Mint's the Best and Ubuntu Don't Care
Last week Michael Larabel reminded the community that Mark Shuttleworth had predicted 200 million users by this year and then estimated the number to be "tens of millions." Today Canonical's Dustin Kirkland fired backed. In other news, Scott Gilbertson has again declared a version of Linux Mint "the best Linux distro" and Tecmint.com looked at the desktops of 2015.
Scott Gilbertson really really loves Linux Mint. Back in November he said Linux Mint 17.1 was the best distro around and now he's said the same of 17.3. He said:
The developers of Linux Mint have shown that they have the vision and are willing to put in the actual work to produce one the best desktop experiences around. The Cinnamon edition is not just the most polished Linux desktop around, it's possibly the most polished desktop period.
Gilbertson had lots of nice things to say about Cinnamon and Mint in general. He then said the "Cinnamon light" edition offers a good option for older or less-powerful hardware." He's not real pleased with the older kernel saying, "There's a good bit of hardware support Mint is missing out on." Despite that Gilbertson concluded:
While Mint has been continually working hard on the desktop and cranking out release after release, Ubuntu has stagnated. Mint's package management tools are simpler, more comprehensive, and easier to use than anything Ubuntu offers. Mint also manages to do all this without anything even remotely close to the resources Ubuntu enjoys.
Canonical's Dustin Kirkland today came to Ubuntu's defense after Michael Larabel last week said the distro probably only has "tens of millions" users instead of the 400 million Shuttleworth predicted. I've always thought the number of Ubuntu users was overestimated, but Dustin Kirkland answered today saying, "Without a doubt, there are over a billion people today using Ubuntu." He provided an impressive list of examples where Ubuntu is being used. Kirkland said it was being used more than anyone knows and perhaps he's correct. Check out that list.
Desktop Linux isn't quite the same without the desktop part and today Tecmint.com briefed folks on 13 of them. The descriptions aren't comprehensive, but it's a nice little rundown for those looking for a replacement. He also includes newcomers Deepin, Cinnamon, and Pantheon as well as forgotten CDE and boutique Sugar.
A few other notes tonight:
* Manjaro Linux 15.12 released