Jamie's Random Musings

I have now loaded the new release of Linux Mint on all four of my laptop and netbook computers. It loaded absolutely smoothly on all four of them, including both HP 2133 netbooks, with no problems and no special "tricks" required.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this Mint release is based on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). That in itself brings along a lot of updates, new package releases and bug fixes. As I have been asked about this several times recently, I will mention here that Linux Mint 7 comes with OpenOffice.org 3.0.1.

Beyond the Ubuntu updates, though, the big news in this release is what has happened to Linux Mint itself. It has gotten even better - it is obvious that a lot of thought and a lot of hard work have gone into this release, it is not just the standard Ubuntu distribution with a few bells and whistles thrown in the box. The differences are obvious right from the beginning - Linux Mint uses the gfxboot version of grub (the bootloader), and includes a nice graphic background for the boot sequence.

Once the boot is complete and Mint is running, you'll see that the default screen layout is different from Ubuntu - there is only one system panel, at the bottom of the screen, rather than two at the top and bottom. That seems like a small thing when you are familiar with Linux desktops, and experienced users are likely to be customizing their desktop anyway, but I have heard many times from inexperienced users, and users switching to Linux from Windows, that they find the two panels confusing, and this one-panel setup seems more "natural" for them.

The menus are also quite different in Mint from Ubuntu. Again, it seems to me that they have put quite a bit of thought into them, and what they have come up with is a sort of a combination of the standard Ubuntu (Gnome) hierarchical menus, and the SuSE-style "Favorites" layout. Both have their advantages, and it's nice to be able to switch easily between the two views.

Mint also includes a lot of its own utilities to supplement the standard Linux and Ubuntu versions. One good example of this is mintUpdate, which provides a very nice, easy interface and notification system for tracking and installing updates. There is an icon in the panel which looks like a padlock, and conveys a lot of information about the state of updates in a glance - whether the package database is locked or not, whether the system is up to date or there are updates available (and if so, how many), and a special "broken padlock" icon to show that there is no network connection, so it doesn't know the current update status. I have often grumbled about the fact that Ubuntu only displays an icon when updates are available, so if there is no icon, I find myself wondering whether there are none, or perhaps the update manager hasn't gotten around to checking yet. I don't have that uncertainty with the mintUpdate icon.

Another notable place where Mint differs from the Ubuntu philosophy is the "su"/"sudo" commands. Ubuntu doesn't like for you to simply "su" to be root, they want you to use "sudo" for each individual root command. There are good reasons for that, but it still creates a good bit of grousing in the user community. (Yes, I know you can "sudo" a shell, but that is not the point.) Mint not only keeps the "sudo" functionality, but it also uses the default user password given during the installation process to the root account, so you can just "su" to root, if that is your preference.

As I said in my previous post about Linux Mint 6, one of the biggest advantages of Linux Mint is that it includes a lot of good packages that you might otherwise end up adding individually yourself, so it saves you time and work. There is another Mint utility which further simplifies this as well, mintInstall. It provides a higher-level view of packages, with descriptions, icon views of applications windows, links to more information and the package home web page, and review/comments from other users. As such it not only provides a much simpler interface for package management, it also gives you an easy way to browse the available packages, and find things that might be interesting to you, which is something that I have found to be difficult to do with Synaptic.

There are other Mint utilities, such as mintBackup and mintNanny, but the bottom line is, if you are looking for a solid Linux distribution, you can't do better than Ubuntu, and if you want it to be better packaged and easier to use, then Linux Mint is definitely worth a look.

jw 28/5/2009

It looks like Linux Mint will be making their next release, 7 or "Gloria", in the next few days, according to the Linux Mint Blog. This is good news, because the new release is based on Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope", which means you will get OpenOffice 3, and quite a few other nice updates. Of course, there are lots of Mint-specific updates as well, many of which look very nice. I've been running the Release Candidate for a couple of weeks now, and it is very good.

On the other hand, the release of Fedora 11 (Leonidas) has been pushed back at least a week, tentatively to 2 June. The delay is said to be due to resolution of the last few bugs.

Good news - ooVoo has released their version 2.1. My favorite change in this release is the improvement to the sidebar view, allowing changes to video and audio settings. Quite a contrast between ooVoo, which is trying to do its job and stay out of your way, and Skype, which is trying to take over your entire screen, and most of the resources in your computer. Along with this release, ooVoo announced new calling plans, with separate choices for 3-way, 4-way and 6-way video call support, an option to remove advertising for an additional fee of $2/month, and an option to add phone minutes. Gosh, where do I start on that? First, again, a huge contrast with Skype, who are still blundering around with 1-to-1 video only, and mumbling about multi-party video coming "real soon now" (as they have been saying for at least the last two years, to my knowledge - perhaps longer). Second, I like the idea of being able to pay a small fee to get rid of the advertisements. This is the real world, and real companies who have to pay real bills need real money. If you're willing to tolerate adverts, fine, they can get it that way; but if you can't stand them, now you have a way to get rid of them. Finally, they have added a "Quick Tips" window, easy to open and close from the main window and chock full of useful "how-to" links.

jw 26/5/2009

Update: Wow, talk about just getting in under the wire! A few hours after I wrote this, Linux Mint 7 (Gloria) was released.

Just read an interesting article listing the Ten Biggest Failures of the Last Decade. How nice to see that Vista is #1 at something!

I wonder if Microsoft will have two of the top ten spots a year or so from now, when Windows 7 has been out for a while?

jw 15/5/2009

OpenOffice.org has released their latest (3.1) version. While this new release doesn't have a "major" change, nothing along the lines of adding MS Office 2007 file reading, it does have a lot of bug fixes, usability enhancements and some new features which together add up to a worthwhile upgrade. The Release Notes contain a complete but very dense outline of changes. The New Features document gives a more readable description of what is new and interesting in this release.

You can download and install the latest version for Windows, Linux, Solaris or MacOS X. If you are using one of the popular Linux distributions, there is a good chance that this version will come through as an update in the near future.

jw 13/5/2009

I've just read an excellent blog about Microsoft's plans to try to hoodwink consumers with "Windows 7 Starter Edition" on netbooks. It is clear that Windows 7 can't compete with Linux on netbooks in either price or features, so what MS is planning to do is cut the price on a lobotomized version, in order to at least get into the ballpark on price, and hope that the majority of consumers are even more stupid than their operating system and won't realize what is going on. To follow their thinking to its logical conclusion, what should then happen is that the consumer gets fed up with the lemon they have purchased, and will then give Microsoft even more money to "upgrade" to a non-crippled version of Windows 7 - and in this case it is an even better deal for Microsoft because they certainly will charge the end user a higher price than they would have charged the netbook OEM in the first place, and they don't have to share any of this money with the OEM.

Of course, the "upgraded" Windows 7 still can't compete with a Linux installation on features (can you say "OpenOffice"? Sure, I knew you could...), so MS is apparently hoping that consumers will give them even MORE money for MS Office.

Tired of Microsoft cleaning out your wallet for you? Then just say NO to Windows and MS Office!

jw 1/5/2009