Ubuntu – Mint cheat sheet

I sense a lot of confusion sometimes when it comes to the difference between LTS and standard releases, or the compatibility between Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Which Mint release is based on which Ubuntu release? How long is it supported for?

So here’s a cheat sheet for everyone, to clear things up and make it easy to remember:

28 comments

  1. The x.04/x.10 are the months that the software is released. They always come out with their new product in April and October, hence the “.04/.10” respectively. It took me some time to figure that out myself. 🙂

  2. Thanks, that’s very useful. There is just one thing that is a bit unclear to me: the time of the release.

    For instance, are Karmic and Helena going to be released the same day? the same month?

    Additionnally (and I’m going to document a bit about this too) how much is Mint based on each Ubuntu release. What I mean is the following: do you remove stuff from the ubuntu releases (I’m not talking about graphics/themes, but more about functionality/applications etc) or do you just add stuff?

    If the correct answer is the second one, then Linux Mint is even cooler than I thought it was 🙂

  3. just thought I’d point out that it’s possible Ubuntu’s next LTS release will change to 10.10 depending on the stability of gnome 3.0 If this is the case, obviously Mint’s LTS would change too.

  4. Lantesh: OK, I’ll add the previous releases.

    Aziz: Mint releases usually come a month after the release of Ubuntu they’re based on. We don’t only add to Ubuntu, we modify some of it and we also remove some of their components. With each Ubuntu release we review their changes and decide whether or not they should make it into Mint. Features introduced by Ubuntu and included in Mint are usually mentioned in the “Upstream improvements” section of the release notes.

  5. To simplify the link with the ubuntu release, why to not have the same first letter? Even if a jump has to be done (as Ubuntu made at the beginning)
    For example, K…a for the next release based on Karmic.

  6. Thanks for the updated Graphic Clem. I switched from Ubuntu to Mint during the days of Mint 4 Daryna, so I was a little foggy on things before that.

  7. @herisson: Sorry, I don’t agree. Mint is unique, let’s keep it that way.

    Just wondering, how are the names for Mint picked? Does clem pick them out of a hat? Is there some voting mechanism?
    My vote(s), if anyone is actually reading this, for the next three are: Iveta, Jindra, and Katerina. :p

  8. The names are voted on by the community in the forums

    They go in order of the alphabet and are always female names

    So 7 Is Gloria

    8 will be Helena

    voting should start soon on 9 if not already

  9. Hi Clem,

    Thanks for the graphic, but it seems you made a mistake for the standard releases Edgy~Gutsy and their Mint counterparts: support has already ended (between Apr.08 and Apr.09). Unless you are mixing up Desktop version support and server edition support.

    As for Edgy, standard support was supposedly dropped in July, am I right?

  10. yeah! well i wanna know, which diferencies have mint and ubuntu, i don´t kon which are the diferencies, and i have a lot of dudes, cause i´m always have been used windows, but i´m just disenchanted windows wanna control us… well, could you tell me? why is better mint or ubunt? which is the compatibility of the formats of the documents like word, excel, powerpoint, etc..

  11. To JOAB: Is not precisely correct to compare Mint to Ubuntu. Mint is based on Ubuntu; it is a modification/custimization, an evolution if you will to better suit its particular community. Better to compare Mint to another “sibling distro,” such as Ultimate Edition (as of this post, v2.3 for both UE & UE Gamers’ Edition) – for they are both built upon/from Ubuntu.

    The customized editions will generally come with more applications pre-installed (and often with newer versions). They will have a customized repository source list with a lot of overlap in the core repos.

    For a Windows user wishing to see (much) more choices in every aspect of the computing experience, those are two excellent distros to try out. Another such is Mandriva (which is not built upon Ubuntu).

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