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Thread ID: 102798 2009-09-01 23:51:00 Following NZ Post's lead - My first impressions of Linux Mint Chilling_Silence (9) Press F1
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806195 2009-09-01 23:51:00 Hi all,

After chatting with a friend briefly about how NZ Post have just switch to Google Apps and how they're investigating Linux Mint, I decided to give it a whirl myself.

I've been a happy Win7 user for the past month or so now, have a large variety of desktops all running it, and I'm eagerly anticipating release so I can buy a few licenses. That said, I'm always open to try something new. With that in mind, I'll constantly be referencing back to my recent dive into Win7, comparing the two.

I decided to install it on my work laptop, a Toshiba Satellite P200, 2GB Ram, dual-core 2Ghz. The HDD was already dual-booting WinXP & Win7. Downloaded the ISO in Win7 (My primary OS -- XP is just used for diagnosing specialist equipment because the software doesnt fully work in Win7) and burned it to a CD.
Time to re-partition. The Win7 Disk Management would let me shrink about 11GB off the first primary partition where XP was installed, but no more, even after defragging. No worries, I decided that'd be enough to "test" Mint out and get a feel for it.
Rebooted and immediately liked the sharp & sexy looking graphics. Didn't boot into a Live CD, I dived right in for the install.

It was smooth & straight-forward, asking little more than the Win7 installation. When it came to partitioning, it had already asked me to shrink the XP partition and dual-boot with all existing OS's. A nice touch, I was able to simply drag the "start" place of the Mint partitions along to the left a little further and made it shrink the XP partition by a further 30 GB. Something that for some reason Win7 was unable to do.

Installation was a breeze, it repartitioned non-destructively (Though there was no indication during partitioning that it *was* going to be non-destructive), and it took only a few seconds, less time than Win7 did to even analyze how much could be shrunk. Already off to a great start in my books.

I rebooted post-install and was greeted by a very sleek looking login screen. The artwork is top-notch, again a lot of work has gone in to making it look attractive, and I feel they've succeeded.
The first popup on my desktop was the standard "Welcome to Mint, here's a link to whats new, here's a link to getting started etc" and about a second later another window popped up over top. I was a little concerned that I was going to be bombarded at this point, but the new window was a warning that the Sony Battery used in my laptop may have been recalled, and "Would I like to go to the Toshiba website to check if my Satellite is one of the affect versions?". Talk about impressed!!

I threw in the Wireless WPA2 key and was online immediately, the joining process very similar to Win7's and quite unobtrusive. A little confirmation window appears in the top-right of the screen once connected, and it's a good touch in my books.
Firefox fires up, and lucky for me, my laptop isn't one of the affected models, but nonetheless I'm pleased they alerted me.

So, my boss asks "Does all the hardware work though?". Good question, lets go try it out. Heading off to YouTube I figured would be a great way to find out. I look up the Numa Numa dance and to my amazement it starts immediately, no downloading plugins or anything! Full-screen Flash playback even works out of the box! Usually it doesn't, so another "well done", no need to even download Flash :D
It's worth mentioning that it *did* take a moment to exit from fullscreen, but only about a second, so it didn't really bother me, but I noticed it regardless.

There's a little icon showing me "restricted drivers available for install" so I install the nVidia drivers and it prompts me to reboot to install them. I know I coulda just killed X and avoided the reboot but I don't really care, I'm pretending 'Im a Linux virgin.

I quickly reboot in to XP to make sure it hasn't fried the disk, nope, everything appears 100%.

Booting back in to Mint, it loads up quick and I test the Flash playback again. It's even smoother now and instantly goes in & out of full-screen mode.

Thunderbird was there in the "Favorite Applications" menu, so I loaded it up, connected to my Exchange mailbox (through IMAP) and all my mail is there, so I'm a happy chappy.

Plugged in my USB Wireless Logitech mouse. Instantly works, no waiting 10 seconds for drivers to install, it was off straight away. Plugged in a USB HDD and that took about 3-4 seconds (FAT32 formatted) but it was there on my desktop in a flash.
I wanted to confirm my CPU speed so I opened gnome-terminal and the it has quirky little "sayings" or "fortunes", and it says to me "You will get divorced soon". Not quite what I was hoping for seeing as I've only been married 8 weeks now ;)

It's still early days between me & Mint, but thus far it looks nice, its quick & snappy, and has everything thus far working out-of-the-box, with one exception: Fingerprint reader.

Oddly enough it only works in XP -- Not even Win7 works with the fingerprint reader, so I'm not really holding it against it. However, had it worked, it would have been one up on Win7 there.

Haven't tried a myriad of other things, like Wine, gaming, bluetooth (I've got a USB dongle here somewhere), but if NZ Post were to go with a generic Desktop OS, then this one works *great* out of the box, better than Ubuntu (Mint is based off Ubuntu), and less config needed compared with the likes of Fedora / Ubuntu / Debian etc to get it to a "n00b user" usable state.

Anyways, just thought I'd throw that out there, maybe to balance my rantings on Win7 a little ;)

Cheers


Chill. 		Chilling_Silence (9)
806196 2009-09-02 00:10:00 You should convert the XP into a VM, to shrink and run in 7... SolMiester (139)
806197 2009-09-02 00:25:00 :D

A few other things:
Mint comes with support for h.264, h.263 (XviD / DivX), MKV containers...
Easy to install Evolution which works perfectly with all my Exchange contacts / mailboxes / calendar.
It would be slightly confusing for a n00b, there's two Package Manager apps in the Mint Menu. One called Software Manager, one called Package Manager. The Software Manager with the Mint Logo icon is a cut-down 'official' list which also grabs screenshots of the app you're looking at. Very cool. 		Chilling_Silence (9)
806198 2009-09-02 00:31:00 I'm impressed... :thumbs: wratterus (105)
806199 2009-09-02 00:37:00 Downloading now.....perhaps its time to have a good look?.. SolMiester (139)
806200 2009-09-02 00:41:00 My thoughts exactly, I figured "why not?" :)

I'd be keen to hear how others go, trying it out, first impressions, likes / dislikes etc.
...and don't worry, I'm not going to try and "justify" X, Y & Z. Just genuinely interested in others thoughts :) 		Chilling_Silence (9)
806201 2009-09-02 01:08:00 Hmmmm... Another O/S

Your very well written first impressions have persuaded me to give it a go.

I will unplug all my hard drives and install it on another.

Thanks. 		Sweep (90)
806202 2009-09-02 01:12:00 ;) Choice, would be interested in your thoughts too :)

Here's the link to the CW article:
computerworld.co.nz 		Chilling_Silence (9)
806203 2009-09-02 01:28:00 My experience with Linux is similar with the PCLOS version.
Have used an older PC, cleaned the HDD and loaded PCLOS for a neighbour. He's very happy with it.
Everything was easy to install, including a HP printer from his basement.
:thumbs:for Linux 		notechyet (4479)
806204 2009-09-02 03:14:00 Chill thanks for the heads up on Linux Mint. I wonder if it would go okay with my laptop? convair (13650)
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