Thoughts on Linux Mint 9

Linux Mint 9 is my favorite Ubuntu derivative, but still is not my favorite Linux distro. OpenSuse still holds the number 1 spot, but Linux Mint is getting closer to being number 1. After all the problems with Fedora 13, it was a pleasure to install something that worked.

Why is that only Linux Mint and OpenSuse correctly detect and boot all the distributions of Linux that I have installed on a machine? Unlike my experience with Linux Mint 8, Grub2 works in Linux Mint 9. Moreover, it actually incorporated the boot menus for all the distributions.

Without doing anything special, MP4 and FLV movies played out-out-of-the-box. No fiddling around, no downloading of additional Codexes, they just worked. It even played a wmv file. Linux Mint 9 is definitely ahead of most distros.

Linux Mint 9 is an Ubuntu derivate, so it suffers some of the same issues as Ubuntu. As with Ubuntu 9.10, I still am not happy about the lack of a GUI service manager application. Upstart still has a split between managing /etc/init directory and the traditional SysV /etc.rc*.d directories. While more applications appear in the /etc/init directory than the previous release, there are still quite a few that remain in the SysV directories. The biggest problem is that there is no GUI service manager that cleanly manages the split. I tried Boot-Up Manager (bum), but it really doesn’t support Upstart. Service management is still a command-line task beyond the capabilities of many of those that are new to Linux.

Gnome seems to have gotten a little fatter, since Linux Mint 8. I am thinking about testing the XFCE and LXDE releases to see if there is a big difference.

If I were to recommend a Linux distro for a desktop user with no background in Linux, it would be Linux Mint. Actually, Linux Mint is a great release for anyone who wants a easy to install, work out-of-the-box desktop environment. Great job guys.