Been looking to finally make the switch from Windows to Linux and I’ve familiarized myself with Linux Mint run in a VM as a beginner friendly option.
However I noticed it’s not included in the recommendations on here. I’d like to inquire as to the reasons for this. How considerable are these differences compared to say, Fedora, and can they be mitigated? At this point I’d like to stick with Mint but if the drawbacks are severe enough I suppose I have to go with Fedora though it might be more difficult to learn and use.
Hey - welcome to the community. On each recommendation page there are some criteria explaining. Desktop/PC - Privacy Guides
Mint falls short in the following:
Doesn’t freeze regular releases for more than 1 year.
We recommend against “Long Term Support” or “stable” distro releases for desktop usage.
To your question this can’t be mitigated. Additional to the criteria above Mint is not mainline it relies on Ubuntu and therefore you add an additional point of failure.
If you search in the forum you may find that potentially someone already asked this.
Fedora is actually not difficult at all. What do you think is difficult? It even has a cinnamon DE so I recommend going to both that if you happen to like the user experience of Mint.
As a Linux Mint user, I feel it’s necessary to understand that just because something isn’t recommended doesn’t mean it’s not right for you.
If you’re looking to make the switch off of Windows, Mint is a great first stop. I started with a dualboot setup, and after about a year of barely touching Windows, I did a full fresh install of Mint 22.2 and never looked back.
Linux in general does have a learning curve, and Mint does keep this from being as severe as it might be elsewhere. If you take the step to start using Mint as your daily driver to get a feel for Linux so that you can later jump to Fedora or openSuse or something that is recommended, then you’re making positive steps, expanding your horizons, building skills, and also not feeding the Windows telemetry beast.
Privacy and security are a journey, not a destination. Take a step on the journey, don’t be frozen by concern that you have to just magically appear at a destination 500 miles down the road or you’re failing.
It’s not the easiest option either. It’s in a weird middle ground in my opinion.
Cinnamon’s lack of Wayland support is one of the main reasons Linux Mint wouldn’t be recommended. I guess Fedora + Cinnamon would be preferable between the two but anyone who wants to stick to Privacy Guides criteria is limited to GNOME, KDE, and Sway.
Its just that PG does have a strict category and while Mint isnt included, it doesnt mean that it is a bad distro per se.
Like what @SwampTrainer said Mint is a good way to learn Linux until you graduate into something better such as Fedora, OpenSuse or Arch. There is nothing wrong with staying in Mint as well. I am willing to bet that more people will encourage you to stay in Linux Mint rather than go back to Win 11 or worse yet, Win10 or 7.
For a general computing use case, Linux Mint is more than adequate. You can go back here after encountering pain points and paper cuts and then we can have better discussion on how to move forward.
What do you mean by this? Sure, they offer LTS versions. But they do have a new release every 6 months, meaning you can choose to always get the latest version.
For a short time it does. When Fedora makes a new release (e.g 42) the release that is 2 versions old (e.g 40) then gets 4 weeks of support and then is end of life.
Linux Mint isn’t my top distro recommendation, though it’s undeniably better than Windows for privacy. However, its popularity among newcomers, reliance on Ubuntu’s LTS releases and Cinnamon’s slow adoption of modern security features like Wayland (still experimental in Mint 22) and conservative update policy (mintupdate, categorizes updates into levels 1-5, with security pathces as Level 1-1, but degaults to manual installation for most users) together, these traits make it an attractive target for Linux malware.
If I were writing Linux malware today, I’d probably target Mint.
I know that we don’t have track of target attacks to Mint but just my two cents.
Ive been using many Linux distros, both as a pro (at work) and at home.
Longest time Ive spent on Mint (+/-4 years) and have to say its rock solid, easy-on-newcomers, stable distro. Plus nicely designed. I really recommend it for personal use.
However, on server machines, Im using AlmaLinux. Highly recommend it.
While I agree with your points about its relatively weak security, it doesn’t categorize updates into levels anymore. I know this because I switched to Linux Mint recently and after months of using the update manager, I didn’t see any levels listed anywhere. Hell I didn’t even know Linux Mint used to do that until I saw an article talking about it and Zorin OS. Someone else even responded to that article saying that Linux Mint doesn’t do update levels anymore.
Would you mind sharing a link where this is explained?
Edit: Nevermind, it got dropped quite a few years ago. Nevertheless a terrible idea and does not shed a good light on the security thinking of the project.
Fair points. That being said, I would expect that without telemetry to back up how many users might be on Mint in the first place, that’s a bit of a gamble for anyone writing malware. Why not spend the time writing malware for distros used more on server architecture, where there’s more of a potential for a payoff? Security updates with other distros might be more common, but we’re all still relying on the obscurity of Linux use and not being negligent to keep attackers out.
IMO Mint users who can reasonably avoid malware through effective cyber hygiene are at most barely marginally worse off than the users of any other distro.
I understand the reason not to recommend Mint on the site as PG’s bar is high, and I certainly won’t argue with that. But as a first step to encourage people to get off of Windows 11, IMO, it’s “Any port in a storm” and Mint isn’t a bad port to wait until one can move onto a better place.
No one has mentioned this yet, but since you’re a beginner I’m going to throw another option in the mix. It’s where I started and after the first day of using, never went back to using Windows. The distro is Kubuntu.
Kubuntu, I think is great. Not that long ago, it used x11 instead of wayland, but that has now changed with Kubuntu 25.04. It’s a great option that allows you to customize pretty much everything on your desktop. It’s a very simple distro to use imo. However, perfecting the customization options to your liking will take time but it doesn’t all have to be done at once.
Linux Mint just works, however there is a huge security/privacy difference between x11 and Wayland so keep that in mind.