Hi, how’s it going? I’ve been daily driving mint with i3 for a while now, (takes like 500mb idle ram) but I always hear mint being called a newbie distro, I know arch is harder to set up and more customizable for example, but overall im wondering, in which cases one would go from mint to another distro? what can make other distros “better” than mint? i’ll end up using a window manager (i3 or if thats not availible some other lightweight one) so differences in desktop environments i dont really care that much about
Its just what they come packaged with. Its all the same kernel. Do you like the software Mint comes with? Have you felt a need to replace a bunch? Does your computer do what you want it to?
Thats really about it. Debian is “good for servers” because it comes with software for running servers. Kali is “good for hackers” because it comes with software for hacking. Mint is “good for newbies” because it comes with software newbies expect.
Thats really pretty much it. Theres nothing stopping you from installing the software you want. If you start to feel like your distro has a bunch of stuff you dont need, then maybe you can look to other distros that dont come with that stuff.
Even if the distro has a bunch you don’t want, uninstalling is pretty easy now with the package managers I’ve used. Just strip some things away and see if that’s good first.
Also good advice.
If your computer runs smoothly and youre not having a bunch of headaches, you’re generally better off tinkering with what youve got than going through the hassle of installing a whole new OS.
If your computer runs smoothly and you’re not having a bunch of headaches, you’re better off NOT tinkering with what you have. No point fixing what’s not broken.
Fair, I meant it more in the user space sense. If your OS came with Blender and you never use Blender, uninstall it.
the other thing is the release cycle, if you’re constantly fighting that then maybe switch distros
Thats fair.
Uh, there’s definitely some different kernels. Cachy etc apply a lot of patches focused on speed and performance. That said there are other distros that offer the cachy patched kernel.
There are also server focused kernels. There is a ton of stuff “in the kernel” whether it’s applied to yours is a different question. So it’s not that simple.
But with flatpak etc, I’d say the real choice these days is immutable, stable, or rolling.
Do you really think that matters in OP’s context?
Of course I was simplifying things
Neither you nor I can say with 100% certainty it does or doesn’t. They didn’t go deep on their hardware that I saw. All I was pointing out was that that was a bit much of a simplification. There are reasons to look at the kernel. Just not a lot of them. Largely I agree with you though. Debian, fedora, or any of their offshoots on hardware from the last ten years potato potato right?
But on a potato. I have an old laptop with a core 2 duo in it. A late 2000’s laptop that only ran windows 7 at best. It’s still surprisingly capable despite its age. Put something like a modern fedora on it, though that’s a different story. It becomes slow almost to the point of being frustrating to use. No matter which desktop environment I’m using. Drop MX or similar and it’s a whole different experience. Part of it kernel patches, part of it run times. Even i3/i5/i7 haswell or older can see a solid boost on kernels not compiled with modern processor extensions primarily in mind.