HI

I know this is a tough question but I would like an opinion on what distro to use I have decided between ubuntu and mint.

I play games on steam,youtube/netflix,listen to music on and a word processor like kingsoft etc.

I am studying penetration testing and have installed kali linux on a thumb drive so this will be my second system to boot to.

However I have 300gigs of music and business docs/videos that I need to maintain during the migration over to my preferred linux distro.

I am wondering can I install Kali on the harddrive with a 500gig partition and copy of the files need. Then delete and format the windows side and move the files over once I have installed my selected distro.

I read a comment somewhere saying that this would be their last 17.x update for Mint, does that mean that Mint is going by the wayside?

I know that distro if not maintained go by the wayside and I thought of that in the days of fedora but it appears to still be going strong. Also the talks about getting company backing for distros?? Will this mean by per download apps on certain distros??

I would love the answers to the above questions please.
Kind Regards
ShenLun

I usually recommend Debian Stable, currently code-named Jessie, version 8.2. It's rock-solid. You can use any desktop environment on it. Coming from Windows, Xfce is a good choice, IMO. It gives you something rather like the older Windows desktop, with a button that works similar to the Windows Start button, although labeled differently.

Mint and Ubuntu are both under active development. But support for older versions isn't very long. Ubuntu, and thus Mint, which is based on Ubuntu, change versions very quickly, and drop support for older versions very quickly. If you want a stable version which will be supported for a long time, without needing to upgrade every 6 months, Debian is a good choice. It is upgraded when it's ready, not on arbitrary 6-month schedules ready or not.

Step one is to go buy an external drive and backup your data, right now you're just asking to lose everything.

It means they're going to version 18.

Mint is created from Ubuntu, so it often has fewer bugs. The obvious difference is the choice of GUI: Unity or Gnome for Ubuntu, Mate or Cinnamon for Mint. If you like your computer to look as if it's turned into a tablet or phone, you'll like Ubuntu. If you want a more traditional interface, you'll like Mint.

The Mint versions and the long-term-support versions of Ubuntu are supported for 5 years, not 6 months. Debian can be very user-unfriendly, although you sound as if you'd cope with it.

Ubuntu has a variant with XFCE, called Xubuntu. And if you stick with LTS versions, you'll have support for 5 years.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS

There is a version of Mint, based on Debian (LMDE).
I don't find it to be even slightly un-friendly - but it is based on Debian Jessie.
So it's not quite a super-stable distro, such as Mint 17.2.

HI

Thank you one and all for your comments. I didn't realise you had to pay for apps in Ubuntu and Mint. That's new since I us/ed redhat years ago. You would simply download the tar or gz files and install them. I love the terminal/ commandline usage much like dos back in the 80's/90's, but they've moved with the times and now you get it from the software centre.

Also apparently I can mount my own windows drives so I can save the vital info straight up? (is this correct)

So I am in the process of downloading both version and I am going to trial them first off a usb stick.

Kind Regards
ShenLun

Everything (almost) is free of charge.
Just install the appropriate .deb packages & these can be automatically updated as new versions come along.

If you choose to download tar.gz files and compile them you will need to keep doing this everytime something changes.

There are a few (non-open) commercial applications that you need to pay money for.
These are rather specialised though.

Debian Jessie is Debian Stable, has been for awhile. It's the most stable distro you'll find.