It’s been a long time since I last looked at Mint, and a lot has changed since. After Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was released, I thought I would take a look at Linux Mint 9 “Isadora” to see what they are doing with the latest Ubuntu base, which was already wonderful as it is. After playing with the latest Mint for just a short period of time, I’ve already fallen in love with it.
I decided to test out Isadora on my trusty Dell Latitude D630 laptop, which has a moderate 2ghz processor, 4GB of RAM, and (at the moment) standard integrated Intel graphics. The installation is pretty much the same as standard Ubuntu, with Mint specific messages during the installation slide-show. It doesn’t take long to get Mint 9 up and running.
After launching the desktop, everything just worked. Since I usually write my distribution reviews from within the distribution I’m reviewing itself, I was amazed at how easy it was to get started. The first thing I did was connect to my wireless network, which was also painless. Then, I browsed my home network for some MP3′s to play while I review the distribution (nothing like reviewing Linux distributions while listening to the Deftones) and then I launched Firefox, logged into this blog, and started typing. All of that was painless and just felt natural.
One of the first things I noticed was the update manager, which seen new updates available shortly after connecting and displayed an icon near the lower right hand corner of the panel. While this may not seem that significant, Ubuntu has done away with this and instead has an update manager that automatically opens. That’s one of my major gripes with Ubuntu, as having an icon to signify updates without interrupting you or causing your taskbar to flash is ideal.
And that’s not my only gripe with Ubuntu that Mint 9 solves. The default application set makes more sense. For example, for email it stocks Thunderbird, for browsing it has Firefox, and for chatting Mint uses Pidgin. Ubuntu also uses Firefox, but uses Evolution for email and Empathy for chatting instead. While Evolution and Empathy are fine applications, they are not available across platforms. This means that if you use Evolution in Linux, you’d have to use something else in Windows because (as far as I know) there is no Evolution port for Windows or Mac. Same with Pidgin. That’s why Mint’s choices make more sense. Firefox, Pidgin, and Thunderbird are available on all major operating systems, which in my opinion makes Mint feel more natural to users of other platforms since they can utilize the applications they are likely used to. My personal opinion is that when in doubt over which application to include in your distro, choose the ones that are available on the most platforms.
Another thing I love about Mint 9 is that it wasn’t released until it was ready. Instead of pushing the distribution beyond its boundaries to release on time, the developers held onto it to make sure that it was as perfect as they could get it before releasing it. Before Mint 9 was released, I noticed the following comment on the official site:
“Looking at the remaining bugs and considering the amount of testing needed I would say we’re about 1 week away from releasing Linux Mint 9. I know most operating systems and distributions stick to release dates and announce them well in advance but I see no reason not to release something once it’s ready and many reasons not to do so until it is.”
I agree completely. I love Ubuntu just as much as the next guy (Ubuntu 10.04 is a high quality release for sure) but I don’t agree with forcing a distribution on a set schedule until it’s absolutely ready. I don’t care if I have to wait a week or more if it means that it will be a higher quality. Ubuntu 10.04 had enough trouble getting released on time, and had to make some sacrifices to meet the deadline. The Linux Mint team didn’t seem to care, they wanted a polished product and that’s what they gave us.
While I think that Linux Mint 9 has been an awesome experience for me, I still have some minor gripes. First, I’m not a fan of GNOME but when I do use it, I prefer the standard two panel (top and bottom) layout. Mint uses a single panel approach (similar to Windows) instead, and personally I’m partial to the classic GNOME layout. In addition, the Mint Menu is nice, but I really believe that it’s clumsy and over populated, and a redesign of the menu would help a great deal.
However, neither of those two complaints are enough to dock points from Mint’s score. My preferring to have the standard GNOME layout is just a personal preference and it’s easy as pie to change back using GNOME’s customization tools. The same thing holds true with the Mint Menu, using GNOME’s standard menu is just as easy as adding it to your panel. Even though I’m not completely fond of Mint’s layout, you have to give the Mint team a pat on the back regardless. They made GNOME theirs, which was a gutsy move in and of itself considering all the purists out there.
Don’t get me wrong though, Mint 9 is absolutely stunning. I may be biased on this aspect since green is my favorite color, but I really do think that the custom artwork all over the place goes a long way. The latest Mint is extremely fast and responsive, and looks good in the process. You can’t ask for more there. To put even more icing on the cake, there are custom Mint tools all over the place, such as Mint Backup and a ton of others. Basically, everything you need to be productive is already here, and there aren’t even any extra codecs to install that I’ve noticed to get media files working. Even Youtube works out of the box.
Conclusion
While I’m a fan of Ubuntu 10.04 and recommend it wholeheartedly, Mint 9 is a winner too. In fact, when it comes to beginner distributions I’d have to say Isadora is the best bet, since pretty much everything is already set up for you. The Mint community appears to be awesome from what I’ve seen, and minor and major tweaks alike all over the distribution give it a very polished experience. If you are a complete beginner, this is the distribution you want. However, even those that have been with Linux for a long time will appreciate the hard work that has gone into this release.
The Good
- Completely polished and stable
- Fast and responsive
- Custom artwork, tweaks, and applications all over the place
The Bad
- The single-panel approach may turn off GNOME purists
- The Mint Menu is cluttered
- This distribution doesn’t get the attention it deserves
Overall: 5/5 (Great!)
Jeremy is a Certified IT Technician that blogs at ITNewsToday.com in his spare time. He has over ten years of industry experience, and studies the IT industry every single day. Jeremy has become an open source enthusiast over time and is studying for his Linux+ certification. He lives in Waterford MI with his wife Krystal and son Alan.
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Great review except for one thing. There IS a Windows version of Evolution. Its actually quite good I’ve been using it for about 2 years now.
I didn’t know that. Where do you find it?
http://www.dipconsultants.com/evolution/
Evolution is available for windows, but it ain’t too great:
http://www.dipconsultants.com/evolution/
Hi Jeremy,
I haven’t tried it myself, but you can get the windows version of Evolution here http://www.dipconsultants.com/evolution/ .
Good review of a fine distro.
The first thing I do is get rid of the Mint Menu. Remove it and replace it with Main Menu available from \ Add to Panel\ via right click. This gives you back the standard Gnome menu.
I also like Mint 9 very much, great distro. However I have to say I prefer Ubuntu 10.04 since with Ubuntu you can upgrade the system with Mint you need to do a fresh install each time a new version comes out. I have also found the new Mint 9 browser to crash when playing youtube videos and nowhere to report the bug. Mint 9 is better on the live CD but Ubutnu is better once everything is installed and setup (more work though).
Mints biggest elephant in the room is the fact that it has no upgrade feature. This is actually a huge oversight on the part of the Developers. All major distro’s today are upgradeable, but Mint? NO! Its a seriously unprofessional oversight and a major detractor for serious use on servers or workstations.
Actually I’m glad. I’ve never had an upgrade work well in Linux, because I always end up with new features that aren’t enabled in the upgrade or things just not working at all. In my opinion, put your /home partition in another directory and install fresh. You can write a shell script to pull in all your favorite packages automatically.
Every point brought up in this review was spot on! Great review! I agree 100% on your views on the release schedule. Im going to have to live with this release for 6 months, and would much rather have to wait a week or 2 longer than deal with problems that are due to a set release date!
Great review. Linux Mint 9 is really an awesome distro. Out of the box, I will have to say it’s better than Ubuntu.
I also agree with the application choice and the release date. Also the new “small” DVD version is also awesome as it has VLC pre-installed which is another plus. I prefer the one toolbar at the bottom with the MintMenu.
As for those who are nagging about the nonexistent upgrade feature, well that is the reason why they developed MintBackup, which lets you make a backup of your applications and then you can just restore the backup in your new updated install.
Yep Mint is great. But I wish the KDE version to be more polish, like Mandriva or Opensuse.
On the upgrade issue, most of the time it does not work like we wanted. Is better to separate the /home partition and reinstall the new os in /.
Actually upgrading using the terminal and APT is relatively simple and just a matter of following of around a half a dozen steps:
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/62 (this link is referenced in the original tutorial noted in another comment above)
But just to copy out the steps necessary:
1. Open a terminal and run ‘sudo bash’ to get a root terminal
2. Using a text editor (as root), replace the contents of /etc/apt/sources.list with the following sources list: http://pastebin.com/wVGb13y3 (extracted from Linux Mint 9)
3. Run ‘apt-get update’
4. Run ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’
5. Follow the instructions issued, don’t worry about overwriting configuration files dpkg will keep a copy in the same directory with the string “.dpkg-old” appended to the filename
6. Run ‘apt-get upgrade’
7. Reboot
This basically boils down to the same type of upgrade that Ubuntu performs automatically. However, that being said, doing an in place upgrade Ubuntu, Mint or any other OS for that matter is very risky and is often fraught with configuration problems that often can’t be solved without a clean install. Even Ubuntu recommends a clean install instead of an upgrade to the next version.
Personally I find backing up my data to an external hard drive (cheap and most worthy investment and is even easier now using the new Mint Backup applet), doing a clean install and then restoring my data to be the best bet and usually takes me around 2 hours total–maybe.