Ubuntu was founded in 2004 by Canonical.
Canonical’s backing comes from billionaire Mark Shuttleworth.
It also derives revenue from selling commercial support, assistance to OEM’s selling computers
with Ubuntu pre-installed, and donations.
Canonical has more than 700 employees spread across multiple countries.
Linux Mint was founded in 2006 by Clement Lefebvre.
Funding comes from donations and partnerships with Duck Duck Go and Compulab who sell MintBox
systems with Linux Mint pre-installed.
Development is carried out by Clem and a community of developers.
Ubuntu offer four official variants: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Minimal, and
Ubuntu Touch which is for mobile phones.
The desktop and server variants are available in 32 and 64 bit system architectures, as
well as ARM.
Ubuntu has two different desktop types: Unity 7 and Unity 8.
Unity 7 is designed for desktop computers, whereas Unity 8 is cross device, being suitable
for Mobile, Tablet, and Desktop.
The Server and Minimal variants don’t come with any desktop at all.
You can either use them in headless mode with the optional Ubuntu Landscape management tool,
or install a desktop of your choosing.
There are several official derivatives of Ubuntu which are supported by Canonical, including
a Chinese variant – Kylin, and Educational variant – EdUbuntu which both use the Unity 7
desktop.
There are also other versions which use different Linux desktops, including Kubuntu, Xubuntu,
Ubuntu Budgie, etc.
And there are many different unofficial derivatives.
Linux Mint comes in five different variants: Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE, and KDE which are based
on Ubuntu.
As well as Linux Mint Debian Edition, which as the name states is based on Debian.
All versions are available in 32 and 64 bit system architectures.
I am not aware of any Linux Distributions which are based on Linux Mint, but if you
do know of any please tell me in the comments.
Ubuntu provide a new release once every six months, with Long Term Support releases being
released once every two years.
LTS releases are supported for five years with optional pay for support to extend further
beyond the five year point.
The interim releases are supported for just nine months.
Ubuntu provide an official upgrade path between interim and LTS releases, with the preference
being to keep users on the LTS release cycle.
Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS releases, with interim releases following the Ubuntu
LTS point releases which result in a minor version number increase.
There is no official upgrade path between major versions of Linux Mint.
Although the standard system updater will upgrade between minor version releases.
Both Cinnamon and Unity work better with a graphics card for hardware rendering of the
desktop, however both will fallback to using software rendering via LLVMpipe from the CPU.
When system resources are constrained it is Unity that suffers badly.
In terms of memory usage Linux Mint with Cinnamon is significantly lower than Ubuntu’s Unity
desktop.
Linux Mint has the edge in hardware compatibility by providing the option to easily install
additional proprietary WiFi drivers.
Stability I can’t decide a clear winner here for stability.
Ubuntu always seems to suffer regular minor crashes of background applications where nothing
noticeable happens, other than the crash dialog box appearing.
On the other hand Linux Mint doesn’t seem to get the minor application crashes, but
suffers worse under nvidia graphics for some users.
A look on Google searches for the terms “Linux Mint Crash” and “Ubuntu Crash” show
results heavily weighted towards Ubuntu.
Although what I did notice was six of the top ten Linux Mint crash search results were
related to Nvidia, and that mirrors my experience of it on real hardware.
Ubuntu has endured the perhaps unfair label of “Spyware”
This was in relation to the old default setting of sending Unity Dash searches to Amazon for
obtaining product results.
The searches were anonomized and sent through Canonical servers prior to being forwarded
to Amazon.
Comparing to the data leakage of Windows 10 Ubuntu certainly does not deserve the label
“spyware” Anyway, the online search is disabled by defult
as of version 16.04.
Linux Mint does not carry out any equivelant online searches.
We have a clear winner here with the Cinnamon desktop, it is very flexible with the panel
positioning, and you can add a wide range of widgits to the desktop.
It has advanced significantly in terms of features over the past couple of years and
is a very close second place in terms of flexibility to KDE Plasma 5 desktop.
Infact it is so customisable that you can turn it into the Unity desktop.
Should you so desire.
Unity is at the complete opposite end of the spectrium in terms of customisation, it is
an extremally rigid desktop, having only recently gained the ability to move the Launcher from
the left-hand side to the bottom of the screen.
There is no easy way to add widgits to the desktop.
In terms of styling my previous complaints about the theming incosistancies were partially
resolved under Ubuntu 16.10.
However, there are still incosistancies with the scrollbar sizes across applications.
No such issues are present in Linux Mint, the styling is consistent and well presented
throughout the entire system.
There are no pre-installed parental controls with Ubuntu
Linux Mint comes with a domain blocker, so you could prevent DNS lookups to certain websites,
however it is a very crude blocking feature and easy to circumvent, but it may be enough
to restrict very young children.
Both Linux Mint and Ubuntu offer the option to scale your monitor for high resolution
displays.
Let me know if you think either of the desktops has an edge here because I only have an HD1080
monitor, and my graphics card pre-dates 4K.
Ubuntu base their application repository off Debian Testing, and then fix the version numbers
during the Alpha stages of development.
A selection of applications and critical components of the system, for example Kernel and Xorg
will receive security updates throughout the life of the operating system.
Canonical also support installation of “snap” based applications which come supplied with
all their dependancies in one snap package.
New Snaps are added and updated, and have even been backported to versions of Ubuntu
that predated the Snap feature.
It is also possible to add additional 3rd party repositiries to the sytem for example
from Launchpad PPAs.
Linux Mint base their repository off Ubuntu, so the choice of packages is effectivaly the
same as Ubuntu.
Out-of-the-box Mint does not have the ability to install Snap packages, however it is easy
enough to install snapd, which will allow you the option of installing Snaps.
Up until this point of the video Linux Mint has had the edge over Ubuntu, but now it comes
crashing down with what in my opinion is the biggest failing with Mint – the way they
supply updates.
The Mint update manager grades applications on a level of one to five in terms of their
ability to cause a negative affect on system stability.
With one to three being safe, and four and five being potentially dangerous.
A kernel update is classed as level five – potentially dangerous and is deselected by default.
I know experianced users understand the difference here, but my concern is the ameture user,
the every day user who leaves the settings as defaults, which will prevent kernel updates.
The kernel privilege escallation vulnerability Dirty COW would remain unpatched on Linux
Mint for up to five years with the default update settings.
If Linux Mint are so concerned about keeping the system working, then they should look
at building a application that can automatically recognise when an item of hardware is no longer
working under a kernel update, and then provide the user with the option of rolling back an
update.
That would be a far more sensible approch than burrying your head in the sand and leaving
the kernel open to serious exploits that could cause theft of credentials or loss of data.
In conclusion there is really only one reason I could recommend Linux Mint – if you have
hardware compatibality issues under Ubuntu.
Beyond that I would recommend Ubuntu or one of its derivatives.
If you like the look and feel of Cinnamon, MATE, KDE, or XFCE then you can get those
desktops under a derivative of Ubuntu.
At least that way you will be getting all the system updates as soon as they are supplied.
If you like my videos then please consider being a patreon and support Quidsup.
You can pledge as little as $1 a month or a thousand dollars a month
but every little bit does make a difference and it does help me produce higher quality
videos.
Thanks for watching and as always I will see you all later.