The Linux Mint distribution was designed to be convenient to install and use. In particular users coming from Microsoft Windows systems will find that this is a great way to familiarize themselves with the Linux world. It provides, for example, dual-boot and NTFS read/write support along with a migration assistant.
The feature list includes one-click software installation, cool 3D effects, easy file-sharing, and improved configuration tools. The update manager provides the option to turn off automatic update notifications for packages you are not interested in updating.
Linux Mint comes with most common proprietary multimedia formats pre-installed so that you can watch YouTube, QuickTime, Windows Media files, and CSS-encoded DVDs right out of the box. Oracle's Java is also included and set up to work as plug-in with Firefox. Default applications include LibreOffice (a branch from OpenOffice), Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp, Pidgin, XChat, and Amarok. It provides access to large software repositories, and compatibility with Ubuntu and Debian repositories. For more information and download links, see the Linux Mint web site.
Not everybody is thrilled with the latest version of Linux Mint. Here is one reader's opinion:
1) Linux Mint is not the most popular distro. It is just that the Mint page on Distrowatch.com has had more visitors than any other distro. 2) Mint Lisa is a disaster, just as any other distro based on Gnome 3. Yes, the team has worked hard to patch up the GUI as much as possible, choosing a couple of ways to do so but stranding in a real disaster. The final version doesn't look better than a premature alpha release. It needs a thousand and one patches, called extensions, to make things work. Nice: a Linux kernel, with Gnome 3 on top, with another Mint-made Gui on top of that, and all those extensions to top that of to make it work (a little).