TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

Linux Mint is a spin-off of Ubuntu with some different visual polish and the inclusion of *gasp* useful multimedia codecs. I've been impressed by it in the past, so as you can imagine this release had a lot to live up to.

The origin of the code name for this one is obvious. I mean, who *wouldn't* want to name a Linux distribution after a busty, anatomically disproportionate cat woman who moonlights as a street fighter/pop star? Or maybe I'm just too much of a child of the 90s.

Install:

Once again, the installer is basically identical to that of the latest version of Ubuntu, so I won't bore you with details or screenshots. Suffice to say, it's there and it works as you would expect.

The programs menu is reminiscent of the openSuSE and SuSE Linux Enterprise implementations, which is not a good thing. I didn't like when those distros used it and my opinion hasn't recently changed.

I had no issues connecting with my wireless card and the Ubuntu "Hardware Drivers" utility set up my Nvidia card as expected.

Software Selection:

OpenOffice, Pidgin, GIMP and Firefox were installed, along with Sun's Java VM and GCC. I included a screenshot this time because I found the cow fortune particularly humorous.

MP3 Playback was included, and all the usual mplayer plug-ins (MPG, WMV, etc) seemed to be present and accounted for.

One program I noticed that sort of stuck out (probably because of its purple system tray icon) is Gnome-Do. It reminds me of a program I used religiously on Mac OS X called Quicksilver. It's basically a program that will pop up when you press a certain key combination and give you a dialog where you can launch applications.

If you've never launched Firefox with ALT+SPACE, "fi" and ENTER, you're missing out. It can seriously cut down on your time navigating through menus, and given that Mint uses a menu system I personally dislike, any time spent not looking at it is worth the effort.

I don't usually pay attention to whether an FTP client is installed or not since I always throw FileZilla on after the fact, but in this case I'd never heard of the programs included. MintUpload and Giver offer a solution to two very different file transfer conundrums. I'd explain what does what, but the Linux Mint folks already did it, probably more eloquently than I would have.

Firewall and parental controls are available as well. This is a nice addition, although I'd personally only use the former and not the latter.

Mint also has a customized version of the Wubi installer for Windows called "mint4win." This is the first time I've encountered an offshoot distro that took the time to tweak that part of the OS.

Adding and removing software can be handled by the Ubuntu-default Synaptic or by "mintInstall." I couldn't tell if the packages I found in mintInstall were from a DEB repository or their own ".mint" installer files. I assume with the inclusion of both programs, minInstall is strictly for the Mint repositories.

When I first ran mintInstall and hit update I wondered why it was taking so long to read (what I assume to be) just a list of software off a repository. When it finished, I realized I was wrong. In previous versions of Mint you could browse their software repository from a website and look at screenshots of the program or visit the developer's website before installing.

Apparently the idea for this release was to bring that functionality down to the distro itself by way of an application. This is not a new idea (I've mentioned Linspire's Click and Run Warehouse before), but the way Mint presents it is much cleaner, in my opinion.

That's not to say it's perfect, by any means. The initial load of some 500 screenshots took the better part of an hour on a reasonably fast connection. I think the loading should be threaded so that you can at least browse through the programs that are already downloaded rather than having to wait for the whole repository to load.

I was happy that at least the screenshots stayed resident once they were loaded, so if I closed mintInstall and reopened it I wasn't looking at an hour each time.

Just out of curiosity I hit "Refresh" again after the initial load and although the process was longer than I would have liked, it didn't take another hour.

While browsing the repository I was a little annoyed at the lack of a package for Nvidia drivers. With all due respect to Envy NG (which was in the repo) I just don't trust it. The *only* way I install Nvidia drivers is manually using Nvidia's official script or through an official repository DEB like in Ubuntu.

Some of the organizational choices in the MintInstall repo were questionable as well. For instance, does the PearPC emulator really belong in the Games section?

Conclusion:

The number of Mint-specific additions in this release is impressive. It's good to see that the team isn't just focused on slapping on a different coat of paint and calling it a day. More offshoot distributions should follow this example. Don't just embrace, extend as well!

In the past I've been both impressed and disappointed by Mint because although it added several useful out-of-the-box features to a solid Ubuntu base, it just wasn't different enough for me to justify using it over its parent. This release has a number of substantive differences that if further developed will address that issue quite nicely.