Fresh start with Linux Mint
For the last three years I’ve been using the same desktop machine, a Gateway that came with Windows Vista preinstalled. I’m a linux user so the first thing I did when got the pc was installing Ubuntu. Later Slackware 12 came along so I installed it on another partition and since I used Vista, Ubuntu or Slackware depending on what I wanted to do. Vista has always been a constant pain but I needed Windows to program PIC microcontrollers.
With 2009 ending and 2010 just around the corner it seems like the moment to make a fresh start. Most of the time, beside the time expent programming PICs, I found myself using exclusively Ubuntu. I use Vista as little as I need and the boots on Slackware are becoming more rare with the time so why not get rid of them and have just one installation of linux? If I want to try any other linux distro or need to install windows there are many virtualization solutions (e.g. VirtualBox) so for me there’s no need to have more than one system installed at the time.
Yesterday I deleted all the partitions of my drive and decided to have that fresh start. The idea of changing distro crossed my mind. I’ve heard great things about openSUSE, and SUSE was one of the first distros I ever tried, but I’m too used to the way debian-based distros works so the only new thing was moving from Ubuntu to Linux Mint, wich is based on Ubuntu but includes some extras like a different user interface and media codecs so users can play music and watch movies whitout installing anything else.
Linux Mint “Helena” is based on Ubuntu “Karmik Koala” and so, it uses the repositories from Ubuntu, wich means that all the software on the repositories is just at one apt-get of distance. Linux Mint is an Ubuntu system, a little bit more focused on the user experience. Out of the box it had media codecs, flash player and the java virtual machine installed. In my case I found that it also installed the NDISwrapper package so I could install the drivers for my wifi card with no trouble.
When someone asked me about what distro to chose I always recomended Ubuntu, but from now on will recomend Linux Mint, an Ubuntu with just a twist of ease-of-use. Thinking of making the step to Linux on 2010? Well… start thinking on Linux Mint!
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