The post says as much. Don’t discount the immense value of that eye candy, not to mention the crucial aspect of great usable defaults and a system that works excellently out of the box for a layman user. Debian alone does not pull that weight. Cinnamon is the easy to spot differential, sure, but LM does a lot more to maintain a really good user experience that you can just install and use painlessly.
An example that comes to mind of the extra effort LM goes to, is that they removed and blocked snap from their Ubuntu-based flavours (i.e. the main one). They point it out in the Release Notes for each release, and link to an explanation of the reasoning behind it (it’s good reasons) and, if you still want to enable it for some reason, instructions to do so.
Mint also has its own tools that reduce or eliminate dependence on terminal interaction.
My interpretation is that Linux Mint does a lot under the surface to maintain an excellent general-purpose distro that anyone can pick up and use.
Edit: even in your meme post, the yacht provides all of the amenities that make the trip a tolerable and enjoyable experience, which the truck doesn’t even try to compete with… So we might be in agreement!
The post says as much. Don’t discount the immense value of that eye candy, not to mention the crucial aspect of great usable defaults and a system that works excellently out of the box for a layman user. Debian alone does not pull that weight. Cinnamon is the easy to spot differential, sure, but LM does a lot more to maintain a really good user experience that you can just install and use painlessly.
An example that comes to mind of the extra effort LM goes to, is that they removed and blocked snap from their Ubuntu-based flavours (i.e. the main one). They point it out in the Release Notes for each release, and link to an explanation of the reasoning behind it (it’s good reasons) and, if you still want to enable it for some reason, instructions to do so.
Mint also has its own tools that reduce or eliminate dependence on terminal interaction.
My interpretation is that Linux Mint does a lot under the surface to maintain an excellent general-purpose distro that anyone can pick up and use.
Edit: even in your meme post, the yacht provides all of the amenities that make the trip a tolerable and enjoyable experience, which the truck doesn’t even try to compete with… So we might be in agreement!