Linux Mint or Ubuntu?

[3bbb7]

I am buying a new laptop and installing linux on it but i am really deciding which one I want.

I like Linux Mint because Im more familiar with it, but I dont like cinnamon at all. I like MATE but the animations on it are enough for me to just pass over it. The looks arent great without instaling compiz, which i cant get working. (well I can get it working but the cpu skyrockets to 100% even when i change the desktop to compiz from marco)
I have tried to like the unity on ubuntu but I dont like it at all, its not very good... Its very laggy even on my current computer which has a decent graphics card and 3gb of ram. however i really like the look of ubuntu
I have looked and only found that gnome 3 would be a decent replacement for ubuntu, but you cant install compiz on gnome 3 ...

What do you suggest ?

 

[YoshiInAVoid]

Fedora!

 

[FAST6191]

For the record there are official XFCE and KDE versions out there of mint (indeed at time of writing the latest RC versions are on the homepage). I have a great fondness for XFCE and as it does not cost you the ability to do anything as you can still install GTK and such like maybe give that a go.

I tend not to use compiz though (even though it should work with XFCE) so I can not really help there.

As for what to potentially pick most of the first ones on http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major work for me, I will note opensuse has a tiny learning curve if you are used to the command line in other distros.

 

[3bbb7]

For the record there are official XFCE and KDE versions out there of mint (indeed at time of writing the latest RC versions are on the homepage). I have a great fondness for XFCE and as it does not cost you the ability to do anything as you can still install GTK and such like maybe give that a go.

I tend not to use compiz though (even though it should work with XFCE) so I can not really help there.

As for what to potentially pick most of the first ones on http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major work for me, I will note opensuse has a tiny learning curve if you are used to the command line in other distros.

Oh xfce looks nice, Ill try it out

 

[The Catboy]

If you only had a choice between Ubuntu and Mint, I would say Mint.

Otherwise I say go with Fedora.

 

[Fishaman P]

If you like Unity and hate Cinnamon (*BLARGH*) then obviously go with Ubuntu.
Keep in mind that you won't have issues with animations on a new machine; Unity, MATE, and Cinnamon will all run without using 1% of the CPU.

 

[3bbb7]

If you like Unity and hate Cinnamon (*BLARGH*) then obviously go with Ubuntu.
Keep in mind that you won't have issues with animations on a new machine; Unity, MATE, and Cinnamon will all run without using 1% of the CPU.

I dont like unity, and I dont really mean the animations but when you minimize something on mate, it seriously comes up with a black box and minimizes, and its very ugly. its like the original grey theme on Windows 7 minimizing almost

 

[Fishaman P]

I dont like unity, and I dont really mean the animations but when you minimize something on mate, it seriously comes up with a black box and minimizes, and its very ugly. its like the original grey theme on Windows 7 minimizing almost

I think the problem is that your current computer has no hardware acceleration, not even with integrated graphics.

 

[3bbb7]

I think the problem is that your current computer has no hardware acceleration, not even with integrated graphics.

well thats probably the issue but also the look of unity is just not very appealing... i dont like having a big bar on the left side of my screen. I prefer the open pages on the bottom of the page, and the menu bar on the top, like the old ubuntu look

 

[Fishaman P]

well thats probably the issue but also the look of unity is just not very appealing... i dont like having a big bar on the left side of my screen. I prefer the open pages on the bottom of the page, and the menu bar on the top, like the old ubuntu look

Then Cinnamon's the answer. MATE might be too, but Cinnamon is basically MATE + Aero.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

I vote for Mint as well, but with Linux in my experience it's best to let the hardware choose....

What I mean by that is, download all the different distro's create one of those bootable USB thumb drives and load up a live version of each distro you want to try. After you see how they all perform and look on that specific machine then you can do an install. Some of them really really hate laptops.

I have always wanted to try out Google Chrome OS.... Maybe this weekend I will give it a whirl.

 

[jurassicplayer]

I would say to go for Mint XFCE/LXDE or build up from the Ubuntu base with stuff you want. Or you could ditch the Ubuntu base entirely and go with something like OpenSUSE, Fedora, Arch, w/e. Maybe you can try without a DE entirely and just use a wm.

 

[3bbb7]

Then Cinnamon's the answer. MATE might be too, but Cinnamon is basically MATE + Aero.

Okay, do you know if Cinnamon has the ability to add extra panels like MATE? I really like having the top panel for my menu bar and the bottom one as my open windows.

 

[Fishaman P]

Okay, do you know if Cinnamon has the ability to add extra panels like MATE? I really like having the top panel for my menu bar and the bottom one as my open windows.

Quite easily, it's in Cinnamon's main settings, which are only a few clicks away. You can set it to top panel only, bottom panel only, or both panels.

 

[3bbb7]

Quite easily, it's in Cinnamon's main settings, which are only a few clicks away. You can set it to top panel only, bottom panel only, or both panels.

Okay i'll give cinnamon another try. thanks

also if I install cinnamon along side windows with the installer it comes with on the live usb iso, does it use the same harddrive for both or am I asked to size them?

 

[Fishaman P]

Okay i'll give cinnamon another try. thanks

also if I install cinnamon along side windows with the installer it comes with on the live usb iso, does it use the same harddrive for both or am I asked to size them?

It asks you which hard drive to use, and then you can choose to either have Linux Mint partition the drive for you, or you can set it up manually.

 

[Deleted-236924]

If you dislike Unity, then use another interface.

 

[FAST6191]

If you dislike Unity, then use another interface.

Nice in theory but for these sorts of distributions moving away from the standard interface and installing your own can cause all sorts of little headaches- even though bandwidth is cheap and storage is not far behind I figure there is a reason they do not just say install this generic distro, install this interface package and log out/select one in our settings drop to change it.
Sure there are network installers that can set things up from the start and things like arch and gentoo that do well under such conditions but ubuntu/mint/opensuse style things with nice management tools and such like have some troubles.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Nice in theory but for these sorts of distributions moving away from the standard interface and installing your own can cause all sorts of little headaches- even though bandwidth is cheap and storage is not far behind I figure there is a reason they do not just say install this generic distro, install this interface package and log out/select one in our settings drop to change it.
Sure there are network installers that can set things up from the start and things like arch and gentoo that do well under such conditions but ubuntu/mint/opensuse style things with nice management tools and such like have some troubles.

Unless you give me a better reason than "I figure there is a reason", then I will continue suggesting this.

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah that was weakly phrased. All I have other than that is most times is probably not a lot better but across many machines when I drag out the piece of junk P4s and similar vintage machines, ponder if they would handle modern KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, MATE..... as determined by modern ubuntu/mint/opensuse (or otherwise stick tiny amounts of ram in there as I scavenge the larger amounts I keep in such machines to fit to a customer machine) and see them run like treacle and revert to XFCE or some such I find little things like root permissions windows not working properly, "start menus" not being grouped as they should be, occasionally specific versions of management tools not caring to work as well as they might and other little annoyances that are not there in the equivalent machines when I go from a net install or use fork/version dedicated to that manager from the start.

There is nothing that is especially dealbreaking and most of the big troubles are obvious ones like keyring type programs not playing that well across each other.