Distribution name:
Linux Mint 5 Elyssa - Main Edition
Version:
5
Desktop Environment:
GNOME 2.22.1.2
Kernel:
2.6.24-16
Instruction size:
32 Bit
Live boot:
The Linux Mint 5 did have a live boot, which took a tad more while to load than what other distros take. As soon as the X started, I got an error which went like: GNOME couldn't load blah blah blah... Some components may not run well. Turned out there weren't any issues, at least none that I could notice. The distro came with MP3 codecs, which was a pleasant surprise, so the live experience was a lot better than that offered by other distributions. Also unlike most other live boots that I have experienced, things were a lot smoother and the system didn't go catatonic. Neither did the GUI (X) crash like I have experienced with many-a popular distributions. While shutting down the live boot, it prompted me to remove all disk from the drive and to press enter when I was done, but strangely, the drive refused to open when I pressed the button for it to do so. I had to reboot to get the disk out.
Installation:
The Installation time for Elyssa is probably the only thing that disappointed me. Though the ease of installation was average, it took longer than any other operating system I have installed yet. I was asked the typical questions that they asked before OS installations. I had a drive mounted and some files open, so after I had finished configuring everything for the install; I was prompted to unmount all drives following which I was redirected to the partitioner again. This is something I did not enjoy, particularly since the partitioner takes ages to load the drive information. All in all it took me over three quarters of an hour to install the operating system, which was after booting in the live mode.
Boot issue:
Due to hassles of configuring the grub or rewriting the MBR following each installation, I have started installing the grub on drive where the OS is installed. I use another GRUB (From either my pen-drive, or my other previously configured operating systems) to start up the grub of the new OS manually. I was pleased to see that the other operating systems had been automatically and more importantly, correctly configured. The only problem I had was when I restarted. I suspect that it is probably because of the frequency scaling, but I was given this warning about CPU over voltage when I opted to restart, which has been the case with other Linux operating systems too.
Screen resolution:
The default screen resolution was 1280x960/60Hz, and I was informed of the availability of restricted drivers from NVIDIA after the installation, which I cancelled for the moment. Later when I set out looking for the option to install the restricted drivers, I came across EnvyNG which was a common manager for NVIDIA as well as ATI drivers. I opted for the automatic hardware detection and installation for NVIDIA driver, which lead to the downloading of loads of libraries which were apparently being fetched from the Ubuntu hardy and the Mint Archive. Strangely, the downloading was not as fast as it usually is and it took awfully long to download everything at a mere 10kb/s. After installation the default resolution was set at 1024x768/85Hz. And after a while a balloon popped up, which said something like Ubuntu (Yes, that's right, it said Ubuntu) is using drivers it cannot support... Blah blah blah. Currently I am at 1152x864/75 Hz and I wouldn't like to go higher at the moment. Also, I am greeted by a full screen NVIDIA logo as soon as the X starts.
Hardware detection:
Well, all my onboard stuff was detected fine. I didn’t try out the webcam, because seriously, there is not much use for it on Linux. The printer is packed up, because it was cluttering my table, though with the HP on Linux drivers, I doubt I’ll have problems with it. The graphics card like I mentioned was detected automatically and restricted NVIDIA drivers were recommended for it.
Mounting:
All drives are detected at the time of booting, but are not mounted automatically. Of course times have changed now and you don’t have to edit fstab or type in commands into the terminal to mount your drives (though no one stops you from doing so if you enjoy it), all you have to do is double click on the drive and it mounts almost instantly, with no noticeable delays. Doing so did cause an icon of the newly mounted drive to pop up on my desktop. For me my desktop is a sacred place, and I like to keep it as less cluttered as possible. I’ll come back to the desktop later.
Network:
The network was detected automatically, since my network is configured by DHCP. No problems here.
Browser:
The browser is something I am really touchy about. I don’t mind using any browser as long as things are accessible and it loads all content in decent times. Luckily Elyssa came with Firefox 3, and since I am really comfortable with the browser, I faced no problems here. Of course, the fonts of the browser were those really squishy ones like the Linux-Firefox has, but since I had been using Vista for a while, it did look kind of strange.
Themes:
The theme for Elyssa didn’t quite give the impression that their catch phrase (From freedom came elegance) promised. I really dislike the colour brown on my monitor, but I’d prefer the Ubuntu scheme over Mint’s any day. Like all distributions this too has its own colour, and you don’t have to be Einstein to have guessed that this distro’s colour is florescent green, usually over a dark gray. I didn’t quite like the default icon set that they had, which seemed to have been mutated by the Hulk (For the record Hulk sucks). But you can always set any distribution to look like your old distro. All it takes is time.
Look and feel:
Compiz came installed by default, and as soon as I installed the restricted drivers, the settings for the graphics changed automatically to advanced. There was this thing called Simple Compiz Settings (Pardon my ignorance if it's a common thing, but I had never seen it before) which allowed me to easily configure the level of special effects I desired. I chose the highest level and didn't see much significant changes in the effect. The standard Desktop Cube was switched on, and the windows flew to the corners of the desktop on being minimized, but nothing significant. I was forced to use the advanced Compiz settings where I switched on the wobbly windows and the water effect, still nothing. Crap, I forgot to restart X. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and I saw the quickest X restart I have seen. All the cool features started working too.
Desktop:
The default desktop of Elyssa came with a two icons, Computer and Mint home. Apart from this there were new icons that kept popping up whenever a drive was mounted, like I had already mentioned. But thanks to Mint’s Control Centre, which was really very cool BTW, I could easily switch this option off, without having to go through the trouble of making edits in the GConfig. And there was just one GNOME panel that was at the bottom of the screen, where I prefer it to be, unlike most other GNOME panels which have one hanging upside down. It’s just a matter of dragging stuff around, getting the panel to the bottom and rearranging stuff according to your preference, but I was talking about the defaults. If you go into customizations, you could change practically everything.
Menus:
The menu as seen in the screenshot was pretty decent, with one of those fields for filters which now seem to have become a standard. The system and the places field comes expanded as you open the menu, and the application field expands into a new column as you scroll your mouse over the appropriate category.
Software selection:
Linux Mint comes loaded with the basic software that you would want to use. There is GIMP for your image editing, and the Open Office comes as your office suite. For your sound and video requirements you have Movieplayer, MPlayer, Rythmbox and also a sound recorder, which is not that common for a Linux distro.
Codecs:
Like I have already mentioned, Linux Mint came with all the proper codecs required for playing all possible video and audio formats, which includes MP3 for audio and amongst the videos I tested out AVI (ISO MPEG-4 (XviD, ffmpeg)) and WMV (Windows Media Video 7). It also played flash video files (FLV), and ran a DVD automatically as I inserted it into my drive. I wonder if the use of these preinstalled codecs is legal. Anyway, so far so good, I am yet to find a file I have not been able to play, which is really cool, since I have not been forced to click on any warnings about proprietary stuff.
Packages:
Mint uses MintInstall which is an application to handle the installation of .mint files and .deb files (Hmmm, I have never heard of .mint files. Why does each and every distro have to make their own file types). It can also be used to retrieve packages from the Ubuntu or the Mint repository. Apart from this, there is also the synaptic package manager which I am really comfortable with, since I have been using Ubuntu for a while
Performance:
The applications take lesser time to start up than it took in a couple of other distributions, though the start-up isn’t exactly fast. I’d have to do some heavy duty work on the system to rate its performance, though it certainly is a tad more responsive than my Ubuntu 7.10.
Stability:
So far Elyssa has been a lot more stable than most of the other distributions. X hasn’t crashed a single time yet, and it doesn’t go catatonic yet. I shall edit this field if I ever have a bad experience with it.
Shutdown:
Shutting down Linux Mint doesn’t take long. And unlike the other places where it took longer than required to do certain tasks, it was faster while shutting down.
Stuff I missed out:
One really cool feature I liked was that Mint played out the MP3's as previews when you placed your mouse pointer over them for over a second. Another thing that I liked was that it provided you with the option of making a backup of your root, which does sound like a nice idea if you have excess disk space. Anything goes wrong and you can get everything back to normal. Also when I booted for the first time, I was greeted by the Mint assistant which is meant to help you fine tune your system. I learnt was that with Mint, you didn't need to have a separate administrative password. Instead simply type in “sudo su root” and you can gain administrative rights. There was also this option for “Humorous” Quotes at the start of the terminal. May be I am not smart enough, but I fail to get the “Humour”. Linux Mint, like most other distribution also has its own update manager MintUpdate, which takes care of all your software updates.
My impression:
Linux Mint 5 is an OS I'd like to switch to from my Ubuntu 7.10, which although is less visually appealing than the Ubuntu, it is not something that cannot be worked upon. Apart from that, I always enjoy working on different Operating systems. This way, I can get to know all about the strengths and weaknesses of an OS.
Final words:
If you are new to linux, or are looking for a new operating system to explore, go ahead, try out the Linux Mint 5. In fact, I'd recommend it over the much more popular Ubuntu it is based on. Although it has it's similarities with Ubuntu, it is also pleasantly different. In case you are an Ubuntu user, it wouldn't take much getting used to it. It is easy to use, and already has most of the stuff you would probably need. As for the more advanced users, it’s no point advising you guys about an OS. You could always get all your favourite features working on any of the OS’s.
PS: The test system had an AMD64 Athlon (2800+) mounted on an Asus K8S-MX motherboard, with 1.5GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce Fx5200 (AGP) with 256MB of memory.
Linux Mint 5 Elyssa - Main Edition
Version:
5
Desktop Environment:
GNOME 2.22.1.2
Kernel:
2.6.24-16
Instruction size:
32 Bit
Live boot:
The Linux Mint 5 did have a live boot, which took a tad more while to load than what other distros take. As soon as the X started, I got an error which went like: GNOME couldn't load blah blah blah... Some components may not run well. Turned out there weren't any issues, at least none that I could notice. The distro came with MP3 codecs, which was a pleasant surprise, so the live experience was a lot better than that offered by other distributions. Also unlike most other live boots that I have experienced, things were a lot smoother and the system didn't go catatonic. Neither did the GUI (X) crash like I have experienced with many-a popular distributions. While shutting down the live boot, it prompted me to remove all disk from the drive and to press enter when I was done, but strangely, the drive refused to open when I pressed the button for it to do so. I had to reboot to get the disk out.
Installation:
The Installation time for Elyssa is probably the only thing that disappointed me. Though the ease of installation was average, it took longer than any other operating system I have installed yet. I was asked the typical questions that they asked before OS installations. I had a drive mounted and some files open, so after I had finished configuring everything for the install; I was prompted to unmount all drives following which I was redirected to the partitioner again. This is something I did not enjoy, particularly since the partitioner takes ages to load the drive information. All in all it took me over three quarters of an hour to install the operating system, which was after booting in the live mode.
Boot issue:
Due to hassles of configuring the grub or rewriting the MBR following each installation, I have started installing the grub on drive where the OS is installed. I use another GRUB (From either my pen-drive, or my other previously configured operating systems) to start up the grub of the new OS manually. I was pleased to see that the other operating systems had been automatically and more importantly, correctly configured. The only problem I had was when I restarted. I suspect that it is probably because of the frequency scaling, but I was given this warning about CPU over voltage when I opted to restart, which has been the case with other Linux operating systems too.
Screen resolution:
The default screen resolution was 1280x960/60Hz, and I was informed of the availability of restricted drivers from NVIDIA after the installation, which I cancelled for the moment. Later when I set out looking for the option to install the restricted drivers, I came across EnvyNG which was a common manager for NVIDIA as well as ATI drivers. I opted for the automatic hardware detection and installation for NVIDIA driver, which lead to the downloading of loads of libraries which were apparently being fetched from the Ubuntu hardy and the Mint Archive. Strangely, the downloading was not as fast as it usually is and it took awfully long to download everything at a mere 10kb/s. After installation the default resolution was set at 1024x768/85Hz. And after a while a balloon popped up, which said something like Ubuntu (Yes, that's right, it said Ubuntu) is using drivers it cannot support... Blah blah blah. Currently I am at 1152x864/75 Hz and I wouldn't like to go higher at the moment. Also, I am greeted by a full screen NVIDIA logo as soon as the X starts.
Hardware detection:
Well, all my onboard stuff was detected fine. I didn’t try out the webcam, because seriously, there is not much use for it on Linux. The printer is packed up, because it was cluttering my table, though with the HP on Linux drivers, I doubt I’ll have problems with it. The graphics card like I mentioned was detected automatically and restricted NVIDIA drivers were recommended for it.
Mounting:
All drives are detected at the time of booting, but are not mounted automatically. Of course times have changed now and you don’t have to edit fstab or type in commands into the terminal to mount your drives (though no one stops you from doing so if you enjoy it), all you have to do is double click on the drive and it mounts almost instantly, with no noticeable delays. Doing so did cause an icon of the newly mounted drive to pop up on my desktop. For me my desktop is a sacred place, and I like to keep it as less cluttered as possible. I’ll come back to the desktop later.
Network:
The network was detected automatically, since my network is configured by DHCP. No problems here.
Browser:
The browser is something I am really touchy about. I don’t mind using any browser as long as things are accessible and it loads all content in decent times. Luckily Elyssa came with Firefox 3, and since I am really comfortable with the browser, I faced no problems here. Of course, the fonts of the browser were those really squishy ones like the Linux-Firefox has, but since I had been using Vista for a while, it did look kind of strange.
Themes:
The theme for Elyssa didn’t quite give the impression that their catch phrase (From freedom came elegance) promised. I really dislike the colour brown on my monitor, but I’d prefer the Ubuntu scheme over Mint’s any day. Like all distributions this too has its own colour, and you don’t have to be Einstein to have guessed that this distro’s colour is florescent green, usually over a dark gray. I didn’t quite like the default icon set that they had, which seemed to have been mutated by the Hulk (For the record Hulk sucks). But you can always set any distribution to look like your old distro. All it takes is time.
Look and feel:
Compiz came installed by default, and as soon as I installed the restricted drivers, the settings for the graphics changed automatically to advanced. There was this thing called Simple Compiz Settings (Pardon my ignorance if it's a common thing, but I had never seen it before) which allowed me to easily configure the level of special effects I desired. I chose the highest level and didn't see much significant changes in the effect. The standard Desktop Cube was switched on, and the windows flew to the corners of the desktop on being minimized, but nothing significant. I was forced to use the advanced Compiz settings where I switched on the wobbly windows and the water effect, still nothing. Crap, I forgot to restart X. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and I saw the quickest X restart I have seen. All the cool features started working too.
Desktop:
The default desktop of Elyssa came with a two icons, Computer and Mint home. Apart from this there were new icons that kept popping up whenever a drive was mounted, like I had already mentioned. But thanks to Mint’s Control Centre, which was really very cool BTW, I could easily switch this option off, without having to go through the trouble of making edits in the GConfig. And there was just one GNOME panel that was at the bottom of the screen, where I prefer it to be, unlike most other GNOME panels which have one hanging upside down. It’s just a matter of dragging stuff around, getting the panel to the bottom and rearranging stuff according to your preference, but I was talking about the defaults. If you go into customizations, you could change practically everything.
Menus:
The menu as seen in the screenshot was pretty decent, with one of those fields for filters which now seem to have become a standard. The system and the places field comes expanded as you open the menu, and the application field expands into a new column as you scroll your mouse over the appropriate category.
Software selection:
Linux Mint comes loaded with the basic software that you would want to use. There is GIMP for your image editing, and the Open Office comes as your office suite. For your sound and video requirements you have Movieplayer, MPlayer, Rythmbox and also a sound recorder, which is not that common for a Linux distro.
Codecs:
Like I have already mentioned, Linux Mint came with all the proper codecs required for playing all possible video and audio formats, which includes MP3 for audio and amongst the videos I tested out AVI (ISO MPEG-4 (XviD, ffmpeg)) and WMV (Windows Media Video 7). It also played flash video files (FLV), and ran a DVD automatically as I inserted it into my drive. I wonder if the use of these preinstalled codecs is legal. Anyway, so far so good, I am yet to find a file I have not been able to play, which is really cool, since I have not been forced to click on any warnings about proprietary stuff.
Packages:
Mint uses MintInstall which is an application to handle the installation of .mint files and .deb files (Hmmm, I have never heard of .mint files. Why does each and every distro have to make their own file types). It can also be used to retrieve packages from the Ubuntu or the Mint repository. Apart from this, there is also the synaptic package manager which I am really comfortable with, since I have been using Ubuntu for a while
Performance:
The applications take lesser time to start up than it took in a couple of other distributions, though the start-up isn’t exactly fast. I’d have to do some heavy duty work on the system to rate its performance, though it certainly is a tad more responsive than my Ubuntu 7.10.
Stability:
So far Elyssa has been a lot more stable than most of the other distributions. X hasn’t crashed a single time yet, and it doesn’t go catatonic yet. I shall edit this field if I ever have a bad experience with it.
Shutdown:
Shutting down Linux Mint doesn’t take long. And unlike the other places where it took longer than required to do certain tasks, it was faster while shutting down.
Stuff I missed out:
One really cool feature I liked was that Mint played out the MP3's as previews when you placed your mouse pointer over them for over a second. Another thing that I liked was that it provided you with the option of making a backup of your root, which does sound like a nice idea if you have excess disk space. Anything goes wrong and you can get everything back to normal. Also when I booted for the first time, I was greeted by the Mint assistant which is meant to help you fine tune your system. I learnt was that with Mint, you didn't need to have a separate administrative password. Instead simply type in “sudo su root” and you can gain administrative rights. There was also this option for “Humorous” Quotes at the start of the terminal. May be I am not smart enough, but I fail to get the “Humour”. Linux Mint, like most other distribution also has its own update manager MintUpdate, which takes care of all your software updates.
My impression:
Linux Mint 5 is an OS I'd like to switch to from my Ubuntu 7.10, which although is less visually appealing than the Ubuntu, it is not something that cannot be worked upon. Apart from that, I always enjoy working on different Operating systems. This way, I can get to know all about the strengths and weaknesses of an OS.
Final words:
If you are new to linux, or are looking for a new operating system to explore, go ahead, try out the Linux Mint 5. In fact, I'd recommend it over the much more popular Ubuntu it is based on. Although it has it's similarities with Ubuntu, it is also pleasantly different. In case you are an Ubuntu user, it wouldn't take much getting used to it. It is easy to use, and already has most of the stuff you would probably need. As for the more advanced users, it’s no point advising you guys about an OS. You could always get all your favourite features working on any of the OS’s.
PS: The test system had an AMD64 Athlon (2800+) mounted on an Asus K8S-MX motherboard, with 1.5GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce Fx5200 (AGP) with 256MB of memory.
