Not this on, even I a Linux first user, after seeing that most of the distros re just copies of an original, which there really isn't many. Slackware, RedHat, Debian, Arch, to name a few of the forerunners, the rest are just derivatives of them. Nothing much better, just someones idea of another spin on them making a default desktop, but the guts are still the same.
Therefore one is not getting a 'better' distro by installing LinuxMint, (though that is a nicer Linux then Ubunutu saturated distro MO).
I just got for the orginal then modify it to my liking.
Same for FreeBSD, every *BSD I seen out there branches off from FreeBSD, so why not just use FreeBSD and modify it to your own liking?
It's a pretty much from scratch OS being no desktop GUI Xorg, OS. just a barebones Server setup install. Everyone else is trying on there own to come up with something different because of there own personal reasons, look up the history on it.
anyways as with most others in here, Might as well just use FreeBSD because all of or most all of the others pull from it anyways and some are not even being maintained anymore, or if they are not as often perhaps due to lack of people working on it to do so.
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Just get a scripting language under your belt and the basic commands on now to run and maintain the system you're pretty much good to go, anything else... well that is what the forums are for.
It is all open source so it can be changed if you do not like what you're seeing or dealing with.