[Lancaster] linux mint - quick review

[andy baxter]

Ken Walton wrote:
> andy baxter wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Just installed linux mint - I wanted to have a look at because a 
>> friend had recommended it as a good beginners distro and I wanted to 
>> see it to see if I would feel happy recommending it to other people 
>> as well. 
> That would be me! :-)
Yep! Thanks.
>
>> It was running a recent version of gnome - I hadn't seen the new 
>> gnome menu before but quite like it. 
> That's not the new Gnome menu, that's the Mint menu.
OK.

>> There was one major bug - when I tried to open an unmounted partition 
>> and then cancelled, the desktop locked up. Ctrl-alt-backspace worked 
>> to get back to the login window, but this is a bit worrying when I'm 
>> thinking of recommending it to beginners. 
> I can't help thinking that most beginners wouldn't have a clue what 
> mounting a partition was, by definition ;-)
It happened while using the gui - I clicked on the icon for a partition 
that I hadn't set up during the install, and it asked for a password to 
authorise mounting it. When I pressed cancel, the whole display locked up.

>> Also I didn't think they should have enabled fortune cookies in the 
>> terminal by default - the first couple I saw were just annoying. I 
>> know some people like the fortune cookies, but it seems odd to have 
>> something so much from the linux old school in a system that's 
>> obviously meant to appeal to a mass audience. 
> That is something you are (or should be) asked whether you want or not 
> on first boot. The default is yes, but it does suggest you may not 
> like them and gives you the option of turning them off.
Yes, but it just seemed odd that they had gone to so much effort to make 
it look swish, and then decided it was worth adding an extra question to 
the install process just for that one program. I assume the lead 
developer must be a big fan...

>> Can't think of any more problems so far, and the lockup may well be 
>> particular to my machine or the way I have my system set up, so I'm 
>> giving them the benefit of the doubt on that.
>>
>>   
> I've been running it for months with no problems. And I mean *no* 
> problems. I often think it's a distro with a less-than-well-developed 
> community, simply because very few people ever have to ask for help.
>
Right, good. I've just put up an tutorial on their forums on how to run 
it in parallel with another distro using chroot, which seems to work 
well for me, so I'll be switching between mint and my main system for a 
bit I think to get a better idea of what it's like. 
http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=19022

andy