The system requirements below, are based on my own experience, and deviate a bit (but not much) from the 'official' minimal system requirements.įor the record: Mint with the desktop environment MATE (more about that later) is noticeably lighter than Ubuntu with its rather heavy default desktop environment Gnome 3. Therefore it's very suitable for older computers.ģ. Xfce: the Xfce edition is much more lightweight than both MATE and Cinnamon. The text editor is called Xed, but it's actually a fork of the ordinary Gedit. Interesting detail: the file manager is called Caja, but under the hood it's actually a fork of Nautilus, the file manager of Gnome. The developers have transitioned it to a modern code base, so MATE has a long-term future as well. It may look a bit old-fashioned and less sleek in comparison with Cinnamon, but that's intentional and stems from the wish to keep the 'old' Gnome 2 desktop alive. Furthermore, MATE is fast, stable and reliable. This makes Mate simple and intuitive to operate. MATE (pronunciation: mahtay, because it's named after the South American beverage Maté) is a successful attempt to continue the former Gnome 2 desktop. My advice is: when in doubt, select Cinnamon. Big advantage: it's definitely the best-looking of the Mint desktops! It's easy to use, yet fast, sophisticated and slick.Ĭinnamon is based on the modern Gnome 3 and it's (when running without too many three-dimensional visual effects) stable and reliable: it has been improved a lot in the last couple of years.Ĭinnamon is relatively heavy on the system resources, especially when many visual effects have been enabled (by default, only a few are enabled).

Mint's own desktop environment comes in the two major flavours Cinnamon and MATE, and in the minor flavour Xfce.Ĭinnamon is the most advanced and modern desktop of Mint, and is rightly considered to be its flagship. How to pick your flavour: Cinnamon, MATE or XfceĢ.

Linux mint debian 32 bit