Hi,
I've tried Linux many times before, and at one stage I tried to make it my sole OS, but over time realised that it couldn't do everything I needed, particularly around using certain devices, and also for my gaming needs, I still needed Windows. Sure, there were some decent games and ports of mainstream titles available for Linux, but overall, it was still a better and more consistent experience to stay with Windows in my case. Where Linux did come into its own was for development work, which was the main area where I became intrigued with it, before eventually moving back to Windows. I loved the range of tools available within Linux, but would be frustrated with something I installed undoing a setting somewhere deep in my PC, and I had to then waste considerable time tracking it down and fixing it. I got sick of it, and was also not really spending much time doing anything with the development tools. I found in the end that I was a more user of content than a creator, so I fell back to Windows, with no regrets. I've come back to the Linux fold now because I have an old Lenovo Ideapad S10 netbook, which I sometimes lug around in my bag on weekends, for surfing in cafe's etc where there might be wi-fi around, or I have a dying need to type something up for later. It came with Windows XP, and it has worked quite well, but support for XP is getting less and less, and over time it was starting to bog down with the normal digital fluff that tends to accumulate in aging Windows systems, particularly in the older versions like XP. On a whim yesterday, I tracked down a copy of the Mint 10 Live DVD, plugged in a USB DVD drive, and booted from it. It worked first time, and with only a minor change, I managed to get the wifi and all key hardware items working immediately. Navigating within the Mint environment was a little slow, but that was largely due to running directly from the DVD as far as I could tell, so I dived in, hit Install, and installed Mint 10 onto the netbook hard drive itself. I had little on there, so I went for the complete wipe and install on the entire disk. About 20 minutes later (although I didn't actually time it), Mint came up, and away we went. It again detected the wifi adaptor and prompted me to activate the driver, and everything from there has gone smoothly. I had used Ubuntu before and was quite impressed, but it still suffered from occasionally being "broken" from something I would install, and like most Linux distributions, the places to find where to change things was a little inconsistent. Mint is based on Ubuntu, but they have to my mind streamlined most aspects of it, and I find it overall much more consistent with its user interface and locations for things I need so far. The other big plus for me is the inclusion of the search box immediately off the main menu. When you hit the menu button on the task bar (like the start button in Windows), there is a search box like in Vista/7, and you can simply type in there what you are looking for. Not only will it show up the applications or settings that most closely match what you type, it will also show available installation packages, which you can simply click on to download and install if they are not present in your distribution. For example, I immediately wanted to install Chrome/Chromium and Dropbox, so I simply typed these in and the packages showed up. I then clicked on them and provided my admin password to proceed, and hey presto, they were installed and operating with no further intervention from me. Fantastic. I have now been using Mint 10 for 24 hours, so we'll have to see how it holds up, but on this basic netbook hardware, and with my limited and spotty history with Linux in the past, so far so good. I would be naive to think that I will never need to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty to keep this Linux installation running at its best, but so far, so good. If you have never tried Linux but are intrigued with the concept, or you have some older hardware that can't really run the latest Windows properly and do it justice, you just might want to give Linux another go, particularly with one of the more user friendly and well supported distributions, like Mint. The search bar for installing and locating software alone makes it remarkably accessible for relatively inexperienced Linux users like me. I'll let you know later how I go, or blog about any significant issues that arise. Later.
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