Linux Mint’s purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution.

Excerpt From DistroWatch.com:

Linux Mint is one of the surprise packages of the past year. Originally launched as a variant of Ubuntu with integrated media codecs, it has now developed into one of the most user-friendly distributions on the market – complete with a custom desktop and menus, several unique configuration tools, a web-based package installation interface, and a number of different editions. Perhaps most importantly, this is one project where the developers and users are in constant interaction, resulting in dramatic, user-driven improvements with every new release. DistroWatch has spoken to the founder and lead developer of Linux Mint, Clement Lefebvre, about the history of the distribution.

Some of the reasons for the success of Linux Mint are:

  • It’s one of the most community driven distributions. You could literally post an idea in the forums today and see it implemented the week after in the “current” release. Of course this has pros and cons and compared to distributions with roadmaps, feature boards and fixed release cycles we miss a lot of structure and potentially a lot of quality, but it allows us to react quickly, implement more innovations and make the whole experience for us and for the users extremely exciting.
  • It is a Debian-based distribution and as such it is very solid and it comes with one of the greatest package managers.
  • It is compatible with and uses Ubuntu repositories. This gives Linux Mint users access to a huge collection of packages and software.
  • It comes with a lot of desktop improvements which make it easier for the user to do common things.
  • There is a strong focus on making things work out of the box (WiFi cards drivers in the file system, multimedia support, screen resolution, etc).

What is Linux Mint?

Linux Mint is a free Linux-based operating system designed for use on desktop computers. It is based and compatible with another free operating system called Ubuntu (which is based on another operating system called Debian). This allows Linux Mint to take advantage of the large amount of software packaged for use with Ubuntu and Debian.

Is Linux Mint suitable for companies?

Yes. Linux Mint offers paid commercial support to companies and individuals. Free community support is also available from the forums and the IRC channel. The main purpose of Linux Mint is to innovate and constantly bring the best desktop solutions to its users. For this reason, the release cycle is relatively fast, with a new version being released about every 6 months. Because of this rapid release schedule may make it impractical for some companies (and even individuals) to upgrade with each release, we have a timed support schedule with each release being supported for about a year and a half. We also make periodic Long-Term Support (LTS) releases which are supported for about 3 years and which are guaranteed to provide enough overlap to allow you to upgrade from one LTS release to the next.

Is Linux Mint suitable for individuals?

Yes, definitely. We believe Linux is the best operating system on the market. There are more than 300 active Linux distributions and we’re working hard at becoming the best solution for your desktop. The competition is tough, as there are other great desktop operating systems and distributions out there. We have faith in the quality of our desktop and a lot of great ideas. If your computer is a PC and you have more than 512MB RAM you owe it to yourself to try Linux Mint and see what you think about it. If you’re running a years-old non-free operating system (such as Microsoft Windows XP, which is rapidly approaching being a decade old) you should definitely be impressed. We like hearing about your experience and listen very carefully to your suggestions, so please give us your feedback.

Our latest main edition and release is Linux Mint 8, codename “Helena”. If you’re new to Linux Mint or if you’re unsure as to which edition is right for you, choose the Main Edition.

Read the Linux Mint 8 User Guide (2.4MB) 

See what’s new in Linux Mint 8

Read the release notes

Main Edition

The Main Edition is our flagship release. It is released on as a CD-ROM image and provides full multimedia support out of the box, meaning that you can listen to MP3′s watch DVD’s and view web pages that require Flash technology right after install. This could get you into trouble if you are trying to distribute it in countries that allow software patents. Choose this edition if you’re new to Linux Mint or not sure which edition to choose.

Universal Edition

This edition aims to provide the same features as the Main Edition without including proprietary software, patented technologies or support for restricted formats. If you’re a magazine, a reseller or a distributor in Japan or in the USA then choose this edition.

The Universal Edition is designed to be just that. It is an edition that can be freely distributed even in countries which allow software patents (such as the United States and Japan) and provides an alternate bootloader that makes it likely to work even on systems that don’t support the graphical loader of the Main Edition. It is distributed as a DVD image, so it can include support for languages that won’t fit on the Main Edition’s CD.

It also comes as live DVD and features built-in support for English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese/Br, Portuguese/Pt, Arabic, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Galician, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Norwegian, Japanese, Ukrainian, Romanian, Slovenian, Catalan, Greek, Czech, Slovak, Marathi, Norwegian [nynorsk], Croatian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Hindi, Finnish, Hebrew, Serbian, Belarussian and partial support for Basque and Bosnian.

x64 Edition

This edition supports the X86_64 architecture and it is optimized for 64bit processors. Note that the Main Edition (which is 32bit) is usually more stable and it also supports 64bit processors. The x64 Edition is functionally identical to the Main Edition, except that it is created with full support for 64-bit technology. This means that it is not limited to using 4GB of RAM. Even if your computer supports 64-bit, we recommend that you use the Main Edition unless you know that you have more than 4GB of RAM, since 64-bit doesn’t provide any other advantages.

KDE Community Edition

Version: Linux Mint 8 “Helena” KDE

The KDE Community Edition is a version of Linux Mint built on the popular KDE desktop. This edition aims to provide a version of Linux Mint which uses the KDE desktop.

 

 

XFCE Community Edition

Version: Linux Mint 7 “Gloria” XFCE

The XFCE Community Edition is built on the lightweight and modular XFCE desktop. This edition aims to provide a version of Linux Mint which uses the XFCE desktop.

 

 

Fluxbox Community Edition

Version: Linux Mint 8 “Helena” Fluxbox

This edition aims to provide a version of Linux Mint which uses the Fluxbox desktop.

Why does Linux Mint include proprietary drivers?

It doesn’t. If it did, it would be legally wrong (because it would violate the GPL) or ethically wrong (if some dirty trick was used for the user to link the code to the kernel for instance).

What about proprietary software?

We believe in the open-source philosophy and release the source code for all of our work. We owe a lot to the Free Software movement and to the GPL but we also owe a lot to all developers who have had good ideas and created great tools and who have been working to make software better. Some of them have released their source code as well and have thus granted us more freedom and more flexibility. Others released their software with proprietary licenses and no source code, and although this doesn’t give us the freedom we would like, it still contributes to make software better. We like Software in general, Free Software even more, but we do not believe in boycotting Proprietary Software.