Linux Mint

[RoyGBiv]

So, based on charlie's suggestion the other day, and because I'm sick and bored and had nothing else better to do, I installed Linux Mint today to play with it.

This thing is very nice distribution, especially for newbies to Linux. In fact, I was somewhat annoyed at having to find how to do some customizing to the default install, but I let that slide because it's not about me. The whole installation process was as close to hands-free as I've ever seen on a Linux distribution. If I had been wanting to do some manual partitioning of my discs, it would have taken a few more steps, but just for testing purposes I set it up on a clean hard drive by itself. Once the LiveCD booted, I double-clicked the install icon, answered seven questions, and then did nothing else until I rebooted the machine. At that point Mint was installed, and on first boot I updated the system via a convenient system tray icon. No other configuration was necessary except resizing my desktop.

The point here, it seems, is to create a distribution that is as "out of the box" ready as is possible and still maintain legality.

The only real problem I experienced with it involves the side buttons on my mouse. These are configured within xorg, and I know from experience that my particular mouse will require a customization that no distribution I've yet tried does by default. So, I expected that, and it's not a lingering problem, but I thought I should mention it anyway.

Hell, Flash videos worked without doing anything special beyond the automated processes. That never happens.

And it's not BROWN. :)

[struggle4progress]

1. I haven't tried it but understand it's based on Ubuntu: what's better about Mint than Ubuntu?

If your answer is just that you don't like the Ubuntu wallpaper, why not change it?

[RoyGBiv]

2. It's a refined Ubuntu ...

It's not about the wallpaper. Admittedly, I don't like it -- more specifically I don't like the default color scheme of the desktop -- and don't enjoy sitting through the install sequence having to look at it. This is a petty thing, I know, but my decision to use or not use Ubuntu is not based on it. The most it does from my perspective is to prevent me from having Ubuntu in my personal que of distros I will try with each new release.

That out of the way ...

Ubuntu doesn't appeal to me personally for a more complex reason, and Mint addresses it to an extent.

As you know, one of the drawbacks of a Linux system, due the vagaries of copyright and patent law, is that after an initial install, you still need do some configuration to get things to work, things that most computer users need to work for a system to do the things they want to do. For newbies, especially those migrating from Windows, this configuration can seem quite complex, even though it isn't. The bottom line is they don't want to have to screw around with it. Multimedia needs to function. People want to play their MP3s and be able to view AVI and WMV wrapped media. They want to visit Youtube. They want their wireless to work and their graphics card to have its 3D functions and hardware acceleration enabled. In most respects, a default Ubuntu install does not address these concerns.

Mint does. Using some creative methods of software distribution along with some handy, easy to use applications, getting a lot of this stuff to work "out of the box" is now essentially automatic. As mentioned initially, I could visit Youtube after all the automated processes were complete. I could play mp3s and AVIs. I don't use wireless and so wasn't able to check that, but the buzz about Mint suggests that it automatically configures many wireless connections that Ubuntu doesn't or at least is able to do so in a more straightforward manner.

For me personally, none of this matters a great deal. One of the reasons *I* use Linux is because I want to configure my system myself beyond some basic elements. I build the hardware drivers for my video card and compile often-used software from source. I install various networking tools and edit my own configuration files the way I want them. I build my own firewall rules and install a customized kernel. Ubuntu, in trying to be more user friendly, actually makes some of that more difficult. As a simple example, the way the developers screw around with some of the permissions, the directory structure, and a couple of config files in the name of "ease of use" makes setting up stunnel, an application I use for certain kinds of SSL connections, an absolute nightmare.

So, in the end, Ubuntu has made a whole lot of things a helluva lot better for a lot of people and makes the migration to Linux much simpler. But it doesn't go far enough for a certain class of people who otherwise might be willing to giving Linux a try, and it goes too far for me personally.

Mint, since it is based on Ubuntu, probably goes too far (for me) also. I haven't looked at it that deeply yet. But, it directly addresses some deficiencies in Ubuntu in a way that makes it more easy for me to recommend to people who want an alternative to Windows but don't want to or can't deal with the configuration necessary to make their system do the things they want it to do.

As an aside, I know that Windows doesn't actually allow you do do a lot of this "out of the box" either. In that respect, Mint is actually better than Windows. Unfortunately, from the perspective of most computer users, Windows does do these things from the get-go because they buy pre-installed, pre-configured systems. The irony here is that for a person who has never installed an OS before taking a machine with no OS and trying to install a new one, Ubuntu and Windows would be about equal in terms of ease-of-use. Mint would actually be easier than either, imo.

[struggle4progress]

5. I've been telling a younger family member, now in college, she might want to consider

a different OS on her laptap.

Of course, Ubuntu has a learning curve and may not be the best choice for her. But for me, ethernet and wireless worked right out of the box -- and when I plugged in my USB cell phone, Ubuntu made the connection without any configuration by me at all. On the other hand, configuring Evolution properly has been frustrating

[struggle4progress]

9. OK. You've persuaded me to try it. I had to download the Basic iso twice to get the right md5

and at 697mb it just barely fits on a 700mb cd, but I was able to do a slow burn and verify without running out of space

The Mint's desktop IS friendlier for non-geeks than Ubuntu's. I'll try installing it as a dual boot on something: probably not a mac (since installing Ubuntu on my mac turned into a weeklong nightmare); maybe onto a netbook with no CD drive, after burning the iso onto a flashdrive

[struggle4progress]

11. Supposedly easy to burn a Live USB from the Live CD, but you need an internet connection:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/linux-mint-6-flash-drive-install-via-cd/

<edit 1:> Skipped syslinux copy step but a syslinux.cfg on the flashdrive. Result: wouldn't boot on my Acer

[RoyGBiv]

12. You need to collect all these ...

Your play-by-plays are excellent commentary.

I've had mixed results with Linux on a USB drive, so I can't comment here. There's so many variables involved, it's often difficult to run down the source of the problems.

[struggle4progress]

16. Posting from Linux Mint 7 Live USB on Acer Aspire One:

To get the Live USB, I put the iso on a flash, copied it to the desktop on my Acer netbook (running up-to-date Ubuntu), and ran UNetbootin on the iso, with the flashdrive as the destination. It was a matter of point and click, with only one glitch: UNetbootin thinks I have 2 partitions on the flash, whereas I think I only have one; the first wouldn't serve as a mountpoint; the second would; I don't know whether I manually tinkered with the partition table on this flash some months ago or whether the problem is some artefact of my initializing the flash on the Mac (that had my original iso download). Mint immediately found my wireless network.

I've had working Live USBs for DSL, Puppy, Ubuntu. I couldn't get Puppy to find my wireless off the Live USB. I forget how I did them all: I've tried various things, including one detailed terminal oriented nightmare that had me mucking my way through setting all sorts of flags manually on the USB. This particular use of UNetbootin seems to have worked well; I can't remember whether my past experience with it was so happy

This is always a great way to increase one's tolerance for frustration, though :)

[Why Syzygy]

17. And here I am..

trying to get a java .dll file to work in Opera on XP :cry: . j/k :rofl:

Yeah, I have other more interesting curiosities these days than to start poking around on Linux.
Like online shopping!

Several years ago would have been a better window for that.

[struggle4progress]

19. I try not to shop online, for the same reason I avoid baskets and carts. If I have to carry

all that junk to a check-out counter and then to my car, I'll buy less I don't need. On-line shopping removes this safe-guard

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

20. It's nice, but I don't like it because it doesn't re-connect my wireless like Xubuntu does

For that matter, Puppy re-connects just fine, as does EasyPeasy.

[Why Syzygy]

3. Would there be any advantage

to installing that as a secondary OS on a Windows XP system? What would the utility factor be?
Browsing? Certainly not .the.game., right?

[RoyGBiv]

4. Knowledge is Power

Knowing more than one operating system is an advantage all by itself.

I have two separate Linux installations and one Windows on this machine. Including virtual machines, I have a total of three Linux systems, one BSD, and two Windows (XP and Vista). I'd install OS X if a reasonable way of doing so were possible. I like options, and I find uses for all of them. Vista and BSD are mostly self-education tools as is the third (virtual) Linux machine. I experiment with things on the latter in an environment in which it is impossible to harm my main system. I like playing with new kernels and compiling software for instance. I will eventually use a virtual machine to start learning out to do Linux From Scratch.

Anyway, to more directly answer your question, yes, there are advantages to having Linux as a secondary OS. In the process of learning the OS, you'll find you can do many things either more easily or far less expensively (as in, at no cost) in a Linux environment than on either a Windows box or a MAC.

Take DVD creation. I know this doesn't sound intuitive (Linux? The thing with the command line? DVDs?), but bear with me. I do this a lot as a hobby, which means I can't justify paying for some of the tools necessary to do the kinds of things I do in a Windows environment, and I don't enjoy mucking around with the limitations of the Windows shareware alternatives. This is actually the very first thing that got me playing with my Linux machine in such a way that I found I was booting that OS more than Windows. I started with a dual boot, allowing a 20 GB partition SuSE Linux. I was trying to encode several AVI files I had of old cartoons I'd recorded so that I could transfer them to a DVD and play them in my DVD player. I Spent *days* on this, had left my machine running for hours while trying to let the process complete, only to find when I came home from work to see the finished result that the damn thing had crashed half way through. So, on a lark, I looked into Linux tools.

I had my DVD created in a few hours.

There's other things, of course, but it's all a learning process at its base. There's really very little you can do with a Linux system you can't do with a Windows machine, but many things are less "dumbed down" and/or more securely done in a *nix style environment. I could go into a list, but that's getting into the Linux vs. Windows debate, and I really prefer not to do that. Beyond that is the fact I've slowly managed to free myself from the Microsoft mindset. which is something I wanted to do. I, personally, find a lot of things far more difficult to accomplish in a Windows environment, even though I use it every day at work. I have a more secure, stable system that allows me to do almost all the things I use a computer to do without spending hundreds of dollars I don't have to get done, all legally. That started with a dual boot system.

As for The Game, no. It's one of the few pieces of software I use I have been unable to get to work under Linux. The reason for this, btw, is the copy protection. You'd think it would be the graphics, but that's not it at all. Because of the copy-protection scheme in EA software, it's impossible to make it work, even under emulation.

[pokerfan]

7. It's always good to expand one's toolbox

but I think one of the best reasons to have a second OS at one's disposal (especially one that boot from a CD or thumb drive) is system recovery.

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

[RoyGBiv]

8. That's a very good point ...

The funny thing is, a few years back, that would have been at the top of my reasons. It's not now because I have gone a number of years without having to *do* a system recovery on my own machine. :)

(knock on all kinds of wood)

I do still regularly download the latest versions of Knoppix and SystemRescueCd and keep them on a disc in my disc library.

I used to keep one of these with me when I worked for Cox, a total Microsoft shop, and used it occasionally on laptops people brought in who were having problems with our network.

[Why Syzygy]

10. 21 reasons ..

updated XP this morning. Twenty one CRITICAL updates. What, it's been almost 60 days since I did a new system install and updated all critical components? SIGH And now I have a Windows Media Player folder, and even though I don't have it installed ON PURPOSE, an automatically launched related file (already disabled). There is also a seemingly CRITICAL program package which is related to VISTA compression, kindly included for no figging reason whatsoever with XP. But if I attempt to uninstall it, I get scary warnings that the long list of programs might not work! You are so right about the secrecy of Microsoft.

OTOH, all I do is browse, including a lot of youtube, play the Game, listen to Winamp, and a few documents, which I mostly use Notepad for. I open Word if I want to count characters for my DU signature.

[RoyGBiv]

13. In all fairness ...

With a major Linux system (Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora, etc), you get even more frequent updates. On average, I'd say I get one or two every other day. Some are critical, some "recommended."

One reason for this is that these distributions tend to include a package update manager that keeps track of updates to the various software packages you have on your system. Active open source projects are constantly in development, and when problems are found, they tend to be fixed as quickly as possible. Development teams then incorporate the fixes into their distribution's repositories and, finally, pass that on to your system when your update manager checks for updates. If you have Opera installed, for example, and a security hole is found and fixed, your package manager will let you know this so you can keep your entire system up-to-date. That is, you get update announcements for *all* the software on your system that's included in the distribution's repositories, not just the core operating system and its components.

"Critical" problems are found and fixed all the time. The difference is that Microsoft has a slower method of patching these updates, which means you can sometimes get a ton of them all at once.

Thankfully, the only updates that tend to require a system restart are kernel updates, which by themselves don't happen quite as often.

[charlie]

14. Yup

Major distros can seem like they're constantly updating, which can be a little unnerving when you're new to it -- what, AGAIN? Especially if you're someone who manages his/her Windows updates to head off unwanted "features" and system explosions. I'll probably get clobbered for saying this, but Linux updates are the model of inobtrusiveness compared to Windows. If patches introduce regressions, they tend to get fixed before I even notice a problem, and I wind up just reading about them later.

[charlie]

15. OT: In case you haven't seen this

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/317416/kernel_2_6_31_speed_up_linux_desktop

It's about the speed tweaks in the new kernel, out just a couple of days ago. It sounds like there are major improvements in desktop interactivity. Maybe ever-slowing Ubuntu will get a speed pop:

“The result is an improved desktop experience; benchmarks on memory tight desktops show clock time and major faults reduced by 50 per cent, and pswpin numbers (memory reads from disk) are reduced to about one-third. That means X desktop responsiveness is doubled under high memory pressure.”

Furthermore, memory flushing benchmarks in a file server shows the number of major faults going from 50 to 3 during 10 per cent cache hot reads.

[RoyGBiv]

18. Saw that ...

I haven't updated my kernel yet to that one.

One downside to having your own custom kernel is that updating is a bit of a process. :)

[hunter]

6. With Windows I sometimes got stuck and had to buy software to do what I want to do.

And then the software I had to buy sometimes didn't do exactly what I wanted it to do.

There came a time for me when Debian or Ubuntu simply did more of what I wanted to do than Windows.

Some of it is money. There are times I don't have money to buy software or new computers. The last Windows I bought for my own use was 98SE.

I don't play computer games so that's never been a consideration for me. I tend to build my own computers from junk. I used to say I wouldn't spend more than $350 for a computer. Now my limit is less than a $100 and maybe approaching zero. At the moment I have two cast off computers in my garage that have better specs than the one on my desktop, but I don't care. The computer I'm writing this on does everything I want it to do. It can even emulate every computer I've ever owned, any time I want to. By clicking an icon on my desktop I can revisit my old Atari 800XL with its home brew memory expansion, my old Mac SE30 , my old GeoWorks machines, or an emulation of the university computers I learned BSD Unix and Pascal on. (I must confess, I am a packrat and have kept a few of my old machines. But I never take them out of their boxes any more.)

Nowadays I won't work with Windows unless someone is paying me. It's just too irritating. Linux is easy. If I want it to do something new the odds are very good an appropriate application is available without any fuss at all -- I simply install it and go. I don't have to take out my credit card, I don't have to register or activate any product, I don't have to worry about license restrictions. It's just there.

[SKKY]

26. Using *nix will make you a better computer user...

...As nice as Mint is (And it is very, very nice), it's not perfect. You will still have some things to do, and will still have some hangups- however minor. Plus, it's free!!!!!!

[RoyGBiv]

21. Update ...

I installed Linux Mint (KDE edition) last night over my old installation I'd had working for about a year.

I'd set aside a block of time today for full configuration duties, that is getting the eye candy right, installing various uncommon applications I use, etc. Turns out I didn't really need it. I've been putting my system through the paces today, and I can now declare this the easiest Linux install I've ever done.

I had two minor problems, one of which wouldn't affect most people.

The latter involves the fact I have five separate hard drives in my system, a mix of IDE and SATA, each one with at least two partitions on it. One of the SATA drives has a Windows partition, another a partition allowing access to data from both my Windows and Linux installations. To add insult to injury, my Linux boot device is on an IDE drive.

I didn't plan it this way. I first built this system when SATA was relatively new, and I was recycling two large, basically new IDE drives at that time. Everything I've added has been SATA.

Anyway this all confused my partitioner a bit. If I'd allowed it to use the default configuration of keeping the old Linux installation and setting up Mint on a new partition, it wouldn't have been a problem at all, but I didn't want to do that. The end result was I had to mess with the partitioning table a bit more than I would have otherwise, and I had to do a small edit in my bootloader after installation.

The other problem was with the Nvidia driver installer. The automated process that you can immediately after install crashed. I'm still not sure why since I didn't have the problem during testing; may have been just a glitch. I started to compile the drivers myself as I normally do, but in the end I wanted to see what Mint could do unassisted, so I went with the handy, dandy driver installer called Envy to do the work for me. After a kernel update and a reboot, all was well.

I'll repeat what I said before. Everything worked. Everything. The first thing I did was open Firefox, navigate to YouTube, and watch a video. Then I opened my mp3 library and played a few. Then I played AVI, MPG, and WMV wrapped videos. Then I listened to some podcasts. No problems. Everything was snappy.

I did some personalized configuration today, installed stunnel, gpg, and a few other things. That all worked well ... or at least as expected. Stunnel is never straightforward. I'll roll my own kernel and compile some apps from source later. I don't feel like sitting through that at the moment.

I use the command line method of installing new packages, FWIW, but for those who are put off by this process, I'll note that you can very easily download the software you want, in a .deb package, then double-click on the file in the file browser, and it starts the installation process just like double-clicking an .exe installer in Windows. There is nothing hard about it.

Anyway, I give it a thumbs up. If you use Linux or want to and are distro-shopping, I suggest giving this a try.

[ConsAreLiars]

22. I just recently trying Linux Mint I've discovered an OS that I really like. Something I haven't

experienced since Amiga days.

I finally built a new machine after gathering up the various parts to replace the old dead one, and had been using an older HP in the interim. New one is AMD Phenom II w/DDR3 Ram and ATI Radeon 4200HD Grapics on the MB.

So, once ot was assembled, I put the 64-bit version of the Linux Mint Live CD in and gave it a test run (Gnome desktop). To my pleasant surprise it did just run (pretty much - video driver did not perform very well on this very newest ATI chipset).

Being absolutely new to Linux, but being of the mindset that believes if I can break it I can fix it, I blundered around a bit in trying to install better support for the ATI graphics system before figuring out a few things. Before getting that far, I also tested to see if the one program I need that runs only under M$ (PWP5.0) would work using WINE. Again, it ran fine except that it needed a couple of other things added to the system first. But the ATI site's new Linux drivers worked fine, although then enabling the FGLRX drivers as suggested within the Control Center's Hardware Driver killed everything (OK, don't do that again!).

Another question was how well the Linux versions of software I had been using performed. Apart from the fact the the new machine is maybe 10X faster at everything (feels like 100X), there also seem to be some subtle changes in the look and feel and menu layouts of Firefox and Thunderbird that l prefer. Importantly, the Livestation Linux software runs flawlessly, so I can view the only English language 24-hour news/documentary source, apart from Link TV and FSTV, Al Jazeera, worth watching.

Add the fact that all the usual programs one might use on a computer are open source with Linux and people smarter than me are are reviewing them to assure that they are not doing me any harm. By contrast, with M$ there are surely programs and code within websites designed explicitly to do me harm, and they can keep their code secret.

But much of my affection just comes from the fact that it is both very pretty and very versatile. I tried the standard Ubuntu and it felt clunky. The default "look" was not attractive, but in Linux Mint, a variant of Ubuntu, the Desktop Interface has several "WOW!'s" the new user will encounter, as well as a better than Amiga CLI (Terminal), that is very easy to use at as novice level and as powerful as one's understanding enables.

Short version- I'm a fan in danger of becoming a zealot, but too slow a typer to become a fanatic.

(edit, because I used a keyboard)

[RoyGBiv]

23. The speed is still surprising me ...

I installed SuSE again some time back "temporarily" so I could play with KDE 4. "Temporarily" turned into a year due to sheer laziness, and I had grown accustomed to the fact that Novell has turned the SuSE project into a bloated mess.

It was an odd kind of bloat too. I installed Virtualbox on it then installed a Windows machine. Some things ran *faster* in a Windows virtual machine than they did natively on the main system. I'm not evening talking about things that are made for Windows and adapted to Linux. I'm talking about things like Firefox and Gimp. Both were noticeably more responsive in the virtual environment. This was with a customized kernel stripped down just to what I needed and a number of daemons and other apps turned off that I didn't need. That just should not happen.

Anyway, in the past 24 hours I've remembered what it was like running my Slackware box, only without the frustrations of setting up a Slackware box. I feel like I just rebuilt my entire system with new hardware. This is the Linux I fell for years ago.

I'm still saddened about Amiga's demise, btw. That was one slick system, especially for its day. I used to drool over the system my friend owned.

[ConsAreLiars]

24. For me it was not so much the speed as the "elegance," a word that was often

used in describing AmigaOS. Unlike the M$ options, it just seems to do what is needed, and use commonly shared resources for many things instead of every program creating and adding a whole new set of libraries. And when new stuff is added, it is is in a form that means it can be used by other developers and programs, rather than being reserved for use only by the original developer.

The result, less clutter, greater efficiency, and most importantly, the work and the results of the work is shared rather than kept secret and private, so each step forward by one group of programmers means more power to all others woring in the same arena.

And the second aspect of "elegance" is how the OS looks and feels and works for the user. Even though Mint is intended to offer a somewhat familiar desktop for people who have only used M$, there are differences that take a little practice before they become familiar, but they seem like efficiencies rather than inconveniences.

Some of the "look" features like windows effects are just pretty and delightful, but extending the desktop across multiple connected screens is extremely helpful and of great practical value to anyone who has ever felt that one or even two monitors getting a bit cramped.

And booting is FAAAAST, even if one sets it up to ask for login name and password.

[hobbit709]

25. Tried the 64 bit on my old system.

Did not like my old serial port trackball-wouldn't see it at all.
After some fiddling got it to see the WLAN adapter.