Why did you switch to linux mint?

[jlr1701]

I've been checking out Linux for a few years. I really liked the old Mandrake distro, but IMHO they have gone downhill in recent years. Never could get Fedora to work. SUSE is OK, but never really liked it. Tried Debian recently, but was greeted with weird draggable windows on the desktop on the first boot and was like, "confused?", so that got deleted in a hurry. Ubuntu is UGLY, and the latest Karmic release is terrible -- buggy as hell with non-functioning Nvidia drivers, which has me concerned about upgrading to Mint 8.

Anyway, Mint is the first Linux distro I've found that I am really happy with. Most stuff "just works". And Mint looks awesome. Beautiful distro! And a friendly and helpful forum, too. Woo-hoo!!

[jhk30]

So is the original poster still here, or are his/her 30 minutes up...hehe. Just kidding...welcome to Mint.

I am here.

[monkeyboy]

Why did I switch to Mint? I was a pclinuxos (a fine piece of work for the time) user but the forum was a mess. Mint on the other hand is a fine system too and the folks on the forum make for an informative and enjoyable read.

[waldo]

"sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras" is not exactly cumbersome.

I don't mean to pick on you, but it is comments like this that keep Linux away from the users that Mint is trying to reach. It is beyond cumbersome. Nobody who uses a computer for real stuff should every have to type in a line like that anywhere. That is arcane expert knowledge. To 99.9% of computer users it is gibberish.

[NCCarlos]

Because my sound disappeared after a power blink under my debian stable installation. It could probably have been fixed with a little trouble, but I've gradually been moving away from such tinkering over time. Mint runs faster and with newer packages than debian stable on the same hardware. Very easy installation. My sound isn't quite back to normal, but it is back. Probably a hardware problem (aging).

[jlr1701]

"sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras" is not exactly cumbersome.

I don't mean to pick on you, but it is comments like this that keep Linux away from the users that Mint is trying to reach. It is beyond cumbersome. Nobody who uses a computer for real stuff should every have to type in a line like that anywhere. That is arcane expert knowledge. To 99.9% of computer users it is gibberish.

I tend to agree. If Linux is ever gonna reach the masses, the command line will have to disappear, or become completely optional, as it has in Windows. Most computer users want an OS that "just works" and is easy to use, with as small a learning curve as possible. That's the reality in a world where most people are very busy and don't have time to learn a complicated OS (which Linux is) from the ground up. Ease-of-use and hardware support have been HUGE issues with Linux for a long time, but significant progress has been made in the last few years. Still a long way to go, though, before Linux will cease to be a "geek's" OS...

[jhk30]

I am keeping windows and linux because alot of my programs are windows only and dont work in wine.

I can't wait for the day that linux takes over and becomes the next "windows" free, stable and amazing compiz effects. then they will have alot of programs for linux.

[Lantesh]

If Linux is ever gonna reach the masses, the command line will have to disappear, or become completely optional, as it has in Windows. Most computer users want an OS that "just works" and is easy to use, with as small a learning curve as possible. That's the reality in a world where most people are very busy and don't have time to learn a complicated OS (which Linux is) from the ground up.

Most people don't want to learn how to truly use their OS period. They learn how to use the applications that are important to them, and are completely clueless as to what lies underneath. Honestly for people like this I find it far easier to tell them to cut and paste the line of code I just gave them into the terminal then to try and explain how to do it through a GUI. Either way they aren't going to remember what they just did, because they aren't interested in the first place. They just want it to work.

[deleted]

Most people don't want to learn how to truly use their OS period. They learn how to use the applications that are important to them, and are completely clueless as to what lies underneath. Honestly for people like this I find it far easier to tell them to cut and paste the line of code I just gave them into the terminal then to try and explain how to do it through a GUI. Either way they aren't going to remember what they just did, because they aren't interested in the first place. They just want it to work.

But I don't need to learn how to put an engine together (or even how an engine works) in order to just drive my car.
People will learn to do the things that are important to them. Just like if people change their own oil, they need to know how much and what type.

If you rely on people to "just cut and paste the code", then you'll miss a lot of people. They first need to know what question to ask in order to reach the code in question. If there is a GUI, or a way of "discovery", then feature will be better able to meet the masses.

Linux Mint is really good about this.

[Lantesh]

If there is a GUI, or a way of "discovery", then feature will be better able to meet the masses.

I agree, and the major distros have been getting better and better about including GUIs for just about anything. I like this, and I use them too! Still when someone asks a question I'm going to give a terminal answer if I know one, if for no other reason than because it's easier than trying to explain what to do in a GUI.

[gravelbay]

I guess I made the switch sort of on a whim. I was happy with OpenSUSE 11.1, but got to reading about Mint and it sounded like it was something I could recommend to friends. I was running Mandriva Spring 2009 on my laptop and wasn't completely happy with that. So I put Mint KDE on the laptop first and it was love at first sight. Everything just worked! So now it's on both machines and I've passed it on to one friend already. Since then, I've noticed that the occasional dependency hassles I had with OpenSUSE and the .rpm package manager have been totally absent so far with Mint and the .deb package manager.

[jhk30]

I am getting fed up with Linux Mint now. seriously cant it just work like a normal OS? Mac and Windows are easy to use. why cant linux be?

[MaddogF16]

I am getting fed up with Linux Mint now. seriously cant it just work like a normal OS? Mac and Windows are easy to use. why cant linux be?

What are you trying to do that is baffling and fustrating you?

[jhk30]

oh dont worry about it now, I JUST FLUPPED UP ALL MY OPERATING SYSTEMS AT ONCE!

so yea. now I have a pc with no operating systems on it. now I need to go and reinstall everything and I lost all my really important, irreplaceable files. x100

[mzsade]

Came via the Windows>>Ubuntu route. Seemed like the most natural and sensible progression to me, don't remember even having to deliberate much about it.

[jhk30]

how do you install a .tar.bz2 file? lol random question here..

[Honayo]

I tried Mint because I was frustrated with the various issues I had with each Ubuntu release and I like green.
Knowing that Mint was Ubuntu based, I had reservations but am happy to say that everything works on this machine with Mint 8 Helena. Quite a refreshing experience for a change!
I found this forum and joined on 12/8/09, have been using LM 8 as my only OS since the 6th. This is my first post, I have no questions and no issues with this OS. Great job by the developers. Kudos to them all!!!!!!!

[MaddogF16]

how do you install a .tar.bz2 file? lol random question here..

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Karm ... 9_archives

[linuxdad]

I actually started of using Freespire, then Ubuntu straight up. Since having troubles with Karmic wireless after a fresh install of Karmic I switched to Mint when seeing that b43-fwcutter was functioning right away in Mint. the install was effortless and I just copied back in my /home/user directory and all is well. Love it.

[Fluxx]

I came to Linux Mint after experimenting with a lot of Live CD's. I had heard about Linux years ago, and had played a little with an old Sun Unix system at a university, but still did not really get what Linux was about except that it used less resources than Windows, and therefore the computer was supposed to be able to provide more power to the apps.

I wanted to be able to do more with my computer and with the Internet. I knew that *nix held the networks that form the Web together, at least largely, and after I learned that Linux was the child of Unix, I felt that learning Linux would now be an asset.

I also knew that I wanted to head for the command-line, because that's where the power lies. The command-line confers degrees of power the GUI only tries to approximate. The command-line is the old-school way of talking to the machine, and it brings you one level closer to where the machine lives. The command-line was the goal.

I had seen a glimpse of its power at a university, where the IT people were able to go into a system that was slower than molasses in a January freeze and see what processes were running in the background. Amazing. But even more amazing was that two of the cubicle residents of my acquaintance were able to write scripts to fix problems I was having in only seconds...and one of them I did not consider all that bright, so I knew I could do it.

So I became determined.

The problem was that my wife was very stuck in the GUI. It took a long time to convince her that open-source was a reasonable alternative for us, and Mint fit the bill for us. She probably agreed to use Mint because she liked the way it looked, really. But it gave me a level of user-friendliness that I needed while I delved deeper, so I was able to get my feet wet without drowning. My wife is very happy and comfortable with Mint and will probably stay with it. But for me it was simply the spring-board from which I plunged headlong into Linux.

I am grateful to Mint for a very reasonable introduction to Linux for Windows refugees. Because I was not so nerdy with Windows, the beginning of my computer expertise has begun with Mint, and with Linux. I find I am beginning to understand Windows in a way I did not before, by comparing it with the Linux way. Not that I'm going back, but it is very interesting to see and compare the differences, the logic behind Linux, and the different way that Microsoft has structured their product.

Linux, computers and the Internet continue to fascinate me, and I can see that there will be no limits to how far I can develop with this interest, even if it is my avocation.