Member Reviews: Linux Mint - 32/64 bit

I've tried two different versions of this on two different machines. I tried the LXDE x64 version on an Athlon 64 x2 with 2 GB of ram, and it was so slow that I uninstalled it in favour of Debian. I recently installed the Debian Edition on my main rig. The installer can't install across two or more disks, so I was forced to install to my SSD, then partition and configure a /home partition on my HDD manually. After I changed mirrors to avoid the ridiculously slow download times provided by their main server, and downloaded the slew of updates, I started using the OS for my daily routines as I would Windows. I found that the packages provided by the repos were integrated nicely, but if I...

The biggest and most striking difference with Mint's latest release (Mint 12) is MGSE or Mint Gnome Shell Extension. As you might have guessed, it is a Gnome Shell extension built on top of Gnome 3 and, well, it rocks! It looks fantastic. It has the bottom panel and ever-popular MintMenu. You can use Mint in the traditional way, without losing any of the functionality of Gnome 3. The top left of the screen sports the infinity symbol which, when clicked, gives an overview of all open desktop spaces and widows - easier even that the alt-tabbing we're all accustomed to. The rest of the top panel is taken up with open windows and the top right mimics Windows notification area with...