My hot take is that #LinuxMint is strongly overrated. Their app store is borderline unusable, which makes it a no-go for newcomers and half the system is antiquated.
#Ubuntu as well, even with the knowledge that dunking on Ubuntu is the status quo. I can write a book about my gripes with Ubuntu, but it boils down to them just blindly patching over anything upstream breaking shit in the process.
Not even sure what to recommend to newcomers these days. Maybe #Fedora, nothing comes close for me.
@sstendahl I'm a newcomer, since a couple of years. I use LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition), and standard Linux Mint on additional computer. I came from macOS, and before that Windows. For me, the Linux Mint family is really good, and almost everything I need is in their store. Ok, I'm only one person, but I am very satisfied with LMDE/Mint, and so much more satisfied than with macOS and Windows, although they works too.
@sstendahl Three examples of sw for which I need to go outside of the LMDE/Minte "store"to get are digiKam (AppImage), Vuescan (native deb, purchased non-free) and Joplin (AppImage).
@hehemrin Don't let me tell you what distro works best for you, if you don't care about the technical details or about having a "modern" software stack, then Mint is a perfectly competent distro for many people.
Even though I think _personally_ it's aggressively mid, and I'm not a fan of many design decisions they make (not just UI-wise, also the software stack, as well as things like downgrading GTK4 applications because they don't like libadwaita which is a terrible move imo). (2/2)
@sstendahl I'm not technical expert, I'm foremost a user. But I do know more technically about Linux than about Windows. I'm not really aware of the problems you point out that I have... In most cases, if a sw is not the latest release, it's still fine for me (as long as security issues are managed). Re digikam and Joplin, it is only the Appimages that are maintained by the developers, so I see it as better to use AppImage for them. I also have Debian (Xfce) on a test machine, but I prefer LMDE.
@hehemrin Just as an fyi, digiKam and Joplin are available on Flathub which is available in the Mint.
It's just that Mint disables unverified (meaning community packaged) software by default. But if you turn that on, you should be able to get those from Mint's software "store" as well.
To add nuance, I think Mint certainly has its place (especially for newcomers) and it's def. better than Ubuntu. (1/2)