Linux Mint 13 (Maya) Has Arrived

New submitter OceanMan7 writes "Linux Mint 13 (Maya) has just been released. DVDs come in four flavors — MATE (with and without codecs) and Cinnamon (with and without codecs) — in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The codec-free versions comply with U.S. and Japanese IP regulations. MATE 1.2 is Linux Mint's community-powered extension of Gnome 2. Cinnamon 1.4 is built upon Gnome 3, but has a more traditional look and feel. As with Ubuntu 12.04, upon which Linux Mint draws, all editions come with Long-term support (LTS) until April, 2017. The release notes provide a list of changes.

Still not impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Mint, to me, is still a buggier and less supported version of Unbuntu.
Not to say I'm that pleased with Ubuntu but every time I've tried Mint I've come away with two hard realizations

1. If you have problems, they are harder to fix and it's harder to get support for them.
2. I have more showstopping bugs than Ubuntu.
3. You end up doing a /lot/ of reinstalling when it comes time to move to a new release.

I'm not a moron and I've deployed mint on Good hardware that run both windows and other distros just fine. Mint just has a very vocal fanbase that I don't happen to agree with.

That said, Ubuntu's not very useful to me either. It's UI has taken a trip to lala land and isnt very useful anymore. I'd accuse them of copying microft's new UI efforts.. Except that Ubuntu's breaking of the UI predates both win phone 7 and windows 8. Go fig.

I suggest that everyone go check out Fedora. No, it's not very romantic or cutting edge. But it does work. Very well. It's also very well supported.
Check out the "spins" where you can download an iso customized to the UI of your choice. I'm a fan of xfce, which makes even gnome3 look bloated and slow.

Re:Is it a good alternative to Ubuntu for a novice

[butchersong]

I tried Mint as a distro for a few of my relatives. I never really 'got' Mint but other than some codecs that are installed by default I don't think the newbie experience would be much better or worse than Ubuntu or one of the Ubuntu flavors. I believe that if you try to play something in Ubuntu it will issue a message that you don't have installed and do you want to install it yes/no... Really it comes down to if you prefer Mint's custom Gnome 3 desktop environment (I don't) or would prefer Ubuntu's Unity (I don't), Xubuntu (I do) or Kubuntu desktop environments. In short they're basically all the same with the same Debian style package management so burn a few livecds and see which graphical environment you like. If you want an everything works distro go with any of either of em. If you want to learn about Linux.. install Arch.

Re:Is it a good alternative to Ubuntu for a novice

[poet]

Wow...

I am not even sure where to start here except:

Linux Mint just works for me.

Ubuntu just works for me.

I have never had any problems with either, even running things like java applets, my web cam, music or... Yahoo Games when I want to play Cribbage with my sweety.

Re:Is it a good alternative to Ubuntu for a novice

[kermidge]

Sorry to read of all the difficulties you've been having. I've had my own small share of annoyances or breakage here and there; some combos of hardware seem to be idiotsycratic viz. a particular OS.

Yet I think it might be more fair to say that you're describing the modern Linux experience that _you_ have; it may not be valid to extend your experience to that of all users.

I suppose much boils down to what you need and how you want it. I've been lucky, the several desktops and laptops have been vanilla hardware; Ubuntu's been working well enough to be my host OS for going on five years.

I like and admire what the Mint folks offer; they've put a lot of work into providing choice. I've found no compelling reason to switch but I could just be getting old and more lazy.