And, for apparently the first time, I wonder. Does Linux Mint refer to the plant/ingredient, connecting obviously with Cinnamon desktop, the green theme, and inviting variations called Linux Peppermint and Linux Spearmint? Or does it originate from being Linux, in Mint condition?
Perhaps, we can all pretend it’s the second one, and instead of *I use Mint, btw," our catchphrase can be, “I mint Linux, btw.”
Your comment made me curious and I tried looking for an answer. I found this forum post from 2008 asking basically the same thing. https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=17953
The founder Clem answered:
Why the name MINT??
Long story… I was writing articles/tutorials for linuxforums.org for a while and I eventually decided to publish them myself, so I needed a .com and I thought of a name. Mint is cold, it’s short, it’s fresh, it’s easy to type and to remember and in English it even means “cool”, “good condition”, “perfect” etc… I also liked the way Linux was associated with the poles, the penguins, the ice… the way a pristine kernel was called “vanilla”… and so Mint was kind of close to all of that. Great name, no particular meaning… just a series of nice subjective associations I guess.
Clem do you like Mint?
It’s my favorite non-alcoholic drink. If you ever go to Paris on a sunny day do order a “Diabolo Menthe” :wink: I also love the smell of Mint and the flavor (especially with lamb)
I use Mint DE btw. :-)
we need that bell curve meme with mint at both ends
I started my bellcurve with Redhat in the 90s, Arch in the teens and I’m back at Redhat (Fedora).
You started in the 90’s and you didn’t don the sackcloth and ashes of Slack? At least for a little bit? Ah, the joys of writing config files!
I did for a couple years. It was progressive and exciting at the time, but was kinda left behind by everything else as other distros started up. Mandrake grabbed me for a couple years, Suse at one point. I did do a Gentoo phase since at one point I would build and sell old machines as software routers with ipchains and Gentoo was a little more structured than just compiling my own kernels to keep it lightweight and fast.
Never used it as a desktop, but Debian has been with me since probably 2003ish, mainly as my email server but it’s the base of every service I run myself. Never saw a point to using anything else, including RHEL. Any time I’ve tried something else, I’ve regretted it and gone back very quickly.
Bring Me The Horizon: “CAN YOU HEAR THE SILENCE?”
Me, with mild-to-moderate tinnitus: boy I sure wish I couldn’t
ah yes finally! can we start saying “I use Mint btw”?
Because I use Mint, btw.
Hell yes! Scream it from rooftops with your menthol laced breath. The celestial calendar fortold that 2025 would truly be the year of the linux ™ the time is now!
It will be glorious! I have to give lemmy and Valve a lot of credit for this. Made the move half a year ago and honestly it has been such a fresh breath of (minty) air.
Just saw a big article on a major local news paper about support for Windows 10 ending soon and they mentioned linux mint as an alternative for most people who simply only use their browser on a PC since that is what a big portion of people actully do on a PC.
The year of Linux happened a long time ago. I assume you mean the year of Linux on desktop, in which case yes, it’s been foretold.
And as repeatedly told and retold every year…
And I’m using, let’s see, (Goes into Settings to check): Fedora KDE Plasma 41. Meh, it works OK I guess. It’s getting hard to tell the difference between distros anymore. And I’ve been doing this long enough that I just something that doesn’t bother me for attention anymore.
I use Tumbleweed btw, therefore, I am in fact superior to you in every way.
