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Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

arstechnica.com

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Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#21

Post by codezero »

wtbob wrote: post #15
VeilEm wrote: post #12

Reading this post I am reminded just how much more work it is to have a functional linux desktop that ends up running worse than a Mac or windows box. More for less. Less battery life, less games, less driver support. Old hardware. I've been running OS X for many years now but I think in the future I see myself going back to windows and using docker toolbox to get an easy to start and maintain linux development envir…

> Reading this post I am reminded just how much more work it is to have a functional linux desktop that ends up running worse than a Mac or windows box. I'm extremely happy with stumpwm. It runs, it switches between emacs, Firefox and a good console just fine. It's infinitely more work to get Windows or an OS X box to the same level of functionality, because neither of them properly supports all of these key features…

OS X is POSIX certified, no Linux distribution is but that's a minor point I assume.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#22

Post by Niten »

VeilEm wrote: post #12

Reading this post I am reminded just how much more work it is to have a functional linux desktop that ends up running worse than a Mac or windows box. More for less. Less battery life, less games, less driver support. Old hardware. I've been running OS X for many years now but I think in the future I see myself going back to windows and using docker toolbox to get an easy to start and maintain linux development envir…

It depends on your setup. I've had best results doing my development on a powerful workstation that, when coupled with a good LTS operating system like CentOS 7, doesn't give me any maintenance headaches (or at least amortises any headaches over a sufficiently long time that I don't care), and doesn't force me to deal with the battery issues you mentioned or the other fiddly bits of running Linux on a laptop.

This was pretty easy to setup and has run quite well without much administrative work beyond the initial installation (something I've never been able to say for Ubuntu, unfortunately), and when I'm away I can just SSH in from a Chromebook.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#23

Post by justinsaccount »

mattlondon wrote: post #7

+1 to Cinnamon being great. I've found Ubuntu's Unity to be really non-intuitive and awkward to use ... even after several years of using it I've never got used to it and generally found it frustrating to use. Cinnamon is an absolute joy to use in comparison - just does its job and gets out of the way. Sounds like Mint is a sort of "unbuntu-without-unity" which is worth its weight in gold in my opinion. Wish I could…

ubuntu has packages for cinnamon-desktop-environment..

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#24

Post by justinsaccount »

I run cinnamon on one of my thinkpads. It's interesting to me how there are a ton of things is does usability wise better than my work OS X laptop:

* The desktop overview 'expose' like thing gives me a large 2x3 grid of mini desktops, each containing mini windows that I can drag between different desktops. OS X displays a tiny 1x6 list of desktops and you can't drag windows between desktops directly.

* When I click the date in my panel I get a mini calendar popup.

* When I click the volume applet it has a entry right there for switching output devices. on OS X you have to option click the volume thing to get the hidden menu. Right click on an external mouse does not work.

Those are just the ones I notice on a daily basis..

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#26

Post by pixelperfect »

I installed Mint 17.3 Cinnamon a couple weeks ago. Every time I've installed a Linux distro in the past 10 years, I have run into major issues with drivers, and this was no exception. It's related to having both an onboard Intel graphics card and an Nvidia video card. If I disable the Nvidia card, performance is fine but I am unable to hookup a second monitor. If I use the Nvidia card, I can hook up a second monitor, but there are major issues with screen tearing. If not for this issue, I would be quite satisfied with this OS.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#27

Post by VonGuard »

fla wrote: post #20
oakhaven wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about {x,k,l}ubuntu?

Or simply ubuntu with gnome-flashback. Has been my goto configuration since unity came out and it's pretty much the best of both worlds.

I use this now, but I also try to use it on some seriously old Dell laptops at my non-profit. Sadly, that means I must first install Ubuntu, vanilla. This means I then must login to Unity and install Gnome-Flashback.

Normally, this takes about 10 seconds on a modern machine. On these 10 year old Dells? Unity chugs... A task that should take me 5 minutes takes an hour because Unity lags so far behind the mouse and slows every single process on the machine to an absolute crawl.

I cussed out Canonical for this a few years ago when they asked me some survey questions. They wanted to know why Ubuntu was not more popular on the server. My answer was that Unity was such a crock of shit that no one wanted to go near damn thing, even if they were just going to make the machine into a headless server. It's that freakin' bad.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#28

Post by nitrogen »

Estragon wrote: post #25

What is the upgrade path like on mint these days? I ran into real problems with it when I tried it a few years ago.

The Mint updater has a menu option for upgrading. You click it, and it updates, reliably. The KDE version gets the update option later than the others, though.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#29

Post by nickpsecurity »

VonGuard wrote: post #19
nickpsecurity wrote: post #5

I was using Mint for over a year. New one is really glitchy on windowing or graphics. Sometimes it makes a weird pattern while keystrokes dont do anything. Also, dragging file save dialog to see a title in background causes entire window to unmaximize & hide behind dialog. Huh!? About to ditch it entirely if I dont find work-arounds in a few days.

MATE or Cinnamon? Want to know before I install. I get weird ass errors like nobody when I install Linux. Currently, my Ubutntu 10/14 machine randomly decides to ignore keyboard inputs and replace them with random other letters. Happens right in the middle of me typing, and I do a lot of interviews. I've literally had to reboot the damn thing in the middle of an interview because my typing was onscreen as akusfhlasiu…

I forget. It's the one that has the Windows-style button on bottom left.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#30

Post by nitrogen »

VonGuard wrote: post #19
nickpsecurity wrote: post #5

I was using Mint for over a year. New one is really glitchy on windowing or graphics. Sometimes it makes a weird pattern while keystrokes dont do anything. Also, dragging file save dialog to see a title in background causes entire window to unmaximize & hide behind dialog. Huh!? About to ditch it entirely if I dont find work-arounds in a few days.

MATE or Cinnamon? Want to know before I install. I get weird ass errors like nobody when I install Linux. Currently, my Ubutntu 10/14 machine randomly decides to ignore keyboard inputs and replace them with random other letters. Happens right in the middle of me typing, and I do a lot of interviews. I've literally had to reboot the damn thing in the middle of an interview because my typing was onscreen as akusfhlasiu…

It sounds like you may have accidentally triggered a shortcut for switching keyboard layouts. Try looking through the keyboard shortcut settings for something too easy to press by accident.
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