Jade Reviews Various Linux Distributions

Linux Mint Cinnamon

Linux Mint is, in my opinion, the platonic ideal of what a casual-oriented Linux distro should strive to be; it's lightweight, customizable without being too overwhelming, has plenty of community-oriented features such as the extensions, desklet, applet, and theme repositories. It's just constraining enough to never let you accidentally break things too badly, but freeing enough to give a casual user the ability to customize things to their heart's content. The level of required terminal use is minimal, making for an idealized casual experience.

Installation is very simple: for Windows or MacOS users, just flash a USB drive with the ISO using Rufus or Balena etcher--and for Linux users, use your distro's existing flash utility--then boot into it using the UEFI/BIOS and you're on your way. To be honest, it reminded me a lot of installing Windows 7 and other early versions of Windows. I suspect that this is probably intentional, given how familiar and intuitive Linux Mint is to me, as someone who was previously a life-long Windows user.

Mint does just about everything for you to get it running, which casual users will enjoy, but more hardcore users with specific preferences for things like drivers, and enjoy getting into the particulars (or require certain hardware drivers) may find this annoying. On that note, it comes with a number of programs pre-installed, such as the LibreOffice suite and Blueman for bluetooth configuration. I would hardly call Cinnamon "bloated"--especially compared to something like Windows 11--but if you prefer perfectly clean installs with absolutely zero pre-installed applications, then this distro may not be for you.

• Difficulty - 1/5 - Not difficult to install and use at all.
• Spiciness - 1/5 - Mild. Has some issues if you exit installation after selecting to install multimedia codecs, but I've had no other issues with it whatsoever.
• Bloat - 3/5 - Comes with a few productivity and settings apps, but otherwise it's fairly clean.
• Aesthetics - 4/5 - All of the default themes are very aesthetically pleasing, and more can be found if they don't quite suit your taste.

Total Score - 5/5

Linux Lite

Linux Lite is... well, maybe it's just because of the device I was using it on (Microsoft Surface Go 3), but I did not enjoy using it. While it has a lot of the same features as Mint in theory, in practice it ends up feeling a lot clunkier. It comes with Chromium as the default browser, which I personally find quite yucky--I'm just not a fan of Chromium browsers in general. I didn't use it for very long, so maybe it would get better with time. It seems to be designed with low-end machines in mind, but most Linux distros work perfectly fine on any machine that I've tried, so I don't really see the point.

Installation is admittedly very simple. Just like Linux Mint, you kind of just hit "next" a bunch of times, and it'll install perfectly fine. No complaints in that regard. Overall, though, it ends up feeling like a Great Value version of Mint, which is a shame because I really wanted to like it. It has some great potential, but there are much better Distros that accomplish the same goal these days.

• Difficulty - 2/5 - Not difficult to install and use.
• Spiciness - 3/5 - Temperate.
• Bloat - 3/5 - Comes with a few productivity and settings apps, but otherwise remains bloat-free
• Aesthetics - 2/5 - The default themes feel pretty flat and lack character. It's like if ChromeOS was a Linux Distro--like, it has a strangely corporate feeling for a Linux distro.

Total Score - 2/5

Arch Linux

Arch is pretty infamously difficult to install, and it definitely is. There are absolutely no training wheels or safety nets--if you want to dual-boot this, you'd better make damn sure to be extra careful while installing it. Now, granted, if you're a seasoned Linux user--especially one who is familiar with the Arch installation process--it's probably not that big of a deal, and the documentation is very well written out on how exactly to install it. But it is definitely not an install process for the casual user.

That said, it's also not designed to be. You don't even get a proper GUI; once you install it, you're left with the terminal prompt and nothing more. The OS is fully usable like this, but for heavy use--especially with non-terminal apps and web browsers--you're going to want a graphics shell like GNOME or KDE Plasma. But I'm going to rank Arch's GUI shells separately from Arch in the interest of fairness (and making this blog post longer /hj).

With Arch alone, you really do get basically nothing. If you don't install the Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth applications, you can't even use those features, let alone browse the web.

• Difficulty - 5/5 - It's Arch. What did you expect?
• Spiciness - 4/5 - Tobasco - Honestly, once I had it installed, it was basically like using the terminal on any other Linux distro. Like, imagine if the terminal was the only part of the OS you're allowed to use.
• Bloat - 1/5 - Literally comes with nothing. Everything must be manually installed once you leave the live install environment.
• Aesthetics - 1/5 - Literally has no aesthetics, just a white-on-black terminal window.

Total Score - 3/5

Arch + KDE Plasma

Now, Arch when you use a graphics shell? Impeccable. KDE Plasma specifically feels kind of like a mix between MacOS and Windows 10. It's obviously more customizable than either of them, being a graphical shell for Linux, but in terms of the default experience, it feels quite familiar. Most modern Linux distros' UIs tend to fall into the category of either MacOS or Windows inspired, but Plasma manages to keep it feeling original despite conforming to that tendency. And, of course, like any Linux thing, it's customizable from head to toe.

The default and most community themes stick to the modern, glassy aesthetic, which I honestly don't mind--although I much prefer the Windows-XP skeuomorphic, embossed look of something like old GNOME or Mint-X--but I definitely vibe with the glass look if it's what you're going for. There aren't really many options outside of it though, unless you're willing to get into customizing the theme yourself (which, yes, you can do.) It's just a little more involved than I'm willing to get with an OS over aesthetics.

Plasma is, regrettably, pretty bloated out of the box. It comes with a swath of games and extras that I don't think I've ever personally touched. It comes with your standard suite of office apps and various others for things like notepads, image viewing, video playback, etc., but a lot of the other apps don't really have much use mainstream use. It's not nearly as bad as something like Windows 11, and fortunately debloating it is much simpler than Windows--if a bit tedious--but it's still a little much compared to something like Linux Mint.

Overall, Plasma is a very competently made OS shell, and it's clear that the people behind it know what they're doing. The whole system feels very robust, as though it can tackle just about any task an aspiring user of the software might be able to throw at it. If it was less bloated, it might get a higher score, but as it stands it's still a very solid choice.

• Difficulty - 2/5 - Installing it and getting it to work is fairly easy, not counting the installation of the underlying OS (in my case, Arch.)
• Spiciness - 1/5 - Mild - Using KDE Plasma is very safe, and it comes with plenty of guardrails.
• Bloat - 4/5 - Pretty bloated, to be honest. It comes with a swath of apps, games, and other digital knicknacks that I'm pretty sure I haven't touched once. At least they're easy to uninstall, I guess.
• Aesthetics - 4/5 - Very clean, modern without being too cold. Generally a nice balance between the look of MacOS and Windows. It has a decent level of charm, without feeling gimmicky.

Total Score - 4/5