Taking Gloria out for a spin: A review of Linux Mint 7.0

There is a soft spot in my heart for Linux Mint: Mint 3.0 was the first Linux distribution that I really used rather than experimented with. Since then I have moved on to Ubuntu (on which Mint is based), but the release of the new Linux Mint 7.0 codenamed Gloria made me want to install and review Linux Mint again. I brought my old Dell latitude D400, a 5 year old subnotebook, out of storage and started the Mint live CD.

The Live CD experience

Running from the CD is never a really pleasant experience, but Linux Mint seems to have made the process as painless as possible: at start up I am greeted by the Mint logo, soon replaced by the usual boot "text mode". after about a minute I am in front of a very nicely designed login prompt with a 10 second countdown to login. Maybe they should have made the CD autologin faster, as the wait could worry newbies. Once logged in I am presented with a very polished desktop complete with some Compiz eye candy. No network connection however. I have a look in the start menu for help: the menu is very Windows like and the control center easily accessible. The hardware driver applet tells me that I will need to download a legacy driver for my Broadcom wireless adapter.I am not too surprised as I know from my old Mint 3.0 installation that this adapter is badly supported on Linux. Beside this everything seems to work perfectly, so I'll continue the review with the installation

The Installation of Linux Mint

I click on install and a 7 steps wizard starts. The first question is language selection, which I'll keep to English, second step is location, third step is keyboard, nothing really difficult up to now. At step 4 a very nice graphical partitioner starts. The Mint partitioner detects that I have an old Ubuntu 7.10 installation on the disk offers to resize a partition and to dual boot by default. Its a good decision to avoid new users wiping an OS they did not intend to erase, but in this case I'll use the entire disk. The next screen ask me for a name, a password, a computer name and gives me the option to autologin. Although it could be considered insecure autologin is really practical for home desktops and cut down the time between the moment you start your computer and the moment you start to surf, so I turn it on. The last step is only a recap. I push install and wait about 15 minutes for the install to complete. During that time I go fetch a network cable to plug the laptop into my ADSL router.

Booting Gloria for the First Time

This time I come prepared: I boot the computer for the first time while connected to the router with a cable. The boot process is almost entirely graphical and is faster than with Ubuntu 8.04. As I requested the system did log me in automatically. There is welcome screen waiting for me: I am offered the option to see the new features of Linux Mint 7.0, download a pdf manual or visit the Linux Mint forums. These are very good starting points for users new to Linux. There is also a message appearing on the screen to tell me that a new restricted driver is available.The driver applet is also present in the system tray, just where a Windows user would expect to find it. I click on this driver applet and the missing wireless driver is flagged for my attention. I click activate, enter my password and the missing driver is installed automatically. I enter my wireless access point name, disable and enable networking and then I am connected through Wifi: all my hardware works! I tried to suspend and wake up the machine and this worked flawlessly too. This review is on to a good start!

Presentation: Gloria is beautiful


The first thing that strikes you when starting Linux Mint 7.0 is how the design is polished. Not only is the theme and wallpaper superb, but everything seems to be just where someone straight out of the Windows world would expect it to be. Although this is no Windows copycat, it is much easier to get used to immediately than Ubuntu. One thing that is very different from Ubuntu is the start menu: it looks like an improved version of Windows start menu. On the left pane you have shortcuts to important places like your home folder, the software installation applet, control center, command line (terminal) and quit button. On the right pane you have either your favorite applications or a start menu. This is a good design decision, as it allows users that just want to surf, email and play music to do that without having to search for the proper application, but at the same time all the other applications are only a button away.

Included Software

The software selection is very good, with classics like Openoffice, GIMP, Rythmbox, Gnome Mplayer, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, etc... This is complemented by a large library of open source and proprietary applications that can be installed. What is more interesting is that the Adobe flash plugin is pre-installed: YouTube videos play straight away in Firefox. Moonlight is also present, and even if I don't support the Silverligth technology I must admit that this will be helpful to users unsure of how to install a plugin. The same principle is true for audio and video codecs: videos played straight away in the default video player, but the colors were a bit strange. Playing the same video in the included Gnome mplayer produced a perfect image however, so this is not a big issue.

Installing More Software

there are 2 options to install more software: software manager and package manager. I start with software manager and I am presented with a very neat application where I can find new software ordered by categories or by the "score" that was attributed to them. Not only is all the important open source software available, but also some proprietary offerings like Opera, Sun Java, the Nvidia proprietary Driver, Skype, Picasa and Google Earth. All applications are illustrated by a screenshot. This is an excellent idea as it immediately helps the user to see what the application is about. The package manager is synaptic and allows those who are used to managing packages themselves to continue doing so.
The update manager mintUpdate is very well done also: all updates come with a risk factor number: the higher the number, the more chances you have to break something with the update. By default only the safe updates (risk level 3 or lower) are visible so that newbie users don't risk breaking something, but this setting is easily changed!

What Linux Mint is Missing

Given how good Linux Mint is why would you install anything else? Well, there are a few caveat. First Linux Mint does not have a big support corporation behind it like Ubuntu. This means that it is more difficult to purchase paid support and that there is no software shop where you can purchase commercial applications like PowerDVD for Linux. The second point is that there is no "one click upgrade" option right now, although I think that the Mint developers are working on a solution for that. The Final point is that the inclusion of multimedia codecs in the main edition could bring some users into legal a gray area in some countries, however a version of Mint without the codecs, the universal edition, is also available for those users.

Conclusion

The main point of the review is that I personally consider Linux Mint as the easiest distribution for new Linux users. Everything has been thought out to make the transition easy for those users without sacrificing what makes Linux unique. Nice touches like the screenshots in the software manager show a level of polish and user friendliness rarely seen in a Linux distribution. Linux Mint is also interesting for more advanced users that want a distribution that install quickly and include all the multimedia components without the need of adding codecs and flash from the repositories. If Linux Mint continues to provide such high quality releases I may well switch back from Ubuntu by the time of the next Long Term Support release.

UPDATE: Clem (from Linux Mint) responded to my review on the Linux Mint Blog. You can also check out my interview of Clem.

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