[lug] Ars Technica : Linux Mint 18 Review

[Brennen Bearnes]

$0.02:

I've used Ubuntu on laptop hardware for years, but I've mostly been
using it as (effectively) a Debian with more/newer hardware
support.  Unity isn't my cup of tea as a desktop environment, and I
got hooked on barebones tiling window managers a long time ago.

Earlier this spring I realized that since I don't have a lot of
trust for Canonical as an institution, or their overall vision of
what end-user Linux should look like, I'd probably be happier with
everything back on stock Debian where I wouldn't have to engage in
such a constant arms race with the distribution to maintain the
status quo of my graphical environment.  It's been a pleasant
return, modulo a few hassles with hardware and fonts.  Jessie is a
pretty solid release, especially considering the sheer amount of
systemd-related political ugliness that dominated its development
cycle.

I ran Mint for a while a few years back, but at least at the time,
there were serious privacy concerns with its default behavior, in
addition to the issues mentioned in Tyler's link.  (I seem to
recall some kind of adware happening in its default browser.)  They
seem to have done a nice job on the classically-styled desktop out
of the box, but I can't say I trust the developers any more than I
do Canonical.

-- bpb