Changing over to Linux Mint February 27, 2008
Posted by novaaesa in Linux.Tags: distribution, Linux, non-free, philosophical, ubuntu, usability, virtualisation
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I think I’m at the stage where I am getting a bit fed up with some of the philosophical ideas that are the backbone of Ubuntu Linux, so it’s time for a change. When ideals get in the way of usability, that in my opinion is (one of the many places) where the line should be drawn between what is a ‘good’ distrobution and what is a ‘great’ distribution.
As some of you may or may not be aware, I have recently been distribution hopping a fair bit. Not on my physical hard drive however, I have been doing it using a nifty virtualisation programme called Virtual Box. That way my precious data is at no risk of damage. I can just set up virtual hard disks and install whatever I want on them.
Anyway, enough about Virtual Box. We are here to talk about my new Linux distribution of choice. The first interesting thing about Linux Mint is that it is a derivative of Ubuntu Linux, so there shouldn’t be too many differences that will come out and catch me off guard. For starters, Linux Mint and Ubuntu use the same set of repositories. This means that I will have the same apps available by default that I have in Ubuntu. All in all, Linux Mint seems to be a version of Ubuntu that has all the non-free goodies already installed by default. There is also a strong focus on things working out-of-the-box, which is always a bonus because I will be running it on a laptop.
Anyway, I will be making the transition tomorrow afternoon. If I’m not back here in at least a few days, you will know that something went horribly wrong.
I have tried LinuxMint, and while I must say I did like the colors and the elegant look about it, I thought it was rather bloated (which could be due to their LARGE menu.)
Currently, Ubuntu 7.04 with IceWM does all I need, but I wish to try out Arch, just as soon I get it downloaded.
I’ve heard a lot of good and a lot of bad about Mint. It looks fantastic, but I’ve also heard a number of people complaining about it. Most recently this post: http://fullmetalgerbil.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/i-have-come-to-chew-bubblegumand-it-aint-mint/
The general consensus seems to be that it’s bloated and slow.
That aside, if you decide you don’t like it, leave the Dark Side! Use Slackware.
Minor joke. Use what works for you. That’s the most important thing.
I have no problem with bloated, I have pretty good hardware. But adware??? WTF? I might have to reconsider this…
I think the author was simply confused. He’s the only person I’ve ever heard complain about AdWare. I’ve used it, but not long enough to find any adware if there is any. I think his complaint about adware mostly centered around Vuze, which is what Azureus has become. He thought it was some crap that Linux Mint turned it into, but it’s not. Linux Mint didn’t alter Azureus. Vuze is simply the next version. And I think he was just confused by that.
Well, I’ve decided to put it off until the weekend. Too much discrete mathematics to work on in the meantime.
I agree with DrSmall…check out Arch linux! i installed it this weekend and it is amazing. Easy and simple and NO BLOAT!
Reminds me of why i like linux so much!
Have you tried Arch Linux? I have been playing around with it for a while as a second “test” OS to Ubuntu. It’s fast, has all the installs you could want (I think) as binary or, for the more obscure or newest, as automated builds…
It does require a little more manual setting up to begin with, but the low bloat is nice
Just thought I’d mention it in case you haven’t tried it
Good luck with Mint, no 64 bit, that’s my issue with it…
I have yet to try it.
Here’s a small update on the Mint situation though: tried it for about a week but couldn’t get wireless working. I went back to Ubuntu where it worked a treat. I’m currently messing around with openSUSE and Fedora, but I will give Arch a go as well now.
+1 for Arch
Well, this is just a recommendation, so don’t get it wrong. Like someone mentioned before, used whatever works for you.
I would give gNS (gNewSense) a try. Especially if you’re interested in freedom.
Yeah, I was confused by the Vuse thing-but just to clarify I had some stability issues with Mint too. That was a long time ago though, there’s been a new release of Mint that despite not being on my short list of distributions to try out, may in fact be much better.
And I don’t know if this counts as adware, but the custom Mint Google search that comes stock with the distro I found to be quite annoying.
Yeah, I was a bit confused when I wrote that post, however I hope you read the disclaimer at the end which I not too recently added. Though the whole post is about to be deleted because I’m tired of it being linked to as an example of an anti-mint rant, and then when someone goes and reads it they’re like “OMG Adware?” then the same person who threw down the link to my post gets to write about how confused and/or n00bish I was. Really, it’s happened too many times, even after I wrote the disclaimer, and it’s getting lame already.
Mint sucks though, even aside from the dodgy “custom” google search that comes pre installed with the stock browser and generates revenue via sponsored results, the damn thing just didn’t run well on my machine and it went sraight to the coaster pile of disliked distros.
Try BLAG Linux. I ran that for a good while and it was very stable, had good expandable repo’s and was a treat to use.
so what happened in the end? i’m guessing it went all horribly wrong? what happened to the ever-using-ubuntu NovaAesa? i’m guessing you went back the Ubuntu?
Just passing by.Btw, you website have great content!
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