Linux Mint 7 “Gloria” was released a little while ago, so before it became too old of news, I thought I’d take a whack at experimenting with it for the sake of netbookers everywhere (and for myself, naturally). As I type this on gedit after about two weeks’ use, let’s just say that the system on my EeePC 1000 HE is, for the most part, rather glorious– pun intended. As a bonus, I also got Google’s Chromium browser to run on it, so keep on reading to find the section on that.
Overview
Linux Mint 7 “Gloria” is the latest Linux Mint release based off of Ubuntu 9.04, and since I already briefly used Ubuntu 9.04 on this very same netbook, I expected it to perform at least the same, if not better. After all, the boot screen displays the phrase “from freedom came elegace” with the Linux Mint logo above it.
The hardware used for reviewing Linux Mint 7 is my trusty EeePC 1000 HE netbook. It has an Intel Atom processor at 1.66 GHz, 1 GB of DRR2 RAM, 160 GB of hard drive space, Bluetooth, wireless b, g, and n, a 1.3 MP webcam, and a 10.2-inch screen. Its network name is appropriately BLACK-BEAUTY.
To install Linux Mint on my netbook via a USB drive, I used the beautiful program known as Unetbootin, available for both Windows and Linux. Though Linux Mint 7 wasn’t yet included in the default options of the program (it comes with a preset list of distributions to use), I was still able to download the image and install it on the USB drive from that. I installed the Linux Mint 7 Main Edition.
Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover– or an OS by Its First Day of Performance
Installation from the bootable USB drive was painless and almost exactly the same as Ubuntu 9.04’s. The entire process took around thirty minutes. Booting into Mint for the first time was sort of like being a child who comes into the family room on Christmas day when the tree is lit up and a model steam engine is weaving its way between a pile of gifts. It’s pretty, it’s new, it’s exciting, and it’s… silent. The silence was caused by the wrong driver being loaded for the sound card, but that was fixed very easily later by selecting a different one. The logon sound reminds me of a cell phone getting a text– that’s what I thought it was the first time.
It certainly was pretty, but it was missing something. The wireless wouldn’t detect any networks at first, but after I let it sit for a while as I did other things, it was able to sense mine. Only after a very long time of coaxing, retrying to connect, and disabling and enabling the network adapter did it finally connect. No tweaking caused it to work– it suddenly connected of its own accord, which is quite odd and leaves me rather bepuzzled. It finally connected, but, due to the fact that I have a somewhat unique setup in my home (DSL modem –> wireless router with the router acting as DHCP server), I was not able to connect to the Internet and was only allowed to roam my own network no matter what I did. I’ve only had this problem with Ubuntu and Linux Mint before as all of my other wireless computers in the house (Windows XP, Vista, and 7) have been able to connect to the Internet flawlessly. After having a bit of a think, I finally decided to change the DHCP server from the wireless router to the DSL modem, and, after more disabling, enabling, and rebooting both routers two or three times, the wireless finally connected and had Internet access at the same time: miracle. It would still take a day or two before Mint would connect to my network automatically (even though it was set to from the beginning); it also took as long for it to connect in less than a minute and a half after being told to. Again, I did no tweaking– the system just needed to be broken in or something, I suppose, like a shoe or a horse. Thankfully, though, the networking on my netbook with Linux Mint now connects automatically in an unnoticable amount of time, and it works flawlessly except when coming out of hibernation (that seems to be a common complaint).
After the networking kafuffle, I also found that the interface seemed to be slow and jumpy, as was the starting of applications. It was disappointing, really, and surprising to find this. The visual effects were only set to normal, and I have seen similar applications start up much more quickly on Ubuntu than this. However, after using Mint for a couple of days, I set the visual effects to the most advanced setting, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that windows weren’t quirky anymore and the overall performance was faster despite being more graphically intensive. After going back to check normal graphics settings, they now work just as well; I believe that my performance lagged because updated or correct drivers hadn’t been downloaded (due to the network mess as previously mentioned), and that performing the first update solved that problem. On the other hand, Firefox is still painfully slow and I sometimes twiddle my thumbs a mite longer than I’d have thought as I wait for system applications such as the control panel or mintUpdate to load. Otherwise, the system seems pretty snappy.
Things were looking bleak for Linux Mint 7 at first, but, once the networking was working, things began to fall into place and were on the up and up.
A Deeper Look: System Features, Performance, Aesthetics
My hope was being restored in Mint again. Continuing in my experience with the system, I found some pretty spiffy features I’d like to show examples of.
First off is the Menu. Instead of a menu bar at the top of the screen containing all programs, options, and tools, it’s contained in one button similar to Windows’ Start Menu. It’s divided into sections with features to filter out certain types of applications. However, my favorite of all of these is the search option similar to Windows Vista’s Start Menu search and Mac OS X’s Spotlight. A user may type in the name of an application to use, or the user may type in the name of a package to install or to search on repositories. What’s more is that when the Menu is closes and reopened, the search filter remains.
I found mintUpdate a very viable upgrade from Ubuntu’s standard system updater. It’s a lot cleaner, easier to use, and less annoying and intrusive. When there are updates available for your applications, the system doesn’t put on a great show and annoy you until you decide to download and install them. Instead, a simple lock is displayed in the system tray, and a mouse-over will tell you how many recommended updates are available. The mintUpdate interface is much more friendly than others in my opinion. It lists updates and the information associated with them as well as gives a rating next to it that states whether the update has been tested, if it’s known or thought to be safe, and if it could potentially be dangerous or is dangerous. You can even change the lock icon in the system tray to whatever you like.
MintInstall had its perks (such as screenshots automatically downloaded whenever an application is viewed), but the sole fact that I can’t seem to mark multiple applications for download at the same time is a little irksome. A user can only click “Install” and have only one application be downloaded and installed at a given time.
Performance-wise, as already briefly stated, Mint runs pretty well on my netbook. It does have its slow moments using certain applications, but Chromium and OpenOffice.org, the applications I mainly use on a netbook, run beautifully. Most other standard applications do, too. It seems to mostly be Firefox and several of the system tools that have trouble. On the other hand, I’m sure that these would have vast improvements running on a desktop with at least slightly better hardware.
Start-up times are a bit slower than anticipated, as are times going into and coming out of hibernation. Going into hibernation takes around 20-25 seconds and 25-30 waking up. Start up takes around 35-40 seconds. Even still, it’s not disgustingly slow; I’m still pleased.
Though the battery time on my EeePC is rated for the default system at a beautiful 6-9 hours, I seem to get less battery time using Linux Mint 7 than Windows XP. On a good day, I can get around seven hours of Internet browsing and word processing on Windows, but Linux Mint seems to fall behind at a somewhat lesser 4-5 hours.
Most of the hardware on this netbook seems to play well with Mint. Even the easy-access buttons above the keyboard have effect– one puts the computer on standby, and the rest I believe are somehow customizable as they cause the cursor to halt in blinking for a fraction of a second whenever I press them (proving that the system picks up some sort of signal when they’re pressed), but I’m currently not interested in figuring them out; I’ve done a few searches to see if someone else has posted their procedure of customizing them online, but none of them revealed anything. Some of the hardware that doesn’t work, however, are what some people may call vital. I don’t use my webcam or bluetooth very often, so it’s not been a problem for me thus far to not have them work. I can’t find any way to interact with the webcam in the system as it currently is, and, though there is a bluetooth interface, it doesn’t seem to be able to tell that I have bluetooth hardware. I do know that there are procedures for getting webcams to work for Ubuntu posted on various websites, so I imagine that they’ll work for Linux Mint as well seeing as how it’s based on Ubuntu, though this theory remains untested by me.
The aesthetics of the system are undeniably pretty. There is a wide selection of different themes and backgrounds, but the default is still glorious. Green is my favorite, so perhaps I’m a bit biased. At any rate, the advanced graphics work well as detailed before, and those combined with the color and icon schemes make it a pretty environment to work in, indeed. If people want eye-candy in their operating system, Linux Mint is a very comfy way to go and can compete with other more popular systems.
I also found it funny that Linux Mint’s terminal gives you a sort of joke/fortune every time you start a new session.
Chromium
Since I’ve become addicted to Google Chrome, I decided I might try to get Chromium on my Mint partition (the slowness of Firefox also influenced my decision). At first I attempted to install the Windows version of Chrome via Wine, but despite a successful installation, all I could get was a blank about:blank screen. Using these instructions to get Chromium, I installed Chromium slickly and quickly, and I use it happily to this day.
Chromium seems more stable and completed than I had anticipated. Day by day use feels just like Chrome, and I sometimes forget that, to paraphrase Dorothy, “We’re not in Windows anymore, Toto” when I use the Internet for an extended period. The only problems I’ve had with Chromium thus far is that some sites based on flash don’t work properly (flash isn’t supported at all in Chromium just yet), and pages implementing HTML5 cause Chromium to completely freeze– pages such as the samples shown on Kroc’s website regarding the successful open letter to Mozilla some time ago. Otherwise, the browser seems to work beautifully and just as fast and efficacious as the Windows version.
Closing Thoughts
Linux Mint 7 is not only shiny and pretty, but well organized and easy to use. It has its slow moments while running on typical netbook hardware, but it still runs snappily for most netbook uses. It has some very viable advantages over Ubuntu in its ease of use and customized system applications, and I believe people who are new to Linux would find Mint much more desirable than Ubuntu in most circumstances. It could definitely use some power consumption optimization as well as some optimization to speed up what it still runs slow. As with most user-installed Linuxes, Mint doesn’t exactly like the wireless card on the EeePC 1000 HE, and better wireless support for all distributions is a very major necessity to attract more users. All in all, I have a little crush on Linux Mint 7 and like it better than Ubuntu; I personally give it a 9/10. However, the way it runs on my netbook calls for a score nearer to 7/10, disappointingly. I do look forward to future releases and hope they may be more optimized for netbooks.
After having used it for couple of weeks now, thanks to “Linux Format”, I am begining to like it. It is fairly easy to use and has most of the the things required to make a good desktop/laptop distribution.
I’ve just installed on my new laptop – It installed perfectly the default opensource drivers seem to work fine with my graphics card and wireless.
It’s suprising how different it feels from Ubuntu Jaunty for example the having a control panel – but son far I like it
To get the optimal battery life, you need to have Eee-control installed to take advantage of Asus’s ACPI extensions and bios features. This also enables various other ACPI features such as Wifi, Bluetooth, and other toggles. I have a 1000HE as well and with Eee-control installed, I can easily get 9 hours on a charge. You can find Eee-control here:
http://greg.geekmind.org/eee-control/
Don’t quote me on this, but I imagine the Ubuntu 9.04 debs would work on LinuxMint 7 (note you need to install the dkms package first).
As for the Wifi, I’m curious, do you have a Ralink RT2860 or an Atheros AR928X chipset in your 1000HE? I ask because the Wireless connection issues you’re having sound a lot like the rt2860, which on Ubuntu at least needs to have its driver updated before it will work properly and, if Linuxmint includes the same version of the rt2860 driver Ubuntu does, an update will help a lot with your connection issues. My 1000HE has an ath9k chipset in it, thankfully, but I’ve set up Linux on others’ with the rt2860 and they’re having the same issues you are (long connection times, unreliable reconnect, etc).
I like installing Linux Mint on the computers of users new to Linux. As they are normally put of by strict open-source and codec policy. Also Linux Mint is very easy to use for newcomers.
Myself, I really don’t like Linux Mint, for the reason that they really want to shove there brand up you. It’s logo is everywhere. All the standard backgrounds feature that ugly logo. They have customised almost everything, sometimes even calling it “Mint edition”, when the only difference is that there logo is everywhere. Google is set to a custom , much more impractical, Mint version, so the makers of Mint can get revenue. And it’s purposefully hard to change this behaviour.
But besides that, it’s a good working distro.
I have to say that I stopped using it when I saw that they do not really update their own packages. So the update situation is much better on original Ubuntu.
Dude, you should try Sabayon (http://www.sabayon.org). Mint is just a copycat of Ubuntu, doesn’t bring anything “new”.
Edited 2009-07-10 15:31 UTC
Is there a LiveCD of this available? I can’t seem to find any information on that, other than the download links.
Yes the install CD is a live CD, handy to give test run before you install
GCC 4.5.0 will have support for the Atom processor, so maybe that’ll help distros like this. Although this being single core might be more of the reason it’s not as snappy. (Otherwise I’d really say I find it troubling that it isn’t blazingly fast. 1.66 Ghz really should be enough for most stuff.) Then again, considering how slow most distros are in getting GCC 4.4.0 (most still don’t have it), I wouldn’t hold my breath.
You can get a better battery than just the stock 6-cell, I think, 12-cell perhaps?
Chrome on Windows does feel a lot snappier than Firefox, and FF3.5 (strangely) did seem to slow down on startup some single core XP machines of mine although in fairness FF3.5 is better in various ways.
Nice review overall.
But still disappointing to see hardware glitches and weird network issues right off the bat. I keep looking for that easy to use Linux that might tempt me to get a refurbished netbook – but I’d want to use the whole machine, not just some of it.
Still, I like the ease of use concept of Mint.
Hmm, perhaps what you should do is get a referbished netbook and ask someone who knows Linux to get everything working, or buy a netbook with Linux pre-installed and configured. As a general rule, all the hardware in these netbooks does work fine under Linux, the issues mostly being outdated or nonexistent drivers on the default installs. Windows is no different really, try installing a base winxp and see how ready it is to work out of the box (not talking about your restore disks here, but a flat out basic XP disk). Even Win7 on my 1000HE needed a driver for ACPI and to have Eeectl configured before everything worked as it should and, on balance, I actually needed to do less tweaking to Linux than I did to either Windows revision to get things working the way I wanted.
It mostly comes down to the sheer variations in hardware, although one would think that some could concentrate a bit more on Netbooks as they, at least, are similar internally. Still, neither Windows nor Linux have the ease of install that Mac OS X does for the simple reason that there is just so many hardware combinations.
I know that in general, people ignore basic grammar rules on the internet, but the story summary for this one is nearly impossible to understand. I mean, for example, “so before it became too old of news…” is just atrocious. The prepositions and infinitives are backwards, and completely incorrectly used.
I had to read this summary twice to get the author’s intentions. Maybe some proofreading before hitting the post button? Excellent site, lets keep up some semblance of dignity.
I didn’t realise this was an English lesson.
Why don’t you go find a new site to annoy people? Who cares how perfect our grammar ‘be’?
You have to understand, the “grammar nazis” kick in when they have nothing worthwhile to say.
I really didn’t mean to fuss, but I hadn’t seen a post by Jordan before and wanted to bring it up. I really wasn’t trying to troll or bother people. I love OSNews, and don’t consider myself a grammar nazi. Everyone makes mistakes. I just thought it was worth bringing up if Jordan is new. Thats all.
Your attempt to make yourself look better than others has failed miserably.
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.p…
From 7 back to Mint 2. Interesting!
I use Mint on an hp 2140 netbook and it all worked right out of the box. I installed it using a USB CD and have it installed to an SD card, as I have OSX as my main HD in this unit. It works really well off my 16GB class 4 card. I want to see how much faster it is on a class 6. If I didn’t use this machine as my main machine and use so much of OSX, I’d use Mint. I may use it to do some java development, as OSX and eclipse seems slower than mint and eclipse from the SD card (which doesn’t seem right now, does it?)
I would like to endorse the earlier post which criticized the poor writing of this article.
This could and should have been edited. It’s rambling and contains elementary errors.
“based off of”: hello? Does this mean based on?
“elegace” ?
“kafuffle” : should have been kerfuffle?
The question about whether this was an English lesson is rather stupid. Correct use of English indicates some minimum level of professionalism and education.
I suspect the author didn’t get paid for this. He certainly should have been paid for it and OSNEWS shouldn’t have published it without editing it.
It does matter.
I think OSNEWS is community driven?
How about you make the corrections and submit it to Thom or Kroc.
Although English is spoken around the globe it is not everyone primary language.
Or Jordan being an OSNEWS editor can take your advice and just correct the article.
Edited 2009-07-11 01:12 UTC
How about this scum bag, maybe after being here for more than 1 day and contributing some articles to the site – then you might have a ‘right’ to steam roll a community members contribution.
I find it funny that you register on this site only to make one comment about the the quality of the ‘English’. For me, I liked the article, it was readable and quite frankly who gives a shit about the grammatical errors – it is understandable, he was able to communicate his ideas, so quite frankly your ‘views’ are without any merit.
> who gives a shit about the grammatical errors
Lots of us do. I care a great deal, for instance.
Errors make the language much less readable. For those of us who know how to use the language correctly, they are intensely irritating and make a piece of text almost painful to read.
Errors impair communication. They are not arbitrary rules, to be ignored; the difference between “its” and “it’s”, for instance, is important, because “its” and “it’s” mean two totally different things.
You would not forgive someone who sometimes said “ATI” when they meant “nVidia”, or who kept mixing up “Linux” and “BSD”. You’d call them a fool and ignore what they wrote. Well, “its” and “it’s” are just as different, as are “there” and “their”, or “there’s” and “theirs”.
There are rules and standards for a reason, and the reason is that they make communication more clear, less ambiguous and easier for the recipient, the reader, to understand.
Misuse and mangling of language mark the writer out as someone of below-average intelligence or poor education. In a comments board, someone who can’t spell or doesn’t know grammar is someone I can probably safely ignore; they have branded themselves as a fool.
Learn the rules. Use them. And prepare to be mocked, vilified or ignored if you don’t.
But in an article, in a published work, for such errors to persist makes me think that the piece is not worth reading, and it makes the publishers look bad.
There is a rider to this, which is that I am a native English speaker. I do not expect perfection from someone to whom English is their second or third language. That includes, in this instance, the site editor – although Thom’s written English is excellent and very nearly flawless.
However a name like Jordan Cunningham sounds to me like a British or American name. I don’t know this, but it seems a reasonable guess. In that case, I expect native fluency.
I thought I might address your critisizms of my use of the English language (I’m the Jordan Spencer Cunningham in question despite my comment username being displayed as “weildish”):
I’m an American citizen, and I happen to be very fluent in the English language– definitely better than ~80% of the US population is, at least. I cringe as you have while talking to many of them online. However, I understand and will be the first to admit that I don’t understand the rules perfectly, and then there are some rules that I throw out for the sake of a style of writing or simply because I feel they don’t matter; I want to say things a certain way, and if my readers can understand it, I’m happy to trample a few rules. I am a creative writer by nature and not one to hold strict to the rules, but I still try to maintain a certain standard. You have to admit that I am not as most of the US population seems to be with their language. I love English– how it is so flexible and how one can explore it, even break through it to yet unknown vistas.
I am happy to better my English, and I appreciate constructive criticism. Please understand that I can only do so much as an editor, and even though I proofread my work multiple times before posting, I usually won’t pick every mistake up (also, I often skip over known mistakes simply because I’m used to bending the rules for my creative work).
I will gladly accept future criticisms in email if the criticizer explains the rules behind these criticisms, but please leave criticism on the author’s language use out of the comments from this time forward. Thank you.
PS– Kerfuffle and kafuffle are interchangable. I consider them slang (as do many others), and both are acceptable if the occasion permits; even multiple dictionaries agree with me if you’d like to be technical.
Edited 2009-07-11 22:00 UTC
English is not a controlled language. There is no governing body that dictates “correct” English. There are hundreds of different dialects of English, each with its own set of “rules”.
I’ve never seen an instance of interchanging (their, they’re, there), (it’s, its), or (you’re, your) where context didn’t provide the intended meaning. Saying “nVidia” when you mean “ATI” is a clear semantic difference. Not even remotely an adequate analogy.
The purpose of language is to communicate. When there is coherence, the communication is successful. Despite you being annoyed by “errors”, this article is perfectly coherent…the intended meaning is adequately conveyed.
I find this a very odd review.
It praises the product highly, yet makes many criticisms. Indeed, more failures are pointed out than successes.
It mentions features that were not tested, but dismisses them as unimportant. It points out ways that this product fails in comparison to rivals – notably, battery life – yet still recommends the distro.
It also seems to lack comparisons to more directly-equivalent rivals, such as vanilla Ubuntu; more saliently, it would have been useful to compare Mint directly against netbook-focussed distros such as EasyPeasy.
I find the described problems with networking, for instance, very troubling; the author says they’ve been resolved, but does not seem to know how or by what, and doesn’t seem to care. That sort of thing is going to be very important to prospective users; merely sidelining it or ignoring it is not an acceptable response.
I am left uncertain of the conclusion; whereas the writer certainly seems to like Mint, I have a worrying feeling that they have not compared it fairly and squarely against either Windows, other general Linux distros or indeed other netbook distros. I also got the impression that the author was content to live with limitations and missing functionality that I, for one, would not accept.
If some hardware doesn’t work, a good review explains why and details how to fix it. It does not say “but I don’t use that, so it’s OK.”
I fear that this means that, as a review, the article has rather failed in its mission.
I also had the same problems with this article that you did—like –what exactly WAS the point of all this?
“Though Linux Mint 7 wasn’t yet included in the default options of the program{unetbootin} (it comes with a preset list of distributions to use), I was still able to download the image and install it on the USB drive from that” –just because were ABLE to do something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work and we have no idea if this was compared to UNR or if Ubuntu was installed via unetbootin…
The last time Linux Mint reviews came up, there was something about refusing to allow people that support the statehood of Israel to use it. Has anything changed on that front?
That wasn’t a license condition, it was just one of the developers of LinuxMint making a personal request that you not use it unless you support his views. Plain stupid imho, as such a philosophy demands conformity to a certain viewpoint which is basically against the spirit of foss, and should be ignored.
A couple of other great Distros are Crunchbang, BLAG, and Dreamlinux.
Love them.
on second thoughts, not.
Edited 2009-07-12 16:35 UTC
but I’ll add my 2 cents to this article…
I installed mint after seeing this article out of curiousity and so far I’m very impressed.
there could be more nautilus scripts by default but I’m very impressed with mintupload, it fits my needs perfectly.
also the menu and control panel are very thoughtful, expect the menu lacks a simple method to make keyboard shortcuts for programs it’s very easy to use and quite effective.
the software repository is of course the same as ubuntu but the special app that shows screenshots and so on works perfectly well and I actually got hinted at one or two apps I really like that I didn’t know before so it’s a good tool but it’s still missing some entries. it currently has about 500. I think if it has 800 entries or so it might be really useful for the linux newb in about any scenario.
so I’d give this distro a 9 of 10.
also I have to note it was very simple to install the alsa-driver snapshot package to get my Creative X-Fi to work which I never could do quite right using ubuntu (maybe that was just my fault but still just note that it works and is as easy as ./configure && make install && modprobe ….)
the performance is also quite good on my desktop pc and the menu offers the ability to select programs for autorun with a simple right click which gets my torrent program and so on running really well.
all in all I would recommend it over any other distro I tried so far and I tried about all there is.
EDIT:
Oh right…the default programs for video playback didn’t work very well for me, especially concerning subtitles…but vlc works fine as expected so I recommend to install it.
Edited 2009-07-13 11:50 UTC