New to Linux? Try Linux Mint
If you are new to Linux, and do not know which distribution of Linux to try on your PC/ Laptop – you definitely ought to consider Linux Mint! In this article, we look at some of the features and functionalities available via the Graphic User Interface in Linux Mint that makes it attractive for a new comer wanting to use Linux.
First of all, let us clarify that this website is not about computers or their operating systems. Its actually about computer networking technologies (So perhaps Network Operating System might have been a better topic to explore – which is coming, BTW 🙂 ). But some times we feel the need to communicate certain important and useful developments in related fields and hence have chosen this topic. We are no experts, hence don’t take our word on it – but we are writing as novices – people who have installed and used Linux Mint for our personal as well as official purposes. Of course, we liked it so much that we decided to write a post on it!
Why Linux at all?
Linux is not about free software or free OS, although it is. The real spirit of Linux lies in its open source nature – the source code being available freely on the Internet, which allows the users to actually participate in the testing, reporting of bugs and sometimes even creating extension modules (and new features) to the existing OS. So, its basically a community oriented project that makes a lot of people participate and learn. More importantly, these pieces of software follow certain international standards. In the computer networking industry, for example, all the vendors follow IEEE standards – this makes the device manufactured by one vendor to seamlessly communicate and work with another. Its very important for all these individual devices to work together so that a successful and secure network can be established. And they do. Coming from this background, its really surprising (and shocking) to see that no such standards are practiced on a large scale in the computer applications industry! In fact, all the device drivers (for the wi-fi adapter in your laptop to work, it needs a device driver – software) are written by default to work on Windows (and perhaps Mac) and very few vendors support them in Linux or even FreeBSD for that matter! (Linux enthusiasts write them by themselves). That is one reason why Linux is very important and needs to be adapted on a large scale – it sets and follows standards. And everything is open standard – available for everyone to see, change and re-use. So, next time you save a file in .doc , think about it – the same thing is happening here as well and you are inadvertently encouraging this trend.
Why Linux Mint?
In short, the following are the main reasons on why a new comer to Linux should consider Linux Mint:
* Most of the device drivers of any laptop/PC comes In-built. (In our case, everything just worked out of the box on our Toshiba Laptop – The Wi-Fi/Ethernet adapters, Sound Card, USB ports, High Speed Internet Data Card (USB based), display drivers and pretty much everything else)
* Linux Mint uses the same distributions of Ubuntu and Builds On it. (This is a huge plus as Ubuntu, which in turn is based on Debian, is one of the most popular and stable Linux flavors available and its got a huge community which has developed a lot of softwares and applications for Ubuntu.
* User Friendly and simple to use Graphical User Interface. (This is a huge plus point for users migrating from Windows as they are unfamiliar with the shell command prompt of Linux. The menu is detailed, well organized, uses categories for easy navigation, simple to use and almost everything can be accessed within 3 clicks from the desktop).
* Stable Upgrade Policy. (Think of it – Linux Mint does not recommend upgrades at all, if one is comfortable with what they have! In fact, they insist that users take a complete back-up before upgrading and install the newer version from a Live CD than just upgrading the newer files which can break certain functionalities)
* Linux Mint is friendly with Windows. (It seems Linux Mint can be installed from Windows itself! using Mint4Win utility. In this mode, Linux Mint is installed as one of the programs in Windows and you still get to login in to either Windows or Linux Mint using the windows boot manager at start up – Isn’t that cool?). There is also a Live CD version, where you need to download and install the ISO image of Linux Mint in a CD/DVD, test it and install the OS in your computer. You can even run Windows programs from Linux Mint using Wine like other Linux OS (but this may not be a pleasant experience)
* Linux Mint includes useful and much needed proprietary softwares. (That means MP3 songs play out of the box with the built in VLC media player, adobe flash comes pre-installed so that you can watch any videos on the Internet – This makes it very easy for new users to Linux)
* Like other Linux distributions, Open Office, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird and other such office utilities comes pre-configured as well. (We seriously fail to understand why people use the commercial office packages when an excellent alternative is available in Open Office. If you have worked with Open Office, you would understand how efficient and user friendly it is. Linux Mint makes the screen go slightly darker (dimmer) if certain operations take longer time to execute in Open Office and to our knowledge it has never hung or crashed)
* There are a lot of creative and attractive background themes (like the one you see in the above picture) and screen savers (There is a Matrix screen saver, for example, that drops characters from top to bottom of the screen like how its done in the movie ‘Matrix’)
* There are useful Back-up tools/ CD-DVD Writer softwares/ Photo Manipulation programs (GIMP) etc. that can be accessed from the Main Menu.
* The software manager utility is of great help as all the softwares available for Linux Mint (and Ubuntu) are accessible through easy to browse categories and can be installed to your computer. (We went to the games section, searched for Pinball and installed it safely – there are also user reviews against each program. For your information, the games section alone contains 1160 packages! and there are other popular sections like Graphics, Internet, Office productivity etc. from which thousands of useful softwares can be downloaded for free – Windows users: Are you listening??). The Synaptic Package Manager and programs available for more popular Ubuntu are all available for Linux Mint too…
* Its very easy to install accessories like scanners and printers in Linux Mint. (There is a section called Configure Printers which allows you to enter the IP address of a network printer and the printer gets configured automatically – at least in our case, the Samsung printer did. There is another section called manage print jobs which gives the status of the prints. These utilities can be accessed from the main menu itself)
* The ‘Network Connections’ tab makes it easy to configure wired, wireless and broadband networks. (In our case, the Huawei USB modem connects to the Internet automatically once it is plugged in to the USB port!)
* The main menu also lets us to set remote desktop preferences (whether to allow remote users to access our system and if a notification needs to be given when they do) and it also lets us to easily change the resolution of the laptop screen etc.
* Last but not the least, there is not much of a Virus problem with Linux machines and more that that there is no problem of the Anti-Virus vendors reminding you to frequently upgrade or renew the subscriptions 🙂
So, when are you switching over to Linux Mint?
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You can add your opinion/ mention some additional features offered by Linux Mint in the comments section below. You could also contact us using the contact-form. As mentioned before, this website is about computer networking and to follow the latest developments in computer networking/ get to know the basic concepts you could enter your email address in the box titled “Get Email Updates when new articles are published”