I have been using Linux Mint 6 "Felicia" on my laptop for a couple of months now. The word "Felicia" is the Latin female version of Felix meaning happiness according to Wikipedia. I have experienced happiness using Linux Mint, much more than when I was using Ubuntu on my laptop.

Linux Mint exclusive software

Mint includes many pieces of it's own software, making it stand out from the crowd. This makes Linux Mint more than "Ubuntu + codecs".

mintInstall 5

mintInstall: An alternative to Add/Remove on UbuntuInstead of the Add/Remove program (named almost the same to the Windows equivalent), Mint has included it's own easy installer called mintInstall. It is basically a more easy to use version of Synaptic.

When you first load it up, it will load all of the screenshots and information about the programs. This does take a while, but this only happens the first time you use it. Subsequent uses after that will load up much faster.

The first thing you will see is a list of all of the applications in order of a "score".  I am not sure of the source of the score, but it seems pretty accurate because the top ten are:

1. Firefox
2. VLC
3. Amarok
4. GIMP
5. Opera
6. Nautilus
7. Blender
8. Filezilla
9. OpenOffice.org
10. Htop

On the side are categories which are categorized very well, because there are even sub-categories. For example, in "Sound and Video", there are three sub-categories: Burning tools, Video players and Audio players. None of these categories are in the standard "Add/Remove" program in Ubuntu.

Another thing that is shown is the description. Unfortunately the description isn't too easy to understand. "Meta package for the popular web browser", the description for Mozilla Firefox, may seem a bit confusing for a person using Linux for the first time.

There is also displayed a date when the application was added to the repos, it's license, which repositories it is in, the size (this is blank on some of the programs), the number of views and the average rating. You can order the applications by any of these variables except for the license and which repo it is in.

The rating part is a very good feature. It has reviews from normal people giving it a rating out of 5. The reviews are only very short at a sentence or two, but they can come in very helpful to see if the program is good or not.

The final thing shown is a screenshot. When you click on the thumbnail, it shows a full size screenshot. The bad thing is that it takes up the whole screen if you have a low resolution. Perhaps they should make it automatically scale to the resolution you are using so that you can see the whole picture? At the moment it is a bit intrusive.

mintUpdate 3

mintUpdate: A replacement of Update ManagerMint includes a replacement of Update Manager called mintUpdate. It is meant to make updating your system easier, but to me it looks a lot more confusing. Apparently though, it can keep your system more stable by giving you an option to refuse to install packages which can affect stability such as the kernel or graphics driver packages for example.

One thing that stands out is that it doesn't have a big "You can install [number] updates" like the regular Update Manager does. All it has is a little "There are [number] recommended software updates available" on the status bar.

Those version numbers really do look confusing as well! This is also a problem on the Update Manager, but there it is not so prominent. Does anyone actually know (other than the people that built the packages) what 4.0.4ubuntu2.2 or 1:0.7.8-0ubuntu1 means? Really they should make it a lot less confusing. They should take out all of this "ubuntu1" and colons and replace it with something like "Old version: 4.0.4 Revision 1. New version: 4.0.4 Revision 2" highlighting the differences. This makes much more sense and is less confusing for a Linux beginner.

mintUpdate - History: Great for troubleshootingThere are "Description", "Changelog", "Warnings" and "Extra info" tabs at the bottom. They cannot be collapsed like in Update Manager. They can be useful for beginners to experts alike. Another thing good for experts is the preferences page. It can change just about everything. There is a part where you can choose to show certain levels of packages or mark them as safe. Another part lets you set how frequently you want it to update in minutes, hours and days. The third lets you get a delay before mintUpdate starts, so it can be sure your internet connection is definitely active. This is enabled by default. Unfortunately this makes mintUpdate feel very slow, but putting it onto "0" makes it much faster if you are using an always on broadband connection. A second option on this tab lets you include "dist-upgrade" packages which can be dangerous, but there is a disclaimer message to (hopefully) prevent tinkerers from fiddling around with the settings and messing things up. Another tab lets you set a proxy, which can be helpful for people using a proxy. The final tab lets you customize which icons are used. Bonus! That's really customizable now - you can integrate it within your chosen theme if you are using one

One thing that I like a lot is the "Levels". They show you whether it is "safe" or not to install anything. I can install anything and I'm fine, but it may be different for other people if they are using closed source drivers from ATI or NVIDIA for example. I'm using open source only drivers (except for the firmware for my Intel wireless card) so this isn't a problem for me.

Also, I like that there is a detailed list of previously updated programs, which can be very helpful for troubleshooting.

mintMenu

mintMenu: A lot faster to get to commonly used thingsmintMenu is an alternative to the regular "Applications Places System" menu and the GNOME menu. I find it a lot easier to find programs using it.

By default, it has three sections. Places, system and applications. The "Places" section has places in Nautilus like "Computer", "Home folder" and "Desktop". The "System" section has programs like mintInstall (named Software Manager), Synaptic, Terminal and Logging out. The "Applications" section has a favourites section which can let you display and organise (by dragging and dropping) them. There is also an option to show your most recently used documents, although this takes up a significant amount of room, making the menu more clunky.

You don't have to click much with this menu, so it is still like a drop down menu in regular GNOME. There is an option to disable this, just untick "Hover" in the "Applications" tab in the preferences.

mintMenu is also very customizable. You can change the colours, the text and icon shown, set the number of rows and columns in the Favourites menu and more. To get to the preferences, just right click on the menu and select "Preferences".

I think that mintMenu is a lot faster to get to things, showing the most commonly opened programs and places as soon as you click on the menu button, and still looks good. It isn't as customisable as Ubuntu System Panel but I think it's enough for most people.

Applications included

Linux Mint includes everything you'll need. The default music player is Rhythmbox, the default video player is Totem, and the default web browser is Firefox the web browser we all know and love This is no different to Ubuntu as it seems, but Linux Mint includes a few more applications and still keeps it within one CDs size. It has Skype for VoIP, and instead of the feature packed e-mail client Evolution, Mozilla's Thunderbird is included instead.

It also includes OpenOffice.org 2.0 as Ubuntu does (no 3.0 ) but 3.0 will be in the next Linux Mint release.

Everyone knows that Linux Mint includes codecs. It does. It can play MP3s, DVDs and all of that out of the box. Something that surprised me the most is that it has 64bit flash out of the box and it is the native alpha! No nspluginwrapper or horrible 32 bit libs. Perhaps it was to save some space, but I congratulate the Mint devs for including it, because I don't think Ubuntu will ever include it out of the box, or even in the repos until it is a gold release.

Something that is really quite annoying is that the Software Sources program has been removed. This is quite annoying, because it is a easy to use GUI method of enabling/disabling repos and adding external ones. Please add it back!

Artwork

Default desktop: The artwork is a bit stale...Linux Mint has very good artwork, but it is getting a bit old. The same artwork has been used for 3 releases now. The only changes have been maybe a little enhancement of the wallpaper, changing the Gtk engine or the colour. Come on, even Ubuntu is starting to look better than Linux Mint! Just search around for Ubuntu 9.04 screenshots (recent ones) and you'll find they are looking pretty good. We want some new artwork! Switching from blue to green to blue isn't that great...

Final verdict

Linux Mint is a great improvement over Ubuntu. There are a few niggles with the Mint exclusive programs, and the artwork is a bit stale, but including things like codecs and native 64bit flash are a big bonus.

Applications
8/10 - The Linux Mint programs are good, but there are a few bugs and confusing options.

Artwork
6/10 - Although good looking, the artwork is very old, and is in dire need of updating.

Ease of use
8.5/10 - The Mint exclusive programs and codecs being pre-installed make changing to Linux easy.

Overall
7.5/10