3. Choosing Mint

Autumn 2012, picking the distro
New releases were released and my Linux-fever was certainly peaking. Had been reading meanwhile, I have to confess. Looking around and trying to get the Big Picture – what is what in the forky world of Linux.

What you can touch with nooby fingers and what leads to amputation:

Ubuntu and its derivatives like Mint and ZorinOs and what else are for the beginners.

Fedora and OpenSuse fit more to 'advanced beginners'.

Then comes Debian and it's family, the middle-weights.

And then nerd-class heavy devices like Gentoo or Archlinux.

Also – this came to me a bit later, but still – It's not wise to choose tiny distros for n00by stumbling-around. Little ones are frequently bug-ridden, missing important parts, designed like crap and generally used only in family circles. They might be very frustrating experience.

Some 20 hours thrown off with Google. Well, sometimes I take RTFM a tad too seriously. But I tend to think that it saves at least equal time in not doing patently stupid things with all of their consequences.

And when widening your knowledge about distros– distrowatch.com is a must. There are reviews for every distro they have in their list. Means hundreds. And they really keep everyday watch on new releases – goldmine for someone wants to hold a finger on a pulse.

Of reviews – Dedoimedo is always a fun to read. Even more – he knows what he talking about. Definitely not oh-so-common 'let's copy release notes (or half) and call it review'.
And here one more roundy overview about picking distro.

And something completely different  - history of GNU/Linux, distros and whatnot, in short and simple form.