Here’s the Deal

Mint vs Puppy Linux

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When comparing Mint vs Puppy Linux, the Slant community recommends Puppy Linux for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux distros that run entirely in RAM?” Puppy Linux is ranked 1st while Mint is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Puppy Linux is:

Puppy Linux requires 128MB of RAM and 333Mhz of CPU, although 256MB of RAM is recommended.

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Common Questions

What are the best Linux distros that run entirely in RAM?

Pros

Pro
All accounts in one place

Mint can handle banking accounts, saving accounts, credit cards, etc. It consolidates all your accounts together so you do not need to put work into following multiple accounts.

Pro
Organizes budget into categories

Mint splits your spending into different categories, such as gas or fast food, so you can see where you're spending too much money or how much you need to budget for.

Pro
Alerts

Mint can be set to alert you to various events such as upcoming bills, or low balances on any accounts. It can be set to alert you from the app, through email or by text message. In addition you can sign up to recieve monthly emails about your money and ways to improve your budget.

Pro
Extremely low minimum system requirements

Puppy Linux requires 128MB of RAM and 333Mhz of CPU, although 256MB of RAM is recommended.

Pro
The whole OS runs off of RAM

Since Puppy Linux is completely loaded and run off of RAM instead of HDD, it's read/write speed is not a factor.

Pro
Designed to run as a live USB/CD

A portable version, that can be carried on a thumb drive without requiring installation, weighs less than 100MB; a Live CD - less than 150MB. You can even save your settings and files for Puppy on the external device/media.

Running off a live CD also has security benefits, as your system will reset to the known config after each boot.

Pro
Different distro based versions available

Puppy Linux offers a few different releases.

The first is an Ubuntu based release called Tahrpup, by using this version the user is able to take advantage of all software and support from Ubuntu.

The second version is called Slacko, which is built upon the Slackware binaries.

The third is called Wary and it is built to support older hardware than the rest.

And the fourth is called Quirky, which is used as a base to explore new ideas.

Pro
Linux distro designed for this exact purpose

Pro
Offers a long term support release

Puppy Linux offers an LTS release called Precise.

Pro
It can be the only distro that works

Sometimes, Puppy Linux is the only distro that works on an old machine: all other distros are more demanding.

Pro
JWM used as window manager

JWM is a low resource window manager that is used in most Puppy Linux installs.

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Cons

Con
Not international

Only works for US & Canada banks, and even then there are banks (like EQ Bank) that have actively blocked access to Mint.

Con
Online only

It does not work offline.

Con
Unsafe

With very few exceptions, Mint isn't just syncing your data over, but is using your username and password to log directly into the bank website. Banks will not reimburse for any fraud or stolen funds that may result from this, or may use Mint as an excuse to not reimburse for charges or stolen funds that occur from other causes.

Con
Categories organization not flexible

Con
The budgeting part has too many bugs

Con
Very complicated tool

Of course, it's powerful but also very complicated. Some would prefer tools which are less robust, has less features but are a lot easier.

Con
A bit ugly

Using puppy makes you feel like you just jumped 20 years into the past. Being that the purpose of Puppy Linux is to run or really low resource machines the software used is often on the older side, which is precisely why it has a 20 year old look.