amitabhishek

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Before you go ahead and read this review, let me tell you that am no geek, my review will be mainly from the perspective of an average Joe.

First impression is always important & Mint impresses here with its cool splash screen and the punchline "From freedom came elegance". Mint Linux begins whr Ubuntu leaves. There is more eye candy here and the default color is soothing green and not that boring brown.It comes loaded with all the necessary software for eg. Totem played MP3 & DVDs out of the box.Openoffice 2.3 is installed by default. Flash player was embedded in the browser. Thunderbird also comes in the standard package. I never quite liked Evolution.

Once installed it will automatically detect all the proprietary hardware and will install all the necessary drivers at the click of a mouse.Compiz works like a dream on this machine and with little help from gnome-look.org and the machine can give even a mac a run for its money.For a regular Ubuntu convert (like me) the only difference is a slight change in Menu.Whatever works on Ubuntu will also work here. So this also tells us the amount of support that will be available all the time. Synaptic package manager is simply brilliant here too.

The cons, I had a little trouble in starting right after GRUB but a simple solution at Ubuntu forum solved the issue. If you are someone who loves GNU games thn u may be a bit disappointed because games are not installed by default! If you like internet radio thn you may have to download realplayer or VLC player.

So if are looking for a user-friendly distro and to showoff your stuff then this distro is for you. But that doesn't mean that you cant use this distro for day to day productive work. If you want my recommendation thn my answer is a BIG yes!

Chris.Osborne

Once installed and you look at the software available in the download package manager and install extra's to your needs it
far surpasses WINDOWZ !!!!!!!!!!!

Easy to install (UBUNTU COPY installer) and the the System has
all the codecs required to play DVD'S ....
Flash player ect.
A must download stream tuner and XMMS player
for streaming radio.

linuxlover.chaitanya

it has a good ubuntu like live cd which can be used to install the distro. this is a good idea to use it first and then installing it if it feels good.
the installation is quite simple and considering the complex installation ubuntu 5.04 had it is a cake walk.
it recognizes most of the hardware, i should say in my case it got all the hardware drivers perfect.
it starts the installation in quite a user friendly manner and still allows you to use the live cd while the installation is going on. this feature is great and comes handy while you want to get used to the os in case you are a newbie to linux.
the installation does not take much of time and in around half an hour you are ready to use it.
it does by default install most of the desktop applications and in case you need some applications then synaptic is always there to help you out.
but if you are a gamer then you will be disappointed to know that not many games are installed by default but then not many linux distros or for that matter even winnie does not install many good games and you will have to use synaptic again for your appetite for games. i tried sauerbraten and it reallly takes the tell out of my old system with just 512 mb ram. but the game is worth a give and addictive too.
on the application front audio and video applications are there with cd burning tool coming with it.firefox is there and it looks good with the homepage of green background.
and if you are programmer needing a whole lot of tools then you may be disappointed with it.
people wanting to give up winnie for all the licenses you pay then this is a good option and can be easy to use for first timers. the menus are well organized too.
but beware that this a desktop linux and cant not be used on server fronts if you compare the ever stable RH.
use it and throw winnie out of your box and njoy the linux world.