In a word.
Same old Ubuntu on steroids.
LUg.
Edit:
Take away Hardy and Mint 5.0 wouldn't exist, any release of Mint come to that 3.0/3.1 Feisty, 4.0 Gutsy.
Edit 2:
I would rather stick with Gutsy and Hardy so I can be more creative.
Edit 3:
snakeeyes
You are always telling us how naff Ubuntu is so there must be something wrong with Mint being partially based on Ubuntu, and it clearly is as Mint is always hot on the heels of a new release of Ubuntu.
Edit 4 :
snakeeyes
As I have said before disliking the name is pretty lame !
Edit 5 :
snakeeyes
I refer to this crazy dialogue we had only last week where you mention the name (See Below)
Hi, just because it is the most popular doesn't make it the best because in that case windows is the best OS in the world.
I don't like it for reasons like its crappy name, theme, unequal treatment of desktop environments, horrible power management, and lack of innovation.
Also Ubuntu is the buggiest distro I have tried so far out of all others, I mean sure other distros have bugs as well but none have as many as ubuntu. Their bug fixing policy is horrible as well. Don't forget the lack of effort they put into their releases, Kde 4 was such a huge launch and Kubuntu kde 4 doesn't even have a custom desktop they didn't even bother to improve it, its just the upstream kde4.
Updates break a lot of stuff in ubuntu rather than fix it, a huge problem. When u use ubuntu u spend more time in forums or alone fixing stuff rather than use it. Neither is there any real special thing about Ubuntu, its a snapshot of debian testing and unstable and made even more buggy then before and then released for new users.
Edit:
Yes its true my disliking the name is weird, but lets face it that the name sounds horribly boring compared to vista, personally I love Mac OS X as an operating systems name.
The theme can be changed, but please point me to themes on gnome-look.org that r as professional as most other distros default themes I mean look at Mandriva's default theme.
Ubuntu Human theme has this ugly dull feeling to it that makes u get bored of it. Saying all this have u at least tried Debian, its really good in my opinion. Even Debian users don't like ubuntu.
As far as bugs and stability go, there is no doubt ubuntu is the worst in bugs and stability issues. Their gnome isn't anything special either I mean u got Brasero and a bug reporting tool with this release, but did u know that other distros have had those by default since a long time. They made it seem like its something unique to them. Please point me out to a page that shows their contribution to the linux world, none, u won't find any.
Edit 2:
Ubuntu didn't really open the linux world in a good way did it.
Its still the worst distro out there with no innovation whatsoever, and so many people at mac os x who tried ubuntu think linux is too buggy for regular use and guess which distro they have tried and used "ubuntu".
The quality of their releases is falling, even microsoft is trying to improve.
Edit 3:
How r they sure that 6 million people use it? How did they calculate that? Lets face it billions of people use windows they must be satisfied with that as well after all there r alternatives to choose from.
People r scared of change, not everyone is so much into technology as us, and maybe those people have an impression of linux being buggy, who knows. The only thing people know ubuntu for is compiz again something they didn't make, I haven't met one ubuntu user who doesn't use or die for compiz, they don't even bother with another distro in which compiz is difficult to set up. Take away compiz and people will leave ubuntu in a few seconds. There is one person I met on a forum that actually said I am not using kde 4 cause compiz doesn't work well on it! How lame is that?
Edit 4:
Here is another thing for u to try, get in to kubuntu 8.04 kde 3.5.9 and try cutting and pasting files with the default file manager d3lphin and see if it works.
The Ubuntu family of distros has honestly turned into a joke, no one apart from ubuntu users like it for some un known reason, even debian users hate it and thats saying a lot.
Edit 5:
Hey there is really nothing special about their gnome either, honestly tell me what do u like in ubuntu apart from package management.
My Edit 6 :
snakeeyes
True not the most innovative. But it is the most popular.
Oh God ! HERE WE GO AGAIN.
Edit 7 :
snakeeyes
Was that really necessary ??