Re: Switch from Ubuntu to Mint
- Posted by irv Dec 30, 2018
- 1202 views
It was about 35 years ago that I stopped being intimately connected with the inner working of computer systems. As I result, it is not clear to me what may be involved in switching my partitioned computer from Ubuntu to Mint. The bios now lets me boot to either Ubuntu or Windows. Is Mint a language distribution which can run on the Ubuntu OS?
Not exactly - Mint Linux https://linuxmint.com/ is a Linux distribution, Ubuntu is another, and there are actually hundreds of different Linux distributions available. Some are intentionally "minimal", designed to work on older computers without lots of memory, others are specifically designed for special uses, such as network servers, graphics or animation, entertainment (streaming Netflix and Amazon movies...), operating a PBX... and some are different just because someone wanted a different look and feel. Anybody can build a distribution if they try hard enough, by choosing bits and pieces that they like and packaging them together. A number of distributions - including Mint, utilize parts from Debian, Ubuntu, etc... Some others are based on Slackware, etc...
Unfortunately, it appears that some distros have been overly influenced by phones and tablet computers, and are trying to look like Google Play. And offer just as much useful stuff (that's a joke).
Mint, in my opinion, has tried to be an easy up-grade for people who liked Windows7, so it looks and works pretty much the way you expect computers to work. Plus it still respects us old computer geeks, by providing the tools we need to do stuff. I've been using Mint for years, and have had very few problems. As you can see from this screenshot, Mint has one-click access to worlds of programming tools and other useful stuff:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hxO2EXbOBz6HkHLz0ozoXS5W_tjLpFFx/view
http://distrowatch.org is a good place to go to see some of the different Linux distributions. It has a "popularity" listing on the right of the screen, where Mint regularly comes in near the top of the list (#2 today) while various versions of Ubuntu are further down (19 thru 32).
Now, assuming you have a new computer which will have plenty of disk space, there's no reason not to install Mint alongside Windows and Ubuntu. You can choose which to run when you reboot.
Visit http://linuxmint.com , look at the 3 editions available, and read the User Guide to see if you like what's offered. That user guide is very clear and well-written, with step-by-step instructions.
You can just put a Mint DVD or USB drive into your computer drive and reboot, and try Mint without installing, but bear in mind that it will necessarily load and run much more slowly - everything has to be read from the DVD.
Installing to the hard disk is normally safe and easy - there's an install icon right on the desktop. But you may want to get help from someone who's done this before, just in case (your luck hasn't been so good so far)
ADD: in case you want to know what Mint looks like, here's a screenshot from mine: https://sites.google.com/site/euphoriagtk/Screenshot%20from%202018-12-30%2014-16-11.png?attredirects=0&d=1
