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Old 03-31-17, 05:42 AM   #13
Skybird
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Location: the mental asylum named Germany
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I put my money on those who already 2-3 years ago predicted that Mint will kind of divorce from ubuntu sooner or later and go along the Debian trail exclusively. Augurs already in 2013 predicted the soon to come death of Mint - and since then it became instead stronger and more popular with every year. Like others predict since 20 years that Linux is about to take over gaming from Windows, which until today just is not the case, not even closely. What tech insiders and developers see as essentials, must not necessarily be what is relevant for the ordinary user, both perspectives are very different ones, a lesson last but not least learned from microsoft and W10. And even if Mint would be stopped, it nevertheless would be a stop not happening over night, but over years. The current 18.1 distribution is having LTS (8long time support) for until 2021, 5 years since release, that is. If every couple of years one has to renew the OS (I did it once per year under Windows, to clean the system and make it faster again), there probably is nothing too drastic to complain about. - But ringing the panic bell over MintS' imminent death, is a bit irresponsible, I think. It can push people into plenty of needless work for essentially nothing within the coming years. And that Mint indeed is dying, is so far nothing but a guessing game. When I read comparing numbers on distributions of Linux in last Decembre, Mint still was the widest-spread version of Linux out there, and it still gets many recommendations from publicatiosn and book authors, for its easy accessability. Things can change, yes, but no need to ring general quarters already now. Ten years ago Suse Linux was the latest call, and today it is almost gone. A lot can happen in ten years. But ten years are just this: TEN YEARS.

The some weeks ago reported problems of mine with the updater btw were found to be users fault meanwhile. My 18.1 Mint works flawless, smooth and fine, with the only excption of my damn printer. When i have consumed my still big ink cartridge reserves, i will buy a compatible Brother or HP one. Printer incompatabilties exist in all Linux distributions. And as long as Ubunutu has no decisive advanatge in that field, I have no motivation to consider it. Whatever it may do differently - I do not miss these different features at all.
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Last edited by Skybird; 03-31-17 at 05:50 AM.
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