Internetling

It’s been almost a year since I switched to Arch Linux, an elegant and simple Linux distribution. I had a Windows XP install on the other partition. I didn’t like this combination. Felt kind of like shoving the trash under the sofa instead of throwing it into the bin.

It was a love-hate relationship. While I still adore the elegance of Arch Linux, pacman started acting up. After every update, my Wacom tablet ceased to work. Gwibber and pywebkitgtk were almost impossible to set up and I couldn’t rotate my wallpaper correctly (found a script to do this later). I like to (since I’m a pretentious nerd) think of myself as a power user. I don’t mind doing things in the terminal or learning new commands. Sadly, even though I am on vacation, after an update, I’d like to draw with my Wacom tablet in the GIMP. I can repair it, but it takes up to 10 minutes. 10 minutes during which I’d rather be drawing. With a heavy Windows XP setup and a once again broken Arch system, I finally decided it’s time to scrap both.

For what?

The first distribution I ever tried was Ubuntu, in 2005. Ubuntu, at least for me personally, represents the best parts of GNU/Linux in a polished package and while I’ve used PCLinuxOS, Fedora and Knoppix as my main Linux machine, I always came back to Ubuntu. Everytime, switching back to a new and improved Ubuntu was a wonderful experience.

Alas, Ubuntu got a bit old.

I heard about Linux Mint numerous times and even tried out a few releases. The major “selling” point of Mint is its main focus: to provide a ready-to-go, user-friendly desktop. Most readers are probably familiar with the fact that Fedora and Ubuntu, for instance, don’t ship with Flash because of certain licensing issues. Well, Linux Mint does not care about that. The project aims to provide a full, out-of-the-box experience, so you get a distribution with i. e. Flash installed. This is both a pro and con, since you do not have a completely open setup anymore. However, many Linux users are not even aware their Linux distribution ships with other closed-source components, such as the famous binary blobs in the Debian kernel. There are certain distros like Gnewsense who use strictly Free Software, though arguably , most of the popular distros all contain proprietary components. So, if we’re going to have to worry about it anyway, why not use a leaner distribution?

Mint is built on Ubuntu. As a consequence, upgrading to a new version of Mint will bring you new Ubuntu features. Alongside the basic Ubuntu setup and some proprietary components, Mint also ships with some different applications and front-ends, which you can see in the gallery. Here are some notable ones.

1. Gnome Do, my favorite launcher application (that also features a Dock) and a must-install for most power users.

2. The good-looking, but unnecessary mintInstall (how many APT GUI do we need anyway). A nice feature is the rating system, even though I believe something similar already exists in the Ubuntu installer. Synaptic does the job much better, can now download screenshots, and is also easy enough to use.

3. The Compiz Config Manager, which is absent in Ubuntu. Good idea to tweak Compiz settings if you’re running it.

4. The excellent MintUpdater, an update manager that sorts updates by “safety”. Depending on the reliability of the package, the updates (originally pushed for Ubuntu) are ranked from 1 (Certified working updates) to 5 (most unstable).

5. Gufw. It is basically a GUI for the Ubuntu Firewall. Sadly, it has very few options. I’d at least like to have the option to get asked whether to allow Internet access when an application requests it. Or is that not the Linux way?

5. Giver. Allows you to easily share files with other users you can see on the network. Yes, this is the most creative description I could come up with.

6. MintBackup. Helps you backup your home directory. Most people who do backups will probably use other applications. Despite this, it might come in handy.

7. APTonCD. This tool allows you to backup your downloaded packages to a CD/DVD. Something like a backup of your installed applications. You can later insert this CD and restore what you backed up.

8. Mozilla Thunderbird instead of Evolution. Hell yeah.

9. SCIM (life-saver for a Japanese learner like me) and Mint Nanny, a rudimentary lock-down app.

10. The Control Panel – just a GUI with all the configuration front ends neatly grouped and sorted by category.

You might notice in the screenshots that Linux Mint does not use the regular GNOME menu, instead they decided to go wtih the SLAB menu, an advanced GUI used primarily in OpenSuse. Some might not like it, I’m still making up my mind. It is nice to have a Search feature for menu items and a Favorites Section. The main downside to SLAB in my opinion is its rather large size. See the screen grabs and decide for yourself, I’m personally sticking with it for the moment.

All in all, Linux Mint 7 is going to be my main machine from now on, at least until I get my claws on another unsuspecting distribution. It is a distribution I spent very little time customizing and I have a pretty specific setup. Flash was there, Gnome Do was there, the GNOME bar was already on the bottom of the screen, I liked the icon theme. Linux Mint is the Ubuntu cake with some extra-delicious icing. The icing doesn’t make it slow, just better. Way better than vanilla Ubuntu. So, if you chose Ubuntu because it does most of the things for you, take Mint for a spin. It does everything, you can just sit back, relax and have a few evil laughs in your secret control tower. Minty fresh.

Get Linux Mint here

There’s also a KDE4 version!