Ubuntu vs Linux Mint - Which is right for you?

selecting a linux distribution can be really hard because there's so many similar choices in this versus episode we're going to take a look at linux mint and ubuntu linux and see which one's right for you before we get started on this versus video if you like this video and want to see more like them be sure to subscribe and click the notification bell so you can see when we post new videos on our channel all right let's dive in there's a lot of distributions out there but in this versus episode we're going to focus on two of the most popular ubuntu linux and linux mint now these two have a couple of big differences that we can highlight real quick here with some background information first off ubuntu uses a different desktop manager than mint in ubuntu we have the gnome desktop manager and in linux mint we have the cinnamon desktop manager that gives them both a very different visual feel that we'll see a little bit later also they're both available in different flavors so you can get them with different desktop managers if you choose and that starts to bring them closer in line and now they look very similar again but their origins are very different ubuntu was released in 2004 by canonical it's got a corporate entity behind it so there's actually a lot of people that work to put that product together versus linux mint which was created in 2006 by an individual person and has grown into a volunteer team so much more grassroots than corporate now the origin of each of these they weren't created from scratch they were both forks of previously existing operating systems mostly debian so you'll see where ubuntu is actually a fork of wn and linux mint is a fork of ubuntu which is a fork of debian so these are all really related and again that makes them appear to be very similar but we also have another huge difference which is the target audience with linux mint they've really focused on the desktop experience so for desktop users what can make it the easiest for them to use but ubuntu is a little more flexible they focused on not just one area but servers desktops iot super computers really really flexible way that you can use that operating system all right now i mentioned the user interfaces are different let's take a look at each one and get an idea of what that means let's get started with ubuntu what i'm running here is a default install of ubuntu linux 20.04 and you'll see the gnome desktop manager it's very unique compared to other operating systems you've got a task manager or task bar over here on the left i can see some default applications like firefox and thunderbird mail we've got a music player their app store and so on and then i've got an application library button here if i click that i'll see all of my applications come up and i can start to pick and choose what i want to run and we even have multiple desktop support if we want to have virtual desktops to lay things across gnome is designed to be a very efficient user friendly operating system and the folks at canonical have made a few minor changes to it to make it a little more tablet friendly as well so that's why we see nice large well-defined buttons over here that are easy to touch with your finger when you're on a touch screen so all things they've kind of taken into account we also have power management our login and log off options those are up at the top right of the screen so you're very designed to be a user interface is kind of out of your way applications get the primary focus when i'm running an application it will get most of the screen all the other controls are out of sight out of mind now let's take a look at linux mint linux mint uses the cinnamon desktop manager and it's very different than what we saw on ubuntu first off you'll notice that things are pretty small it's not focused on a touch interface at all they expect a mouse and a keyboard so all the controls are rendered smaller on the screen and i don't have a task bar on the left side i have a task bar down here at the bottom i see a button for linux mint with their little logo i can bring up to get to a menu and if you're coming from the windows world this should look really familiar to you linux mint wanted to make a desktop that was easy for people to switch to and back when windows 7 was being end of life they knew a lot of people would be switching to linux and they wanted to give them a similar environment something they were used to so they wouldn't have to be retrained so that's what we're seeing here is basically the equivalent of a start menu at the bottom left we've got our file explorer and other options right here in the taskbar at the bottom right i've got my clock my volume my network and i've got desktop icons very very similar to microsoft windows so that's the primary goal here of this desktop environment is to make it easy for users to switch in without having to be retrained completely different design dynamic than what we saw over in ubuntu so we just saw the desktops which is a pretty big difference let's talk about some of the similarities first the app store both ubuntu and linux mint are forked down the road from debian and that means they run pretty much the identical set of applications so you're not going to see a huge difference between the two ubuntu does have their own app store where they do curated software in linux mint we have the software manager which is basically the same thing curated software there's some minor differences but most people will never notice them upgradeability both of these are fully upgradeable and because they're effectively free for most people there's no reason not to upgrade you'll see updates come out every six months and the upgrades are typically automatic so there is a software update manager that's running in the background that will take care of updating your packages as well as the operating system itself and then lastly installation they both use the same installation wizard so it's really just clicking next a bunch of times maybe you want to customize your hard drive layout maybe not but it's done the same way in either one so if you know how to install ubuntu you know how to install linux mint and vice versa so those are basically interchangeable now let's talk about the differences there's a couple of things that can really jump out that identify where one distro will be better over another one the desktop manager is probably the big obvious one in fact that's going to be one of the major decision points here if you like that cinnamon interface then linux mint may be right for you if you prefer the gnome interface then ubuntu may be right for you but those are interchangeable we can actually change out the interface so some of the other differences start to come into play let's talk about system requirements with ubuntu they recommend you have a minimum of four gigabytes of ram to do a basic install in the linux mint world they recommend a minimum of two gigabytes and that means that linux mint is a little bit more friendly on lower end hardware if you have older computers old laptops laying around linux mint may run a little bit better there than ubuntu although ubuntu can be scaled back if need be cost and support linux mint is completely totally free there's no way to pay for it it's just free but you get basically no support there's a community that's available you can post questions but it's not real support so you're on your own with linux mint ubuntu on the other hand has a whole commercial arm you can pay for commercial support they don't sell ubuntu the operating system is free you can download install and run it doesn't cost you a dime but if you want to pay then you can get support you can call them on the phone or open up an email ticket and they'll help you through your issues which makes it a lot more friendly for business use and that's that next icon there on the business side ubuntu is a very viable option linux mint really isn't because there's no chance to get support you typically don't want to use that in your business if something goes wrong you're on your own you've got to fix it it's not supported also ubuntu is a little faster at getting updates because mint is building off of what ubuntu has done so it's a little bit slower on the update side which makes linux mint a little less attractive for business users the release schedule i mentioned six month updates right so every six months both ubuntu and linux mint do releases however there is a difference in long-term support releases you don't want to have to upgrade every six months that's a hassle especially in an enterprise where you might have thousands of computers so what ubuntu does is every two years they do what's called an lts or a long-term servicing branch and a long-term servicing release is supported for five years so that means you really only have to upgrade every five years yes you need to do security updates but a major upgrade is every five years in linux mint it's every two years so they have a more frequent update schedule for an individual user on their desktop at home that's fine in an enterprise that's a bit of a headache backup systems well they both have support for basically the same backup software so not a huge difference from that side but one thing ubuntu does shine at is they directly support the zfs file system which has some really neat snapshotting and backup utilities that can piggyback off of it to make it easier to backup software so ubuntu definitely gets a bit of an edge on that side customization well ubuntu is constantly used as the basis for other distros like linux mint there are literally hundreds of distros that are based on ubuntu you can customize it however you want and release it and know that it's going to be stable and secure and a lot of people do that linux mint on the other hand really only has a handful of forks off of it that most people will go back to the ubuntu side so ubuntu is considered to be heavily customizable for creating your own distro but both are customizable just in terms of your own machine you can tweak just about any setting that you want and you have a lot of flexibility now gaming this is going to be a big deciding factor for some of you out there i've mentioned some of the business case stuff but let's talk about personal when you talk about video games the number one store for buying video games right now is steam and steam it directly supports ubuntu you can go to valve's steam page and download a deb package which you'll install on debian it'll actually install in linux mint as well but some little things may not work quite right at valve they are only testing on ubuntu and so if you want to do video gaming with something like steam's library then you'll want to run ubuntu for that so it's got better gaming support in linux mint there's a few games that are packaged with the distro they're kind of older it's really an afterthought there it's not a primary design decision although it's not really a primary design decision for canonical either it's just that valve has chosen that one as the distro they want to support all right so the bottom line the bottom line here is if you are working in a enterprise or a business environment iot servers desktops super computers ubuntu is going to be the better choice for you it gives you the most flexibility and consistency if you're an end user or a home user then linux mint might work better for you it's a more user user-friendly desktop environment that helps people switching from windows 7 into the linux world and it's just a kind of an easier adoption cycle however i'll tell you as somebody who works in linux every single day i like to have a consistent environment so if i want to consistent environment between my work and my home ubuntu really is the best choice for that it gives us the most options and flexibility and once you learn it in one method it applies to the other so it gives you a consistent environment to learn well that's about it for this versus episode help hopefully i helped you decide between which one is right for you ubuntu linux or linux mint and if you're interested in more linux training from the great folks at it pro tv or even myself be sure to check us out on our website at itpro.tv you'll find tons of linux courses available for you i look forward to seeing you there

Channel: ITProTV

Views: 152,290

Rating: 4.8721366 out of 5

Keywords: ubuntu vs mint, ubuntu vs mint gaming, ubuntu vs mint for beginners, ubuntu vs mint 2020, ubuntu vs mint 2021, linux mint vs ubuntu gaming, linux mint vs ubuntu performance, linux mint vs ubuntu ram usage, linux mint vs ubuntu speed, ubuntu vs linux mint 2021, ubuntu vs linux mint performance, ubuntu vs linux mint which is better, ubuntu and mint differences, difference between ubuntu and mint, mint and ubuntu differences

Id: 5kPn-Hf7hOc

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021