Linux Mint the lovechild of Ubuntu and Scope.

Yesterday I worked up the nerve to try out Linux Mint, when I try out a new distro I never base my review off of the live CD since it runs much slower than an actual install would.

My only issue was with the first .ISO file I downloaded, for some reason it only ended up being just over 250mb as opposed to one that is 600mb+. So after downloading a new .ISO, burning it to a disk, and then finally running it I got to start the review process.

The install took about the same time as a standard Ubuntu install, so nothing really special there.

One of the first things I noticed while using the live CD was the uber themeing, I don't mind it, but it made me want to pluck my eyes out at first.

After the install I logged in and a little wizard popped up before I was sent to the GNOME Desktop, it had only two options, one was eneabling the root account, which i decided not to do, and the other was enabling fortune, since it reminded me of my nostalgic Slackware days, I enabled fortune.

OK so there I was with a fresh install of a different distro, I decided it was time to really test the waters. One thing I had to get used to was there being only one GNOME panel, with a Windows like menu button on it, instead of saying "start" it has the name of the current build of Linux Mint on it. I clicked it and explored the menus.

I was presented with a very nice and organized SLAB-like menu. It had all of the usual categories and whatnot, including a way to easily access the GNOME control panel. Then I checked the Sound & Video category, the first thing I noticed was Amarok. I was very happy with that, I love Amarok. I'm listening to a the heavy metal station on last.fm through it as I write this review.

Speaking of multimedia, the out of the box DVD playback is very nice. Also included are the codecs for all of the main video formats.

As with Ubuntu, the Restricted Drivers Manager popped up and told me of all the restricting goodies I can install. I installed my freedom hating graphics driver and then decided to run the updater.

mintUpdate told me I had close to 200 updates, so I installed them and went about reviewing more.

I fired up Pidgin and was pleased to see it had a good deal of the plug-ins installed with it. I added all the accounts I'm on 24/7 and did more menu exploring.

Having Xchat already installed was nice, since I use it a lot. No games came preinstalled though, which isn't a real big issue since I rarely play the preinstalled games. But a few games were needed so I installed Doom and two hours later I worked on this review more...

All of the usual productivity goodies were there, the Open Office Suite, GIMP, and Thunderbird. OK Thunderbird isn't really productivity software, but I need my email. Honestly reading email is usually nothing near a productive activity...

So more about some of the uber themeing, a few programs which I felt they could have not really named anything minty is mintInstall, mintUpdate, and mintAssistant. Also in the control panel the GNOME Desktop icon is now called mintDesktop.

All in all it's a good distro, it seems to actually run faster then regular Ubuntu, and the less configuring I have to do after installing it the better! So in conclusion if you want a good solid distro with out of the box media supprt then I suggest Linux Mint, if you need any other reason to run it, well it's based in Ireland, which makes it beer case engineering friendly! Until next time, take it easy.