7-Dec-2008

As stated previously, I've been experiencing a fair amount of instability and graphics shortcomings with the recent Kubuntu-Ubuntu offerings.  As a result, I've resorted to using Kubuntu 6.10 as my daily production operating system.  I started trying out various distro's to see if I could come up with a suitable current technology operating system.

I tried the following and experienced either problems with the installation (yes I did the CD check and the md5 sum'r) or the actual operating system had core problems on my hardware:
DreamLinux 3.5
Fedora10
PCLinux

I had an old version of Mint V4 (KDE) installed on my system.  I admit that I kicked the tires a while ago and the big problem I experienced was in getting my screen resolution down to 1024x768.  As a result, I used the installed Mint4 primarily as a platform for my weekly pilgrammage into Partimage for system backups (see Backup Strategy for details).  On a lark, I decided to try to install MInt5 (KDE).  The download and burning of the DVD went well.  The installation also went flawlessly for me using pre-congfigured partitions in the manual partition mode.  The installer is almost identical to the one used in the Ubuntu family of ops.

Upon firing up Mint5, I was able to get my resolution tamed down to the needed 1024x768 (and have it stay there).  As advertised, all of the necessary codecs came pre-installed so that Mint played nice with the standard multi-media (CDs, DVDs).  It also came bundled with a very robust lineup of pre-installed applications. 

The only thing that I found to be functionally broken was the ability to activate the "commented out" repository sources via the adept manager.  I guess I'll just have to do this the old fashioned way by editing my /etc/sources.lst file.  This is only an irritation and not a show-stopping biggee.

An annoyance which is probably based on my somewhat unfamiliarity with the latest vintage (non KDE V4) is that I haven't been able to figure out how to have the multiple desktop options displayed in the bottom toolbar.  I'm pretty confident that this is a "Tim thing" vs. a defect in the ops.

So, as I write this, I have just finished making the transition from Kubuntu 6.10 over to MInt5 as my default operating system.  The MInt Linux organization is to be highly commended for putting together a very well thought out and executed operating system.  My cautionary words to them are to not allow themselves to fall into the apparent trap that seems to be playing out in the Ubuntu distro's of releasing the newer versions irregardless of their state of readiness.  Keep up the excellent work!

Here's the link to the MInt homepage if you are inclined to check things out.

www.linuxmint.com/index.php

-Tim

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