Linux Mint – The Distro to Fill the Missing Gap
- Posted March 27, 2008 at 11:14 pm
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Recently, I have been trying out the Linux Mint operating system which caught my attention in DistroWatch.com. It currently ranks 5th in the Page Hit Ranking, trailing Fedora by a very small margin. My first impression with Linux Mint is that it is for those who want to play MP3 songs and DVD movies out of the box. Those are two common missing functions most wanted by most users. A lot of the big name distro, such as Ubuntu and Fedora, do not include those functionality by default.
Linux Mint is a variant of Ubuntu with integrated media codecs. After using Linux Mint for a few hours, I can immediately see that it is trying to get the good things all together in one place. First, it has a very flexible application menu, very similar to the one in OpenSUSE. You can drag applications to the “Favourites” section of the menu so that you can find them easily. You can also hide certain sections of the menu, which is divided into Places, System, and Applications.
Another thing it has is what it calls the Software Portal (or mintinstall). The Software Portal is very similar to OpenSUSE’s One-Click-Install system which I have described in here. By just clicking the install button on the Software Portal site, you can install some popular software such as Google Earth, VirtualBox, Second Life, Microsoft Fonts and more. One point worth mentioning is that when I installed VirtualBox, I didn’t have to go through all the steps that I went through in Ubuntu (steps here). It just works. However, I am finding the number of software you can install through the portal site is still limited.
Another thing that surprised me is the Ndiswrapper driver installation tool which they called it “Windows Wireless Drivers”. I used a D-Link DWL-G132 Wireless USB Adapter to test it. I downloaded the Windows driver and found the .inf file. I used the Ndiswrapper driver installation tool to install the .inf file. Right away, Linux Mint detected my wireless USB adapter and I am able to connect to my wireless network.
If you are looking for a Linux distro that fills the gap of missing codecs out-of-the-box, then you may want to give Linux Mint a try. I will be testing Linux Mint on my MSI S262 Megabook to see if the compatibility is any better. Results will be coming soon.
[...] Linux Mint – The Distro to Fill the Missing Gap [...]
I think I would really really love mint… if what you just mentioned above would work for me. I have a D-Link dwl 520 vE and its no go on the wireless which means i can just play music and watch videos thus far. Kind of a bumber. I click on the .inf file and it does a whole lot of nothing.