Linux Mint is an adaptation of Ubuntu, with packages for browser plugins, java, media codecs etc forming part of the default install. Their latest release Linux Mint Celena is compatible with Ubuntu Fiesty repositories.
Having spent some time with Linux Mint Celena, I am all praises for it. The punch line for Celena is From Freedom came elegance and I could not agree more. This is the most elegant Linux desktop I have seen. The artwork is just out of the world. You may see some screenshots here. The experience starts right from GUI GRUB menu, against the text based menu in Ubuntu, the beautiful splash screen and GDM login screen, the gnome splash and finally the Celena GNOME theme. Every thing is an eye candy but with elegance, there is no in-your-face blatant display of colors and the color scheme is well integrated. In terms of artwork Celena easily matches OSX and Vista.
Celena provides a complete desktop right from booting the Live CD. It has all the required software for Office, email, calendar, listening to songs and even watching youtube videos. Most modern distributions have very easy install procedure through the installable Live CD, Celena also follows the same and does a good job of installing to hard disk. I have described the install and my initial experiences in my previous blog entry.
Celena is Ubuntu Fiesty:
Celena has base in Ubuntu, which is considered as a benchmark in desktop Linux. Keeping this in mind I started evaluating Celan. To check the difference in default packages, lets not bash Ubuntu for not having some essential non-OSS packages like java by default.
- Celena uses Amarok for playing music, whereas Ubuntu uses Rythembox. Amarok is now becoming industry default and is more user friendly.
- Celena uses Synaptic for package management, Ubuntu uses 5(five) GUI applications for package management including Synaptic and Add/Remove Programs. I feel a single application reduces confusion.
- The Update Manager and Update Notifier were removed from Celena so users would not perform un-educated upgrades. With more than 2 releases a year and many modules affected by upgrades, stability was preferred to security in Celena. No more pop-ups telling you a new version of Ubuntu became available, no more pop-ups telling you to download the latest kernel... your system is stable, tested and it should stay that way.
- MintAssistant in Celena proves very helpful in initial system configuration.
- MintUpload allows the user to upload any file smaller than 10MB on the Internet. The user doesn't have to worry about getting an FTP client or finding Web-space to store his files. It's never been easier to share files with friends. MintUpload is also compatible with the mint-space service which allows files to be as big as 1GB.
- MintMenu looks like an adaptation of SUSE gnome menu but is much more elegant and useful. Ubuntu still uses the lackluster GNOME menu.
- Celena only has a bottom panel, a la KDE/Windows, as opposed to twin panel of Ubuntu.
- Celena uses Thunderbird instead of Evolution, which is default in Ubuntu.
- Lastly, Mint Control Center provides a more user friendly experience than the GNOME Control Center of Ubuntu.
Apart from these Celena is just like Ubuntu Fiesty and provides for wholesome desktop experience.
Desktop Usage Experience :
Celena believes in Stability so it does not have the latest version of certain software like OpenOffice, GNOME and Firefox in its repositories or shall we call them Fiesty repositories. However, the installed packages perform very well. Celan applications have an amazing lead over Ubuntu when it comes to performance. Big and resource hungry applications like OpenOffice load very quickly in Celana. Here is a list of common applications I use.
- Media Player:
- Amarok for all MP3, oog songs
- Totem for playing Videos, though I prefer VLC and have installed it through Synaptic
- Photo Organizer/Editor
- Celena does not come with any Photo organizer as default, but installing Digikam, F-Spot or Picassa is easy.
- Gimp is installed by default and is the best image editor.
- Internet Utilities
- Firefox, with all plugins
- Pidgin - one of the best IM client, though I prefer Kopete.
- XChat - Its a must. All my IRC queries are through this.
- Office
- OpenOffice 2 - Do I need to say anythig ?
- Desktop Notes
- Tomboy does this job perfectly. I actually like the known yellow background in it.
- 3D Effects
- I do not have a 3D enabled video card so could not test Envy to install the proprietary driver, but from the reports I have from other blogs, Envy performs its job very well. Also Beryl is installed by default. We just need to enable beryl to have those beautiful and wobbly windows.
- Multimedia
- Out of the box almost all type of media works. I have tried mp3, avi/mpg videos and even flash videos through youtube. All work perfectly. Though there can be media types which may not play by default, for those we can follow the normal Ubuntu procedure.
- Personal Finance
- GnuCash is present, however, this is such a complicated application that it is really difficult to use for an average user. It is more suitable for small businesses. I use Buddi or KmyMoney2.
Some Issues:
The above applications pretty much make my desktop an almost complete desktop. I am using the word almost complete as still many useful applications are not installed by default also there are some stability issues. Let me list them
- Default bittorrent client is gnome-bittorrent. This is probably the most user unfriendly client I have seen. Imagine a scenario, where I am downloading the DVD of a Linux distribution. This might take more than a few hours, so I shut down my system and go to work, only to resume the download after I return home. The gnome-bittorrent will not remember where the torrent file is, so we need to download the torrent file again and tell gnome-bittorrent about its location. Oh!! miss the blissful world of ktorrent.
- Celena is for average desktop user, so it must have an easy personal finance client, GNU cash is for pro.
- No default Photo organizer and no k3b.
- I faced a strange device mounting problem. Here it goes. Suppose I have connected a USB device to my system, it will be auto mounted and an icon displayed on the desktop, now if I simply remove it and then re connect it, the device will be mounted ( I checked in terminal through mount command) but the icon will not be placed on the desktop.
- I was unable to mount VCDs, let alone playing them.
- In the default install MintMenu was crashing, I had to do a full system upgrade ( 147 MB) to resolve this. One of the major goal of celena is stability - Well I had a different out of box experience. However, apart from that I never faced any stability issue. No applications crashing, no system hang, nothing. It is stable in those terms.
- Full system upgrade lead to a dependency problem with openoffice-common, which is still not resolved. Though it does not deter any other program to install, but always gives the error. However, this can be my fault as Mint developers advice against doing upgrades. One question though - In the age of distributions like Gentoo, Arch and PCLinuxOS which have a rolling tree releases and new versions are just a snapshot of the current stable stack, does it make sense to ask the users not to do an upgrade.
Conclusion :
Whatever said and done, I think Celena is a breath of fresh air. It is the best GNOME distribution I have ever used. The artwork is simply amazing, I think PCLinuxOS must take a hint or two from Celena. Strong emphasis is given to integrating the theme with applications, as demonstrated in the Firefox screenshot. I can see the hard work Mint developers have put behind custom applications like Mint Menu, MintUpload, MintAssitant and Mint Control Center. They have done a commendable job and made our lives easy. They have not followed the trend and have included KDE applications, wherever they felt the need.
Looks like the hard work of Mint developers is paying off as Mint is steadily rising on distrowatch popularity. I am surely going to keep Celena as a Live CD and even recommend my friends to use it. For my desktop -- Sorry but SUSE 10.3 is releasing and I need space to install and my primary hard disk contains PCLinuxOS.
22 comments:
Great review, but I think you should also mention great tools such as mintInstall, mintDisk or the ndiswrapper assistant mintWifi.
Good idea. I use Celena on my desktop with ethernet cable so would not be able to comment upon mintWifi, but would surely add on mintInstall and mintDisk.
great review. I am a Mint user now.I love Ubuntu and Gutsy is going to be quite a force. I love Mint though and highly recommend it over most distros. It is simply well done, and has the backing and access to the great and numerous Ubuntu / Debian packages.
I also Loved Celena, however I am more of a KDE guy. I just cannot survive without katapult. I prefer ktorrent, kopete and konquerro. I code in kdevelop, but have recently started with monodevelop.
Still unless GNOME guys come with something drastically better, I will remain with KDE. Looking forward to KDE 4 release.
Moreover, PCLOS is also an excellent and updated distro and has KDE as the default desktop. I don't think that I will swap PCLOS for any other distro.
Although I prefer KDE, I like the fact that they use the best apps from the wide spectra of FLOSS offering, like Amarok and Thunderbird. There is always place for GIMP and GParted on my KDE desktop!
Keep up the good work...
For heaven's sake: it's NOT fiesty but feisty. I don't know how many times I've seen the name misspelled on various web sites but it's probably many dozen a time... Not a big deal but spelling things right would be nice anyway.
Thats the best part about Mint, they have the best of both worlds. I really appritiate teh inclusion of KDE applications and thunderbird.
And thanks for all the comments guys.
The Update Manager and Update Notifier were removed from Celena so users would not perform un-educated upgrades. With more than 2 releases a year and many modules affected by upgrades, stability was preferred to security in Celena. No more pop-ups telling you a new version of Ubuntu became available, no more pop-ups telling you to download the latest kernel... your system is stable, tested and it should stay that way.
Yea, don't give a damn about security updates because the whole wide world is just beautiful... MINT! WTF?!
When looking at the screenshots of MintUpload and MintMenu I thought it would be nice, when a distribution putting "emphasis on elegance" would get at least dialog paddings consistent with the interface guide. Also I fail to understand how Synaptics fits into the elegance scheme.
I agree with your security concerns, but I think that Mint people opted for user experience over security.
Well I guess when people can use Windows and be happy about their System being secure, Celena is much better off.
A meta-distribution that can not be upgraded due to broken dependencies? And then you conclude "It is the best GNOME distribution I have ever used"?. Sorry, I have serious doubts that you have any idea what you are blogging about.
Hi dwave,
Lets consider a very important point :: Mint developers do NOT recommend upgrading.
Despite the dependency problem of openoffice-common, I was able to install many new packages like ktorrent and google desktop search. Hence its not like my system is unusable or not allowing me to install new packages. Just that while installing new packages, I get an error about openoffice-common, but the new packages install just fine.
Regarding your meta-distribution thing ::
After spending days with Celena, I discovered that Mint is not just "Ubuntu with some media codecs and browser plugins". It's much more than that. Look at applications like MintMenu, MintUpload, MintControl, MintInstall, MintDist, MintWifi and the awesome artwork.
Lets give Mint guys the credit they deserve.
There really is no reason to have security impact stability. Security fixes usually are just a few lines of code changes.
Have a look at security.debian.org, they do security fixes only.
The summary on OSNews gave me high hopes for this thing but your actual review leaves me with absolutely no interest in trying Mint, breaking security updates in the interest of stability seems like a terrible idea, choosing amarok for a GNOME based distribution seems odd, there are numerous GTK based player out there including Exaile.
The artwork looks distinctly average to me?
There's a pretty logo with 'mirror effect', but the rest is stock standard Gnome as far as I can see from the screenshots.
So, effectively, it's Ubuntu with a slightly different set of packages, a different default theme, yet with the updates stripped out of it?
Think I'll stick with Ubuntu - there's some solid community backing and a level of professionalism streets ahead of mint.
Well, even Windows do automated security updates, so if this one is subpar to that aspect, it comes off in pretty bad light. One may argue that Windows need the updates more, but that doesn't make Mint look as taking security more seriously as for the security update experience.
Also, that they don't recommend updates is a major disadvantage to me.
Too bad, because I liked the distro being bold with the application choices, and also leaving out cruft only used by a minority that often clutter other distros.
Actually, just this week, there's a new package called MintUpdate (surprisingly) which is a new front-end updater, grading packages from 1 (recommended, tested, fine) to 5 (dangerous, unstable, may break your system). Default is 3, which will get you security updates.
From my read-through, I get the impression that the guys behind Mint don't recommend just hitting update as soon as the Ubuntu updater tells you to, but they're not "anti-updates" per se. It's more a case that, if your target market is people who have never used anything other than Windows, you need to make the updater unable to break your system.
For reference, I'm running Minty Gibbon here (installed Celena then dist-upgraded) and it's working quite well.
Excellent review, thanks, I've been using Ubuntu since 5.10 up to version 7.10.
I still use Ubuntu 7.10 It's a great Linux OS for new or experienced users.
However, I'd like to echo the comments of the review regarding Linux Mint & add that I absolutely love it!
I've never seen Gnome like the way they do it in Mint before!
Absolutely beautiful art work and integration of applications, interface & ease of use.
It really is an integration of KDE & Gnome in one OS.
Mint is my current OS of choice right now. My Mint experience began with Linux Mint Celena 3.1.
Recently I downloaded the beta release Linux Mint 4.0 (still currently in testing phase) Although I should add in my experience It's working and running more like a final stable release candidate.
Congratulations to all the effort and hard work gone into the development and progression of Linux Mint!
I'm looking forward to the final release of Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna.
I predict Linux Mint to be in the top 3 Linux OS on the distrowatch site shortly after the release of Mint 4.0 daryna.
"So, effectively, it's Ubuntu with a slightly different set of packages, a different default theme, yet with the updates stripped out" of it?"
No, effectively it's ubuntu with restricted codecs installed and different menus. No updates are "stripped out of it"?
"Think I'll stick with Ubuntu - there's some solid community backing and a level of professionalism streets ahead of mint."
Gee, did you ever even install it before you came to that well informed conclusion? No? Then why do I care about your opinion?
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