Linux Mint: the New Ubuntu? 685
MrSeb writes "In the Linux world, a war has been raging for a couple years. At stake are the hearts and minds of its user base. The combatants: the various distributions of Linux itself. For some time, Ubuntu Linux has been the clear leader in the fight, amassing more users than any other. Canonical and its baby seemed poised to take over the Linux desktop/laptop market completely — until it released Unity. Unity has caused an uproar in the Linux community — especially amongst the power users who decry its lack of customizability and inability to scale on big- and multi-monitor setups — and users are defecting in droves to Linux Mint, now the second most popular Debian-based distro and gaining fast on Ubuntu. Mint has very similar commands and shortcuts to Ubuntu, runs most apps the same as Ubuntu, and you can customize it to look and feel exactly how you want — which, for most users of Linux, is exactly what they want."
I recommend Mint now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Talk about a knee-jerk reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
And this kind of thinking is why the year of the linux desktop never comes >.>
Small Error.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"and you can customize it to look and feel exactly how you want"
no you cant get rid of the non standard 2 pixel wide scroll bars that pop up to a scroll tab when you get over them. I hate them. I have spent hours trying to disabled the damn things and they stay there on the File manager and the settings apps.
Make the damned things go away and back to NORMAL scrollbars.
Re:Wait ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Talk about a knee-jerk reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
No, people are abandoning the distro because it's become painfully obvious that the people running it are batshit insane. It wasn't that they moved to unity, it's that they released an alpha quality Unity with a release. But, it's more than that, have they ever fixed the bug that made it impossible to log in via bluetooth keyboard? I temporarily dropped them because of that bug. OpenSUSE isn't afflicted by that particular problem.
Unity itself probably wasn't that much of a problem it was just obvious, up front and hard to ignore, I suspect that most of the folks that dropped it afterwards had been contemplating it up until that point.
Re:How about Fedora? (Score:5, Insightful)
It has always felt a bit annoying distro to use, especially with sudo and apt.
What's annoying about sudo and apt? You don't have to use sudo if you don't want to, adding a real root user is easy. But using sudo is good practice on any Linux system. And apt? Apt is one of the major reasons to use a debian based distro.
Re:Fixing Gnome3 (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem is, GNOME Shell doesn't need fixing, GNOME Shell actually works. Unfortunately geeks stubbornness too :)
Re:Talk about a knee-jerk reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. I have two issues with Ubuntu in recent releases:
(1) It's getting too buggy for my likes. I think this stems from (a) a focus on UI innovation rather than quality, and (b) they follow a bugs-be-damned 6-month release cycle.
(2) Lots of people, including me, hate Unity vis a vis Gnome 2. To be fair, many of us also hate Gnome 3 vis a vis Gnome 2, so Ubuntu didn't have many good options for people who like Gnome 2. But a lot of us think Ubuntu would be far stronger if they put their effort into making Gnome 3 be as good as Gnome 2 (like Mint did), rather than developing Unity.
Re:How about Fedora? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people might contemplate going over to Fedora. It works pretty well with GNOME Shell. I doubt the different package manager means anything most of the time but yum has one pretty compelling feature - the presto plugin for yum which downloads and applies delta rpms. For the life of me I do not understand why deltas haven't been a standard feature of every dist for the last decade. Downloading a 30MB file just to apply a fix which probably only touched a few lines makes no damned sense.
Re:Well, I was using Mint but went back to Ubuntu (Score:4, Insightful)
One reason: Mint's heavy handed tendency to replace the default Google search with a 'Mint-ized' version of Google search
Last time I tried Mint, I typed 'google.com' in the browser and got Google. Have they changed that? Or are you just referring to the easily-changed default home page?
Re:Talk about a knee-jerk reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
--It wasn't that they moved to unity, it's that they released an alpha quality Unity with a release.
No, for most it pretty much IS simply that they went with Unity. If you are power user with big monitors (or multiples, or big multiples etc) where desktop space isn't at a premium, then why the hell would anyone want to hide buttons and options? Why make multi-tasking so hard? Why SEARCH for applications rather than hierarchical menus grouped logically by task?
My desktop isn't a damn phone thank you very much. I don't want it to be a phone and I don't want it function like a phone. And in the case of Windows 8 metro, it is just a blatent attempt to wrest control away from the OWNER of the device/computer. They envy the fact that apple users have given up every last semblance of control over look, feel and function of their electronic devices and that that control can be monetized. They can finally lock out apps they don't like and with UEFI they can finally lock you in to their OS so you can't weasel out of it after the fact.
No thank you. I will control my own devices, I'll be a power user with menus and widgets, multiple screens and multiple windows that AREN'T maximized.
Re:How about Fedora? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the tradeoff, in a nutshell. For most people, who don't want to dick around with the internals of their PC to get it working, Windows 7, and even moreso Mac, is the right choice.
For people who instead enjoy optimizing their PC - setting it up "just right", and then having it work forever after that, Linux is the appeal.
And that is why Canonical shot itself in the foot with the latest changes - a less customizable experience can only possibly fly with an OS/distro that "just works" out of the box. There's just no one who both wants to labor to get their PC working, but then doesn't want to customize and tune it.
Re:How about Fedora? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fixing Gnome3 (Score:2, Insightful)
It works for me and my friends. Propably won't for you, because it seems that you have already decided even trying it seriously :)
Re:Fixing Gnome3 (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes the fanboi excuse of "But you didn't try it with an open mind!" just because someone doesn't share your opinion.
Why Linux Isn't Winning (Score:2, Insightful)
I've been dual booting Ubuntu on a laptop alongside Windows for quite a few years now. I'm using an LTS version and haven't been exposed to Unity yet. I just checked out the online tour on the Ubuntu website and I'm just.... well, depressed.
Linux won't expand drastically into the home PC market unless it can accomplish the following:
- Make navigating my files and applications easy and intuitive. Finding installed applications should not be difficult.
- Make installing any new application easy.
- Let me configure the OS, my preferences and my hardware and drivers easily.
- NO COMMAND LINE REQUIRED.
- Extensive help within the application.
- Extensive hardware and driver support. The current state is not good enough.
Sadly even though Ubuntu has been the nicest one I've used, it seems to be dumbing down some things while others are still difficult. If a normal user who is not doing anything unusual has to open the command line, this is a fail.
I know this will cause a big flame war to say this, but as a long time Windows and Linux user... I have to say.... just make it work like Windows! Windows may be popular due to a monopoly on the industry, but they are now the standard and despite the MS hatred, they have over time developed a clear and non-complicated way of doing most things you need to do on your computer. I haven't opened the command line on Windows for years... not even sure if it still exists. I can find all my settings under Control Panel, and my applications are nicely organized and I can add shortcuts and organize files however I like. For all it's flaws, Windows is the standard in the industry. If Linux deviates too far away from this, it will forever remain a fringe option for technical or very determined users.
I say all this as someone who has no love for Microsoft and very, very much wants to see Linux grow in popularity. I've been dual booting Ubuntu to see if I could ditch Windows and use it exclusively. So far my answer is no way, and will be sadly getting Windows 7 on my next machine, and probably dual booting some distro of Linux. I might try Mint next.
Mint - very good (Score:5, Insightful)
And the reason is pretty simple. They *really* focused on delivering a desktop thats rounded and end-user in idealism. Not really the usual focus on devs, or linux geeks, or coders or any of the normal compromises that are often tipped in other Distros. Things like a software manager, a user menu, and having DVD and codecs from the off. Wireless drivers that tend to work (as well as they do in the landscape of linux) - and lots of effort to focus on that idea.
The delivery of this across multiple versions has been praised, and is praise worthy, and its being rewarded by end users moving to it on one very simple thing. Merit.
People like Mint. And the devs deserve that because of their desire to deliver something that is sometimes missed by Linux, and thats care for the end user. Somehow its a chunk of what Shuttleworth has totally lost in his headlong charge to unity. And its alos lost on the Gnome 3 devs who lost it totally as well. Now they went down a path that was more please themselves and ram it down people's throats. (Hi MS, I love how you've mimic'd the same stupid move with Metro).
Anyway, nuff said. I predict that in fact Mint 12 even with a bit of rough round the edges - will be welcomed by one and all, and others will in fact have to have a rethink. And thats a good thing.
Gnome polish (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why Linux Isn't Winning (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing about computing is intuitive, it's all learned. When people say "intuitive" they tend to mean "works like Windows." And Microsoft has enough of a hold on the desktop space to make Linux's entry virtually impossible, whereas fields that MS doesn't have any hold (mobile, supercomputing, embedded) it has a commanding presence (note that this is referring ONLY to the kernel, much of what we call "Linux" is not present in most Mobile or Embedded spaces.)
Your points are basically stating the obvious, but there is one I have to call out:
Fine, get the hardware vendors to start playing ball and we'll talk. So long as data sheets are held as trade secrets and drivers are kept proprietary there's little the Linux community can do.
See, called it before I read it. My response: go use Windows.
Or instead of letting Microsoft dictate how computing is done, do it differently and don't let the complaints of the technically ignorant hold you back.
Re:Fixing Gnome3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you assume that? It took me about 5 minutes of, yes, actually trying it out seriously the day Fedora 15 came out to find out numerous reasons why Gnome3 was not going to be satisfactory for my needs:
1) NO GODDAM APPS MENU
2) NO GODDAM TASKBAR
3) Clock - cannot change position; cannot add day-of-week; cannot add seconds.
4) No weather applet with current conditions, forecast, and radar map all right on the bar.
5) No drawer applet for my own common app launchers, on the bar.
6) No sensors applet for the bar.
7) No CPU freq scaling monitor applet for the bar.
8) No system monitor applet for the bar.
9) No Mini Commander applet for the bar.
10) Can't right click desktop to create launcher or start a terminal.
11) Numerous other problems.
All of this stuff worked perfectly in Gnome2. So yes, if you don't ask it to do much of anything at all, and if you are satisfied with horrendously convoluted invocations for common tasks that used to be very straightforward, then yes, Gnome3 will satisfy you. Otherwise, not so much.
When most of that stuff gets fixed, I might switch to Gnome3. When ALL of it gets fixed, Gnome3 will be as good as Gnome2.
Re:How about Fedora? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is why Canonical shot itself in the foot with the latest changes - a less customizable experience can only possibly fly with an OS/distro that "just works" out of the box. There's just no one who both wants to labor to get their PC working, but then doesn't want to customize and tune it.
Canonical blew their leg clean off, because not only did it become less customizable, it made my laptop less customizable, the one I had already worked to get "just right", in a way that was nigh irreversible. It's fine to make another product like Unity but goddamn, make it a different product, don't mark it as an upgrade to a very different system that plenty of people were happily using.
Unity was Canonical's suicide note (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why Linux Isn't Winning (Score:3, Insightful)
This is further evidenced by your comment: 'Extensive hardware and driver support. The current state is not good enough.'.
If some hardware youre trying to use doesn't work in Linux it's because the manufacturers of said hardware have not supported it's operation in Linux.