know that everything on Mint is available on most Linux distros.

I'm very surprised that Ubuntu is bare-bones while Mint is a full out-of-the box experience. But I feel that Ubuntu used to.

A huge controversial change happened to many Linux desktop environments during the time of late 2011 to 2012.
GNOME 2 became GNOME 3, Many hated the new buggy DE. Which is where Unity came from. KDE also was rebuilt from the ground.

Unity was unlike any other desktop environment before it besides Mac OS X. A lot of people aren't liking the new Unity look.

Linux Mint stepped in and is a popular choice. It had a more faithful UI. Mint could be the future for Linux systems!

Do you think that Linux Mint with all it's preinstalled programs etc. benefits over Ubuntu?
Lets take a look.

Multi ISO Choice - Each ISO Image has different desktop environments installed one thing that Ubuntu didn't. I just hope one day with Mint we will have an All-in-one package.

File Manager - Mints file manger beats Ubuntu's. I don't know the name for each one. And I know you could replace Ubuntu's.

HTML5 Login screens - I have been looking at a lot of them and they are looking very pretty

Driver Manager - The UI in MATE is more user-friendly I don't know about the other Mint versions.

What Linux distro do you use. And would any of the DE's in Mint want you to replace you're's?

HTML5? That sounds like a good argument to stay away from Mint.

Nah but seriously, Ubuntu is only serious GNU/Linux distribution for the mainstream. They got a company that backs it and a big community of users and contributors.

You can always use your personal favorite distribution, but there's no chance Mint or Mageia or whatever their names is will take over the "market"-share from Ubuntu.

You can always use your personal favorite distribution, but there's no chance Mint or Mageia or whatever their names is will take over the "market"-share from Ubuntu.

But Linux Mint is Ubuntu just everything preinstalled.
Well not everything, Just look above.

I use Manjaro which I am more than happy with. elementary OS seems to be quite popular as well these days. However, I do agree that the masses need to have a company backed Linux distribution in order to trust it which I find quite ironic.

I use Manjaro which I am more than happy with. elementary OS seems to be quite popular as well these days. However, I do agree that the masses need to have a company backed Linux distribution in order to trust it which I find quite ironic.

Well remember pretty much all those OS's are based of Ubuntu or Debian.

But Mint doesn't got a company backing it, neither does it have the amount of contributors or general community members as Ubuntu. They technically doesn't have a chance against Ubuntu.

The reason Mint got higher status on DistroWatch is beacase it actually comes up as a link when you search "Linux Mint" on google, people click it, and it get higher status on DistroWatch. Ubuntu got much more relevant links coming up when you search for it, which is another way of showing it got more interested people in it, more people search for it.

Yes but remember anything that gets contributed to Ubuntu gets contributed to Mint. Since Mint is a spin off of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu with another Desktop Environment. All of those spin offs are.

I mean we have Kubnutu which is the same just with a new feel.

My point is Mint can't "overtake" the market share Ubuntu got, since Ubuntu for example can come pre-installed on a few vendors and is already a famous brand that even non-technical people know about.

Also, it's silly argument that "anything that gets contributed to Ubuntu gets contributed to Mint" since that solely means that Mint is dependent on Ubuntu, so if it takes over the "market" and becomes the "mainstream" distribution and Ubuntu start lower their development activity then Mint has only lost on it.

^ that makes a strangely large amount of sense

(using mint 14 kde over here)
@satuim your post talks as if kde had just gotten its ground up makeover ... when in reality at that time kde 4 had been in development for a while ... and had just started maturing
(kde4.3 was near unusable . kde 4.6ish came out around that time . now 4.9 is almost perfect)

I use Manjaro which I am more than happy with. elementary OS seems to be quite popular as well these days. However, I do agree that the masses need to have a company backed Linux distribution in order to trust it which I find quite ironic.

Well remember pretty much all those OS's are based of Ubuntu or Debian.

True, Mint and elementary OS are based on Ubuntu, but Manjaro is based on Arch. Still, looking at elementary OS on the Linux Action Show, it seems like such a good pick for the masses as opposed to Ubuntu simply from a design perspective.

I got fed up with Ubuntu and their stupid crap and now I'm using Linux Mint with cinnamon and I'm perfectly happy.
It doesn't matter whether distro is popular or not, only that it works.

Another strange statement, so who would develop it and maintain it? Lots of work is needed in distributions, security fixes, keeping packages up to date, bug fixes, integrating new technologies.

Saying Ubuntu is silly and saying that if you apply a OS X like theme on it (which essentially is what they've done), then it will suprizingly start work well for some magical reason? As I said earlier, use what distro you personally prefer, but saying that Mint, particularly, could "overtake" Ubuntus' market share is really silly honestly, it is not a good thing at lesst for even Mint usets themselfs.

(You might read my earlier posts in this thread if you dont get my point)

@satuim your post talks as if kde had just gotten its ground up makeover ... when in reality at that time kde 4 had been in development for a while ... and had just started maturing
(kde4.3 was near unusable . kde 4.6ish came out around that time . now 4.9 is almost perfect)

4.9? 4.11 is the latest now and that's actually going to be the last KDE SC 4 feature release before KDE Frameworks 5 is released. KDE 4 was back in 2008 and I switched when it hit 4.1.0. Never had the problems that other people experienced with it (maybe I was the only one).

It is not really so true that Mint is overtaking Ubuntu. Distrowatch page ranking has already been stated to be skewed in many cases, for example if you look at the rolling releases like Gentoo and Arch you never see them rank very highly, because they don't have big release announcements every 6 months followed by 97 different spinoff versions.

Mint might be suitable for people wanting to move away from Ubuntu but there are plenty of other choices out there and I'd really not push everyone in one direction. Mageia for example is another easy to use option. If you want to get more in depth then try Arch or Gentoo.

Ubuntu has caused a drastic shift in the distro 'market'. Not saying it's all good or all bad but it has moved to the point where many more parties are assuming Ubuntu as the 'de facto' Linux and only releasing software for it and not Linux in general. The same used to be true for Red Hat many years ago.

I got fed up with Ubuntu and their stupid crap and now I'm using Linux Mint with cinnamon and I'm perfectly happy.
It doesn't matter whether distro is popular or not, only that it works.

Yep that's the point i'm trying to say.
Linux Mint in general is a redesign of Ubuntu.

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^ that makes a strangely large amount of sense

(using mint 14 kde over here)
@satuim your post talks as if kde had just gotten its ground up makeover ... when in reality at that time kde 4 had been in development for a while ... and had just started maturing
(kde4.3 was near unusable . kde 4.6ish came out around that time . now 4.9 is almost perfect)

Yep I was just saying that almost all Desktop Environments have had some sort of major makeover to keep up.

some questions about Mint:
- is there any Mint distros w/o PulseAudio?
- is it possible to use ubuntu's launchpad ppas?
- is there any other differences between Mint and Ubuntu exept preinstalled restricted extras and some more DE like Cinnamon/Mate?

some questions about Mint:
- is there any Mint distros w/o PulseAudio?
- is it possible to use ubuntu's launchpad ppas?
- is there any other differences between Mint and Ubuntu exept preinstalled restricted extras and some more DE like Cinnamon/Mate?

1 - I don't know about that but looking over at the Ubuntu wiki, You have to install

2 - I also don't know but since Linux Mint is redesigned Ubuntu probably yes.

3 - This confirms all questions above. No that is it. they put on there own theme, wallpaper rebrand it as Linux Mint. Make 4 different versions (I think) with different environments.

some questions about Mint:
- is there any Mint distros w/o PulseAudio?
- is it possible to use ubuntu's launchpad ppas?
- is there any other differences between Mint and Ubuntu exept preinstalled restricted extras and some more DE like Cinnamon/Mate?

I'm pretty sure Mint has lots of bug fixes and lots of custom stuff vs Ubuntu. There's a thread on the Mint Forums about removing Pulse audio. The method worked for me but that was a few years ago.

Uninstalling PA isn't the one way to get rid of PA. You could just disable it permanently:

http://voices.canonical.com/david.hennin...our-audio/ (same page on the web archive)

What is wrong with PulseAudio?

The problem with PA is that sound issues are easily solved by disabling it and using ALSA instead.

Sorry for bumping old threads, but Linux Mint is taking over Ubuntu, Ubuntu's newer releases are just getting slower and slower, and Mint is ranked #1 according to DistroWatch, Ubuntu at #2 (Learn more Here)

Sorry for bumping old threads, but Linux Mint is taking over Ubuntu, Ubuntu's newer releases are just getting slower and slower, and Mint is ranked #1 according to DistroWatch, Ubuntu at #2

A big thing that distorts the numbers is that Ubuntu no longer releases so many development snapshots.

Distrowatch page hit ranking is not a true measure of popularity in the Linux ecosphere but just based on popularity on Distrowatch. If a distro makes a lot of noise with many releases, it gets rated higher. By no longer having so much development release noise as it used to, Ubuntu gets a lower page hit ranking, whereas Mint keeps up the development releases and therefore takes over as number 1.

The page hit ranking #1 has gone backwards and forwards at times and distros do come and go. When PCLinuxOS first came out it made huge amounts of development noise and got to #1 for some months but no doubt the usage figures didn't reflect it. If you wanted you could claim to be developing a really revolutionary Linux distro, put out a monthly development release prior to the final release, get it out there to every Linux review site, offer Ladislav Bodnar an exclusive interview on your concepts and no doubt you'd be #1 too! Even if your distro had a small install base.

I'm not saying Mint is nothing, it's clearly highly popular but the Distrowatch page hit ranking is not a direct link to popularity. You have a lot of mature, expert user distros which have massive user bases but very little release noise, an example being Arch which doesn't do release announcments for it's monthly snapshots.