Linux Mint 9 (Isadora)
The Desktop
The first thing you’ll notice on the desktop is the new Welcome Menu. This menu is now rendered in HTML and looks better than ever. The menu contains the following helpful categories and links:
Documentation (New Features, Known Problems, User Guide)
Support (Tutorials, Forums, Chat Room)
Project (Sponsors, Donations, How To Get Involved)
Community (Idea Pool, Software Reviews, Hardware Database)
The Linux Mint welcome menu.
The Linux Mint 9 desktop features an attractive but unbranded wallpaper. The desktop contains two icons, the Computer icon and Home folder. The panel contains the Menu button, show desktop icon, volume, date, update manager, and the network connection icon.
The installed Linux Mint desktop.
As I noted on the first page of the review, you can now use the new Desktop Settings tool to change where the title bar buttons appear. I work on Macs frequently so I decided to move mine to the left. When Canonical did this in Ubuntu 10.04, it caused a major backlash among angry Ubuntu users. Linux Mint’s solution is perfect, it puts the power in the hands of the user.
I definitely prefer the buttons on the left but your mileage may vary.
You can now place title bar buttons on the left side, if you wish.
Wallpaper
One of the nice things about this release is that it comes with a number of very attractive Linux Mint 9 themed wallpapers. Right-click your desktop and choose Change Desktop Background to pick a new wallpaper. The choices are all very attractive. If you prefer to see more, just click the Get More Backgrounds Online link.
You can also adjust your theme, fonts, and visual effects from the Appearance Preferences menu that contains the background controls.
Use the Appearance Preferences menu to change your desktop wallpaper.
Next, I’ll look at the software bundled with this distro and at the tools included to manage it.
(23 votes, average: 3.65 out of 5)
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I love Mint… but 8 pages for this review?… Do you hate your readers that much? I understand ad income… but don’t make it irritating for us. No digg.
And the background Tuxes… lose them IMO.
Hi Shane,
The review is actually 7 pages. The last page is an image gallery. The reviews are set up to make it easy for people to hop to the sections they want to read. Some folks have no interest in certain sections of the review and prefer to skip to the sections that interest them.
Please note also that there are about 27 screenshots in this review. You do not want them all to load on one page, trust me. Even on a fast broadband connection, it would be very annoying.
Thanks for the feedback though, I hope you’ll reconsider a digg in a future review.
Didn’t I read Mint could be launched on top of Debian PPC? Where’s your review Mac-man? Don’t you have a G3 or G4 PowerPC in a closet somewhere? I got my G4 tower for only $25.00 without an OS or RAM and had to find an old Ubuntu 6.0 PPC Live CD to see if it was a lemon at that price. Luckily, I had the right PC100/PC133 RAM that worked in it. Of course, without Flash games and my favorite Firefox Extensions, I searched out Tiger OSX for it, but with less software than my Windows or Linux computers…it’s in the closet as back-up.
Thanks for the review of my favorite Mint and Puppy Linux, let me guess you like the one that looks like a Mac.
Now I’ll find out if my Intel dual-P3 650 MHz slot1 computer can run the new Mint. Funny last time I had to run the KDE version on it and my Gateway P4 I had to go Gnome because the KDE wouldn’t load, now it has KDE added though.
Joan in Reno
Hello Joan,
I parted with my PPC Mac Pro ages ago. I gave it to my friend Katherine and it promptly died! She claims she had nothing to do with it, but I suspect foul play. That Mac Pro was fine, I never had a problem with it but shortly after she got it, it died.
Hmm. I suspect malicious intent on her part.
Installed Mint 9 after work today while I made cookies. It’s that easy to install. So far no complaints. Everything works how I want. I did a clean install but for my netbook I’m going to try out the upgrade instructions from the Mint blog. Mint is by far my favorite but Puppy is a close second. This version of Mint feels faster but it could just be me. It definitely feels faster than Windows 7 on the same computer.
One small complaint I have with mint(and really the reason I use ubuntu instead) is the menu. I hate the new menu style used in kde4, and mint. I like how kde4 is so easy to switch to the classic version by simply right clicking on the menu and choosing classic. I think mint (or gnome) should make this option available.
@david
Left click on panel, add either: main manu, or menu bar, whichever you like, then left click on mint menu icon, remove.
Then you have classic menu in either variation and move it around the panel as you like.
While on the subject of panels, I see that annoying bug with new panels going invisible when added is in the final version.
Otherwise I’m testing it on a partition and it looks fine. Will try it some more and then decide if I’ll use it.
Nice review! Finally, a holistic one! Very true about prism. It needs to be integrated with mint by default. It’s usually one of the first addons I install in firefox.
Based on the information I see here, both in the review and in the comments section, this version is at least worth a look in a Virtualbox OSE session. It doesn’t, however, good as it is, sound like my kind of distribution.
I am totally set when it comes to my every day systems: I have three really solid ones in sidux as my cutting edge, rolling release system. It’s definitely not for the average consumer, but it’s just right for me, cutting edge, yet easy to maintain with fast, flexible, customizable tools.
Then there is antiX, a light desktop system that can run live, from SSD media, CD, DVD, or disk, and though it uses Debian Testing repos by default, it has commented out entries for Sid and Stable, and it has admin tools that allow you to customize it into whatever you want. So I have the light, flexible arrangement as well.
Then finally, I have the really boring, but completely stable SimplyMEPIS environment. Available in both KDE 3.5.10 (Version 8.0.15) and KDE 4.3.4 (Version 8.5) forms, backed by a Stable Debian binary tree, this is a simple, extremely stable system.
Mint may have it beat on fancy features, but no way is it beat on simplicity and stability.
At the same time, for the average Linux user, this release seems to be a great alternative to the recent Long Term Support (LTS) release from Ubuntu 10.04. To me, this one, for such users, ought to get more points even than Ubuntu. Easy to install, easy to use, and easy to modify. Those are my three criteria for simplicity, and that’s why, even though I have my own personal favorites, I want to give this one a good look.
I am suspecting that for most routine Linux users, Mint is likely to be one of the most appropriate systems to use, and based on early feedback, that certainly seems to be the case. I will weigh in later with more once I actually get to test this most current version.
There are hundreds of Linux distros out there, and Mint is certainly one of them.