Linux Mint

Linux has many many flavors, but I’m fond of Mint, specifically using Cinnamon for my window manager. I have been using Mint Cinnamon since 2013. Prior to that I had used Ubuntu, but some of their recent UI changes were difficult to deal with.

Mint Cinnamon offers a nice clean interface, incredible customization options, and it just makes sense to me. It has the elegance of Windows XP without the fluff of newer Windows versions or the odd inconsistencies of MacOS and OS X. I find Macs difficult to use and their lack of customization options frustrating. Windows works well enough, but some of the tools I like just work better on Linux. So Linux is my primary operating system.

That said, I don’t recommend Linux for everyone. In fact, I don’t recommend it for most people. You can use Linux (whether Mint or another “distro”) for any day-to-day computer tasks like email, web browsing, document creation, etc. but since it is different than a Mac or Windows PC, there’s a learning curve. I really like having full control of my system and being able to change any part of it to suit my needs and even my whims. Linux is becoming easier and easier for regular users, and is a good alternative for those with Windows 10 machines that cannot upgrade to Windows 11.

That said, if I’m being completely honest, some software does work better on Windows, for instance. (An example would me my home document scanner really needs its native OCR software and Adobe Acrobat to function well. Dual booting into Windows takes care of this and other Windows-specific needs. )

The neat thing about Mint is you can be “Linux curious” and boot it on your existing machine via USB stick (instructions on their site) and not have to install a thing or change a single file on your hard drive. It’s definitely worth a look.

The latest version of Linux Mint is 22.2, and I’ve got it working great on many of my machines. There is one annoyance: elevated users don’t have a red prompt any more. Fortunately, that links to the solution.

Linux Mint logo

Current Tools

Old Tools

1 Comments

  1. Shutter - Chris Mospaw on September 6, 2025 at 12:24 pm

    […] have some sort of screen shot ability built in. Those built-in tools always seem half-baked to me. Linux is certainly no exception here; but as usual, any deficiency is made up by the presence of a good […]



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