Test Drive: Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” on the EEEPC

It has been some time since my latest “test-drive” of a linux distribution on the EEEPC. I must be honest about it: the EEEPC is getting everyday older and I’m slowly loosing interest in improoving its use. By the way afrer reading of the newly released Linux Mint version, powered by Cinnamon 3.0, I’ve been tempted to write a live disk on my USB stick and try how it performs on my old netbook.

First impressions

After boot Linux Mint starts with the usual, “good-old” fashioned, Cinnamon desktop

Cinnamon applications menu offers a modern interface to start applications with all features a good application launcher need

the bottom panel is already loaded with all more common applets:

more applets can, of course, be downloaded and installed. The bottom panel can be easily configured withe a contextual menu:

interesting feature: while in “edit mode” panel areas, left, right and center are made more evident using a “color code”.

Last but not least Cinnamon offers “hot corners” configuration and a functional workspaces management, the features I mostly miss on my current EEEPC installation.

Conclusions

The desktop environment is the aspect that mostly can contribute to the feeling about a computer performances. Linux Mint with Cinnamon 3.0 it’s quite responsive and performs very well even on the EEEPC. Next step will be adding Cinnamon over my Ubuntu installation and try how it will perform on a “real” system.