On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 1:09 PM, Paul Morgan-Roach <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Linux Mint Debian - very, very impressed! Probably going to stick with >> this on the laptop. Rolling distro, attractive and the forums are friendly >> and helpful. Cpufreq didn't run out of the box and the Debian methods of >> doing things are not as straight forward as Ubuntu, but it just feels right. >> Still got a huge learning curve, moving from a RPM based distro to a DEB >> based. But very impressed. > > Never really played with Mint - this is interesting feedback - might give it > a go! Do bear in mind that there are currently 2 flavours of Mint. It is *possibly* on the threshold of a big change. Ordinary Linux Mint is an Ubuntu remix, with a more Windows-like layout of panels and so on, the fairly minimal collection of bundled proprietary addons and media codecs to access most Web media content, DVDs etc., and a few tweaked tools - a different Start menu, update manager and so on. It's good, but it's basically just Ubuntu tweaked. Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is new and different. The maintainer of Mint, Clem LeFevbre, apparently does not much like the directions that Ubuntu is going. (E.g., he has kept window widgets on the right, does not incorporate the Netbook remix and so on.) He is experimenting with changing the basis of Mint from Ubuntu to raw Debian. In essence, he's taken his custom tweaks and changes to Ubuntu and applied them to Debian instead, to produce something that looks and works like Mint - i.e., like Ubuntu but slightly more "refined" - but that is actually Debian underneath. I have only had a quick play with it, but it looks good. It's nearly as easy to install as Ubuntu or Mint (they're essentially the same at install-time), comes with all the media stuff, drivers and so on, but it's a bit smaller and a bit faster and takes a bit less RAM. It's not as sleek as Crunchbang, no, but then, it is a full GNOME distro. It's an interesting project. Nobody knows yet which way he's going to go - keep on producing an Ubuntu remix, switch to Debian, maintain both, or what. Both sides have their strengths. My personal guess? He doesn't like the look of the promised changes to Ubuntu - the big ones being Unity instead of GNOME 3 and Wayland instead of X - and is getting ready to kill off the Ubuntu derivative as soon as Ubuntu drifts too far from where it is now. Note, even though I work for a company that sells computers running Mint, I know nothing about what's going on with it - I'm just guessing here. I have been meaning to take Mint 9 off my main laptop and replace it with LMDE, actually. I now have Ubuntu 10.10 running really sweetly on it, which is its main OS, and I never use Mint 9 any more. My older laptop - a Thinkpad 1161-93G (PIII-750, DVD-ROM, 320MB RAM, 20GB HD) - is running Lubuntu 10.10 really nicely now. Sadly, the Debian-based Crunchbang won't find my Xircom Ethernet card, so I am still on #! 9.04, which is getting worryingly long-in-the-tooth now. I might wipe both distros and start again, actually... -- Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven Email: [email protected] • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: [email protected] Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: [email protected] • ICQ: 73187508 -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
