#linux mint 12

Cinnamon Linux Mint 12

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I have Fuduntu and Mint 12 set up as my main operating systems, and I realized that, for reasons of practicality, it'd be better to have One main operating system for work. I think I'm going with Fuduntu, and I'll try to break down why in a sort of mini-review.

This is based on my requirements and user experiences, and is, of course, entirely subjective. I like setups where basics like log-in, wi-fi work out of the box. Programs I use are pretty simple: Libreoffice, Rednotebook, Gedit, Chromium, Firefox, Xournal, GPartEd, AWN, and Multiboot. Both OSs suit me well, but I need to pick one or waste time configuring an extra OS.

Criteria:

User experience: ease of use; aesthetics.

Power: available software; convenience, configuration. -- what it can do, in short, and how easily.

Versatility: hardware support, system requirements. -- where it can do it

Support: community, documentation; security, updates.

Stability: does it crash or hang or glitch?

User Experience

Ease of use

Both OSs call themselves user-friendly and both live up to that. I think Mint takes the ease of use category, because it does almost Anything by default, without sacrificing too much performance. Also, the software center is much more transparent and easy to navigate and setup. Then again, Fuduntu shouldn't take anyone long to learn, though its more spare nature, in terms of provided features and software, might make it harder to get used to at first.

Fuduntu 8/10. Mint 10/10

Aesthetics

I like Fuduntu's custom icons and default backgrounds. They have AWN set up already, and since I always add that in Mint, that's a plus. Mint is pretty pedestrian, but clean and unoffensive. And easy to customize.

Fuduntu 8/10. Mint 7/10

Power

Software

Oodles of software, measured in assloads, Mint has. It definitely wins in terms of available software. And it's easily available, too. 3.5 assloads of software. Fuduntu has an amount that's just about right for what I need. The developers are very attentive to the community and add reasonable requests fairly quickly to the testing repositories. But it's 2 assloads to Mint's 3.5, and who knows what needs will later arise. Multiboot is also Ubuntu-family only, I believe.

Fuduntu 8/10. Mint 10/10

Convenience and Configuration

I like having stuff set up beforehand. And if it's not, then configuring it should be relatively simple. I like Fuduntu's defaults, but Mint is definitely a more mature product and has very transparent configuration options.

Fuduntu 8/10. Mint 9/10

Versatility

Hardware Compatibility

This is a big one. My traveling PC is a netbook. If an OS is great, but you can't run it, is it still great?

Fuduntu was designed for eee PCs and works remarkably well on my 1201t. It also has Jupiter built in for battery management. Mint and Ubuntu suck battery life like a vacuum cleaner inhales sea monkeys. I honestly haven't tested Fuduntu strictly on battery, but it will be hard to get less than the 25 minutes I got on Mnit 12 vanilla. (Didn't try it on LXDE, either, but I realy prefer to use the Gnome desktop).

Fuduntu isn't blazingly fast on the 1201t, and it consumes about 300/1800 MB of RAM on idle, but is noticeably faster than Mint 12.

Fuduntu 9/10 Mint 7/10

Support

Community and documentation

Mint's community is larger and just as friendly as Fuduntu's, so I think they have a considerable lead here. Also, having been around a long time, the documentation is more thorough. I haven't needed to do much browsing for OS-specific stuff, though. Mostly just reading things to shore up my basic knowledge of Linux.

I imagine a lot of Fedora documentation still applies to Fuduntu.

Fuduntu 8/10. Mint 9/10.

Security and Updates

Security and updates are where Fuduntu wins big for me. I want to set up and forget. Not only does the OS have a fast update schedule, it's rolling release. Mint 12 is supported until April 2013. Mint 13 will be supported for 5 years, which is huge, but I still need to work between now and the end of May. The only knock is, Fuduntu is a small project, and until it gains traction, it's hard to say if it will be around until, say, 2017. I guess that's why I'm throwing in with Fuduntu!

Fuduntu 10/10. Mint (12) 7/10.

Stability

Neither of these OSs have an issue with this.

I've honestly logged more hours with Mint, so I've seen it glitch more, but they've mostly been minor. Some apps will cause things to hang a little bit, using the auto-hide extension from Webupd8 will cause some icons to white out on the panel, etc. Probably the only one that irked me is a graphical glitch where Chromium started to flicker when I had more than two or three tabs open. It's gone away now since installing the NVidia drivers. I know better than the mess with Compiz, too. Fuduntu has small glitches, too. Repositories require manual tweaking, and the autohide is finicky at times for the top panel. The developers are aware of most of the problems, which is a good sign. Again, nothing major.

Fuduntu 8/10. Mint 8/10.

I intially chose both because I genuinely like using them both. Fuduntu is just a little more my style and fits my needs a little better. I also realized that using any Linux, you have to keep tabs on the community, because bugs and developments are usually not too far away. I can't devote that time to multiple OSs.

Interestingly, I've found that some Linux OSs are just a joy and pleasure to use. With Windows, there was always nagging issues of maintenance, which is a pretty decentralized process on that OS. (It was also slow.) On the plus side, Windows 7 was very stable and could handle most of what you threw at it.

Some Linux OSs tended to pose the opposite difficulties. While they were centralized and minimal, and fairly simple to set up for basic tasks, creating a fully-featured desktop for everyday computing was an outright project. I liked the idea of Puppy, SliTaz, and Crunchbang, and used them for short whiles, but didn't like having the feeling that a problem was always around the corner. Again, the fixes were there, but it's not a situation you want with a productivity desktop. I did enjoy the speedy "feel" of both SliTaz and Crunchbang, though. SliTaz, especially, impresses me with how much functionality it contains in 30-40 mb. Maybe when 4.0 comes out, I'll give it another try.

I first noticed while using Fuduntu that it was something you'd forget you were using which, to me, seems to mean it's a well designed desktop OS. It's feature-filled enough so that you're not running into errors trying to do simple tasks, yet not bloated to the point where those same simple operations will stutter. The Gnome default setup is also quite nice, being simple, clean, and easily customized. That's the kind of distraction free desktop I like to work on. Linux Mint 12 vanilla and LXDE also fell into this category, though 12 was a bit slower than Fuduntu and LXDE requires quite a few extra steps to do things like change the wallpaper.

I have high hopes for Mint 13, likely released in May, and Ubuntu 12.04. 11.10 would have been a good productivity desktop, but it just felt slow which, in itself, is a distraction. (Fuduntu was apparently targeted at eee PCs in its first iteration, which probably explains why it runs well on my 1201t.)

Oh yes, and Chakra. I'm keeping an install of Chakra around mainly to learn how to use it. It's a great project and the OS itself is very capable and well-designed. I don't see myself doing a lot of work on it, though. I get distracted by all the little KDE doodads. It is, however, very complete, and very pretty, as well as quite fast for an OS filled with eye candy.

So, basically, I'm going to be doing the bulk of my work (editing and writing) on Funduntu and Mint 12 (and 13). I like the balance of speed, capability, and clean design. I don't have any hardware that really necessitates the use of "light" OSs, so these two should do it!

(Sorry for the disorganized rambling; trying to organize my thoughts after weeks of learning new OSs and deciding, meh, this doesn't feel right.)

So, I'm lucky enough now, after three weeks of intensive experimentation with different Linux distributions, to know sort of what I'm looking for in an OS.

1. Stability

2. Ease of use/customization

3. Simplicity

Bloathi and E17, as well as Kororaa annoyed me a little by their lack of focus. There wasn't communicated to me a sense of unifying design, which is in abundance in Mint, Ubuntu, Fuduntu, and Chakra, as well as Slitaz, Puppy, and #!.

I've settled on Fuduntu and Chakra for now.

I'm comfortable with the Ubuntu and Debian package manager, and their terminal commands, but learning the Fedora commands (for Fuduntu)  and the Arch commands (for Chakra) isn't too different.

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I have Mint 12 LXDE running on the small laptop now, and Chakra and LMDE running on the big laptop. I'm likely to remove LMDE. It's good, but I prefer the functionality of Mint 12 Gnome. Judging from outraged Linux bloggers about a year ago, Gnome 3 was one step forward, two steps back. Well, I guess I like that one step forward, because the Gnome MGSE desktop of Mint 12 was more comfortable for me than the Gnome 2 desktop of LMDE.

LMDE (which I'm typing this in) is very fast and stable, though. I can't seem to make "tap click" work, which is another thing. Though, really, I only need one OS on this computer. It's a powerful laptop, so I figure I might as well run Chakra on it.

Fuduntu is on my external hard drive. I tried to install it on a USB drive, but one is loaded with Linux ISOs and the other is a tad too small, at 3.7 GB. It was a bit of a trial, but if you tell the bootloader to write to the MBR (not just the boot partition) of the external drive, it works.

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