Linux Mint 2.1 Review - as promised

Well, it didn't take me long to render a verdict on Linux Mint 2.1. Clem and the gang have definitely made some improvements since 2.0, and I was already pretty much sold on that one.

One of everyone's big "beefs" with 2.0 was that it was basically "Ubuntu with codecs". Not this time around. The community has helped Clem out quite a bit with artwork -- the splash screen and icon themes are specifically for Mint this time around, so you feel like you're using a unique distro and not a "dream install" of something else. But the newness isn't just limited to artwork. I wouldn't mind seeing a GRUB splash screen instead of the text that points to the Ubuntu kernel, but that's just one simple thing that by the time I'm at my desktop, I completely forget about it.

Installation, as usual, was a breeze. Since it's a Live CD, and it's Ubuntu-based, it's just a matter of booting off the disk, double-clicking the installer, and answering a few questions. I was even still talking to my girlfriend on Gaim as Mint was installing on my hard drive.

Once it was installed, I rebooted, but before I logged into GNOME, I hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get out of X, typed sudo envy (which this time around, came pre-installed -- no need to download it separately!), which downloaded and installed my nvidia drivers for my GeForce 6600, and updated my xorg.conf for me. It's an amazing script. My only real complaint about envy is that since I have a widescreen monitor, I need to go back into xorg.conf and add "1680x1050" as a resolution, but, as widescreen becomes more and more the norm, this problem should resolve itself.

After this, I just typed startx and there I was, back at the blue GNOME desktop that I saw before I burned the new ISO. Color-wise, it's the same as 2.0 -- lots and lots of blue (which is odd, because I'd think a distro named "Mint" would have a lot of green in it).

I pulled up Synaptic and removed Xchat-gnome and replaced it with regular old Xchat, because since I use IRC as my primary means of communication with the rest of the Quakecon staff and community, I need all the features that seem to be stripped out of the GNOME-specific derivitave. Maybe they haven't, but, I'm just more familiar with Xchat, so that's what I like.

The only other programs I felt the need to install were Exaile for multimedia (I got hooked on it when someone posted it in the comments section of my Mint 2.0 review), K3b for CD/DVD burning (I know, I'm using GNOME, but once again, I just got familiar with it when I was using Mepis, and if Clem can put in Amarok, I can install K3b, right? :p) and FrostWire.

Remember that these aren't "necessary", they're just to satisfy my semi-self-indulgent desires.

So then, I started playing around with my newly-installed Operating System and all of its toys.

I popped in a CD full of music, and keeping with tradition, I once again pulled up My Name is Jonas by Weezer. Yes, this is my official "MP3-capability test song". As expected, it pulled up, played, and the sound quality was great.

I opened my DVD-ROM, popped in Return of the Jedi, and there was Totem, with full DVD support (including interactive menus). Even Windows doesn't make it that easy (if anything, it's harder in Windows than it is in Mint).

Firefox 2.0 came standard, which is great, and I wasn't having problems with most of the pages with streaming audio and video. Everything either worked through the Mplayer Plugin (which comes standard this time, one less thing to worry about), or popped up in Totem (much like Windows Media Player does). Flash came pre-installed, and worked really well (for a beta version). The only problem I ran into was trying to watch video on FoxNews.com -- I could hear it, but couldn't see it. I had this problem with Mint 2.0 as well.

In tinkering around, I saw mintWIFI [the link goes to the forum thread where all supported cards are listed]. Now, I don't have a wireless card in my PC, but I do in my laptop. Once I buy a new charger for it, I'll test it out and let you guys know how well it works, but basically it's a "home brew" app for Mint. It's a GUI-based ndiswrapper for wireless cards. If your card isn't immediately recognized by Linux, just click, point to a .inf file (from the manufacturer's disk or from downloading it online) and it will recognize it. Then, you set up your ESSID and everything else just the way you've always remembered it. And, for the non-Linux-savvy, it's all GUI-based. By the little I've read, there's not really a need to pull up a terminal and type anything. This is the first version of this, and if the Mint development community has proven anything between 2.0 and 2.1, they're dedicated to making more than "incremental updates" with their new versions, so mintWIFI will only get better and better as time goes by.

Again, I'm thoroughly impressed with this distro. It may infuriate some of the open-source purists, but, for people who just want their computer to work, it's getting closer and closer to being "the perfect distro".

I give this one a 9 out of 10. Highly recommended for new Linux converts, and people like me who are just too damn busy to tinker around with a thousand different things just to make your computer work.