> I'm not sure what software you mean. All of the user-facing apps I've seen
in Mint are common ones.
I'm talking about the software the Mint project develops. Software such as:
- Cinnamon
- mintMenu
- mintNanny
- mintInstaller
- mintUpdate
These are not "common" apps. With the exception of Cinnamon and mintMenu,
none of them have been distributed for any system other than Mint and its few
derivatives. This isn't an ethical problem, but it does make migration away
from Mint more difficult.
> As long as the Lens spyware is not installed, I don't see why Unity is a
"problem".
I was talking about the specific problem of Unity being configured, by
default, to send all lens searches to Canonical. This is still the case until
Ubuntu 16.04 (which hasn't been released yet).
> If people have a good first experience of GNU/Linux by using a
user-friendly disto like Mint, they are less likely to panic and go back to
Windows (I've seen this happen when people are thrown in the deep end). Once
they prove to themselves that GNU/Linux is a viable alternative to Windows,
and get used to using it fulltime, then they are ready to be introduced to
the differences between distros (including software freedom considerations),
and encouraged to try Trisquel or another 100% free distro.
But Mint isn't just "GNU/Linux". Mint is Mint. Mint does not do anything to
help you transition to a completely libre system, at all, and even goes to
lengths to make sure more proprietary software gets installed on your system
(heck, there's a utility installed by default which searches for proprietary
drivers, even when you don't need them, and tells you to install them). And
everything about its look and feel is customized specially, up to and
including specialized software.
For some reason, you seem to think that Mint is somehow more
beginner-friendly, but Ubuntu makes it just as easy as Mint does to install
proprietary software. At the same time, it makes it easy to not install
proprietary software. This is important. Mint only does the former, and it
does so with vigor, such that the latter becomes effectively impossible.
If your problem with Ubuntu is Unity's interface not being similar to
Windows, you can recommend one of the many Ubuntu variants using different
DEs, like Ubuntu MATE.
