Superior over what exactly? Most workstation/desktop distros have a graphical software manager and handle drivers in a similar manner.
Very few have software and driver managers.
“Most users want a no fuss os” and “very few have software and drive managers” sound quite contradictory, doesn’t it?
Recently I’ve used OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, PopOS! and Ubuntu, as well as Mint, and all of these have comparable graphical software managers. Which ones are you thinking of that don’t?
Man, this doesn’t deserve all these downvotes. OP’s just expressing gratitude.
I’ve never understood the fuss about Mint, but I thought it was more of a tinkerer’s distro? I’ve been using Debian, which has its warts, but seems to want to minimize loose ends (not always successfully). Some more explanation of Mint’s benefits could be useful.
Imo, the great thing about mint is stability first. You can tinker with it, but it’s generally about being able to plug it in, and get started using your device with as little puttering around as possible. It tends to be one of, if not the, most out of the box easy to install on any hardware.
Yes, it lags a little behind since it’s a derivative distro, and they tend to keep packages stable over recent. If you need more recent packages, it can suck since you’ll have more work to do to get it set up. But the average user doesn’t really need need bleeding edge stuff.
Then you’ve got their flagship DE, cinnamon. Again, right from install, it’s usable, visually easy, and pretty much bug free. But it still has enough depth of features to play with if you want.
When I started exploring Linux as win10 started being more and more obviously something I wasn’t going to like, I tried a bunch of distros on multiple machines. Mint ended up being the most reliable on all of them. By the time I was picking up enough background to be able to move to something else and make it work, mint was still doing what I needed, so I only play around with distros when I’m gifted old hardware and patch something together out of it. And I end up going to mint on those because there’s really nothing better for my needs, and I like it.
Mint is not really for tinkerers. It’s a distro designed to work out of the box without the need to tweak anything, and it does that well. The downsides are that it’s not always the most up to date, and it bundles a lot so it’s not a slim distro.
Telling a Debian user that Mint isn’t the most up to date struck me as pretty funny.
True. Not everyone needs to chase the latest stuff, apart from security patches.
YasT
The only superior Linux distro and DE is the one that works for you and meets your needs.
This is different for each user and, frankly, the joy of Linux that it has such a variety as to be able to meet almost everyone’s needs.
For me , personally, thats Debian/Gnome with minimal tweaks but just because it works for my workflow does not make it superior.
Mint is definitely good because of those things, and its no-fuss approach, but almost all Linux distros include a software and driver app with equal functionality.
almost all distros include a … driver app
Not really. Ubuntu and Mint does, but Arch, Fedora, and Debian don’t. The latter two don’t even have the drivers in their main repositories.
Some may be included in the desktop environment. on Fedora KDE for example provides me with firmware updates for my laptop within the settings program.
On Manjaro, I remember using a driver app for Nvidia graphics.
At the very least, even if your distro doesn’t have a specific app or menu for firmware/drivers, you will most likely have the linux firmware repositories added to your package manager which ensures they’re updated with your system.
For all other drivers of course we can rely on Kernel updates.
Which distro doesn’t have a software manager? If I recall correctly even Gentoo had graphical software managers ~15 years ago.
maybe reword the title, as this will inevitably lead to partisan turf wars in the vein of my-distro-can-beat-up-yalls-distro and such.
as to your thesis, yes, mint and ubuntu are important and needed as beginner-friendly it-just-works solutions that have things in place (like the mentioned driver manager) that are sorely needed for noobs. once they learn what’s what they are free to wander farther, as there’s essentially zero switching costs when moving from, say mint to fedora.
you’ll find low sympathy from experienced users as they can’t relate to people who are so much below their expertise level. case in point, a buncha people already mentioning package managers, ignoring the idea that a noob doesn’t know what that is.
I think the title is intended to lead to partisan turf wars.
I don’t necessarily agree with the beginner vs expert thing.
I’ve been using linux for many years but I certainly don’t have any magical expert knowledge or intuition. When I have driver trouble I google it and copy whatever commands seem sensible.
It’s probably better to say that some distros are more configurable from the desktop than others. As in, if you’re going to get grumpy about using the command line then mint or ubu might be your best choices.
That said, in my experience linux GUIs rarely expose all of the underlying features of whatever service they’re interacting with. (For example, gnomes disk management GUI).
