There are few problems with default Linux Mint ASCII logo currently:

Current ASCII logo for reference

1. "Blurry" look of the LM logomark

IMO, biggest issue I have with default ASCII logo is that LM logomark inside the circle is really hard to see because of all the quotemarks and dashes. Specially the "hills" of logomark's M letter are hard to recognize.

2. Logo's circle and LM logomark isn't as round as it could be

Capital M letters do create contrast really well, but lack on roundness for the circle and parts of LM logomark. Capital O letters are IMO more suited for roundness and still bring decent amount of contrast.

3. Unnecessary characters

Minor nitpick, but there's few characters on the outer circle that aren't necessary for creating roundness.

My proposal for ASCII logo improvement:

linuxmint-ascii-logo-proposal.txt

EDIT 2026-02-17: improvements on outer circle roundness

I started with the current ASCII logo, but ended up updating many aspects of it. I have never done ASCII before, but I'm designer with decent knowledge of typography and I recently read article about ASCII graphic rendering, I used some techniques mentioned there.

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I didn't create new PR yet because I'm not sure how these are handled, but I can create it if you want.