Well, about time for another post. Been a bit slack lately, and should have got busy on the keyboard, but time flies when you are working, sleeping, working...
As I stated in my last post, I have been happily tinkering on a laptop loaded with Minty goodness... Linux Mint 11 to be exact. I have installed and used both Mint 11 and Mint Debian Edition, and found both to be excellent distros. I am by no means a linux expert, and fiddle around with things with happy abandon, knowing I have all my important files and packages saved on an external USB hard drive just in case I break something whilst "adjusting" things or "testing stuff".
As a newish (and lazy) Linux user, I do not have the experience to command a system via the console, but I'm not scared to give anything a go, and have (I must admit) busted my system occasionally doing just that. One of the great beauties of Linux (well, most distros based on linux) is that they are so easy to reinstall if something goes wrong. It's a different story with other OS'$ though, some taking forever to reload, reconfigure, sort out drivers, etc. Linux is simple, and in about 30 minutes (with a reasonable internet connection) you can be up and running, all hardware working, then just install a few packages to get your system back to where it was. Easy! Admittedly, if I got serious about learning more command-line stuff, I could probably quite easily fix these types of issues without a re-install, but I don't need much of an excuse to throw a different distro at my system. Why spoil the fun! ;-)
The Linux Mint Experience.
My first experience with Linux Mint was with the 32bit version of "Standard" Mint 11. This installed like a dream, with similar results to Ubuntu Natty - everything worked fine from first boot. All hardware worked well, and (surprise, surprise!) it already had Flash and Java installed, along with the required restricted drivers and codecs to play, copy, rip and fiddle with DVD's and CD's. Great stuff! This was my type of OS! I loved loading this up and finding a fully fledged and operable system ready for use almost straight away. The only thing I really needed to do was to install the NVIDIA drivers for my graphics card (a GeForce 9400M) which is an automated task anyway. Then we had full desktop effects like fades, transparencies, slides, and other fancy cube-type desktop twirls. Very impressive!
Overall, I found Linux Mint 11 a very quick, stable and polished OS. I liked the “old” style Gnome 2 desktop, finding it easy to use due to it being similar to M$ Windows. You can drag and drop shortcuts, rename things, right-click for options, etc and it is very easy to learn. It is a desktop manager used in many linux distros, so if you have used it once, you can use it on any version of Linux pretty easily. Linux mint added a few extras, such as the Mint Menu (their own version of the main menu, a one-click selectable list of favourites, recent docs, etc) and their own Software Manager (similar to Ubuntu's with a similarly huge list of available packages, over 30,000 last time I checked, most with very good descriptions of what they actually are and do so you can make an informed choice). Mint also has it's own set of themes and wallpapers which look pretty sexy, and make the desktop look very professional. It's not quite as colourful as Ubuntu's, decidedly lacking in purples, with a more subdued and clean appearance. Don't stress if you like bright colours though, as it's easy to tweak to your own tastes, with stacks of icon sets, wallpapers, themes and extras available to download and install (for free, naturally!) If you like fun themes, try an icon set called “Gartoon Redux” with a nice clean wallpaper, it looks a treat!
Another big plus with distros such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint is the amount of help available on the net for them. Any time I had a problem, without fail I found a solution by checking on either the knowledge bases (community forums, wikis and such) or just searching on Google. There is such a huge assortment of people and hardware out there running Linux that you can almost guarantee that someone else has had the same issues that you have experienced and (usually) found a solution for it. Most fixes are very simple, and with a little experience using the terminal and entering text commands (sometimes this just means copy-and-pasting code into the terminal) and the world is in balance once again. Don't think there are lots of problems though, I had very few.
I had no issues whilst running Mint 11. Stability was no problem, and updates are tested and don't cause any dramas. No screen lock-ups or system jams like other expensive OS's. Just another free, slick operating system, with a wealth of no-charge software available to do pretty much anything you want. The only thing I did do later on was update to the 64bit version of Mint 11, just to see if there was any performance advantage, but my system didn't feel any different, it just kept purring along without a cough.
The Change is Upon Us... Mint Debian Edition
My time with Mint 11 was most enjoyable, and I was sold on the fact that I would stick with it for a long while, but the bug bit again when I noticed a post on the Linux Mint website that informed me of the release of Linux Mint Debian Edition. I had been keen on trying Debian for a while, so hit the net and did some more research. Ubuntu is based on Debian (and Mint is based on Ubuntu), but I read that Debian ran very fast and (if set up correctly with the right repositories and updates) could be super stable. The Debian Edition was set up to look and work the same as the standard Mint 11 edition, with the advantage of being a fast “rolling” distro. This meant that it would constantly update itself, not being stuck at one particular version, so without ever having to install a new release, your system would always be the “current” distro. Sounded great! Everyone wants their box to blast along as fast as possible, right? We all want the latest version, yeah? Another distro was taking up it's spot on my collection on the external drive, ready to be burnt onto CD.
The install went smoothly once again. LMDE 64bit was installing whilst I drank my coffee. Was it my imagination, or was the file copy process zipping along at a pretty good pace compared to the standard 11 version? Soon I was watching the login screen appear, and I was into the desktop. It all looked basically the same as before. This time though there was no little pop-up from the jockey driver installer telling me that a driver was available for my NVIDIA card. And the wallpaper was different. Menus looked the same and worked the same. Time to put in some effort and find out how to install the graphics card drivers. Turned out it was pretty easy. Just install a couple of nvidia packages from the repo's via Synaptic or the Software Manager (nvidia-kernel-dkms pulls in other required dependencies when installed, nvidia-settings is next, then nvidia-xconfig). Once installed, run nvidia-xconfig in the terminal, reboot, and you have your drivers up and running. Simple when you have done it once. This process works well, and ensures that the NVIDIA drivers are compiled into the kernel any time a new kernel is installed, so you don't have to do it all again yourself.
I also changed the repositories to the recommended “Incoming” ones. This ensures that your system only downloads and installs updates that have been thoroughly tested for bugs and are stable. No system breakages from updates! Of course, this is entirely personal choice. It means that your system may not have the most current "bleeding edge" software, kernels and drivers, but it will be stable. You can switch to "Testing" repositories if you want newer stuff, or even "Unstable" if you want the newest and don't mind a few system breakages now and then. It's up to you!
After this I changed my update server settings to use a local mirror (Australian) to speed up downloads, ran an update, and the system downloaded and installed all available updates. The wallpaper changed mid-update to one very similar to the standard Mint 11 one, but with the "Debian" symbol on it. Very cool! I also now had Libre Office instead of Open Office. Both are great, and will open, edit and save MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint files, plus also save office docs directly as PDF's. Very useful stuff. They also handle a variety of other formats.
Once I installed my favourite software, away I went. And yes, the Debian Edition is fast. Faster than the standard version by a stretch. Software just fires up very quickly and windows seem to spring open. It's a nice OS to use, and feels very responsive. Updates don't come that often when set up the way I had it, which isn't an issue at all. Who needs constant updates when the system scoots along without any problems?
Software is once again freely available, with most of the packages available as per the standard edition (it still uses the regular .deb packages, but the variety available varies dependent on which repositories you have enabled in the package manager).
It still amazes me that so much good software is available free of charge. Admittedly, some is not quite up to scratch, but isn't it the same with almost all OS's? You can still pay good money and get pretty crappy software. The advantage here is that you don't have to pay. Download it, have a play with it. If it doesn't do what you want, uninstall it and try something else. All you have lost is a little time and a bit of your data limit! Don't have a big whine about software though. Many people have contributed a lot of time and effort for the benefit of others, gratis, so if you don't like it, just ditch it and move on. It may be just the stuff that someone else needs! I have installed some great games on the kid's computer (which is an AMD Athlon with 2Gb of RAM, and is getting pretty old), and the thing flies along at a great rate of knots, much faster and more stable than it ever was running Windows. They Skype and Facebook on it, and play Minecraft and other games, do homework, and love it. My 4yo even has his own "log-on" and plays kids games and puzzles. Beats upgrading the hardware every so often so it can still run an expensive and bloated OS and commercial games. When they get bored with the games, I just install some new ones, and they are happy for another couple of months. Can't beat that!
Stay tuned for the next update: I have found Kubuntu!
Want to check out a beautiful, stable and easy to use OS? Next visit I will update you on another great discovery. Keen to try out a different desktop manager, I have installed Kubuntu 11.04 to replace Linux mint Debian Edition, and am loving it!
