Linux Mint

In an effort to get away from Windows I am playing around with Linux Mint (Cinnamon)
Initally, I tested Mint via a bootable USB stick (with persistence), created by using Linux Live USB Creator

I must say, Mint in general is very impressive. The installation worked first time, with no frustrations. Having poked around there are a lot of nice features in place:

1) Desktop window management - Just move your cursor to the top/left corner and a set of individual screens appear. You can then jump to another screen or drag open windows into one of the screens. Nice!

2) Software packages - Mint has a very clean package manager. It makes easy to find and install software. You can view by category, read up on the app, and check ratings and comments.

3) The system is clean and light. Battery power on the laptop appears to hold out for a long time. Boot time is super-fast (6 seconds for me)

4) The Menu (AKA Windows Start) is quite easy to navigate through. It supports the Windows key so you can open it and start typing away if you want to find an application quickly

5) Real-time help. There is a chat IRC in the menu which takes you straight to a live chat IRC channel where you can get help relating to Mint. Good move. I have had a lot of support from the guys there.

Having used Mint for several days its actually easy to forget that I am *not* using Windows. I am actually trying to move away from Windows since I don't like the way MS is heading with the whole childish TILE-based concept.

Any other Mint users here?


BTW: Shame there is no native Linux B4A

Yes, Linux Mint is indeed very nice, I've been using it since forever, don't forget to also check Mint Debian.

I've tried Mint a couple of times, and I think at the moment its the best distro out there. I dont like Unity or Gnome3 and Mint gives a decent alternative.
However, I had some trouble installing it on my PC (since I dont have a USB Flash or a CD-ROM), the unetbootin etc werent installing properly from my HDD.
I probably need to try it again soon.

You could install it on a VirtualBox too.

I know. But I prefer the OS to run as an OS unless I just need it temporarily.

Hi Jim ,

my effort to get away from Windows was Ubuntu ... i am using it now for 4 Years
Works like a charm you can do dual boot Win/Linux automatic if you need

I had been sticking with Ubuntu as well and/or back and forth between it and OpenSuse since others had issues on my laptop and failed to load some drivers. I ended up caving in and getting the 3 Pack Win7 home pack when they went really cheap on Amazon. I upgraded one of them to Pro with one of those Anytime upgrade cards that were cheap at the same time. Looks like Microsoft is giving upgrades to Win8 at $40 till end of year when released too that again give more options to those on Win7.

Linux did give me better tweaking that Win7 hides, but lots of the Linux distros had issues with my sound card and took finding all kinds of 3rd Party stuff to play all my media formats and such. I do a lot of Video editing too and Sony Vegas as well as a few other apps suck up to Microsoft too much and limited support to Vista+ when WinXP SP3 and XP 64bit would have worked fine.

My main gripe with Win Vista/7 is all the updating and wanting reboots or taking time out of startup/shutdown to update, but Linux did a lot of the same. I somewhat like how they made the soundcards function at an application level and more integrated with the OS, but it also lags with the OS where I never had that issue with XP. Soundblaster's 64bit drivers have issues too and I'm unable to record as well as many of my favorite applications and FX not working.

Roger Garstang said:

I had been sticking with Ubuntu as well and/or back and forth between it and OpenSuse since others had issues on my laptop and failed to load some drivers. I ended up caving in and getting the 3 Pack Win7 home pack when they went really cheap on Amazon. I upgraded one of them to Pro with one of those Anytime upgrade cards that were cheap at the same time. Looks like Microsoft is giving upgrades to Win8 at $40 till end of year when released too that again give more options to those on Win7.

Linux did give me better tweaking that Win7 hides, but lots of the Linux distros had issues with my sound card and took finding all kinds of 3rd Party stuff to play all my media formats and such. I do a lot of Video editing too and Sony Vegas as well as a few other apps suck up to Microsoft too much and limited support to Vista+ when WinXP SP3 and XP 64bit would have worked fine.

My main gripe with Win Vista/7 is all the updating and wanting reboots or taking time out of startup/shutdown to update, but Linux did a lot of the same. I somewhat like how they made the soundcards function at an application level and more integrated with the OS, but it also lags with the OS where I never had that issue with XP. Soundblaster's 64bit drivers have issues too and I'm unable to record as well as many of my favorite applications and FX not working.

Click to expand...

i had also some problems with drivers only with new Laptops , but there is a way you are able to take the Win Xp Win 7 drivers and use them in Ubuntu , what i did with the WLAN drivers , otherwise it worked out of the " box ", you also are able to use the "virtualbox " like VMware and use your Windows inside ubuntu
it is a preference ...

Its nice to read that others digging Mint.
What I found especially good recently was the support (via xChat in the menu). I had issues with LCD brightness control for my laptop and the guys from the chatroom support were second to none. Throwing commands, suggestions, and links to articles. Needless to say I got the brightness working in the end.

That kind of support can only serve to give the Linux community a good name.