Review Linux Mint 18 Sarah-Part 1

What is the distro
Taken from Linux Mint "About US" (https://linuxmint.com/about.php)
The purpose of Linux Mint is to produce a modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use.
Linux Mint is the most popular desktop Linux distribution and the 3rd most widely used home operating system behind Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS.
Some of the reasons for the success of Linux Mint are:

It works out of the box, with full multimedia support and is extremely easy to use.
It's both free of cost and open source.
It's community-driven. Users are encouraged to send feedback to the project so that their ideas can be used to improve Linux Mint.
Based on Debian and Ubuntu, it provides about 30,000 packages and one of the best software managers.
It's safe and reliable. Thanks to a conservative approach to software updates, a unique Update Manager and the robustness of its Linux architecture, Linux Mint requires very little maintenance (no regressions, no antivirus, no anti-spyware...etc).

What is it based on?
Linux Mint 18 Sarah is based on Ubuntu. There is also a rolling release Linux Mint edition based on Debian, but that's not what we're covering here.

What is it known for?
Linux Mint, as it stand right now is known for ease of use and polish. It's a great transitional distribution for people looking to come to Linux from Windows or people that don't know anything about Linux in general. For the most part, Linux Mint "just works".

Brief history
Linux Mint has been the number one most used distribution on Distrowatch.com for a few years now, after unseating the long reigning king, Ubuntu. As far as I understand, it was born out of a Linux desktop ecosystem in turmoil. At the time, Gnome and KDE reigned supreme. Both being the default environment on quite a few of the Linux distributions out there. Kde had undergone a shaky transition from KDE3 to KDE4 and was finding stability and it's place in the world again. Gnome made it's own very radical shift from a stable and loved Gnome2 to a revolutionary Gnome3. As with KDE4 a few years earlier, the shift from Gnome2 to Gnome3 caused a complete uproar amoung the Linux world, with even the great Linus chiming in at some point. The Linux Mint team took it upon themselves to take Gnome3 and develop the Cinnamon desktop environment, which led to Linux Mint, which led to them becoming the number one distribution.

*Edit* Mint came about in 2006, before the desktop ecosystem got turned upside down. It didn't take the number one spot until Cinnamon came out later.

Having said all that. I hate Linux Mint. I've always hated Linux Mint.