Yesterday I spent a few good hours reinstalling everything on my computer. Not that I had to, I just felt like changing something. In over 7 months of using the same installation both the Windows XP partition and the Ubuntu one were filled with junk software. Plus I was curious about trying out Linux Mint for a while now. And with shame I admit I was a bit curious about Vista as well.
Windows Vista
So I burned a DVD for Windows and a CD for the Linux Mint Felicia Main Edition. Installing Vista was surprisingly uneventful and fast. Moreover I realized that I had no need of installing drivers for my soundcard or Nvidia videocard. A few months ago when I installed XP SP 2 I had to browse for a couple of days for the right sound driver (I found out what soundcard I have by looking in the Ubuntu sound applet). Anyway, in spite of an easy install I realized Vista just looks ugly. I changed the theme and shrinked the icons but still the borders dwarf the text and there's just something about the Aero interface that seems half-baked. And no, I don't want to switch to classic view -- I think a desktop should pe pimped enough to make me enjoy using it.
After installing Windows the next things had to be installed in order to make the OS useful:
- Firefox web browser
- Pidgin IM client
- Songbird music player
- RSSowl
- Daemon Tools lite
- Skype
- VLC media player
- SMplayer
- OpenOffice.org
I'll also have to install Microsoft Office (i need it for school, otherwise I use Open Office as much as I can) and a few games. Also I noticed that Vista is way buggier than XP. And annoying when it comes to installing stuff. Keeps asking me to press continue and ok until I feel like having played 3 straight hours of Diablo II.
Linux Mint
Installing Linux Mint was more problematic than I thought. Though the installer is pretty ok, I don't understand why distros don't use Gparted for partitioning. It's one of the best tools Linux has, and it also comes with a straightforward GUI -- using it is much more OK than whatever half-baked partitioning programs major distros come with. I tried making a 256 Mb /boot partition, but in my n00bity I was utterly unable to. So I just stuck to a 10Gb / (root) partition and a 30Gb+ /home one. The first time I started the installer I chose to skip the "fetching date/time from server" stuff -- thus the installer abruptly stopped. I rebooted my machine and Windows started, meaning the Mint install was incomplete. Confused and a bit frustrated rebooted in Live CD mode once again and this time I only skipped the language pack external download. This time I was successful.
First problem was the sound. There was none coming out of the speakers. After being a bit scared I had to search the nets for Linux soundcard drivers I realized the sound was simply muted from gnome. Yeah, n00bity again -- but c'mon, it's not like it couldn't happen to anyone else. I think that by default all sounds should be turned up to maximum. Next problem was the Nvidia driver. Without it I could have no fancy desktop effects and no resolution of 1280*1024 (the optimal one for my 17" monitor). Due to external factors the internet wasn't working that well, so I just watched a movie and went to sleep.
This morning I installed the video card, set the monitor resolution from nvidia-settings (which had to be run with sudo btw, so I could save the settings to xorg.conf). Then I proceeded to install all the software I installed on windows (save for demon tools) and I also promptly started some pimping. Not too much pimping, just enough to make Mint more... cozy.
RSSowl doesn't really work on Mint so I installed liferea, an excellent gnome alternative. Also Songbird abruptly stopped working for some reason -- it keeps giving me the error "Failed to connect" and then just crashes. At the moment I'm listening to music on Rythmbox but I'll have to do something about Songbird. No way it stays off my desktop.
There was some stuff I installed and needed a little meddling in /etc/apt/sources.list (this helped a lot). Mainly I'm refering to the latest versions of Wine, Gnome-Do and SMplayer. Gome-Do version 0.8 has this great mode called docky. I never consistently used a dock on my desktop, and this docky thinie seems to be a great little tool. It's definitely staying.
So...
Vista is so... Windows. Buggy, intrusive, I only use it for running apps/games that I really can't run on Linux. Mint is ok. It's not much of a change from Ubuntu, but by having some stuff preinstalled it almost forces me to try new stuff. Yes, it has it's share of headaches -- but it's Linux. And is free, as in free beer. And it has Wanda the Fish.
Pictures
So this is how my fresh minty desktop looks like. Not only that it looks good but it's also useful and very responsive. So I forgive Linux Mint the few minor glitches it made me put up with.
