mint's clem

"Why Ubuntu? Because it was (and still is) the best package base."

That's from the interesting interview over at TechWorld, "Q&A: Clement Lefebvre: The man behind Linux Mint."

According to Lefebvre, there are no plans to move Mint from an Ubuntu base, but it sounds like the Mint team is keeping their options open.

He also discusses: Cinnamon and MATE; Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE); the upcoming release of Linux Mint 16 ("Petra"); his thoughts on the possibility of using Ubuntu's Mir (or Wayland); Mint's financial support and business plan; and many other things.

I've always liked how Clem keeps the lines of communication open -- participating at the Mint forums, and keeping users informed at the Linux Mint Blog. He seems to go out of his way to try to let everyone know what's going on with the distro, what he's trying to do with it.

For my own computers, I decided (after Mint 9 "Isadora") to go in other directions, and I no longer run Mint here, but there are good reasons why Mint has become one of the most popular Linux distributions out there. Mint continues to be one of the jewels of the Linux world. I probably won't install it, but I'm looking forward to running a live session of Mint 16 when it comes out because I want to take a good look at Cinnamon 2.0. Down the road, I might even try installing Cinnamon in Ubuntu 14.04. :)