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Our top-3 2020 Linux distros. Why Mint at the top?

And why a top-3 when everyone else is doing top-10s? Well, let's save time!

An article from the blog https://tellhandel.blog/notre-top-3-2020-des-distros-linux-pourquoi-mint-en-tete/

The following objective criteria - as opposed to subjective elements, we understand - were used for this classification:

• Logic, safety and ease of installation
• Aesthetics
• Flexibility
• Customization options
• Speed
• Stability
• Scalability
• Community technical support
• The professionalism of native applications

Solus OS, 3rd in the ranking

And here's why

Installing Solus is child's play, as it should be, even on multi-systems. No need to manually create a swap partition etc., but you know the drill.

Pop! OS missed out on the top-3 for this reason. Nowadays, an installer must properly detect partitions already in use and OSes already installed. We've come a long way from the days when double-boot installation gave us cold sweats (were we going to overwrite the other system's grub and render it unusable? choose the wrong swap partition?). It's hard to understand System76's decision to deprive its OS of this capability, which is already present in Ubuntu, on which Pop! OS is based.

Back to Solus OS. We were impressed by its speed of execution. Its uncluttered style matches today's expectations. We feel it's a very stable system. It inspires confidence. Simple to use, including Terminal commands, which is paradoxically where the problem lies.

Solus comes with its own command interpreter and package manager. It's a bold initiative, and not without interest. Solus was developed fromscratch, with Linux as its sole foundation, we're told.

It's an ideal OS for standard installation on a standard PC (whether desktop or laptop), but it can quickly become risky to use it on special machines that require, for example, the installation of kernel patches (think of the operation of a touch screen or other internal peripheral).

Without direct support from Solus, or solid knowledge of how to adapt lines of code from patches made for Debian, for example, which represents a significant investment of time, we objectively see no immediate use for this challenge, unless the user wants to get involved in the Solus project as a contributor.

Nevertheless, in our opinion Solus OS outshines many GNU/Linux distributions and deserves this top-3 ranking.

DeepIn UOS, 2nd in the ranking

And here's why

DeepIn UOS is easy to install. It's an extraordinarily well-designed operating system, especially in terms of aesthetics and scalability, which has nothing to envy to Mac OS X or Windows 10. The fact that it's based on Debian is of course an undeniable asset.

First place eluded him for two major reasons:

• DeepIn UOS is a Chinese OS, and several elements, including the application store, use Chinese or English only. This means too many challenges, and too much investment of time, in our opinion, to install packages in French.
  
  A good example is LibreOffice, whose installation of the French version is too risky, forcing the user to go through the Terminal, an installation that causes duplication with the LibreOffice installed as standard.
  
  Generally speaking, the language problem doesn't stop there, since it poisons the user's life right down to spelling correction in many other applications, with rare exceptions such as Google Chrome.
  
• Too much instability. During our tests, we lost the computer's wifi connection several times, forcing us to reboot several times. We checked to see if the cause lay in the Linux kernel, perhaps ill-suited to our test machine. This was not the case. The same kernel gives good results with other distros.

Nevertheless, it remains a system that developers of other distributions, and desktop designers in particular, could draw inspiration from. For those interested in finding out more about DeepIn UOS, we published an article here.

Linux Mint, winner of our 2020 ranking

And here's why

Linux Mint saves us having to introduce you to other Ubuntu-based distributions. Everything hums along, from installation (including dual boot) to intensive use.

Almost a Ten out of Ten, in terms of stability, intuitiveness and attention to aesthetics. On this last point, DeepIn UOS is perhaps a notch above, although...

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Although Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, there are a number of factors which lead us to believe that it is superior to the latter. We've noticed bugs on Ubuntu that we don't see with Mint (for example, the mouse pointer that occasionally disappears on Ubuntu with Communitheme when you arrive above the dock). It has to be said that the designer of Linux Mint has made the judicious choice of offering his OS with a choice of Cinnamon, MATE or xfce desktops.

(By the way, after all these years, Canonical's choice of the Unity desktop on Ubuntu still remains a mystery to us, despite this small glimmer of hope and the respite that Communitheme provides for the eyes of Ubuntu users. End of parenthesis).

Linux Mint is a remarkable, modular and highly intuitive graphical environment. With the Cinnamon desktop, customization is easy. However, Cinnamon's designers would do well to take inspiration from the work done by the DeepIn UOS team to offer other presentation options for launching applications, instead of the single drop-down menu.

On the maintenance front, we liked the native presence of System Reports, accessible from the taskbar. Mint analyzes the integrity of the system and searches for missing packages, including, for example, those for adequate language support in certain sections of the OS or desktop that may have been overlooked. This is quite a difference from DeepIn UOS!

How do I create a shortcut to a folder or file on the desktop?

Aaaah we've asked ourselves that question!

The process is ultra-simple, but you still need to be familiar with it! While creating a shortcut for an application is totally intuitive (right-click on the application in the launcher, then select the Add to desktop option), creating a shortcut for a file or folder is a simple matter of left-clicking on the icon of the file or folder concerned, then pressing the keyboard command [Ctrl] + [M]. The shortcut is created. Simply drag it to the desktop.

Now that we've mentioned Mint's stability, we could also talk about the excellent and vast choice of native applications. The Debian foundation and the ease with which all kinds of other software can be installed, including proprietary software from publishers' websites, or using simple Terminal commands, are just some of the strengths of this distribution. The fact that it is based on Debian as well as Ubuntu ensures phenomenal community support for its users. Technical and support literature is abundant.

In our opinion, Linux Mint is an excellent choice for everyone, businesses and individuals alike, including those who are thinking of taking the step of migrating from Windows to Linux in the near future. Let us know what you think in the comments section below!