Minty Goodness

I went ahead and downloaded the latest version of Linux Mint (15). I installed this open source operating system on a virtual machine (Ahfey, 2012), in this case using a program called Virtual Box. VB is also open source, and I highly recommend it to anyone that wants to experiment with a new operating system without putting their primary installation and data at risk. It allows for virtualization experimenting for free. I cover it in greater depth in another blog post.


I installed Linux Mint 15 on the Virtual Box which allowed me to test drive the new OS within Windows. I am thoroughly impressed with it.



The install process was very easy, arguably easier than Windows 7, I have yet to experience Windows 8. It recognized all of my hardware and installed the appropriate drivers with no intervention on my part, even playing nicely with my graphics card – typically an area that Linux has struggled with. 

Install process

The user interface is great looking, and is very easy to adapt to if you are coming from a Windows background. It has the menu in the familiar place of the "Start Menu" for windows. It has similar right click context menus. Things just generally make sense if you are coming from a windows background.

My desktop

For those coming from a Mac OSX background I would recommend Ubuntu Linux with the Unity interface.

Believe it or not, this is actually Ubuntu Linux with an OSX theme applied to it.

 Linux Mint came with many productivity software choices pre-installed and ready to work “out of the box”, everything from office software in the form of LibreOffice to photo editing in the form of Gimp. It also came with Firefox, Thunder Mail, and Pidgin IM client. Trying out Linux Mint will expose you to a wealth of open source software for the best price on the planet, free!

Compared to Windows 7, Linux Mint is a breath of fresh air. (When I wrote this, I didn't see the bad pun there....it was not intended. lol.)  It just works! Windows is sort of the default choice for most users, but if you are willing to step outside your comfort zone a little there are a plethora of choices that are infinitely more customizable than Windows 8 or OSX. I am not really happy with a lot of the design choices seen in Windows 8. The "Metro" interface that they have forced on users as an "improvement" is what made me start looking seriously at switching Operating Systems. I don't want to end up like hapless XP users who haven't upgraded yet. (They are high and dry. Microsoft support, including virus defense ended for XP this summer.)  Overall I enjoy the fact that I don't have to worry about viruses like Windows users do. There are two factors to that; Windows has the lionshare of the market for OSes hence they get targeted more often by malware. The other and arguably more important factor is that Linux being built in the image of Unix is very compartmentalized and requires Admin approval to change just about anything. This prevents malware and virus from wrecking havoc on your data!
Plus any legacy windows applications can be run in an emulator program called WINE, which runs most windows applications reasonably well.

And the real reason is that there is a lot of nerd cred that comes with using Linux. ;-)

References

Ahfey, T. (2012, Nov 20). Install Linux Mint 14 Nadia Using Virtualbox On Windows 7 . Retrieved from Youtube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIqR--Lj0_Y