Every Ubuntu vs Linux Mint comparison seems to quote the same idle RAM figure and the same boot time, and I could never find anyone who had measured them. So I installed both on identical virtual machines, three of them, and measured: Mint on its current release, Ubuntu 26.04, and Ubuntu 24.04, because Mint is still built on the 24.04 base and the fair question is how much of any gap comes from the desktop rather than from the newer Ubuntu underneath.
You get the numbers first: idle memory, boot to a settled desktop, the lowest RAM each one will still run a desktop on (with the exact error at the first size that broke), and what the Snap vs Flatpak split costs when you open Firefox. After that come the parts you can’t benchmark: Cinnamon on X11 against GNOME on Wayland, update handling and Timeshift, the default apps, and what changes when Mint moves to the 26.04 base. If you already picked one, the Linux Mint install guide and the Ubuntu 26.04 install walkthrough take it from there.
Ran all three side by side on one Proxmox host at the end of September 2026 (Linux Mint 22.3 Cinnamon, Ubuntu 26.04.1 and Ubuntu 24.04.5, all fully updated, all on kernel 7.0); every number below came off those VMs.
Ubuntu vs Linux Mint: the measured numbers
Same hardware for all three: 2 vCPUs, 4 GB of RAM, a 40 GB disk, the default install from each ISO, and automatic login straight to the desktop. Boot and Firefox times are the median of three cold boots.
| Measured | Linux Mint 22.3 | Ubuntu 26.04 | Ubuntu 24.04 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop and session | Cinnamon 6.6.9, X11 | GNOME 50.1, Wayland only | GNOME 46, Wayland |
| Boot to a settled desktop | 22.5 s | 26.1 s | 23.8 s |
| RAM used at idle (180 s after boot) | 1,019 MB | 1,163 MB | 1,189 MB |
| RAM the OS can see (of 4,096 MB) | 3,911 MB | 3,398 MB | 3,911 MB |
| RAM still available at idle | 2,892 MB | 2,235 MB | 2,721 MB |
| Lowest RAM with a clean desktop | 512 MB | 1,024 MB | 512 MB |
| Firefox cold start | 1.27 s (.deb) | 2.01 s (snap) | 1.98 s (snap) |
| Firefox warm start | 0.69 s | 1.01 s | 1.01 s |
| Disk used after install, swap file excluded | 9.8 GiB | 7.6 GiB | 7.7 GiB |
| Installed .deb packages | 1,928 | 1,509 | 1,512 |
| Snaps / snap loop mounts | 0 / 0 | 13 / 21 | 12 / 19 |
| Running system services | 30 | 32 | 36 |
| Processes at idle | 205 | 216 | 214 |
| Support ends | April 2029 | May 2031 (standard) | June 2029 (standard) |
The short version: Mint idles 144 to 170 MB lighter, starts Firefox about 0.7 seconds faster, and runs a desktop in half the RAM Ubuntu 26.04 needs. It also installs more software, which is why it uses more disk. Most of the RAM gap on 26.04 has nothing to do with GNOME, and the next section explains where it went.
How the test was run
All three VMs ran on the same Proxmox node with identical settings: 2 vCPUs passed through as the host CPU type, 4,096 MB of RAM with a balloon device that reports stats but never reclaims memory, a 40 GB virtio-scsi disk, virtio networking and virtio-gpu graphics. Mint came from a clean 22.3 install. All three had OpenSSH and the QEMU guest agent added so they could be measured from outside. Both Ubuntu machines were installed unattended from the official desktop ISOs using the installer’s default choices, which means Ubuntu’s “Default selection” (the minimal app set) rather than the extended one. The 24.04 machine started from the 24.04.2 ISO and was upgraded to 24.04.5. After a full apt full-upgrade and snap or Flatpak refresh, all three ended up on the same 7.0 HWE kernel.
I left the first-login welcome window open on all three, because that is what a new user sees. Each number means one thing:
- Boot to a settled desktop: from the VM start command to the first moment the screen stayed more than 98% unchanged for 10 seconds, after the desktop shell process was running.
- RAM used: total minus available memory as the guest reports it through the balloon driver, read 180 seconds after boot. I checked this against
/proc/meminfoinside each guest and the two agreed to within 3 MB (Mint read 1,019 MB from the host and 1,022 MB inside). - Lowest RAM: stepped down from 3 GB (Ubuntu) or 2 GB (Mint), boot, wait four minutes, then check the logged-in session is alive and look at the screen. The last size with a working desktop counts; I screenshotted every step and pulled the journal from the first size that broke.
- Firefox start: a headless screenshot of a local file, timed from launch to exit, run once cold three minutes after a fresh boot and once more warm straight after.
Treat these as relative numbers. A laptop with an SSD and a real GPU will boot faster than a VM on shared storage, but the order between the three holds.
1. Idle RAM: Ubuntu 26.04 sets aside 512 MB before GNOME even starts
The first surprise showed up before any desktop loaded. Mint and Ubuntu 24.04 both saw 3,911 MB of the 4 GB they were given. Ubuntu 26.04 saw 3,398 MB. The kernel log says why:
sudo dmesg | grep -i 'crashkernel reserved'On the 26.04 machine it prints a 512 MB reservation:
[ 0.011489] crashkernel reserved: 0x0000000052000000 - 0x0000000072000000 (512 MB)Ubuntu 26.04 installs kdump-tools on the desktop by default. The package drops /etc/default/grub.d/kdump-tools.cfg, which adds crashkernel=2G-4G:320M,4G-32G:512M,... to the kernel command line. On any machine with 4 to 32 GB, 512 MB is held back for a crash-dump kernel that only runs if the main kernel panics (bigger machines reserve 1 to 4 GB). Neither Mint nor 24.04 does this.
So the real idle comparison has two parts. GNOME 50 itself used 1,163 MB against Cinnamon’s 1,019 MB, a gap of 144 MB. The reservation then took another 512 MB off the top. On a 4 GB laptop, Mint leaves you 2,892 MB free for browser tabs and Ubuntu 26.04 leaves 2,235 MB. That difference is enough to decide whether a cheap laptop starts swapping.
If you never read kernel crash dumps (most desktop users don’t), removing the package gives the memory back. I ran this on the 26.04 test machine and rebooted:
sudo apt-get purge -y kdump-tools
sudo update-grub
sudo rebootAfter the reboot the reservation is gone from the kernel command line, and free -m shows almost the full 4 GB again:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3910 611 2919 9 611 3299The trade-off is simple: if the kernel panics, there’s no dump to send in a bug report. On a server I’d keep it. On a 4 GB desktop I’d remove it.
2. Is Linux Mint faster than Ubuntu at boot?
Slightly, and less than people claim. Mint settled into a usable desktop in 22.5 seconds, Ubuntu 24.04 in 23.8 and Ubuntu 26.04 in 26.1 (medians of three cold boots each). SSH answered at almost the same moment on all three, 13.6 to 14.1 seconds in, so the base system comes up at the same speed. The difference is all in the desktop.
GNOME’s shell process actually starts first (15.7 seconds on 24.04 against 17.3 for Cinnamon). It then spends longer drawing the dock, desktop icons and the welcome app before the screen goes still. One to four seconds is noticeable on a slow disk and unnoticeable on an NVMe drive. I wouldn’t pick a distro on it.
That is the Mint desktop the timer stopped on: welcome window, bottom panel, menu button at the left. Ubuntu 26.04 stops on its own welcome app with the dock down the left edge:
3. How little RAM will each one run on?
Far less than the documentation says. Linux Mint asks for 2 GB of RAM and recommends 4 GB. Ubuntu’s download page now lists 6 GB for 26.04. Here is where each one actually stopped producing a working desktop:
| Distro | Documented minimum | Last clean desktop | First size that broke, and how |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linux Mint 22.3 | 2 GB | 512 MB | 384 MB: wallpaper only, the panel never drew; cinnamon-session logged “Unable to start session”. 256 MB: black screen, nothing written to the journal. |
| Ubuntu 24.04 | not tested against a spec | 512 MB | 384 MB: the dock came up, but the desktop-icons extension restarted every few seconds, the welcome app vanished and SSH stopped answering. |
| Ubuntu 26.04 | 6 GB | 1,024 MB | 768 MB: in both automated runs the desktop-icons extension restarted 78 and 53 times during each five minute boot and journald hit memory pressure; the run captured below ended on the login screen. A third, manual boot reached the desktop, so treat 768 MB as unreliable. |
A clean desktop at 512 MB does not mean Mint is usable at 512 MB. Open Firefox and it starts swapping immediately. What the floor tells you is how much room is left for your apps on real hardware. On a 2 GB machine, Mint and Ubuntu 24.04 still have headroom for a browser. Ubuntu 26.04 is already close to its limit, and it’s tighter than the floor suggests: the 2G-4G:320M rule reserves 320 MB for crash dumps on a 2 GB laptop. The floor tests at 768 MB and 1,024 MB weren’t affected, since nothing is reserved below 2 GB.
Mint at 384 MB: “Unable to start session: A program required by the session failed to start”
This is how Mint failed. The display manager logged in, the wallpaper painted, and then Cinnamon itself never registered. After a 50 second timeout, cinnamon-session gave up:
cinnamon-session-binary[909]: WARNING: t+49.82025s: Application 'cinnamon.desktop' failed to register before timeout
cinnamon-session-binary[909]: CRITICAL: t+49.84191s: Unable to start session: A program required by the session failed to start. App ID: 'cinnamon.desktop'.What you see is the Mint wallpaper with no panel, no menu and no way to click anything:
Ubuntu 26.04 at 768 MB: the login screen comes back
Ubuntu failed more quietly, and my first automated check missed it. The logged-in session was technically alive, and gnome-shell was still running as the user. The journal showed the desktop-icons extension (DING) crash-looping: gnome-shell: Launching DING process appeared 78 times in one automated run and 53 in the other, against 1 to 3 times on a normal 4 GB boot and 7 at 1,024 MB. Both runs also logged systemd-journald: Under memory pressure, flushing caches. The run below ended with the GDM greeter on screen instead of the desktop. For any real user that is a failed login. A manual boot at the same size got through with 14 DING restarts and no memory pressure, which is why I call 768 MB unreliable rather than impossible:
Ubuntu 24.04 showed the same DING loop, but only once it got down to 384 MB. GNOME 50 on 26.04 hits it at twice the RAM.
4. Snap vs Flatpak, and what it costs when you open Firefox
A fresh Ubuntu 26.04 install already had 13 snaps, 21 squashfs loop mounts and 2.6 GB under /var/lib/snapd. Firefox, the App Center, the firmware updater and the security center all ship as snaps. Mint had none of that. It pins snapd so apt can never install it, and you can read the pin yourself:
cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.prefA negative priority means apt will never pick the package, even when another package depends on it:
# To prevent repository packages from triggering the installation of Snap,
# this file forbids snapd from being installed by APT.
# For more information: https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.html
Package: snapd
Pin: release a=*
Pin-Priority: -10Mint ships Flatpak instead, with Flathub already configured as a remote. Ubuntu doesn’t install the flatpak package at all. The Snap, Flatpak and apt guide for Ubuntu 26.04 covers adding it if you want both.
The part you actually feel is launch time. The same Firefox release (157.0) shipped as a .deb on Mint and as a snap on Ubuntu 26.04, which makes this a clean test of the packaging. Each distro got three fresh boots, then this timing loop at the three minute mark:
rm -f ~/ff.png; s=$(date +%s%N); firefox --headless --screenshot ~/ff.png file:///etc/os-release >/dev/null 2>&1; e=$(date +%s%N); test -s ~/ff.png && echo $(( (e - s) / 1000000 ))The output lands in $HOME on purpose. My first attempt wrote to /tmp, and the snap build silently saved the file into its own private /tmp, where the test could never find it. That gotcha catches scripts on Ubuntu all the time.
| Firefox launch | Mint (.deb) | Ubuntu 26.04 (snap) | Ubuntu 24.04 (snap) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cold, three boots (ms) | 1,287 / 1,273 / 1,226 | 2,006 / 2,019 / 2,000 | 1,962 / 1,998 / 1,984 |
| Warm, three boots (ms) | 688 / 695 / 678 | 1,027 / 1,001 / 1,007 | 998 / 1,006 / 1,027 |
The snap costs about 0.7 seconds on a cold start and 0.3 seconds on every launch after that, every time. Snap startup has improved a lot since the early days, but the snap wrapper still sets up confinement on every launch. It’s a small cost you’ll notice daily. Mozilla publishes its own apt repository with a .deb build if you’d rather swap the snap out on Ubuntu. On Mint there’s nothing to change.
5. Cinnamon on X11 vs GNOME on Wayland
This is the real reason most people end up choosing one or the other, and the gap has grown. Ubuntu 26.04 no longer ships an X11 session at all. The session directories on each machine tell the story. Mint has both:
ls /usr/share/xsessions /usr/share/wayland-sessionsOn Mint, the X11 Cinnamon session is the default, and a Wayland session is available next to it:
/usr/share/wayland-sessions:
cinnamon-wayland.desktop
/usr/share/xsessions:
cinnamon2d.desktop
cinnamon.desktopUbuntu 26.04 has only ubuntu.desktop under wayland-sessions, and the xsessions directory doesn’t exist. X11 apps still run through Xwayland, but you can’t log in to an X session any more. For most hardware that’s fine: Wayland gives you fractional scaling (on by default in 26.04), smoother high refresh displays and HDR. Where it bites is old screen-sharing tools, some remote desktop setups and the occasional automation script that expects xdotool to work.
Mint’s Wayland session is still labelled experimental, and the Mint team has said why: the Cinnamon screensaver only works on X11, and a replacement is being built for the next release. Until then, Cinnamon on X11 is what Mint supports.
Layout is the familiar split. Cinnamon gives you a bottom panel, a start menu, a system tray and window buttons in the taskbar, so anyone coming from Windows can use it without learning anything. GNOME gives you a dock, an Activities overview on the Super key and workspaces as the main way to organise windows. It’s efficient once it clicks, and it takes a few days to click. If you like Cinnamon but want Ubuntu underneath, installing Cinnamon on Ubuntu is an option, though Mint’s integration is tighter.
6. Updates, Timeshift and the apps you get
Both distros pull the same security fixes from Ubuntu’s archive. What differs is who presses the button. Ubuntu 26.04 installs security updates on its own (APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1" is set out of the gate) and refreshes snaps four times a day. Mint’s Update Manager ships with its automatic upgrade and autoremove timers disabled and asks you to decide. On first open, it recommends turning on system snapshots and applying all updates:
The snapshots in that screen are Timeshift, which Mint preinstalls and Ubuntu doesn’t. It isn’t configured until you walk through its setup (the test VM had no /etc/timeshift/timeshift.json). Do it on day one: a Timeshift snapshot is the fastest way back from a bad driver or kernel update. The Timeshift backup and restore guide covers rsync and Btrfs modes, and it works on Ubuntu too once you install it.
The default apps explain the disk numbers. Mint’s 9.8 GiB install includes LibreOffice, Thunderbird, the Celluloid video player and the Hypnotix IPTV app. Ubuntu’s default selection leaves the office suite and mail client out, which is how it fits in 7.6 GiB. Ubuntu 26.04 also replaced several GNOME tools, and I confirmed each one on the test machine:
| Job | Linux Mint 22.3 | Ubuntu 26.04 | Ubuntu 24.04 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Files | Nemo | Nautilus | Nautilus |
| Terminal | GNOME Terminal | Ptyxis | GNOME Terminal |
| Text editor | Xed | GNOME Text Editor | GNOME Text Editor |
| Images | Xviewer | Loupe | Eye of GNOME |
| Xreader | Papers | Evince | |
| Office, mail | LibreOffice, Thunderbird | not in default selection | not in default selection |
| Firefox | .deb from Mint | snap | snap |
| sudo | sudo 1.9.15 | sudo-rs (Rust rewrite) | sudo 1.9.15 |
Nemo is the one I’d miss most going back to Ubuntu. It keeps split panes (F3) and a menu bar, both of which Nautilus dropped years ago. The sudo row matters if you script against sudo: 26.04 ships sudo-rs, and a few rarely used sudoers options behave differently. The full list of what moved between the two Ubuntu releases is in the Ubuntu 26.04 vs 24.04 comparison.
Servers are where the choice makes itself. Mint has no server edition and no cloud images. Anything that runs headless, or in a VM template or a cloud instance, is Ubuntu’s job.
What changes when Mint 23 lands
Today’s comparison has an expiry date. Mint’s own blog lists the next release, called Mint 23 “Alfa” for now, as planned for Christmas 2026 on an Ubuntu 26.04 LTS base with kernel 7.0. Its development builds carry Cinnamon 6.7 with the new Wayland-capable screensaver, and Mint is replacing the Ubiquity installer with the live installer from LMDE. Once it ships, the Mint vs Ubuntu 24.04 row in the tables above stops mattering. The comparison becomes Cinnamon vs GNOME on the same 26.04 packages, and the questions worth re-testing are whether Mint also inherits kdump-tools and its 512 MB reservation, and whether Cinnamon’s Wayland session loses the experimental label.
Until then, the measured numbers make the choice fairly mechanical. On 4 GB of RAM or less, or on a machine you’re handing to someone leaving Windows, install Mint. It leaves about 650 MB more free memory, opens Firefox faster and stays supported until April 2029. If you want Wayland today, run a HiDPI or high refresh display, or want the longer support window (standard support to May 2031), install Ubuntu 26.04, and consider dropping kdump-tools on low-memory machines. Mint 22 users don’t need to do anything now: 22.3 is the current release, and Mint has shipped an upgrade tool for every base change since Mint 18, so watch the 23 release notes for the upgrade path. If your hardware is older still, the lightweight Linux distros roundup ran the same kind of RAM floor tests down to 64 MB.
