On Dec 7, Dan Egli wrote: > So, while I love Gentoo, I hear a lot of people talking about how they love > Mint, and that Mint has the same flexibility as Gentoo, but is easier to > install/configure/update. > > So, I ask those who may have had experience with both to rate your > experience on each. How was the initial setup? Maintenance of config files? > Updates? Package/program availability (especially in pre-compiled binary)? > Granularity?
I don't have experience with Gentoo (my source distribution experience has been with LFS), I have had both good and mediocre experiences with Mint. I originally set it up on my wife's new laptop, when she discovered that her Apple software could no longer be upgraded because it needed a new operating system, which needed new hardware. She had originally bought that Mac after getting fed up with Windows, but before meeting me, and had seen me using Linux, so decided to try it. Initial setup was a breeze, and she was happy enough with the music, office, and other programs. It was able to use all Ubuntu packages, and many straight Debian ones, so program availability was fantastic. Even Google Chrome was a breeze to install. Mint's custom configuration editor meant that I rarely even touched a configuration file. That laptop ran Mint 7 (Gloria) for over two years, until websites started complaining about the age of the browsers. However, the maintenance window for that version had closed, so neither Firefox nor Chrome could be updated. I couldn't even compile new versions, because I hadn't installed the header files for a few key libraries before the package repositories moved on. Unfortunately, upgrading to a new version was painful. Mint had completely replaced Ubuntu's upgrade manager, with one that had no ability to switch distributions. Their website also strongly discouraged upgrading by any means other than backup and re-install. Therefore, instead of upgrading incrementally, I had waited so long that even Mint 8 was no longer available, so we had to switch straight to an even later distribution. I backed up the home directory, but not the operating system itself, which proved to be a mistake when my first attempts at a system upgrade completely failed. I eventually managed to get Mint 11 (Katya) running, but it never worked quite as well as Gloria. In particular, X would freeze for no particular reason. By the time that laptop's battery died a year later, my wife was frustrated enough with the random crashes that she wanted to try Windows again. To be fair, Windows 7 has been suddenly rebooting or shutting off almost as often, and Ubuntu 13.10 has been freezing even more frequently. Ubuntu on a desktop has been somewhat more stable, but one version had serious NTP issues, another version randomly corrupted Git object files, and just about every upgrade breaks one of the work-related programs I run under Wine. I have also tried PCLinuxOS, but failed to keep up with the distribution fast enough to keep the package manager working, so I refuse to try any other rolling release. Another desktop used Debian stable, but it tends to feel old, and distribution upgrades are potentially worse than Mint. On the LFS front, my server has been rock-solid for years, but when I tried to roll up a desktop machine, Firefox failed to compile. Then something got fried by a lightning storm, so I never got to use it much. - Eric /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
