Linux Mint Blog
The Linux Mint project's official blog, where the developers announce releases, hardware, and decisions about the distribution.
What HN says
HN commenters cite it for Mint's policy decisions, such as shipping Firefox as a .deb, criticizing Snap, and building Xapps for desktop consistency.
Stats for nerds
111HN people shared it
97linked in comments
1.5Kstory points
Nov 2025last shared
Top posts on HN
- 1The mintBox, a Linux Mint computer1 person · 185 points · first shared 2012 · 80 comments on HN
- 2Beware of hacked ISOs if you downloaded Linux Mint on February 20th8 people · 171 points · first shared 2016 · 61 comments on HN
- 3Linux Mint signs a partnership with DuckDuckGo3 people · 137 points · first shared 2011 · 45 comments on HN
- 4Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Cinnamon released1 person · 95 points · first shared 2014 · 28 comments on HN
- 5Mintbox Mini Pro1 person · 91 points · first shared 2016 · 24 comments on HN
- 6Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” released1 person · 71 points · first shared 2011 · 64 comments on HN
- 7Linux Mint 16 "Petra" MATE released1 person · 69 points · first shared 2013 · 42 comments on HN
- 8Linux Mint 13 "Maya" RC released1 person · 53 points · first shared 2012 · 9 comments on HN
- 9Linux Mint forum database compromised, all users urged to change passwords1 person · 51 points · first shared 2016 · 9 comments on HN
- 10Linux Mint 17.2 “Rafaela” Cinnamon Released1 person · 44 points · first shared 2015 · 12 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
- RMPRApr 2020
If it's to avoid this kind of aberrations https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864985 it's totally understandable, but in practice, it doesn't work that smoothly unfortunately, not to mention the potential vendor lockdown, or as the Mint team phrased it:
> If you’re a Fedora user and you want to install Spotify, you’re told to go to https://snapcraft.io/spotify. Spotify doesn’t distribute RPM packages, appimage, Flatpak or anything useful to a Fedora user who wants to download it, or to a Fedora maintainer who wants to add it to a repository. Fedora users are told to go to what is essentially a commercial store operated by a RedHat competitor where stats tell them their distribution is only 7th best.
> We’re in luck, we can still download the .deb. If Spotify stops caring, what do we do? We move to snap because we have to? Will the snap store continue to let people download actual .snap files in the future or will that get locked down ? Will the snap store continue to operate without an Ubuntu One account or will we get vendor-locked ?
https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3766
- acgkmopvvgvmgvAug 2020
It's not for nothing that Snap is considered dangerous by SUSE and is not officially supported. They even fail basic upstream responsibilities.
https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906
> A year later, in the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, the Chromium package is indeed empty and acting, without your consent, as a backdoor by connecting your computer to the Ubuntu Store. Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can’t audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store. You’ve as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you.
> First, I’m happy to confirm that Linux Mint 20, like previous Mint releases will not ship with any snaps or snapd installed.
- psanfordJul 2020
From the linked announcement: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906
> Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can’t audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store. You’ve as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you.
This is a great summary of why people rightfully feel nervous about Snap. People run linux because they want visibility and control into what is happening on their systems. Canonical seems to want to take away that visibility and control from their users.
- sampoDec 2015
> Last time I looked on Mint there was no support for upgrading the system.
Some years ago, the recommended way to upgrade Mint was indeed to do a full reinstall [1]. For a couple past years, there has been a simpler way, involving a bit of command line acrobatics [2]. Still not good for your mother-in-law.
Apparently [3] only in 2015 Mint finally started to have the "normal" way, where you just click on an upgrade button, and the system upgrades itself. But even now, this does not upgrade the kernel. Weird.
[1] http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2
[2] https://gist.github.com/hgomez/7074150
[3] http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2871
- dchestSep 2012
Our goal is to give users a good search experience while funding ourselves by receiving a share of this income. Search engines who do not share the income generated by our users, are removed from Linux Mint and might get their ads blocked.
...
It won’t only be down to donations and sponsorships anymore, your activity on the web, every search query you make and product you buy will help fund our project.
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851
* * *
Try Trisquel http://trisquel.info/ which based on Ubuntu, with non-free software removed.
- whoisthemachineAug 2020
It's really interesting that Mozilla doesn't funnel donations to software development interests. There are successful open source projects that do so, such as Linux Mint [0]. Maybe what's really broken is the idea that a browser needs a backing corporation to fund it?
Personally, I can see no better way to keep an open internet than through the development of meaningful software that serves that purpose.
[0] "Donations are usually quite high after a release and Linux Mint 20 is no exception." https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3953