"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

Thursday, 24 January 2013

Test drive: Linux Mint 14 (live) on the EEEPC


I must reckon I haven't been recently paying much attention to new Linux releases. I so missed Linux Mint 14 release last November until some days ago. I so downloaded Linux Mint 14 “Nadia”, the one with Cinnamon 1.6 included, in order to give a look on how it would perform on my EEEPC 900. So after creating a bootable USB disk using Ubuntu's disk creator tool I restarted my netbook and started exploring the new Mint.

First impressions
Needless to say that Cinnamon, more than Mint itself, is the main object of my interest. I had been positively impressed from it while testing Mint 13 and the latest version only strengthened my opinion.
The EEEPC has been stable and responsive during all the time I tested Mint 14. Cinnamon settings are a bit improved over last version.
The user interface, traditionally styled, is configurable through themes, applets and extensions. No extension where provided with the version I downloaded while some choice of applets is available.
all together Cinnamon configurations allows a pretty good customization level over the user interface.

Conclusions

I'm even more positive about Cinnamon on the EEEPC: it fits very well on small screens and it gives back to me some of the feeling of control over the interface, that the old Gnome 2 used to give. Still I'm wondering if it's worth installing Linux Mint or is just better to install Cinnamon over a standard Ubuntu installation.

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