Linux Mint 8 ‘Helena’ Review
Linux Mint 8 is the newest Linux distro on the block. We, at Gadgetmix, have been testing the new Mint from the past few days on a variety of netbooks. So, does this distro offers something newer, better than the popular Linux distros like the amazing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. Can it be used as Windows alternative? How user friendly it is? Get all these questions answered in this review
Installation
The Linux Mint 8 OS was installed on 3 one of the most popular netbooks of all time: Asus eee 701 (first proper netbook), Acer Aspire D250 (Acer’s best selling netbook) and Sony Vaio P.
The Mini 9 takes about 2.1GB of storage space, which means that it can be installed on the netbooks that come with just 4GB of storage. I installed it on the 4GB SSD-equipped EEE 701 with 300MB of swap space with no problems.
Installation is just like Ubuntu. I used unetbootin to make bootable flash drive.
Boot
The boot is noticeably quicker than the Ubuntu 9.10 standard and Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix. The boot screen appeared for just 2 seconds on the EEE 701 and then the login screen appeared. It takes about 35 seconds before the whole system becomes usable. Not bad, considering the fact that most companies lie when they say that the boot time is just 7 seconds or so. They do not take into account if the system has become usable or not. The OS could be loading several things in the background even though the main screen has appeared.
Software Bundle
Linux Mint 8 comes bundled with plethora of apps. Here is the full application list.
Application List: (category-wise)
- Accessories: Calculator, CD/DVD creator, Character map, Disk usage analyzer, File Uploader, gedit, Print Jobs, Password and Encryptions keys, Search, Screenshot utiltiy and Terminal
- Graphics: GIMP, OpenOffice Drawing, Scanner utility
- Internet: Firefox, Giver (file sharing utility), Thunderbird, Pidgin, Sun Java, Transmission BItTorrent Client, Xchat (IRC client)
- Office: Dictionary,OpenOffice Database, OpenOffice Presentation,OpenOffice Spreadsheet,OpenOffice Word Processor
- Sound and Video: Brasero (create CDs/DVDs), Mplayer, Movie Player, PulseAudio device chooser, Volume Control, Rhythmbox, Sound Recorder
You also get CompizConfig to manage Compiz. By the extensive app list, it is clear that Linux Mint 8 comes with a bigger application suit that the Ubuntu 9.10 as-well-as its Netbook Remix edition.
It was nice to see Java pre-installed there.
The applications are installed by Software Manager. To help the user to choose the best and the most popular apps, scores and rating system has been given. Otherwise, it is similar to Ubuntu’s software center.
Compiz, as mentioned earlier came preinstalled. Animations worked out-of-the-box.
It has many bundled color schemes and wallpapers too.
So, what is not there?
There is no built in GMA 500 support. Note that this affects only those netbooks that come with GMA 500 chipset. Most of the 10-inch or smaller netbooks do not come with this chipset.
Taskbar
I must confess, I have never used Linux Mint before as I have always been an Ubuntu fan. Ubuntu, by default has two bars: one at the top and another at the bottom. Tasks open at the bottombar. This actually wastes few pixels, which are very valuable in case of netbooks which generally have 600 pixels vertically (most netbooks come with 1024×600 resolution).
Linux Mint 8 OS combines both of the bars into a single bar, much like Windows. This gives the user few more pixels to work with. Also, folks moving from Windows OS to Mint won’t feel much change in interface.
Performance
Mint 8 is speedy, even on my EEE 701 with celeron processor that runs at 600Mhz clock speed. It was as fast as Ubuntu which I use on my Aspire D250 netbook.
It also played back all of my media flawlessly out of the box. This is something that was experienced in only Jolicloud linux OS. This makes it a great alternative to Jolicloud OS which will cost $$. Mint 8, even though, being free won’t let you down.
Note that all the apps meant for Ubuntu will work on Mint 8 OS.
Can it be used instead of Windows?
Well, it can be. It comes with Open Office suit for your office needs. It has the excellent Firefox 3.5 browser for web-browsing. You can also install Opera web browser from software center, if you wish to. It has Pidgin, the tried and tested chat client. Heck, there is even an IRC and torrent client. If you are not down with that, visit software center to find the application you are looking for.
Bottom Line
Linux Mint 8 OS is a great OS for those who want to enjoy near flawless out-of-box experience. It has all the necessary apps built from DVD burning app to Internet browser to office suit, it has it all.
Recommended for netbook users, who want to try something other than Ubuntu
Random Posts
Sign up to the Gadgetmix Newsletter (free) for news and reviews mailed directly to your mailbox CLICK HERE
Best Debian based Linux experience there is, bar none!
Great Review but i severely question mint booting much faster then ubuntu as they do no innovation to the ubuntu base system at what there based on. they basically just create a couple apps and make a pretty theme. and call it Linux mint!
May be they have done some under-the-hood changes to make the device faster? :)
mint 8 is a good remake or edit of Ubuntu. I find Ubuntu already complete and easier to modify things as i like except for login window which was replaced with login screen. I did not like that. But in all, mint is as good as ubuntu.
Mint 8 sucks. It won’t even boot up on either my desktop or my HP notebook. I will stick with Ubuntu as my main OS of choice on my notebook and PCLinuxOS as my favorite Live CD since all the codecs are built in even though my wireless won’t work on PCLinuxOS. I thought I would try Mint since it is suppose to have all the codecs and drivers built in but it won’t even boot it stops at “Loading” on the screen and fails to continue. Mint still needs work, I tried Mint about 2 years ago I didn’t work then either. It just must not support much hardware. I’ll stick with Ubuntu even though I need to setup the multi-media and wireless, it’s just a click and download away.
Good Thought ,That could be the case! , looks like they disabled some unneeded services on boot up, making it boot faster, cool cool. Mint is good for giving anyone a working system with no setup needed! I wish ubuntu could do this! but they can’t because of this legal BS its really really lame.
T, it’s unfortunate Mint 8 was your first experience with Mint. I’ve been using it since Mint 5 and love it, but had the same result as you with #8: the live CD booted and ran ok and the install program appeared to function well, as it always had. But on reboot, I received a black screen. This looks to be (if it’s the same bug as you experienced) a problem with Xorg and ATI video chipsets and has been seen on several of the latest distros, so it’s not just Mint.
After several hours of surfing for a bug fix, I gave up and went back to Mint 7.
@DC – You’re probably correct about a ATI/Xorg conflict being the problem since ATI support is still new and, as you say, a lot of bugs have appeared with several of the latest distros.
For myself, I have an older Nvidia GeForce 6200 (AGP) and install and initial boot went without a hitch for me 2 out of 3 times on an older desktop PC. The one glitch I had out of the three test installs was that initial boot after install stopped at trying to load the login splash screen with a one line error flashing at the top of the display. Rebooting the computer solved that problem and Mint 8 has been working fine ever since. Amazingly capable and stable as a rock.
Linux Mint is really a good OS. Friendly, easy, safe.
Well done Clem!!
Better than Win XP.
Unfortunately exist Win 7,
just a little bit more charmy.
thanx for this article..
I’m using a netbook that using intel gma 500 chipset..
my question is,
whether appropriate to use this linux mint 8?
that’s all
@ fakhri, it does not comes with GMA 500 drivers. So, you’ll yourself have to install them
A few things usually have to be done with any Linux distro, especially on newer hardware as many hardware makers don’t (want to?) support Linux so drivers appears long after Redmond’s do. Such is life in the alternative lane, and learn to make do as we did with Windows (God, I really hated the Windows registry even with the .ini file complexity! But, I learned to live with it.)
OTOH, one thing Mint really must fix before I upgrade off Mint 7 (beautiful Gloria!) is the touchpad interface. With Mint7′s Mouse control I could deactivate the touchpad entirely; now I cannot–unless they’ve hidden the control somewhere else. One thing Windows did right was allow the deactivation of the touchpad upon plugging in a USB mouse (though that SHOULD have been the default action!!!); Mint et al have not provided that utility yet, at least consistently. HAL and other programming alternatives don’t really cut it as they are not daemons…I don’t get the problem as there is already a daemon detecting USB usage.
Using Mint 8 XFCE on a dell inspiration mini 10 absolutely no problems, been using mint since 6 “Felicia” and have loved it since. I found Ubuntu more of a problem in getting working on netbooks than mint the support has really come along way. Even without a ssd HD which would defiantly improve the performance of this netbook it still runs smoothly and efficiently.
still Sabyaon ftw XD
I have a couple of points to add to your review:
- Ubuntu 9.10 gives you two virtual desktops, Linux Mint gives you FOUR (4) without impacting performance. (This is on a regular laptop [Gateway] with 1GB RAM, dual-core Celeron 2.00GHz)
-Rhythmbox doesn’t require any additional packages in order to play your MP3′s. Haven’t checked for .wav, but I believe these are included as well.
-The interface is sleek and smooth, and incredibly customizable. Whereas Kubuntu and Ubuntu are both customizable, one seems more customizable with less features (Kubuntu) and one is smoother and easier to customize with fewer features (Ubuntu).
Strongly recommend this distro above Ubuntu and Kubuntu for it’s boot-time, footprint, sleek “clean” feel, FOUR vd’s, and “As-is” installation.
I’ve got Mint 8 installed side by side with Ubuntu and Kubuntu on my MacBook with Boot Camp. It’s slick, sleek, easy to use, and everything worked perfectly at first boot with the exception of my HP USB laptop speakers.
I like — a lot.
I’ve Mint 8(helena) installed on my NetBook (Acer Aspire One) wich the highest resolution is 1024×600.
there is a few problem on GUI design. Many form exceed screen resolution. eg. “File Management Preferences”, The “OK” button out of the screen desktop.
I got Mint 8 to load but it froze up at least seven or eight times inside of the first five minutes of each boot, oh ya, when it seized, it seized, in Gloria you can hold down the alt and system requirement key and type reisub and that is the equivalent of control alt delete, but the mouse, keyboard, screen, everything was locked. I downloaded Ubuntu Studio and will make a partition for Mint Gloria 7 until the work some of the kinks out.
I too found Mint to be faster than Ubuntu, not only in booting but also in applications startup and response. I am using Mint 8 on my laptop. My desktop however did not accept it nor did it accept Ubuntu Karmic. Both just froze my system. So after jaunty for a short time after Mint 7 (which I removed for Mint 8), I decided to give open suse and fedora a try. Open suse is by far the best KDE I’ve experienced and fedora was buggy so I stuck with suse. Being a gnome user I’m eagerly awaiting Mint 9. Hope It works on my desktop. I would definitely say from Gloria onwards mint scores over ubuntu everytime.
Linux-mint-8-helena is best Oparating system
thanks Linux-mint.
alamgir_ai
it is too fast & easy in working.