IT Professionals

Why Linux Mint?

Posted by on Mar 15, 2007 | 17 Comments

I received an interesting email the other day that I wanted to share with you:

Hi, Matt

Here’s another tip-of-the-cap for Linux Mint, as compared to my Ubuntu distro.

I went to Yahoo! to check one of my mailboxes, and there was an interesting video being shown on the opening Yahoo! page. Well, after adding several ‘flash’ components to my Ubuntu distro, I still couldn’t show the video, and Yahoo! complained that several things needed to be upgraded, etc. before it would even offer to play. I switched over to my Linux Mint box, went to Yahoo! and the video played. My point? Linux Mint just worked, when, after several minutes of futzing, etc., Ubuntu still didn’t.

As much as I like Linux, I still can’t recommend it to my click-and-run Windoz friends. It still requires more hands-on than does the current incarnations of Windoz. So, I have to steer them to Macs. And even when I’m in Linux, I’ve grown tired of the constant amount of config file hunting and editing, and ‘figuring out,’ forum reading and Google surfing that I have to do to get something to run. It reminds me of the period between Win 3.1 and Win95. Joe Blow just won’t dig that hard to find the answer or to figure it out. And beyond a certain point, I’m beginning to think that the casual user shouldn’t have to. If if doesn’t ‘just work’ what good is it to Joe Blow. Something as mainstream as accessing Yahoo! Videos should have been anticipated out of the box, shouldn’t it?

Incidentally, this isn’t a request for tech assist on the ‘problem,’ just an unsolicited opinion from the field, both on the lack of basic assumptions on the part of Ubuntu, and a compliment to Linux Mint. Again, thanks for telling us about it. I’m enjoying getting comfortable with it..

I hope this note finds you well, safe, and happy.

Well, I am thrilled that Linux Mint saved the day. And would agree that Ubuntu is still rough around the edges in the sense of simply giving the casual PC user a disc and telling them to “go for it.” But for anyone who has ever edited a registry, built a computer or chased down a virus, Ubuntu is really not that difficult.

Installing Flash has never been an issue for me when using Automatix. Trying to do this an alternative way would likely prove tedious. So I can only conclude that people that have issues with Ubuntu are experiencing these problems based on not knowing where to locate reliable information. This is understandable and I feel their pain, I really do.

The learning curve is definitely similar to that of someone learning a brand new operating system. To believe differently, is frankly a bit naive. But in the defense of new users, I would be first to admit that information explaining how to accomplish tasks are scattered, half-written and even the official documentation project for Ubuntu assumes constant use of an apt-get type mentality from a console/shell.

No matter what, I would say that “limited” editing of a .conf file is acceptable to toggle on and off features in a given application; such as 0 for no and 1 for yes. Much as editing my registry so that my Start Menu reads “Stop,” is fun to do. But editing a .conf file must never be needed to make the OS work, this is stupid for a newbie distribution.

As I have stated in the past, I am working with a developer to create a utility called the “xorg configurator.” It will offer the following:

  • Easy to use GUI, HIG Compliant.
  • Show the Driver, Manufacturer on ‘Display Information’ tab.
  • Show the monitor configurations on ‘Monitor’, this includes setting up dual-monitor.
  • Show the display adapter configurations in a tab named ‘Adapter’.
  • Show color profile in ‘Color Profile’ tab.
  • Dual monitors can be setup using ‘Monitor’ tab, and by clicking add a monitor will enable other options in Adapter and Monitor tab.
  • Driver specific options can be configured in Adapter tab,
  • OpenGL, Composite (Beryl) options configurable in Adapter tab.
  • Safe mode option in Adapter tab
  • Display resolution(s) is in Monitor tab (this includes improved wide screen support)
  • Update video driver in Adapter tab

As things stand now, we have entered this concept into the Google Summer of Code program and feel good about being accepted. Unfortunately, my developer had a hardware crash recently and is now re-working his PC to get things back up and running. We expect this to be taken care of by the end of the coming week. Then we will return to work on the project.

Once we complete that project, we are exploring other ideas which include a cleaned up version of the GNOME Network manager /w/support for RaLink Wi-Fi cards and WPA built-in. And after this, improved LAN/networking tools for logical file and printer sharing as Edgy and Dapper are awful in this regard.

It should be said however, that latter depends largely on what was done with the final release of Feisty. I doubt this has been addressed, but we’ll see…

And finally, I am also working with two companies to release their once non-Linux applications, into the Linux realm. One of them is considering open source, most likely with the MIT License.

But even with all this, there is still an issue within the world of documentation. I have studied every Ubuntu book known to man. The only one worth the money I paid for it was Ubuntu Hacks, the rest were over-written and way more than you want to fool with. The only resource that really impressed me was free and can be found here.

As for Linux Mint, I am still recommending it, but only as an alternative to those who are simply not able to make Ubuntu work for them.

Oh, as for the “backing-up” article that I have been promising, it’s coming. Part of what is taking so long is that I want to cover all three major platforms – Windows XP/Vista, OS X and Linux (Ubuntu in my case). With each, I will be showing you how to save a nice skeleton of your system, so when disaster strikes, you are only left updating copies of your documents and pictures from yet, a more frequent back-up. The time saved on all three platforms will be impressive, believe me.

[tags]Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Linux, distro[/tags]

  • John Wales

    Your correspondent is spot-on with his analysis.

    I have been using computers all my working life (currently 41 years) and Mac/DOS/Windows PCs for the last 15 years. I have built PCs, repaired PCs, changed more registry entries than I care to remember, removed rootkits and viruses but I still find Linux in all its incarnations too hard to handle.

    I have tried running Ubuntu, Mandriva and Red Hat, amongst others, and I have not been able to get them to perform satisfactorily.

    I am about to try Mint but I have no reason to believe that my experiences will be any different this time.

    I agree that until, and unless, configuration and installation become far easier, and do not assume knowledge of the underlying system, Linux will not become widespread in its takeup. It will remain a specialist OS.

  • http://www.geocities.com/martinbreguet/servi-pc.html Martin

    Great Article ! Keep on posting those ! I really enjoy reading them, as it is written in an honest, pragmatic way !

    Ok, I am on Fedora those days, but I still have Dapper on my laptop, and all my customers are running winxp, with a few on OSX, and now 1 with Vista…

    You’re doing a good job, man, keep on sharing your experience.

    For me, it is difficult to fathom how to share my FLOSS experience, as I keep on installing winxp for customers, but use Gnu/Linux exclusively for myself, my wife & kids since 2 years…

    I didn’t cross the bridge of offering it to the customers, because I don’t really know if it’s appropriated… Most of them don’t know that an OS is somethng different from the hardware part of the PC…

    All the best from our little tropical paradise in the north coast of the Dominican Republic…

  • http://blog.akademie.de Simon

    I’m grateful to you for bringing Linux Mint to my awareness some time ago. I had been trying to make Ubuntu work with a WPA WLAN for quite a while, and ended up in utter desperation. I’d also not been able to make Flash and Shockwave work properly, and I’d had a hard time getting the dial-up modem to do as it was supposed to do.

    Most of that stuff works automatically with Linux Mint. Not the WPA thing, however. The Gnome Network Manager is great as long as you don’t want to hook up to a WPA protected wireless LAN, or work on a WLAN and a wire network at the same time.

    And WPA_supplicant comes preinstalled with Linux Mint, but I still had to put in the network information into the .conf manually – and that, for me, is already difficult. Now I have a WLAN WPA connection. But the default network module tells me it isn’t activated – that WPA_supplicant works completely outside of the GUI management of Linux Mint.

    Other than that, Linux Mint is great and pretty idiot proof – that is to say, it works well for me. :-) Thanks again for telling me about it.

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    John:

    I feel your pain, but for the sake of research, I am interested in the top 3-5 frustrations that made you give up? I am a problem solver, I have a development team and will do what it takes to resolve existing issues that I am aware of.

    My experience is that too many developers are still thinking like; well, developers in the Ubuntu world.

    Currently, I am working with someone who “gets it”. 3D desktop, dual monitors, wireless, parental controls, easy file sharing over a LAN and so on. This is my list of needed improvements, what is yours? Let’s compare notes. :)

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    Simon:

    Man, you are preaching to the choir on the WPA headache. What’s worse is why none of us are getting it to work: it’s the drivers for our cards. Only very, very few cards have WPA-ready drivers in Linux.

    I am getting ready to kick in a few doors here with 2-3 wireless card companies that offer Linux support, for them to make sure that WPA is being supported in their future driver releases. In the meantime, I have a lazyman’s work-a-round that I use by not broadcasting my SSID and MAC filtering. Secure it’s not, but it does make people think twice when there are other completely visible and non-MAC filtering networks out there. ;)

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    Martin:

    I agree with your stance on PC customers and getting them to switch. My mom’s bookstore is a great example. She uses Publisher on Win XP, also offers an Ubuntu PC for public use that has just been switched over to BoothCD Linux for its browser only availability.

    The only people I have switched (ex-clients) would be those who simply cannot run XP without seeing my every other week with the latest virus or worm. In their case, I have been able to set them up with parental controls, Shockwave via WINE/Firefox w32, automatic backups to a thumb drive and plenty of software. As it stands now, I am looking at the feasibility of the GNOME lock-down editor to further protect users from themselves.

    Even though I have not been a part of the repair scene in awhile, I am still looking for tools to make this feasible while keeping those who repair PCs employed. ;)

    BTW, bookmark linuxminute.com – something amazing is coming…

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    Simon:

    Email me, let’s get Flash and Shockwave working, shall we? Some will tell you that Shockwave is not possible in Linux. Officially, this is true. In “Matt-Land” however, I have found that thinking outside the box works wonders. Shockwave can be done and with less work than you would ever expect. The whole process is done easily and without use of the command line whatsoever.

    As for the modem, is it internal or external? Linux distros are all but ignoring much in the way of help here, but if you are stuck with dial-up, going external is always the best way to go.

    matt (at) lockergnome.com

  • Richard

    Good luck with the Display manager and Network manager projects! They would be greatly appreciated. Especially since I’ve had to try to explain to a newbie Ubuntu user how to manually edit the conf file to support his widescreen monitor. He ended up just switching to Mint. It worked right out of the box.

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    Richard:

    Thanks for the well wishes. The super-cool thing is that all of the back-end stuff already exists. We are just adding a pretty GTK wrapper and then making the right calls to make it all stick. To say that dual monitor could have happened a long time ago however, is a mixed bag.

    Because of the GPL (see today’s report to be posted later), the Linux kernel make this difficult. But thanks to installable packages, I can offer this. :)

  • http://www.wcprd.com John Edwards

    It’s comical listening to WindoZ bashers. They have to jump thru hoops to get stuff to work. Spending hours installing plugins and reconfiguring. That’s what I love about Windows, it works.

  • Keith Baddams

    I believe Linspire/ Freespire is changing as Ubuntu is debian based
    Linspire/ Freespire has all codecs installed in it,
    even live cd running all video’s play great
    Impressed by its Live CD running
    bye Keith

  • Matthew

    RE: Monitor setup…

    My #1 request – Refresh Rate!! For the love of God/Cthullu/Flyingspagettimonster/Tux… Not everyone has LCD monitors, and 60hz, well, hurts! Why must I always hunt down a conf file to change it?

    As for general features/organization – copy 90% of it from OSX. (Might as well steal from the best – not perfect, but better than anything else I’ve seen.)

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    Keith: Linspire (I am an “Insider”) is going to be basing Freespire 2.0 and Linspire 6.0 on Ubuntu. So this is still in the works, although some alphas may be out now. ;)

    Matthew: Ah, this will be included as xorg already offers this, but through sloppy, old school thinking, a GUI has not been presented. 99% of what p*sses off Windows users with Linux is being addressed with a vengeance. Linuxminute.com (still being built), will offer blogged tutes, a self-authored eBook taking an approach unlike anything you have seen elsewhere and a number of greatly improved Ubuntu GUI tools to take on the biggest problems people are facing today. Stay tuned, we are making history while Windows is making a mess. :)

    John: I would agree that Ubuntu, among other distros have a nasty habit of glossing over improvement “must haves” for basic operation. As a long, long time Windows user, still believe that Windows 2k was the best os ever to roll out of Redmond, with XP Pro SP2 in a very close second. But the problem is the love and excitement is dead. There are no frontiers left to explore. Registry, boring, WinFS is not happening, and Vista’s hardware requirements for the cool editions with 3D effects are insane.

    Having said this, Microsoft is master when it comes to working with their famed developers, making sure their MVPs are given the kudos they deserve and plunging into new markets to beat the Japanese (XBox).

    Hell, I will never use anything other than my Windows Mobile devices! Why? Because I am realistic. Windows Mobile saves me time. It works and I am not left screaming at my device for errors or bugs.

    On the desktop however, no OS is clear of this. Like some of the Linux distros out there, Vista has MUCH work to be done. It’ll happen and likely to prove to be a very stable, usable OS. But with their initial release, they actually leveled the Linux playing field for us! Much of the issues being had by Vista users can be seen as parallel to what some Ubuntu users have experienced.

    Here’s the rub though. I can fix the issues in Ubuntu. The backend needs are already there, because the “hang-ups” are not bugs in most cases, rather usability issues. Best of all, when the Ubuntu distro does things in a really foolish manner, I can simply take what they did right and then add to it. Can this be said for Windows? I am afraid not.

    Windows will for the time being, and likely for many years, remain the masters in the proprietary application market.But realize this: I am working with people who are developing: a new and simple programing language so simple to use, a 4th grader can use it, GUI tools that fill in the missing gaps, and I have also been working with a company to bring indie movies and music to the Linux realm as well. I even have wifi card manufactures that support Linux out of the box looking at we are doing here. Things are beginning to level out here.

    As for DRM-protected content and proprietary options, I would keep my eye on Linspire’s CNR release. Once this goes public to other distros, we will see a flood of proprietary options that will further level the playing field.

    Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

    and

    I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

    ~Bill Gates

  • Chris mankey

    “It’s comical listening to WindoZ bashers. They have to jump thru hoops to get stuff to work. Spending hours installing plugins and reconfiguring. That’s what I love about Windows, it works.”

    Yep, all the viruses and worms are configured correctly. So you had nothing better to do with yourself than show up here and post this? Must be lonely in that basement!

  • http://www.friendster.com/paul1984 Paul

    Hey, great to find out more about Linux & Windows from you, Matt.

    I really wanted to switch to LInux Mint, but I afraid my P3 800 Mhz with 256mb SD ram will not run smoothly with it. I would have to wait for my new PC… i guess… some day after I graduated.

    I am currently running Xubuntu 6.06 on this old P3. Working fine except for some windows applications that I really going to miss, and some office applications (e.g. powerpoint).

    Well, at least Xubuntu don’t give me any virus or worm problem, not like Windows 2000, have to install darn lot of protection like Spybot S&D, Norton Antivirus… etc. Xubuntu is just smooth and cool… minus the uncool of unavailability of multimedia supports.

  • http://twitter.com/MerryMarjie MerryMarjie

    Thanks for the “free music to the gray-headed crowd, including baby boomers” reference, but I’ll always be blonde as long as Clairol is in business!

  • Norbert ( Bob ) Gostischa

    You also need to realize that AARP isn’t there to fight for the rights of us seniors. Those days are long gone. It’s now just another political entity with it’s own agenda.
    It’s also more concerned with making a buck than defending Senior Rights.
    I was a member for about 15 years but have now learned to channel my funds elsewhere.
    The should rename themselves to something more fitting like Another Association Ripping off People.