Pros: Easy to use, blazing fast, looks good
Cons: Trys to be all things to all people.
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 internet connections, time, date, battery (on laptops), volume, background software (such as TeamViewer / Dropbox)... the usual fare.
The bottom right of the screen has the workspace (desktop) switcher.
MGSE comes with a left shortcut sidebar where you can access your favourite apps such as your browser, Banshee, Terminal, Folders etc. This doesn't seem to be configurable though. Having ditched the pre-installed Firefox in favour of Crome, I can't seem to add a Chrome shortcut. A quick google suggests that it will be possible in the near future.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (so I'm told by HAF-X owners
) and, to me, Mint is stunning. The defualt theme is Mint-Z which uses a silveryish gray with shades of transparency for eye candy. It's not overdone and looks clean yet modern.
The software manager is similar to Ubuntu's, but more user friendly with better organisation. It also loads much faster than Ubuntu 11.10's and is generally snappier to use.
Banshee is the default music player. Popular software such as GimP, Pidgin, Gdei, Firefox and VLC come pre-installed. The default search engine is DuckDuckGo. Apparently for "commercial reasons". This search engine sucks (technical, I know), but is easily changed through your browser's preferences.
In conclusion, for anyone who doesn't like Unity, try Mint. I'm admittedly inexperienced with *nix distros. The advice I was given on OCN when I asked the "what distro for me" question was "try as many as you can". I have. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xbuntu, Fedora, Debian... I'd always liked Ubuntu, but not enough for me to move away from Windows. Even my laptops dual booted with Windows. Mint feels just right. Refreshing, one might say
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 internet connections, time, date, battery (on laptops), volume, background software (such as TeamViewer / Dropbox)... the usual fare.
The bottom right of the screen has the workspace (desktop) switcher.
MGSE comes with a left shortcut sidebar where you can access your favourite apps such as your browser, Banshee, Terminal, Folders etc. This doesn't seem to be configurable though. Having ditched the pre-installed Firefox in favour of Crome, I can't seem to add a Chrome shortcut. A quick google suggests that it will be possible in the near future.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (so I'm told by HAF-X owners
) and, to me, Mint is stunning. The defualt theme is Mint-Z which uses a silveryish gray with shades of transparency for eye candy. It's not overdone and looks clean yet modern.The software manager is similar to Ubuntu's, but more user friendly with better organisation. It also loads much faster than Ubuntu 11.10's and is generally snappier to use.
Banshee is the default music player. Popular software such as GimP, Pidgin, Gdei, Firefox and VLC come pre-installed. The default search engine is DuckDuckGo. Apparently for "commercial reasons". This search engine sucks (technical, I know), but is easily changed through your browser's preferences.
In conclusion, for anyone who doesn't like Unity, try Mint. I'm admittedly inexperienced with *nix distros. The advice I was given on OCN when I asked the "what distro for me" question was "try as many as you can". I have. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xbuntu, Fedora, Debian... I'd always liked Ubuntu, but not enough for me to move away from Windows. Even my laptops dual booted with Windows. Mint feels just right. Refreshing, one might say
Many graphics card can be a pain in the *** to install tbh.
But yes - It's lightning fast, looks good - and apart from GPU fiddling, sets up easily.