LinuxMint Question

[Joseph Sinclair]

1) What is the end user coming from?  Windows UI has changed extremely dramatically in the last couple releases.
2) What's the hardware?  I have Mint/Mate running very fast on a 2010 AMD A8 quad core APU, anything equal to or faster than that (with at least 4G RAM) should work beautifully for any current Linux desktop (Mate, Cinnamon, KDE, Gnome3, Unity, etc...).
3) Does your pastor prefer the (current) Windows tile interface, the Apple (mobile-inspired) full-screen-only interface, or the older (and vastly more functional) windowed interfaces (both Windows and Apple).
4) Is your pastor working on a laptop or a desktop?  For always-connected desktop use, it may work better to install something ultra-simple like ChromeOS which eliminates all maintenance (fully automagic self-update) and will maintain documents in the cloud (although you can explicitly store things locally if needed).

My recommendation (lacking more information):
Check the hardware, if it's reasonably recent then Mate or Cinnamon is fine, if it's really old or slow (older than 2010, or slower than a 2010 AMD A4 APU), then something with LXDE (e.g. lubuntu) might work better, but there are some tradeoffs for the lighter desktop.
If the user prefers the current "mobile-inspired" desktops from MS or Apple, then you may want to look at something like Unity (which has the same design esthetic).
If the user wants the more functional (but less "pretty") UI of prior generations of desktops, then Cinnamon is more Apple-esque, Mate is more like Windows-XP, and KDE offers massive additional functionality (at the cost of significant additional resource usage).
Whatever you do, make sure you give the end user a chance to try a couple options and see which he/she likes best.
Discovering you have choices in the basic interface and interaction with the system (and can choose the one you like best without negative consequence) can go a long way toward helping the user migrate to the Linux ecosystem.



On 10/29/2015 12:22 AM, Nathan England wrote:
> 
> My Pastor told me tonight he's had enough of Windows and wants to go to Linux.
> I was impressed he even knew it existed, but that's beside the point. It left me with a hard question...
> 
> LinuxMint Cinnamon or LinuxMint Mate
> 
> First impressions I like that Mate shows program descriptions (thinking it might be easier for him to find things) and I can drag and drop applications from the menu right to the desktop.
> 
> But Cinnamon really looks nice and has the latest libraries.
> 
> So my question is, which is better for a complete noob to linux?
> He really is only interested in LibreOffice, Chrome and maybe Firefox.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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