Ubuntu losing in popularity?

I was checking http://distrowatch.com/


And I noted how Mint has bypassed Ubuntu. I'm not sure if this is a good indicator for a OS popularity. But I thought it was worth notating. Why would people use mint rather than ubuntu?

I thought Mint was just ubuntu but with more bloat.

Maybe not, lol.

[bob]

That's hardly an accurate method to measure popularity, but Mint's a great distro by all standards. Clem's a stand-out and I'll agree that he's made it a cut above Ubuntu, IMHO.

[smr54]

A lot of people are disenchanted with Unity and/or Gnome 3. Mint 12 is apparently (I say apparently because I don't use Unity or Gnome, so am going by hearsay) making a nice interface that will not aggravate people as much.

Also, even more than Ubuntu, they've always seemed to try to take some of the typical problems out--for example, codecs, java, other things that for one reason or another, sometimes legal, sometimes philosophical, don't work out of the box on Ubuntu.

[rclark]

Yeah, I was impressed with Mint (LXDE version) for several reasons. Out of the box: 1) I could load it on by USB thumb drive with persistent storage (get updates and get software) . 2) All the codecs and such were already loaded, so you-tube, and others worked out of the box, 3) sound worked, and 4) wi-fi worked where-ever I went on my lap-top. It's the way an OS should work ... ie. just works! Every other live disto I tried (Ubuntu included) had something missing or I had to tweak. Even Fedora I've spent several hours getting it 'back' to where the previous version was at because of all the 'extra' stuff that needed to be loaded. And I still have a few 'issues' even though all the main stuff is in place on my home server!

No, to a newbie I would definitely say 'try Mint' it works!

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, Ubuntu is getting long in the tooth and it still lacks decent wizards for many things that we take for granted on Fedora, Suse or Mageia.

Long ago, Ubuntu had something similar to Autoplus of Dangermouse (Thanks Dangermouse!!!) which was called Automatix, but since Mint was born, that is the best way to get a fully working Debian desktop system.

So, yeah I send new users to Fedora and tell them about Autoplus and then they are perfectly happy, but Mint would be a good alternative and it is certainly way better than Ubuntu.

[ulftho]

It is a fact Ubuntu, doesn't live up to it's reputation. Since I installed Ereader the UBUNTU- system is definitely unstable and the latest GNOME -version is a catastrophy. My favorite today is Fedora 14 and I intend to use Xfce when even Fedora leaves the old GNOME-version. However if you have trouble trouble with the VLM in Fedora there is still the reliable Mandriva based on Fedora. I shouldn't leave the main stream to experiment with MINT and similar things.

[assen]

Apparently more people recognize the fact that computers' primary purpose is to do work - which calls for high productivity instead of counter-productive 'innovation'. Thumbs up for Mint for having MATE!

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by ulftho

It is a fact Ubuntu, doesn't live up to it's reputation. Since I installed Ereader the UBUNTU- system is definitely unstable and the latest GNOME -version is a catastrophy. My favorite today is Fedora 14 and I intend to use Xfce when even Fedora leaves the old GNOME-version. However if you have trouble trouble with the VLM in Fedora there is still the reliable Mandriva based on Fedora. I shouldn't leave the main stream to experiment with MINT and similar things.

Mandriva is not based on Fedora. A long time ago it was based on Red Hat, but as I said, that was a long time ago. Mandriva is a distro in its own right. Not that I like it.... But I think this is the second time I've seen this disinformation in this forum.

[flyingfsck]

Yup, Mandriva was a fork of Redhat 5, way back before Redhat renumbered and eventually became 5 for a second time.

Today, there are also PCLinuxOS and Mageia, which are both very nice forks of Mandriva. Both of these are as good or better than Fedora - depending on what you want.

Originally Posted by assen

Apparently more people recognize the fact that computers' primary purpose is to do work - which calls for high productivity instead of counter-productive 'innovation'. Thumbs up for Mint for having MATE!

This holds some truth to it.

But (some) people want a computer to be fun as well, I know since a person said he ran what he called a wintendo and explained that he likes Linux but Windows was his pick due to all the games windows has.


I personally think Ubuntus problem is that it just looks old and feels the most unprofessional and does not fill any particular need. Windows is much better than Linux in some aspects, Ubunut idea seems to play on Linux weknesses mainly "hey we can windows" seems to be the slogan. People don't get impressed by Ubuntu if they have a fairly new windows version that is not full of viruses. Linux has some advantages but its not a windows killer when it comes to everything.

Also the partitioning tool isn't even powerful. Ubunutu seems and feel like Windows 95 but with more bugs, and I'm not even sure if Ubuntu has better games or tools than those that were in DOS. I havn't tried Mint but if you build stuff on crap, chances are that it will colapse so I don't intend to test it either. All the ubuntu built distros are probably gone in 10 year if I have to guess, what do others think?

[Dan]

Originally Posted by assen

Apparently more people recognize the fact that computers' primary purpose is to do work - which calls for high productivity instead of counter-productive 'innovation'. Thumbs up for Mint for having MATE!

Ayup! <....>

[RupertPupkin]

Originally Posted by birdwatcher

I'm not sure if this is a good indicator for a OS popularity.

It's been discussed here many times so I won't rehash it, but basically Distrowatch stats are meaningless. In terms of being a true reflection of a distro's popularity I would put it slightly above spinning a bottle and seeing where it lands.

[rich52]

The Gnome 3/ Unity shells are fiasco's. Unless Unity gets it all together and realize that dekstop computers are for getting real work done and are not to be confused with tablet pc's they haven't got a chance to survive. Both Gnome 3 and Unity are dumbed down way too much a leave a lot of customization controls out for the user. Other issues are the graphic card issues (i.e. Nvidia vs Ati with Gnome 3). I'm a KDE fan and have tried Kubuntu and it runs a close 2nd to Fedora's F16 which in my opinion runs much smoother and has fewer bugs to contend with.

rich

[flyingfsck]

The funny thing is that many (most?) users seem to believe that you need to completely re-install the machine in order to use a different DE. Here on Fedora too. Sad really, considering how easy it is to install another one.

[shade0o]

Ive swap from Ubuntu to Fedora just because of the native Gnome Shell.
tempted to swap to something else unless i can find out why my wine doesnt work, missing some i386 lib files which are screwing over a few things (running 64x) and keep getting Signal 11s for a range of things...