cloudplasma

been a while since i used linux mint in anger. been running the beta version of ubuntu 12.04 (with xfce) until the ‘stable’ version was released. it’s time to switch. i love debian on my servers but on the desktop i find it slightly too restrict­ive. the best of both worlds? linux mint debian. the UI’s slicker…there are more pack­ages avail­able out of the box. it’s a rolling dis­tri­bu­tion (based on debian testing) so no major updates every 6 months. all good. LMDE uses MATE/Cinnamon and it’s MATE by default. this didn’t work for me…couldn’t even get to a desktop. switch­ing to the cin­na­mon inter­face (at the login screen) sorted this. sta­bilty? top notch. the menus are sens­ibly laid out and it’s great not to be con­strained by the full gnome 3. not the fastest boot in the world but that’s not too much of a problem. will be stick­ing with it for a while i think. some screen shots can be seen below…

decent options for folders and files with a right-click

sens­ible start menu. sensible.

com­pre­hens­ive con­fig­ur­a­tion options in control center

with the fglrx drivers installed my tv is sup­por­ted as an exten­ded desktop/monitor.

the kernel count is rising

not too heavy on resources

gimp installed by default! (reading this, ubuntu?)

i reduced some of the font sizes as i found them rather large for my laptop’s screen.