No hate to Ubuntu LTS (my old OS) as I think for an entry to Linux, it’s about the best there is, and then I just got used to it and then I started getting more and more annoyed with Snaps.
FFWD a couple of years and I decided to switch to Mint but I wanted something that was entirely free of Snaps, not just blocked, so LMDE seemed the best fit. I get all the good bits of Mint without the Canonical enforced stuff. It’s been running a week now and after plenty of tweaks (installing Gnome for example) looks and feels exactly how I wanted it without interference from Canonical.
I don’t have a ton of snaps installed but haven’t noticed any degradation in speed so far for something like Firefox.
Also I don’t think Ubuntu shipped with flatpak before snaps. Some of the other flavors of Ubuntu did but chose to go with snaps instead. You can always install flatpak if you want.
Not that anyone has to be okay with snaps or the direction Canonical is going. I’ve been eyeballing LMDE myself!
I should’ve been clearer - the speed issues were to do with installation (and updating) rather than running speed. The whole process seemed very slow and hung quite often. But, as I just said to @Varyk, maybe that was a misconfiguration on my part.
I’m definitely not an Ubuntu hater at all, its just the culmination of a few things like the Snaps coupled with Canonical’s slightly weird attitude was enough to make me want to switch.
As for LMDE, I definitely recommend it. It’s solid as a rock and once I put Gnome on it, was exactly how I wanted it.