I can understand some of the frustrations there. Although if you are looking for the perfect OS... you will keep looking.... and looking. ... and looking.
I always think Fedora looks fantastic and professional but everytime I install it and actually start using it and try to get multimedia working or whatever, I get incredibly frustrated with dependency issues etc and throw my hands in the air. Good luck !
Since this is a rant session and I woke up in an ugly mood this morning let me give you my thoughts on your points:
I actually agree with some of what your saying although not quite as intensely as you do. However your use of the word "crap" is a bit over the top. One persons idea of crap is another persons idea of compost. But you know you do have some level of control over what autostarts at boot time ( mintUpdate, Gnome Do - which I trun off , etc...), you don't have to use mininstall, etc...)
Your comment about mintapps goes back to the crap vs compost argument. It's what sets Mint apart from the rest in my opinion. You disagree and that's fine.
You only made one technical error in your post:
Fedora, on the other hand, is very user friendly since the project itself focuses on community development, that the community should play a leading role in helping to shape Fedora.
I won't debate wheter Fedora is user friendly or not but Fedora is in a never-ending beta cycle and is used as a test vehicle. Fedora users are free beta testers for packages which may or may not end up in Red Hat. Same goes for the relationship between OpenSuSE and Novell.
Mint strives to be a ready to use, stable desktop and in my personal opinion I think it basically achieves that goal.
Please add a [SOLVED] at the end of your original subject header if your question has been answered and solved.
1) no one distro is perfect, or even necessarily good enough, for everyone who's after linux. If you prefer fedora, good for you. If you have some suggested improvements for mint, even better, but phrasing them as such will make it much more likely you'll be listened to.
3) mintTools are one of the things that sets Mint apart, (along with codec support) and is unlikely to change. As with all software projects, they've got to start somewhere, and linux's release early, release often mantra is exceptional. Most mintTools are optional extras that you are not forced to use, and those that are (e.g. mintMenu) are production-ready, quality software. You've also got to remember that Mint started off as a one-man project to add features, and create his own distro, which he has more-than surpassed. As projects develop, so do their features, and their professionality, e.g. mintUpload 3, in my opinion is a much more professional-looking app than mintUpload 2, though it's still in development (disclaimer: I worked on some features for mintUpload, but all the professional-ness comes from clem)
I have tried Fedora many times before and I still can't make up my mind which I like less, Fedora or Suse, it is a close call.
BTW the reason you have two instances of gnome-do running is because you have it starting from autostarted applications and its own preferences panel - that is your fault, nobody elses.
I gotta say that the bit about Mintinstall in the original post was about the only bit I agreed with. I see what the developers are trying to get at, I fully support making things easy for newbs, and, although I use the command line regularly, I would far rather not have to, so any attempt to improve the 'gui' world I approve of wholeheartedly. The operative word in that sentence though is 'improve' and I am not at all convinced that MintInstall does improve things. Synaptic is not rocket science, it only has 3 buttons that you need touch (reload, mark and apply). There is also Add/Remove in the system menu (although mine doesn't work incidentally!). Now you have Ubuntu Tweak as well which fulfills a similar, though more diverse, role.
I think the reason there are so few 'comments' in MintInstall is probably because so few people are using it.
viking777 wrote:I gotta say that the bit about Mintinstall in the original post was about the only bit I agreed with. I see what the developers are trying to get at, I fully support making things easy for newbs, and, although I use the command line regularly, I would far rather not have to, so any attempt to improve the 'gui' world I approve of wholeheartedly. The operative word in that sentence though is 'improve' and I am not at all convinced that MintInstall does improve things. Synaptic is not rocket science, it only has 3 buttons that you need touch (reload, mark and apply). There is also Add/Remove in the system menu (although mine doesn't work incidentally!). Now you have Ubuntu Tweak as well which fulfills a similar, though more diverse, role.
I think the reason there are so few 'comments' in MintInstall is probably because so few people are using it.
Yeah. Used Daryna, now using Elyssa, haven't used MintInstall once.
I think you missed the major point of opensource and Mint.
Mint is not only clem, it is me and you and all others using it.
You miss a feature in mintNanny? Code it yourself! If you cannot? Suggest it! But moaning like a little girl that doesnt want to eat her spinach... I dont get it.
Look to mintUpload... Some guy missed SCP support, so he took his time and coded it and released a patch.
Grunting will solve no problems, so what... become active
haruspexed wrote:I think you missed the major point of opensource and Mint.
Mint is not only clem, it is me and you and all others using it.
You miss a feature in mintNanny? Code it yourself! If you cannot? Suggest it! But moaning like a little girl that doesnt want to eat her spinach... I dont get it.
Look to mintUpload... Some guy missed SCP support, so he took his time and coded it and released a patch.
Grunting will solve no problems, so what... become active
Agreed! although I fully understand how he feels about MintInstall (even if I don't agree with how he put it ) but I'm grateful for what it is now, as I have no coding skills to improve upon what is already there and I make do with how good it is at the moment and patiently wait for improvements if and when they come
There is no perfect O/S - see M$ if your not sure.
But - LM comes close - IMHO.
mintinstal ? probably was better under elyssa, but I can see where clem is trying to assist newbies.
the 1st time load is painfully slow, like on a slow dsl connection like mine. but only the 1st time. it's ok after that.
Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] - when your problem is solved!
and DO LOOK at those Unanswered Topics - - you may be able to answer some!.
Without giving excuses or knocking on any other distro... Mint is not perfect and the issue with mintInstall is a well known one and work is being done on it. But Mint is a very small project compared to the likes of Fedora, Open Suse and Ubuntu... Mint is the only distro in the top 4 on distrowatch that is not backed by a huge company. That is quite an achievement.
If your user account is set up to start 2 instances of Gnome-Do, who is to blame for that? Do you want Clem to make a house call and disable it for you? I don't get it...
It says quite a bit about a person when he/she gets something like Mint for free and now all of a sudden the whole project owes him/her an arm and a leg... Mint is also a community driven project... which is how mintNanny came about in the first place... people asked for it. Have you contributed to the project even if it is just in constructive feedback and politeness? That is the least you can do as no one here owes you anything.
Anyway, good luck with Fedora... I wonder how far you will get with them and this attitude.
Thanks for the feedback. MintInstall was significantly improved in Mint 7. Upstream improvements were also made which make the whole system faster to boot and to respond. I take note on the other points you mention. I don't like the tone and the attitude but feedback is always valuable.
I switched permanently from Win to Mint six months ago, after several years of off-and-on flirtation with Linux. Mint was the only distro that felt just right.
PCLOS came close, but I soon felt that the foundations were shaky - turmoil in the dev team, development driven by a single, rather cynical developer, etc.
Ubuntu always had too many bugs, OpenSuse and Fedora felt too unfinished, rocky at the edges. Debian - way too many problems, definitely a geek/developer's distro like Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, et al.
I would love to love Ubuntu 9.04 - downloaded the live CD today and the UI is slick. Wi-fi worked wonderfully quickly, the menus are just right, etc. But, as usual with Ubuntu, here comes the litany of problems - lost data with ext4, and so on. And when I look at the Mint 7 development history I find prominent in the task list "fixed bugs..."
Frankly, I wish Mint were a teensy bit more like Ubuntu. It would make it much easier to find help if some of the Ubuntu menu items weren't missing in Mint. I'm thinking particularly of the method of adding download repositories. I always find I have to "translate to Mint." And I often think "Well, this is really a pretty slick way that Ubuntu is doing it - why did Mint have to change it?" Really, there must be reasons, but I hope they don't boil down to change for change's sake.
Actually, I tried the latest live CDs for three distros today (it's Friday): Fedora, Ubuntu, and OpenSuse. Ubuntu is far and away the slickest - quite a wonderful feel straight out of the box. But I surely do appreciate Mint, because it isn't all surface glamor, as Ubuntu always manages to seem. So - though other distros are tempting (KDE has the apps I like, Ubuntu has the UI, Debian has stability, etc.), I'll stick with Mint. Why? Because it just feels right. Ubuntu without bugs? What could be better.
) but I'm grateful for what it is now, as I have no coding skills to improve upon what is already there and I make do with how good it is at the moment and patiently wait for improvements if and when they come 
