Linux Mint Dethrones MX Linux As the Most Popular Distro On DistroWatch (betanews.com) 81
BrianFagioli writes: Linux Mint has reclaimed its position as the top-ranked Linux distribution on DistroWatch, dethroning MX Linux. The latest page hit rankings, which reflect the popularity of distributions among DistroWatch users, place Linux Mint in first place with 2,412 hits per day. MX Linux, previously the reigning champ, now sits in second with 2,280 hits.
MX Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Never heard of it before.
Re:MX Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried it for a while, it was fine.
I didn't identify any advantage over Mint.
But then, I don't see a benefit to Mint over normal Debian, so maybe I'm biased.
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Agreed, that's why I use plain debian for almost everything now. I got over that systemd thing. I use Slackware otherwise, my main work desktop is still on Slackware but debian for many servers even the ones with a vnc GUI, I have a debian 12 vm template for those so I don't even need to install it, I just copy/clone the vm image which itself is kept updated then save space with block level deduplication across the cluster and memory deduplication with ksmd on each hypervisor host.
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I didn't get over that systemd thing. I went to Devuan. It's physically possible to install Debian with sysvinit or another init system but it's difficult. It's also possible (and easy enough) to switch later. But when you try, you find out that a lot of things need tweaking and Devuan has done it already.
Nice idea on the cloning and the dedupe schemes, if I ever install a bunch of VMs which are all similar I will have to look into that. My VMs are mostly very different.
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I dislike systemd as well and that was part of the reason to move to Devuan.
The other part was that Devuan follows the original Debian mindset that became lost in the whole debacle of introducing systemd as default and pretty much neglecting the other init systems.
Unfortunately for Debian it was at the time I looked into donating, so now Devuan receives my monthly appreciation.
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Nice idea on the cloning and the dedupe schemes, if I ever install a bunch of VMs which are all similar I will have to look into that. My VMs are mostly very different.
My vms aren't much similar at all. By running the same kernel and shared libs on every guest and keeping them up to date together, you can still save resources. I get about a free 15GB out of 128GB RAM. Then some have same apache server etc. But most of the memory is taken by applications anyway and they don't run the same applications.
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Me neither. Am happy with mint when I'm not using macos.
There's sort of a meme on the mint forums "it just werks" - and it's mostly true, I had to change just one bios setting to get some driver working correctly. I've been using linux in various flavours for 29 years, it had better damn well "just work" by now.
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That's not what a meme means.
It literally is.
These other things we call "memes" now were originally called "memepics" but that was too complicated for the simple among us, who outnumber the people who like to think and care about the meanings of words.
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Reposting an image macro doesn't make it a meme. Reproducing the structure of the image in another image makes it a meme.
Re:MX Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
Never heard of it before.
I was introduced to it through an AV Linux variant that was specifically set up for running a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) system. Essentially, a recording focused Linux system. It's not quite as lightweight feeling as Mint, but worked as advertised at the time. I've stayed with it since I liked how it worked, though I still have a Mint system kicking around too.
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Re:MX Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
Never heard of it before.
What about PTR Linux or CNAME Linux?
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Why would you need to merge a CNAME, it just points to whatever you want! /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: MX Linux? (Score:2)
You're wasting so much power if you don't move to CMOS Linux over TTL bro.
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Never heard of it before.
What about PTR Linux or CNAME Linux?
They all wind up being A Linux, and A Linux can be turned into PTR Linux with a little awk/sed/perl of your choice.
Re:MX Linux? (Score:5, Informative)
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Not understanding this "no systemd" comment. According to Wikipedia, MX is based on Debian stable, not Devuan.If you didn't like Cinnamon you could have gotten Mint with Xfce, it's one of the three main DE variants of the project.
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Honestly sounds terrible. I just want something that works, not that is ideologically driven and prone to breakage as a result. Ubuntu has that problem for entirely different ideological reasons and I'm sick of it.
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Next can you you tell me how long you haven't owned a television for?
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30 years and counting for me, but that's neither here nor there...
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Not quite.
MX-Linux has systemd installed but boots by default with sysvinit so systemd libraries are available for the packages that need it but systemd isn't in charge. An MX install can easily be set to boot using systemd. An MX LiveUSB with persistence only works properly booted with sysvinit.
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>"Was gonna say I also have never heard of it so hard to believe it is most popular. But then I read the details, this is just a count of page hits"
Correct.
I am not sure I had heard of it either. I know exactly zero people that run MX. But I know tons running Mint and other distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Alma, Slackware, and other big names), with more Mint users than anything else.
Distrowatch is just a page hit count, it really doesn't mean much. And when a distro puts out a major update, like Mint just di
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This does make me question the value of their list.
DIrect link to the ratings chart (Score:2)
Since TFS didn't give it and the TFA only linked to DistroWatch's front page: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.... [distrowatch.com]
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Okay thanks, but the 6-month ratings are in fact on the front page. Scroll down a bit and look to the right.
No, it doesn't (Score:5, Informative)
From the DistroWatch announcement: "The charts don't measure install base, quality, or popularity, it just indicates (on average) how many people visit a particular project's information page." - https://distrowatch.com/weekly... [distrowatch.com]
It's not a good sign when they get even the bare essentials of the concept wrong.
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That depends on how you interpret the word "reflect" in this context. It doesn't necessarily mean "measure."
It's defensible that page-hits are correlated with popularity. How exactly you measure popularity is a different matter. Install-base numbers perhaps? Not sure where you can find those.
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I've been wondering where this came from, because Mint Linux is around, but usually it is Ubuntu, Debian, or Red Hat which is what I encounter.
I am glad other distributions are out there and worked on, especially Slackware which is arguably the oldest maintained one around. This allows people to find something usable, be it an immutable OS core, separation of processes in VMs or containers (Qubes OS), or distributions designed around things like no systemd.
Of course, stuff like this makes utilities like Ap
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Thanks. Good point. Looks like AppImage might be the way to go for this one, and make sure to include uncommon libraries, and hope for the best. If one doesn't care about offline use or use with STIGs, then just Dockerize it and call it done.
Re:No, it doesn't (Score:4, Informative)
"The charts don't measure install base, quality, or popularity, it just indicates (on average) how many people visit a particular project's information page."
Specifically, how many people visit a project's information page on DistroWatch. They're not measuring how many people visit, e.g. https://debian.org/ [debian.org] but how many people visit https://distrowatch.com/table.... [distrowatch.com].
If DistroWatch were the world's primary source for information about Linux distributions (or even a really significant source), then page hits might be correlated with popularity of usage, but AFAIK the only people who use DistroWatch are distro enthusiasts who are interested to know which distro is most popular, and the relationship between that and actual usage seems very distant, because the actual most popular distros are also the boring ones that don't appeal to enthusiasts.
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This. Really, Distrowatch ought to be a useful thing. However, it's not, because their way of measuring popularity is basically useless. You really want to know the number of installations, the number of new installations, and possible the number of installations categorized by type of user (corporate, private, etc.).
I don't know of any such measurement. From web statistics and such, one gets the idea that Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS are the top distros; some places also list Fedora.
Trends (Score:5, Funny)
Distrowatch - my goto VM repo (Score:3)
Mint lover here (Score:5, Informative)
Mint lover here. I jumped ship from Windows about 5 years ago and never looked back.
Mint is great for me- it's clean, quick, and it just works.
I've never really had any issues with it and I can state that it's a solid distribution for almost anyone, and especially for those migrating from Windows.
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Just curious (and honestly not a snark) but what do you use Mint for?
I have used Ubuntu for the most part, although long ago I used Slackware. I have done many things with Ubuntu, including scientific software development, data science, document creation, graphics/AV, VM hosting, and so on. I like that it has a high profile among creators, so deb packages are often available. However, recently I have had trouble with the 24.04 and 24.10 releases stalling at the partitioning step in the install, so I have be
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Just curious (and honestly not a snark) but what do you use Mint for?
Not the GP here, rather just another Mint user. I use it as a daily driver, and it fulfills all of my needs, which admittedly aren't terribly demanding.
Before Mint I used Ubuntu, but jumped ship around the time they started pushing Snap. Even before that, it seemed to me that they were getting a bit pushy about telling their users what they should like or not like.
Mostly I rely on installing packages via Apt; but I do use some Flatpaks and Appimages, either to run multiple versions of the same program or be
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I use both Mint and MX Linux. I use them for writing short stories and novels, creating 3D images and short videos with Blender, web development, and recording music with DAW systems. Only issue I've run into is plugin support, but that's more a matter of iLok not supporting Linux rather than any fault of the OS. Sometimes audio is glitchy when playing back 16+ tracks and recording 4-6 more, but can usually be tamed by killing unnecessary services. The DAW and Blender are probably my biggest processor usage
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Not the OP, but for me I don't do a lot so for me Mint is perfect. Listen to songs (online and CD), attempt to write a book or two, web surfing (obviously), and other basic items. Considering I'm using it on a ten year old desktop (I think it's 10), I have zero issues except for one weird one where on rare occasions my monitor won't wake up when I pull the machine out of sleep. The only way to get it to work is shut the machine dow
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"Other than that, using Mint Cinnamon is like running Windows 2000. It just works. It is the perfect distro for someone who just wants to use a computer and not have to relearn anything when migrating from Windows."
Very well said.
On a side note, when people talk about picking or recommending a distro, I think they should really be talking about picking or recommending a desktop, since that's what most people think of as "the computer".
The truth is that the distro used hardly matters. The desktop is the expe
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>"Just curious (and honestly not a snark) but what do you use Mint for?"
I am also not the GP, just responding as well.
I use Mint on all my home desktops and laptops. It does everything and I don't use any other OS. Web browsing, spreadsheets, documentation, drawing, diagrams, watching video, media server, photo storage and editing, IM, scanning, some games, audio recording/mixing, Email, etc.
I jumped from Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia running KDE when it became less and less supported and relevant. Ubuntu
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Just curious (and honestly not a snark) but what do you use Mint for?
It's my home PC, so I use it for everything, just like I would with a Windows PC.
All the usual things- email, banking, creating graphics, writing documents, shopping, 3D design for printing, fiddling with audio files, maintaining websites, etc etc.
Repeating what someone said below, it's my daily driver. The only difference is that I'm running Mint rather than Windows.
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My biggest issue was finding replacement apps- the little odds and ends that I use all the time like a good card file app, an FTP app, etc.
It took a while to try them but in the end I found good replacements for everything.
(I settled on Cherrytree for the card file and Filezilla for FTP, in case anyone needs something similar.)
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Very Skewed (Score:5, Informative)
These results are extremely skewed, mostly because of the way DistroWatch measures it.
I've never heard of MX Linux, nor EndeavorOS. Mostly because they are tiny niche players.The big marketshare holders are way too low on this list, although I am happy to see Debian close to the top. But major players like Ubuntu, the SuSEs, RedHat/Rocky, all need to be higher on any real world list of distro market share.
I also hear lots about Manjaro, but I've yet to see anyone using it. The same goes fro Arch, but I have tremendous respect for Arch and their documentation is of significant value to the Linux community in general.
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I am using Manjaro as my daily driver. It's Arch dialed down to a less bothersome level. It just works. They even made the AUR more easily usable. Props to them for that!
That said, I've realized that I would probably also be happy with plain Debian. Being on the cutting-edge isn't so important for me nowadays.
Good never really like MX (Score:4)
I tried MX Linux (Score:2)
For an "everything just works" distro... (Score:2)
It's hard to beat Mint, out of the box.
Re: For an "everything just works" distro... (Score:2)
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Snap is bad, so Ubuntu is bad.
For my part I didn't see any benefit to Mint over Debian.
I then decided I didn't want systemd (it caused a boot problem I didn't want to troubleshoot) so I went to Devuan.
Now I have no systemd, no snap, and backports contains adequately recent kernels and some other software, like a modern pipewire and current zfs.
Lol that article image (Score:1)
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antix 22 configuration & theming [youtube.com]
Re: Lol that article image (Score:2)
Makes sense. (Score:1)
Cinnamon Took Desktop Gnome Walked Away From (Score:2)
So good, a Windows user could use it (Score:2)
2024 is the year of Li (Score:2)
...Linux confusion.
Linux Mint Debian Edition (Score:2)
It is based on the traditional Debian repos, and should be slightly more stable than the more up-to-date ones. I like the combination of straight Debian for the underpinnings, and the more "playful" Mint stuff for the GUI.
Cinnamon is great (Score:2)
I recently gave up on Linux Mint, got tired of editing installer scripts which look for Ubuntu in /etc/issue and halt.
Turns out Ubuntu Cinnamon gives me the UI I like and EDA toolchains are happy too.
Who cares? (Score:2)
I mean... why should we care about the opinion of an obscure website? It's not as if newbies go to distrowatch when they're looking for their first distribution to try.
They'll probably go to uncle Google and ask him, something along the lines of "I want to install Linux" [google.com]. Google then gives a bunch of results. Notably, these are not links to Linux distributions, but rather to social media.
Who uses distrowatch and MX ? (Score:2)
MX Linux has been top-ranked since 2019 (Score:2)
It may still be top ranked for 2024.
Ubuntu? (Score:1)
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Ubuntu is #6. Besides Mint, another Ubuntu-base distro, Elementary OS, is also above Ubuntu on the rankings.
Debian tends to score above Ubuntu on distrowatch and others. I'm not sure I understand or trust the methodology of these distro rankings. But it provides a conversation starter at least. Ultimately I think few of us here pick a distro based on which one is most popular.
But if we see a distro that we've never heard of being ranked highly, such as MX, Elementary, or Zorin. Then it hopefully leads to a
Mint is less than stellar (Score:2)
I use mint xfce and I've had serious issues with it... had to reinstall the damn thing after some months. It started by making me login twice in a row every single time. Then at some point the WM decided it would not load automatically. Steam also stopped working after a while and I had to reinstall it (this happened twice already). And at some point the game I used to play decided it would only play some of the sound. People would sometimes start talking and their voice went mute. Or they wouldn't talk at
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Chromebook is less complicated inside, and there isn't quite the same patchwork of independently developed apps that have to interoperate together.
You should also test out lots of distros until you find one that works reliably on your hardware. This is especially true on laptops. Where suspend/resume can cause audio and wifi issues. And some distros, or at least some combination of WM and desktop, seem more reliant than others.
The constant stream of updates is the new normal. Hackers and the very large atta
Mint is good, but gets old (Score:2)
I really like Mint + Cinnamon in general, but it was getting really old earlier in the year. I got new hardware and had to use Fedora + Cinnamon for a while on two machines and grew to like it. Wish I'd tried it earlier.
It just about as polished... some things are more polished, a few things less. For example, Fedora doesn't have the nice package update GUI that Mint does. But, I typically use the CLI with aliases to update anyway, so no biggie. DNF seems to be getting better than apt, though I had to