I’ve been seriously looking to migrate away from Windows’s grip recently and I’ve laid my eyes on LMDE, as it seems like a simple and stable distro (I’m a total beginner in Linux/Unix). However, I have a laptop with an NVIDIA integrated graphics card, and given NVIDIA’s record, I’m worried about compatibility issues given that LMDE is Debian-based. Can anyone shine me some light on this? Thanks!
It’s mostly an aesthetic choice, a choice between desktop environments.
Desktop environment (DE) is just the visual bells and whistles that you use to navigate the PC, like that quick animation when you minimize or maximize a program (Apple loves this), a start menu that has cute icons for each program and turns blue when you pass the mouse over it (or a start menu that is just a raw list of program names), etc.
Mint Cinnamon uses a DE that looks like Windows 7 reborn, Mint XFCE uses a DE that looks like Windows XP reborn, and Mint MATE uses a DE that looks like Windows Vista reborn.
People will tell you that these DEs will have a slight difference in consumption of RAM, where the most ‘shiny’ DEs will consume more RAM (XFCE<MATE<Cinnamon) by virtue of having more bells and whistles and some different programs that execute the same function, but the difference is irrelevant in practice (unless you are using a 2gb or less PC, where each 50mb of RAM counts). So it’s mostly what you fancy to look at. I just like the old-school visual of XFCE.