George Whittaker wrote an article about the new Linux Mint 22 in Linux Magazine. And indeed that is a fine distribution – as long as your computer has at least the 3GB of main memory to even start it. I tried the live image on my wife’s old Lenovo SL500 with only 2GB, and it didn’t even start that live image.
But I agree with Rich Edmonds of MSN in that it is probably *the* distribution for Windows converts, like those coming from Windows 10 who don’t have a machine capable of running Win11.
Any Linux would be better than going to Win11 of course, but this one makes it easy indeed. So if your machine has 3-4GB or more of RAM, give it a try. If not, try Debian. The newly installed Debian Trixie (which is not even out yet) runs in about 570MB once you have it on disk or on SSD, provided you’ll use XFCE instead of Gnome. With a Gnome desktop it needs a bit over 1.1GB when running, as tested in a QEMU/KVM virtual machine.
Oh, and Mint isn’t for newbies only – my friend Peter is certainly not new to Linux, but uses Mint regularly for new installations as he told me. I’m older, so I’m using its granddaddy which is Debian (Ubuntu would be the in-between parent, so to say) 😉
And regarding that headline above: I’ve tried Mint in a VM as well, and of course it’s nice, and also sleek and speedy – and it updates much faster than Windows as well 😉 It takes about 720MB or so when running idle, so its Cinnamon desktop is somewhere in between XFCE and Gnome.
As always, thanks for reading.