Originally Posted by
mixture
I wouldn't trust Distrowatch's numbers.... I think there's very little doubt that Ubuntu trumps Mint on adoption..... Ubuntu has all the business server and desktop users to start with that Mint doesn't, before you add on their home user base with is almost certainly larger than Mint's.
Mint is where many of us Ubuntu users went after Ubuntu decided to push their netbook interface onto those who run Linux on 24" monitors.
And, I will admit, it was a pretty good netbook interface. But a lousy one for big screens.
Mint 17 is just coming out, which will be supported for several years. However, a distro designed specifically for older and slower machines may make sense. Looks like I have 1.6GB in use in Mint 16 with a dozen Firefox windows, Thunderbird and LibreOffice running, and a DVD playing in VLC.
Oh, and everyone I know who runs a business server or desktop on Linux is using Red Hat or a derivative (CentOS, Scientific Linux, etc). But I'm sure some run Ubuntu for the newest and shiniest apps.