Linux Mint

About

Our Purpose

Linux Mint's purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution.

Linux Mint and Ubuntu

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and compatible with it.

Release cycle:

Ubuntu has a fixed 6 months release cycle
Linux Mint's release cycle is faster (from 1 to 2 months) and depends on what innovations were made rather than on a predefined schedule

Philosophy:

Ubuntu tends to follow the "free software" philosophies and for this reason do not include "dirty" software (patented or proprietary technologies for instance).

We believe in freedom. All our development and work is released as free software and we're glad to contribute our source code. We also prefer to use open source software rather than their proprietary equivalents. However we don't believe in banning or boycotting proprietary software. If a proprietary component has no suitable open source alternative and is needed to produce an elegant desktop we do include it. For this reason we include things like the Flash plugin for instance.