Thoughts on Mint?

[xarte]

Mixed reviews... I'm not to sure about the 'community driven' aspect - does this mean it will be less stable? I really don't like updates breaking things. The emphasis on multimedia seems promising as I'd like to make this my 'music center'. (I assume it will have the same issues with webcam drivers as the rest of the linux world.)

Yeah I know, live CD/Virtualbox (slow, timeconsuming) and I don't have all that much download limit left, so I don't want to download it unless it's worthwhile.

Looks like a pretty interface. I think I've almost convinced myself, I'll probably go ahead and try it since I've not got any software or data loaded up yet.

Things I like in a distro: Simple, clean, easy to navigate. Finds all my hardware. Tool for installing broadcomm/NVidia drivers. Easy partitioning.


Any general thoughts on Mint? Liked, didn't like, why?

[wolfen69]

some people love it because of the menus and all codecs being preinstalled, but it's not hard to set up ubuntu, so i don't care for it anymore. it is ubuntu afterall, with some minor modifications.

[SuperSonic4]

It's OK but it is not for me is how I'd sum up.

It really isn't that hard to install *buntu and then add codecs. Plus their KDE version is seriously dated - kubuntu is better by far imo

[exploder]

Things I like in a distro: Simple, clean, easy to navigate. Finds all my hardware. Tool for installing broadcomm/NVidia drivers. Easy partitioning.

Mint is simple and clean, the artwork is pretty polished up. As far as hardware goes, Mint is built from Ubuntu so hardware compatibility should not be a problem. Mint has Envy and Jocky so NVidea drivers should not be a concern. I'm not certain about broadcomm but I think there are a couple of ways to get that going.

Check out the screen shots on the home page for a good look at the desktop and the tools. From your description Mint should be a perfect fit.

[Sorivenul]

As far as stability goes, for me, with any release I've tried, Mint frequently seems at least as stable, if not more stable, than Ubuntu. The Mint tools are a nice touch and add a nice cohesive aspect to it, also. I don't use Mint, but thoroughly enjoy testing it.

[wolfen69]

if you want to waste some bandwidth for the ultimate media centric distro, try Progex (http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Operating-Systems/Linux-Distributions/Progex-42838.shtml). it is ubuntu with every major multimedia app and every codec known to man, preinstalled. there wasn't anything i could not do "out of the box". seriously, try it. has much more than mint.

from their website:

Why should i choose Progex?

· You won't lose time installing and configuring programs (we took care of this).
· It's easy to use even by kids or people that never used a Linux distribution before.
· It's the most complete Linux distribution. You can do anything without downloading new programs from the internet.
· All the people who tested it before the official release were satisfied.
· It has a professional look, layout and feel and it's free.
· Because you deserve better.
· And because you got to see for yourself.

[Twitch6000]

I find Linux Mint to be what Ubuntu should be something that just works.

Linux Mint does just work, Ubuntu... not so much :/.

Linux Mint also has its own custom gui tools to make alot of things easy.

I have found myself only touching the terminal one time and thats to a quick wireless fix.

So yeah give Linux Mint 6 a try you will like it :).

[Nessa]

Mint works for me.

[Raffles10]

I went from Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 to Linux Mint 6 and was really impressed with the subtle differences, mainly graphical. I used to hate the Ubuntu shutdown dialogue box, it looked like it had been drawn by a child using crayons, the new one in Mint 6 was much more neat and simple and together with the other subtle changes I decided to install it.

I then tried Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 as a live cd and realised that what had impressed me in Mint 6 were actually new features in Intrepid and that the Mint tools didn't really add much more functionality but just did things in a slightly different way.

What I've realised is that Mint 6 is just a customized version of Ubuntu 8.10 but it's customised by someone else !

So now I have Ubuntu 8.10 installed and I've customised it to be what I want it to be, rather than use someone else's idea of what Ubuntu should be.

Setting up multimedia is as easy as:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

[xarte]

Hmm, Progex sounds fun. I'll have to try it out when my download limit refreshes in a couple of days.

Though, it does sound like it might be a little bloated.

I'm using Mint right now. First impressions are pretty good. There's some funky desktop stuff, though I 'm not sure how much of it I'm actually likely to use. I found the install screens mostly good except that the final 'customize' one seemed to crash and I couldn't unselect the daft jokes/fortunes.

I watched a movie on it last night, worked perfectly, and it was fun having the movie on in the background while browsing and using Pidgin. Nothing I can't do on Ubuntu of course (though I didn't try out the movie player with Ubuntu yet).

I found the menu a little odd at first, having gotten accustomed to the Ubuntu arrangement, and it's a bit annoying the way you have to use a scrollbar to see the whole contents.

The Hardware driver utility worked fine and I'm also finding the wireless internet utility excellent. With its password stored in the keychain, it's working perfectly every time, without the teething problems I had with 8.04

I had installed 8.10 and found some of the menus I didn't like so much as in 8.04.

The software/package management seems good, though installation of standard stuff from CLI is hardly a challenge. (It's just the webcam drivers that are doing my head in).

Overall I'm pretty happy with it and would likely keep it, except for that OpenSolaris disk sitting there saying "try me.... go on.... you know you want to....". I may come back to it, though I'll probably put 8.04 back on to check first.

[wolfen69]

Though, it does sound like it might be a little bloated.



it may be bloated in terms of # of apps, but it runs pretty quick.

[xarte]

I actually have Mythbuntu on a magazine CD - never bothered installing it as I thought it seemed more like a 'loungeroom media center' sort of thing.

So far, media-wise, I've only really used the computer for music and podcasts. I spend enough time sat at it working that I don't want to watch movies on it. However having a movie running in the background while I browsed was rather fun. The DVD did get REALLY hot though....

Mint is really quite nice, I could live with it quite easily. If only I had another spare computer that I could tinker with Slackware on....

Maybe I need to build a desktop with half a dozen drives.

[jrusso2]

I don't use Mint I use Ubuntu, but I recommend Mint to all new users as it comes with java, flash and all the codecs the new users seem to have issues installing.

[kamitsukai]

I don't much really care for the Linux Mint main gnome distro but I think there going to come into there own with there take on a KDE 4 setup! another thing I find while browsing the mint forums is that they actually consider the users idea's where as ubuntu appears to get people involved and then not use much of the ideas presented...(IMHO)

[kjb34]

Mint is pretty nice but I personally prefer Ubuntu. It is a good distro for beginners.

[sirebral]

if you want to waste some bandwidth for the ultimate media centric distro, try Progex (http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Operating-Systems/Linux-Distributions/Progex-42838.shtml). it is ubuntu with every major multimedia app and every codec known to man, preinstalled. there wasn't anything i could not do "out of the box". seriously, try it. has much more than mint.

Progex looks nice. The developer should include an Update to Progex version.

[LowSky]

... another thing I find while browsing the mint forums is that they actually consider the users idea's where as ubuntu appears to get people involved and then not use much of the ideas presented...(IMHO)

The ubuntu Forums are for the users by the users, canonical has no say here on the site.

if you want to post new ideas pot them here
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

somethings do get answered and alot don't. Mainly because many of those ideas require another application to be fixed. I just looked on the site and people want driver suport for the latest ATI graphics, well that really isn't the job of the OS but of the Graphics maker...

The only thing Ubuntu can fix are things it impliments like Themes, wallpapers, which application are included by default. Personally I think people get very gready whne it comes to Ubuntu, try Debian or even a Gnome Version of Arch or Gentoo, and you will find that Ubuntu is trying to cater to people who know nothing about Linux rather than vanilla version of gnome you get with Debain or Arch. How about trying Fedora and tell me that they're actually better than Ubuntu. Sure the theme in Fedora is nice but so many other things aren't as easy to do as in Ubuntu

[xarte]

I think part of the problem with user feedback/involvement is that projects just get too big. I have a website, and the email it generates is insane. I can spend hours a day reading and answering user queries.

With a distro the size of Ubuntu, you're looking at a mind-boggling range of user response, and it's going to take a while for stuff to filter up to the developers. And as has been mentioned, a lot of the stuff that users have issues with ISN'T the responsibility of the developers.

Also, there is such a thing as the dictatorship of the majority. Just because 'lots' of people want plug-n-play instant everything, doesn't mean we all do. Some people prefer a higher degree of control and flexibility that might limit the accessibility for some users. That's the beauty of linux - there's a flavour for everyone.

I'm really rather enjoying mint now. I'm not sure how many of the features are the same as on Ubuntu or other distros, so I expect most comments about the apps would be fairly redundant.

I think I do prefer Gnome to KDE. I wonder what the new version of KDE will change. There's a couple of funky applets that seem to be only available for Gnome. I'll have to find out more about the two - most google answers I've found have said they're basically the same and it's persnal taste, but I don't think that's the case.

I have found a few applications crash on exit - the music player crashed when I ejected the disk, and something else crashed last night, forget what. Screen capture, gimp all work just dandy, and it was nice having Flash already installed. (Though having to install it myself on Ubu was a handy learning process).

[malspa]

I've got both Mint Elyssa and Ubuntu Hardy installed and use them both, like them both. I don't think that either one is better than the other.

[nitehawk777]

I eagerly installed Linux Mint6 this morning,.....only to be disappointed. I actually was able to get my dinky little dialup service set up in Ubuntu,....(no easy task, since it has changed dramatically in that area from Hardy). Mint is supposed to follow Ubuntu 8.10 very closely,.....
but it was a no-go on the dialup. I guess I just don't want to hasstle with it.

[wolfen69]

but it was a no-go on the dialup.

shudders at the thought. ;)

[xarte]

Dialup. Heck yeah. Geez I'd need valium.

I assume from your tone that you know what you're doing. (it's been so long I can't remember the peculiarities involved) - did you figure out why exactly it won't play nice?

There's a few cutesy things that are giving me the irrits - the customised Firefox for one. And I'll have to see how to make the keychain automatically log me in, I don't need so much security.

I was going to install Slackware last night but couldn't get the DVD to boot. So now I'm tossing up whether to give openSuse a whirl or openSolaris.

I'm always a sucker for a nice shiny interface. Give me a pretty splash screen and a slick dropdown menu and I'm yours.

[jrusso2]

Unless you got pretty old Hardware I would go with Open Suse. Hardware support for Open Solaris X 86 has been poor. I had problems just finding an ethernet card that would work last time I tried Solaris x 86

[Sorivenul]

shudders at the thought. ;)
+1. I don't think I was ever happier than the day I ditched dialup.

[off-topic]wolfen69, you changed your avatar, and really confused me for a minute.[/off-topic]

[Maxxtsch]

I thought it was really hard core, I thought it felt like a KDE/Gnome hybrid (that's just me)

[愛 am best]

Honestly, i use Mint due to Ubuntu being "berserk" on my laptop and won't install at all :(

I guess lots of people prefer Mint better with the pre-installed codecs and such buy apart from that Mint is like a little sister of Ubuntu

[nitehawk777]

Linux Mint5 (Elyssa) was pretty "friendly".....but not so this new Mint6! If I'm going to have to do that much fiddlin' and tweakin'.....I'm just going to give Debian Etch a spin. (from the DVDs, of course,....no netinstall with dialup, y'know).:P

EDIT: Well, whaddayaknow! I just got dialup all setup and working
great in Mint 6! It's just about the same thingys I had to
for Ubuntu 8.10. Now I have the problem of figuring out
which one I want to use,....(decisions,...decisions!)

[xarte]

Funnily enough I'm thinking of going back to Mint.

I've been pointed towards a couple of other distros that I might try first, but it's definitely on the short list.

I'm finding Ubuntu a little glitchier than I'd like for a linux system - wireless particularly is tempermental, and some of the multimedia apps have been crashing.

[exploder]

Both Ubuntu and Mint are good choices. Mint has a lot of tools that make your life less complicated. The built in command for md5 immediately comes to mind.Open as root, mint menu, and software manager also make things nice!

I test out Ubuntu releases and report bugs so I like it too. You can hardly go wrong with either choice. If you are having problems with multimedia in Ubuntu, this command makes thing pretty easy and has always fixed things up for me.

sudo apt-get install alsa-oss faac faad flashplugin-nonfree gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse gstreamer0.10-pitfdll libavcodec-unstripped-51 libmp3lame0 non-free-codecs sun-java6-fonts sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin unrar

This was taken directly from the multimedia section on this forum and there is a lot of other helpful information to be found there s well.

[SomeGuyDude]

Mint: Ubuntu for people who need help putting their pants on in the morning.

[bobbob1016]

Mint: Ubuntu for people who need help putting their pants on in the morning.

Waiting for the post that starts like:
Ubuntu: Debian for.....

I don't really like Mint. It's "ease of use" seems to get in the way. I haven't tried Mint 6, but when I tried upgrading 4-5, I had to use the upgrade tool. I always have /home and / on separate partitions, but that seemed to confuse the upgrade tool. On Ubuntu, I basically just do a chown on the old /home, and it works. However, Mint was much harder to do that with.

I do like the "mintupload" thing, where you just right-click, and tell it to upload, and it automatically puts it on a mint site, and gives you a link.

I read about "Giver" on a Mint 6 review, which is a cool feature for those who don't want to do file-sharing. Would be nice if Giver had a contextual option, as in right-click and do "Give to ->" and select another machine.

[xarte]

Thanks for the handy dandy download-the-whole-box-and-dice code ... !

I'd spent hours fiddling about trying to get webcams to work, I couldn't remember how I'd fixed the router password problem and Firefox kept crashing. aMSN wouldn't work at all. I missed Mint's pretty gui so decided to give it another spin.

In the meantime I tried Slackware (once I'd managed to successfully create an iso dvd) but then it wouldn't boot. My irritation with this suggested that a more plug'n'play distro might be a wiser choice at this point.

Installing it was a breeze. The partitioner was a piece of cake, allowed me to tidy up the hard drive nicely, booted just fine. My webcams work just fine, aMSN works and everything seems pretty stable. Proprietary drivers installed and wireless is dandy.

I'm a little concerned about the upgrade issues mentioned by bob, but I guess I'll deal with that when it happens.

I'm more than capable of putting my pants on in the morning, thanks - but I want my primary OS on this machine to 'just work'. I'm interested in using command line but I don't want to spend five hours googling fixes, trying to figure out why the file I'm supposed to insmod or whatevertheheck it was wasn't created... it's just an exercise in frustration when you don't know what you're doing. I'm learning but it can be a steep curve.

The 'Ubuntu little sister' metaphor is a pretty reasonable one. She seems to like my machine so I'm sticking with her. Doesn't hurt that she's easy on the eyes.

So, I can get some work done.

And tinker and learn - maybe Arch, not sure - with the spare chunk of hard drive that I've set aside for that purpose.

[SomeGuyDude]

Waiting for the post that starts like:
Ubuntu: Debian for.....

:lolflag:

I don't deny that Ubuntu is Debian for people who have someone else bathe them, but to me Ubuntu is as far toward "easy" as it gets before...

I don't really like Mint. It's "ease of use" seems to get in the way. I haven't tried Mint 6, but when I tried upgrading 4-5, I had to use the upgrade tool. I always have /home and / on separate partitions, but that seemed to confuse the upgrade tool. On Ubuntu, I basically just do a chown on the old /home, and it works. However, Mint was much harder to do that with.

Bingo. Mint tries so hard to make things "easy" that it becomes aggravating.

[exploder]

Bingo. Mint tries so hard to make things "easy" that it becomes aggravating.

That just doesn't make sense. That would be like push starting your car because using the starter is too easy.:lolflag:

[SomeGuyDude]

That just doesn't make sense. That would be like push starting your car because using the starter is too easy.:lolflag:

That's why I put "easy" in quotes. :lolflag:

An automatic transition car is easier than a standard, but yet standard transmission can get a lot done that automatics will struggle with because you have more control over the vehicle (if you live in a hilly area, particularly a snowy one, you'll know what I mean). And that's just ONE somewhat-applicable example!

[xarte]

Frankly, SomeGuyDude, I find the 'pants on' and 'help bathe' comments offensive. So I suppose you never use instant coffee (you grind your own beans daily), never buy sliced bread and will certainly never get a TiVo (you prefer to manually program your old VCR).

What, is it not real linux unless I have to compile every package by hand?

Mint for me WORKS and allows me to get on with getting stuff done. Maybe Gentoo would be a purer Linux experience but it would take me a week to get it running with my patheticly small knowledge of linux.

I acknowledge the point that the automated processes can take too much power out of the user's hands - and can often create problems when their design conflicts with what you're trying to do - but for me personally it works just fine and I don't appreciate being belittled about it.

Isn't one of the strengths of linux the fact that there is a flavour to suit everyone?

It's like a variation on that old Monty Python skit where the old farts are trying to outdo each other on how tough their childhood was. "You had a cardboard box? You was LUCKY! We 'ad 'ole in the ground...."

Just need someone to chime in and chide you for even using the Ubiquitous Ubuntu, if you were any sort of geek you'd have written your own distro.

Or better yet hacked your own kernel......

[SomeGuyDude]

You do realize that I praise Ubuntu and used it for over a year, right? I mean, you got that, yeah? So, you're not so dense as to think that my comments were dead serious, correct? Because, man, that'd be pretty rough. Notice in other posts I've said that I use Arch because Arch is like Slackware that helps tie your shoes.

Although I do grind my coffee beans, mash my potatoes, drive a stick shift, and since DVR can pause/rewind television as it plays (a function that I literally cannot get with a VCR) I don't believe that breaks my credo. :lolflag:

I'd keep going, but you DID reference my favorite Python sketch of all time, The Four Yorkshiremen, so I suppose you can't be ALL bad.

[xarte]

No, I haven't seen all that many of your posts so I didn't really know where you were coming from and took it a bit to heart. You know how it is, so much one-upmanship around here.

Guess I must be a bit touchy - having spent a fair bit of the holidays constantly getting criticized by various relatives I'm about ready to kill the next person who passes judgement on my choices. So apologies for over reacting!

[SomeGuyDude]

No, I haven't seen all that many of your posts so I didn't really know where you were coming from and took it a bit to heart. You know how it is, so much one-upmanship around here.

Guess I must be a bit touchy - having spent a fair bit of the holidays constantly getting criticized by various relatives I'm about ready to kill the next person who passes judgement on my choices. So apologies for over reacting!

No harm no foul. :guitar:

What happens is I post on a weightlifting board that's practically un-moderated so flaming and seriously coarse language is just par for the course to the point that even friends tear into each other. So sometimes I have to remember that UF is a lot more civil and my comments won't be interpreted the same way. :lolflag:

[L815]

I like mint. Although they make it simple and have their own tools, I think that's just what makes it great.

Users shouldn't be criticized by the distro they use. You have to realize that not everyone has the same taste. I like a lot of distros, but most of them just don't work as well for my hardware.

[Naiki Muliaina]

I liked Mint XFCE edition. Not a huge fan of kitchen sink installs unless ive customized it so ^^

My partner loves mint. Her and Linux got off on several wrong foots but she stuck with it. Mint has been a winner for her though. Simple install, everythings pre installed and works out of the box. Shes not had to go into terminal once in the month or two that shes been using it.

Mints a cracking remix of Ubuntu, its just not for everyone :)