Ode to Linux Mint

[Fox]

Especially directed to aqua, who can now say, I told you so. In all my distro hopping, I never tried Linux Mint, as everything I read suggested it was just a dressed up Ubuntu. That may be so if you're running gnome, but in xfce, this thing is fast and beautiful. I installed version 7 xfce a few days ago in a Fusion vm; it came on a Linux magazine disk I bought for some holiday reading. Ubuntu xfce is supposed to be no faster than gnome and to use as much RAM and disk space, but in Mint, it runs as fast as any distro I have tried, barring the ones that load in RAM. Mint 8 xfce doesn't exist yet, as it's a community distro and the maintainer recently turned over. I'm looking forward to it when it's out.
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Mini 1: 2.3 ghz Core i5; 8 gb RAM, Corsair 240gb SSD, 500 gb Seagate XT
Mini 2: 2.26 ghz Core 2 duo, 8 gb RAM, 500 gb Seagate
Also a Cube, 13" MacBook Air, 20" 2.66 ghz iMac & 11.6" Acer 1810TZ running Ubuntu & openSuse

[Aquafire]

Fox, I am pleased to read of your Minty explorations.

Although I haven't used Mints' XFCE version, I can say that in my experience, XFCE is no slouch.

So for it to be even faster, must mean that the Mint people have probably 'tweaked' it a bit.

The added bonus is knowing how well the Mint group put their distros together. In my experience, Mint simply works straight out of the box.
Everything works first time, every time*.

Aqua

PS : I wouldn't dream of saying ......I told you so.

The pleasure of reading your 'Ode to Mint' is reward enough my friend.

*The only exception was their first KDE 4 version. It was a shocker, but I put that down mainly to the KDE group.
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Of the four X systems in the world.

Which would you choose?

OS X : LinuX : UniX or MS-BolloX.

[Fox]

XFCE isn't quite as user-friendly as gnome. The gnome menu is much easier to modify, as a right-click on the menu brings up a GUI modification window. In XFCE (at least Mint's version), you have to edit a config file. No big deal and something I can learn from by doing.

I am also learning a bit about KDE 4 through two other distro vms: openSUSE 11.2 and an alpha of Chakra (an Arch-based distro that uses KDEmod). I like the fonts and widgets of KDE better than gnome, but I still find KDE awkward to work with. This version of openSUSE is much faster than previous versions; surprising because openSUSE is considered a heavy distro. They must have tweaked it somehow.
_________________
Mini 1: 2.3 ghz Core i5; 8 gb RAM, Corsair 240gb SSD, 500 gb Seagate XT
Mini 2: 2.26 ghz Core 2 duo, 8 gb RAM, 500 gb Seagate
Also a Cube, 13" MacBook Air, 20" 2.66 ghz iMac & 11.6" Acer 1810TZ running Ubuntu & openSuse

[Aquafire]

Re KDE & Speed.

I do know that one of the criticisms leveled at the KDE group was how the whole Desktop was becoming a mishmash of options and shortcuts.

Like to many chefs spoiling the broth, each line of extra code was making the whole thing sluggish & slow.

By comparison to KDE3 when it first came out, KDE4 was a Tank compared to a motorbike.

So over the last set of permutations, the KDE group has set about stripping much of the junk out of the system. By that I mean, they looked at the whole business of shortcuts, of what did what and where and trimmed a lot of that stuff off the bone. They also went with Dolphin as a filing system, which leaves Konqueror in the dust.

All this means, that KDE will regain much of its lost speed.

Gnome on the other hand is beginning to show its age. It is going to have to undergo a transition of its own. It's in the works as we speak, so the next 12 to 18 months should be very interesting.

Aqua
_________________
Of the four X systems in the world.

Which would you choose?

OS X : LinuX : UniX or MS-BolloX.