Mint is more than Ubuntu with a DE
I don't think Mint would be "obsoleted" all that readily. Along with supporting a number of DE's on top of their derivations of Ubuntu, such as Cinnamon, Mate (my choice since it most closely resembles the Gnome 2 that I, and my wife, got used to about 10 years ago, which lured me to Mint when Unity became the mainstay for Ubuntu), and some others I forget (XFCE, KDE?) , they provide the multimedia decryption and proprietary codecs that mainstream distros shy away from to avoid business exposure to DRM legalities. Also, Mint provides a "pure" Debian spin that lets them avoid total dependence on Ubuntu.
I had been really hoping the Ubuntu Phone would get somewhere as an alternative to proprietary, insecure Android, but could not get going with it as long as the Unity DE and Nexus hardware were the only viable, supported options.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
