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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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PSA: When people ask you "What distro should I use?", try pointing them here (distrochooser.de)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I found this site a while back - basically it will ask you a bunch of questions on your usage of your PC, and will came out with a list of recommended distros, and a list of reasons why YOU could like or not like it.

https://distrochooser.de/

There are some similar sites to this one, but since I'm not familiar with them, I won't post them. They are simply DuckDuckGo-able though.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

how would you compare Mint to MX Linux? Whats the biggest difference in your opinion?

When selecting a distro to mess around with, i just checked distrowatch to find the most popular distro and chose that (MX). My reasoning was that the resources like wiki/tutorials/forum posts would be most easily available with a more "popular" distro.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

The main thing a newbie would benefit from with Mint is their extremely polished software appstore program, which is essentially a nice frontend to their repository that provides categories, reviews, and easy installation and management of your programs wrapped up in a polished, non-techie UI.

MX linux has a similar program installer for common apps, but it does not offer reviews, and does not give access to the entire Debian repo, eventually requiring you to use Aptitude, which is not newbie friendly at all.

Mint's Cinnamon interface is also extremely easy to use for a new windows convert.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the biggest difference is that it is based on Debian and is a bit more conservative. I prefer cinnamon over xfce and in its default even over KDE.

Really, I just assume better hardware compatibility and slightly newer packages from Mint and that's just about it.

Don't read too much into it. There is nothing wrong with MX, Debian or just plain Ubuntu either. In my opinion Ubuntu fixes a few problems Debian has and Mint does the same with Ubuntu. Because apt is widely supported the Debian family is a great choice anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

thank you! more up-to-date packages sound good to me, will have to check out mint, then.