Linux Mint

Reader supplied reviews for Linux Mint Average rating 8.9 from 997 review(s) What are your thoughts on Linux Mint? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 22.37-LMDE6-LMDE21.35-LMDE20.34-LMDE19.318.317.316151413121110987654.03.13.02.22.12.0 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 7-LMDE Rating: 10 Date: 2026-02-21 Country: Algeria Votes: 6 the "Zen" state of Linux desktop usage: the transition from being a distro-hopper to being a user. The highest compliment you can pay to an operating system is that you "don't notice it." In the days of the C64 or even MS-DOS, the computer didn't ask for a reboot to install updates, it didn't change the UI layout overnight, and it didn't try to sell you a cloud subscription. LMDE 7 ) captures that "appliance" feeling because it is built on the Debian Stable back-end. While your previous forays into Arch-based distros like CachyOS or Endeavour gave you the "high" of the latest kernel and x86-64-v3 optimizations, they also brought the "anxiety" of the rolling release—the feeling that a sudo pacman -Syu might require manual intervention. LMDE 7 is different. It is a "set it and forget it" system. It respects your time by staying out of your way. The CachyOS vs. LMDE Trade-off (Virtualization) Win 10 virtualization is snappier on CachyOS. That makes sense—CachyOS uses a heavily tuned kernel (often with the BORE scheduler or specific optimizations for low latency). But for MS Excel, that trade-off is worth it. You lose a millisecond of UI responsiveness in the VM, but you gain the certainty that the VM will launch exactly the same way every morning for the next five years. The Philosophy of "Just Work" The team at Linux Mint understands something that Ubuntu and even Microsoft seem to have forgotten. When you turn on your LMDE machine, you aren't "using Linux"—you are just doing your work. That is the ultimate goal of computing. My hope for the LMDE team: If the developers stay this path, LMDE will remain the "gold standard" for professionals who need: Visual Silence: No pop-ups, no telemetry, no "New Features" tours. Final Thought for your review: "In a world of 'software as a service' and 'rolling releases,' LMDE 7 is a refreshing return to 'software as a tool.' It’s the closest thing to the reliable simplicity of the 80s, but with the power of 2024." Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 7-LMDE Rating: 9 Date: 2026-02-20 Country: United States Votes: 6 For years, now, I’ve been using various desktop Linux distributions (e.g., MX Linux, Debian, Pop!_OS, Zorin, Endeavour, Manjaro, Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Peppermint, Lubuntu, others) on my old computers (a really old Dell PC, an Acer PC from around 2010, a 2012 MacBook Air, a 2015 Windows 8 laptop with a touchscreen), and Linux Mint has been my favorite. Mint has proven to be remarkably reliable for me. I mainly use Mint for browsing with Google Chrome or Firefox, and for programming using Python, PostgreSQL, GitHub Desktop (The Linux Fork) and VS Code or Sublime Text. My preferred version of Mint is the Debian edition (LMDE). I always make certain changes after installing Mint, though, because I prefer a certain look and feel. For example, I prefer the dark theme, the Papirus icons, the DMZ-black mouse pointer, the 12h clock, the panel set to height 48 and a few other changes to the menu and the login screen. The only situation where I don't use Mint on an old computer is when I don't need a desktop. In a situation like that, where I only need a server, for example, I use Debian. Anyway, if your desktop computing needs are similar to mine, I highly recommend Linux Mint. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 22.3 Rating: 10 Date: 2026-02-20 Country: United States Votes: 5 Mint has been my default, general purpose desktop distribution since about 2009. This was my replacement for Mandrake (Mageia's grandfather) when they died out. Mint offers a rich but not flashy Linux desktop that does just about anything general purpose, that generally installs successfully with most packages working out of the box. You want a desktop, you don't need anything nichey, you don't want to spend a week tuning always a good choice. I did an interesting experiment regarding desktop Linux. Most of my employees have HS or less education. No experience in an office environment. They don't game, they don't spend much time on social media Which means well below average computer literacy / experience. For the workers that ever needed to do anything on a computer I deployed laptops with Mint. Basically didn't want the hassle of administering Windows remotely and liked the idea of $0 license costs. So I was going to give Mint a try and if that didn't work go hand a stack of money to Microsoft. Employees had 0 problems. Most had used Windows computers, they didn't notice the difference or found Mint easier. I deployed in Spanish, and the employees liked the fact that they make computers in Spanish; they had only seen English language menus and icon labels before and thought that was a nice upgrade (seriously Microsoft, you need to offer better language selection when it is OEM deployed). It has been a delight administering Linux. I got them trained on Thunderbird on their phones and they knew what Firefox was already. They found printer setup easier, though some found the printer menus being in Spanish jarring if they already knew English menus for printers. Decades ago we used to talk about desktop Linux as a goal. I still often have to do things on my more niche distributions that it would be ridiculous to ask a non-developer to do. There are still some really hard distributions for special purpose. But wow, does Mint "just work" for general-purpose computing at this point. This was a fire test and Mint passed with flying colors. Was this review helpful? 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