Should i use Linux Mint or Ubuntu?

[KJ4]

I am thinking of giving Linux a go, but i'm not too sure what distro to use, what one would you recommend?

I am going to be gaming on it aswell as creating word documents etc.

[Bananasplit_00]

Mint, Mint is really nice

[ResonantPixel]

I am big fan of solus, everything works really well and easily, nothing seems to break (even though its a beta) and it has had steam specifically ported to it, as such the steam client is 64bit, whereas you have use the 32 bit client on a lot of other distros.

Not a big fan of Ubuntu, it's far to heavy and ugly, mint isnt so bad ; P

[Sauron]

It's down to personal preference but at the moment I think mint is better than ubuntu overall. Another good option is ubuntu mate, which solves a lot of the issues I have with "vanilla" ubuntu.

 

Either of these will do the tasks you mentioned in pretty much the same way. Don't expect games to always run flawlessly though, especially those that weren't compiled for linux.

[mikat]

I'd recommend mint

playing csgo isn't as good as on windows but definitely pretty good

[KJ4]

4 minutes ago, ResonantPixel said:

I am big fan of solus, everything works really well and easily, nothing seems to break (even though its a beta) and it has had steam specifically ported to it, as such the steam client is 64bit, whereas you have use the 32 bit client on a lot of other distros.

Not a big fan of Ubuntu, it's far to heavy and ugly, mint isnt so bad ; P

Would you say Solus would be a better option than Mint?

[ResonantPixel]

Yeah, I have done a lot of distro hopping, Solus is bar far been the best of all that I have used, I have used both the noobiest and some of the much more hacky distros, hell at sometime at the same time, yet Solus is better than them all! Partly because it just flipping works, so you can do your work (or play those video games : P). So yeah, in my opinion Solus is superior to mint! Be sure to tell us of your experiences!

[KJ4]

Okay thanks for all the help! Really appreciate it. I will give Solus a try and see what it's like.

[SCHISCHKA]

I say go as upstream as you can so use the ones everyone else is based off. That would be Debian if you have old hardware and ubuntu if you have new hardware. All the other stuff others distros have you can install on Debian and ubuntu 

[noahdvs]

Just look at screen shots for both and pick whatever look you prefer. They're both the same underneath the looks because Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. Solus looks like it's worth trying, but Ubuntu based distros are better for beginners since Ubuntu has the most support and tons of information about it. Also, since you're into gaming, Steam only officially supports LTS Ubuntu (Long Term Support, X.04 releases), though it should work on other distros.

[ResonantPixel]

3 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

I say go as upstream as you can so use the ones everyone else is based off. That would be Debian if you have old hardware and ubuntu if you have new hardware. All the other stuff others distros have you can install on Debian and ubuntu 

I have not actually had driver/hardware issues in quite a while, especially with "easy" distros, the only thing I have struggled with Solus is netbeans, but even then it was because my uni course recommends, even though compiling is way  easier ; P. I used Debian for quite a while before Solus was really a thing, probably what I would go with second, its just it can be very funny about graphics drivers as it tries very hard to force you to use free ones, normally this is the biggest issue with graphics cards. Seeing as this person is gaming, I imagine that the graphics drivers are probably reasonably important.

[ResonantPixel]

5 hours ago, KJ4 said:

Okay thanks for all the help! Really appreciate it. I will give Solus a try and see what it's like.

If you do want any help, I tend to check my LTT account around once a day, so probably will reply reasonably quickly if you PM me : P.

[SCHISCHKA]

3 minutes ago, ResonantPixel said:

I have not actually had driver/hardware issues in quite a while, especially with "easy" distros, the only thing I have struggled with Solus is netbeans, but even then it was because my uni course recommends, even though compiling is way  easier ; P. I used Debian for quite a while before Solus was really a thing, probably what I would go with second, its just it can be very funny about graphics drivers as it tries very hard to force you to use free ones, normally this is the biggest issue with graphics cards. Seeing as this person is gaming, I imagine that the graphics drivers are probably reasonably important.

using proprietary drivers is easy. its kernel version to watch for. Debians slow release makes it stable but it dates very fast. Thats why i say ubuntu for newer hardware. You wont be using debian on a ryzen CPU for example

[ResonantPixel]

1 minute ago, SCHISCHKA said:

using proprietary drivers is easy. its kernel version to watch for. Debians slow release makes it stable but it dates very fast. Thats why i say ubuntu for newer hardware. You wont be using debian on a ryzen CPU for example

It's still a little irritating, especially for a new user, pretty much want to make it easy as possible.

[SCHISCHKA]

2 minutes ago, ResonantPixel said:

It's still a little irritating, especially for a new user, pretty much want to make it easy as possible.

if they open sourced the drivers so it could be included in ISO it would require no effort by the user. Its as difficult as the hardware company wants it to be

[Donut417]

On 3/17/2017 at 2:23 PM, KJ4 said:

I am thinking of giving Linux a go, but i'm not too sure what distro to use, what one would you recommend?

I am going to be gaming on it aswell as creating word documents etc.

Ubuntu is officially supported by Valve. What does this mean? Well it means you can run Steam in Linux. Some games will work in Linux as well. Other wise you might need to use Wine, and that can be hit or miss for software. 

[MatazaNZ]

On 3/18/2017 at 7:23 AM, KJ4 said:

I am thinking of giving Linux a go, but i'm not too sure what distro to use, what one would you recommend?

I am going to be gaming on it aswell as creating word documents etc.

The honest answer: No one can tell you that. Best I can say is to try both out, and pick one. It's all down to what you prefer. Mint is based on Ubuntu, so they should both support the same packages. That said, I haven't run either of them in a while (Last I used was when 14.04LTS was released(Been on Arch since)), so I might be wrong on some things now.