"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)

Tuesday, 4 June 2013

Test Drive: Linux Mint 15 “Olivia” on the EEEPC


Less than a couple of months passed from latest Ubuntu arrival and the new Linux Mint 15 (codenamed Olivia) also has been released. I prepared a bootable USB disk in order to give it a look. I was, as usual, mostly interested to the new Cinnamon version (1.8) it comes with.

First impressions

Linux Mint welcomes you with a reassuring plain old styled desktop.
The application menu is responsive and it fits quite well even on the small EEEPC screen.

one of the more interesting novelties introduced by the new Cinnamon 1.8 are desklets. Desklets are small programs running in Cinnamon desktop much like KDE plasmoids or Android widgets.

At the moment, only a handful of desklets are available but, with the help of Cinnamon users community, they can become a very promising feature.
On the customization front Cinnamon offers many way to personalize the desktop with themes, applets, and now desklets. It gives a more comforting view on a future filled of too many one-fits-all believers.

Conclusions

Linux Mint with Cinnamon is definitively grown up to be one major Linux distribution but … I'm still a little undecided about upgrading or not the EEEPC. Nowadays you can install a new desktop manager with only a simple “apt-get” command so, it's really worth installing a whole distribution when you can easily have Ubuntu with Cinnamon or whatever desktop you prefer?

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