I'm currently in LA so only been able to read through these posts, I just got 5 minutes spare and thought I'd put in my 2-cents worth on the Mint Vs Ubuntu discussion.

First off, the more you use Unity on 11.04 the better it becomes. It's a great platform and with all the updates since it first come out it's already come on leaps and bounds. I personally prefer it to the Gnome environment and I'm glad they have gone in this direction. Everything about the desktop interface is just right, and it's so much faster than previous distro's I've been using.

We've installed 11.04 on 20+ PCs at work of all sorts of hardware configurations and on all but two old Dell machines it's worked well. We've actually got 10.10 and Mint 11 on the two PCs which wouldn't work with 11.04. So, I'm really happy with the overall installation process and compatability of the OS.

As far as Mint goes, it's just another version of Ubuntu really isn't it? Ok, there are some things changed, but even Ubuntu installs all the codecs etc you need when you install it now. It's an alternative to Ubuntu, but for myself and for work we've been impressed with Unity so much that we are sticking with it.

The good thing with Linux is that there is choice for everyone, and I really believe that every distro I have used has been ready to use out of the box these days. We've had no problems with additional hardware with Ubuntu 11.04 or Mint 11, so that can't be a bad thing really.

Mark

well Ubuntu has just locked up twice in 2 days so i might just make the switch. Ubuntu is getting almost as glitchy as Windoze which is saying something! Used to be able to give it a right battering now it locks up with a couple of browsers going, Empathy and a couple of media players while I was trying to rebuild my internet radio collection. What it would do if i tried flash based facebook apps and BBC iPlayer HD i dread to think

I'd say do yourself a favour and seriously consider PCLinuxOS 2011, which is fresh out. I've been running it for ages and it's really brilliant. None of the bugs or problems of Ubuntu. Give it a go.

which version? website has quite a few

KDE Desktop
Enlightenment Desktop
XFCE Desktop
LXDE Desktop
Gnome ZenMini Desktop
OpenBox Desktop
Gnome Desktop

Not had any of those problems on work PCs donig much more than that! Even my home PC streams music, records films, download and has browsers running with no problems.

PCLinuxOS has just failed to install on a number of machines we've been using, so we gave up on that in favour of Mint 11 and Fedora 15 now (on the 2PCs that wouldn't run Ubuntu).

I've never seen so much productivity in the office! No more machines crashing, doing tasks super-quick and of course no worrying about Virus'!

Mark

Just go for the KDE version as long as you meet the minimum requirements.

How did the 'normal users' initially take to moving away from Windows? Any resistance, confusion or hassle? Or did you tweak everything to make it as 'familiar' as possible?

They only have launch-pads to the apps they are allowed to use, and everyone picked it up instantly. If they want to delve deeper, we encourage it, but 99.9% of the time it's just the Internet when not using work apps, so no difference at all.

To be fair, most of them didn't even realise we don't use Windows software anymore!

Mark

well.... both Mint and PcLinux fail to install after download. I tried with both the .iso and the extracted files yet each time it failed to boot from USB. Only thing i could find was some complex command line thing about mounting or some such gobbledygook which should be totally unneeded for an 'easy' distro such as Mint. download, copy to USB and install, simple right? apparently not

Try burning it to a dvd and installing from that. So far installing Mint has never been a problem but I wouldn't do it via USB.

Mostly I get video problems on install. But I can see enough to change driver. Recent recommendations have other problems.

Zenix just crashed to prompt. Can't remember message.
PC LinuxOS crash to prompt but screen rolling so badly it was totally unreadable.
Above were probaby just USB boot attempts with uNetbootin/Universal USB Installer or Yumi.

Now Kubuntu is just hanging on pale blue screen with window and HDD? icon. Mouse/Touchpad works briefly then freezes.
Tried via USB and CD.

I am not worried by these failures since Mint 11, Ubuntu 11.04 and Puppy 5.25 (Xorg change on that) all work fine. Gparted live, Parted live also OK. I only try for interest.

I wonder why my laptop seems so fussy when others problems are rarely reported until above?
I have AMD onboard graphics on my Compaq laptop (CQ61) and the screen is reported 'non Plug and Play'. Maybe that's it?

I've had pretty much the same experience with relatives when I've switched them over to Linux. Granted, they are undemanding users who just want the Internet, so for them, Mint with a simple Internet icon on the Desktop is ideal.

Anyone else have experience of moving other people (successfully or otherwise) onto Linux?

Not if you're using Unetbootin, this problem seems to occur a lot. I've also had a lot of problems with it when installing to our Eee PC. It's hit and miss as to whether or not the current Unetbootin will work. See Ironjade's response below.



The screen rolling problem is the same I have encountered on Unetbootin. It's a real pain, and without an alternative to create a USB boot up, all you can do is burn a CD or DVD. Zenix was OK on mine though with it. Have you checked the MD5Sum?

I noticed Madriva 2011 is almost ready for launch. Have any of you used Madriva? It seems to get some great reviews, and I am tempted to have a go on the laptop with it.

Mark

Mandriva 2006 Discovery was my very first distro! I didn't have a clue what to do with it. That came later thankfully.

It's a great distro, but they've had a lot of financial problems to deal with which nearly finished the distro off. I think I would try Mageia Linux first these days. PCLinuxOS uses Mandriva as its base.

Damn, that could set me back! I've had no luck at all with PCLinuxOS on any PC that I have tried it on. Never mind, I'll still give it a go.

On another note, Thunderbird 5 has been released. I'm happy with Evolution, but I am interested in trying Thunderbird. I know a few of our clients who work in solicitor firms use Thunderbird and find it very effective.

Mark

That's 'cos you're doing it wrong.



In other news, just stuck Crunchbang Statler on our Eee 701. Niiiice! Really impressed. It takes up slightly more space than Zenix OS when installed, but uses Chromium rather than Midori, for example. Somehow it seems even lighter on resources though, which is both surprising and completely brilliant.

Frankly it's a real keeper on this little system, and with that I can finally say its distro hopping days are over.

just a heads up about this

http://www.mageia.org/en/1/

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mageia

and the changes that are happening at Mandriva.

Lol. I wish I was doing it wrong (any OS that allows some-one to "do it wrong" is not right anyway)! I'd feel a whole lot better about it then. I work with a team of Linux-geeks, and not even they get much luck with it. I really wish we could get it to work though, as I really want to try it!

Mark

yeah whatever believe that when i see it.

Sshhh! I just about convinced myself then too.

So, how many of us Linux users switch from distro to distro on a regular basis then? For the most part I stick with my distro of choice on all of my machines apart from one, which I sometimes use to test other distros.

Looking at here, seems some of you like to chop-n-change every so often!

Mark

I'm sticking with Mint for the forseeable. Distrohopping just gets tedious after a while.

When i first started out with Linux in the late 90s i distro-hopped from Mandrake to Progeny to Libranet until i settled on a pure Debian (woody) system for a couple of years.

Ubuntu came out right around the time that i got my first Mac, so i never really got around to using it although i'd install the most recent release in a virtual machine every so often to see how things were progressing.

I didn't like the direction Apple was going with OS X so, at the beginning of this year, i switched back to Linux.

I tried out various distros in a virtual machine before hand but, for me, it's got to be a Debian-based OS, so in the end i went with Linux Mint Debian Edition (pinned to Debian stable).

Now that the various smooth font rendering patches have been integrated into Debian Testing's libcairo2 i'll probably switch to a pure Debian system running KDE when Wheezy is released, but for now LMDE/stable is working for me.

I honestly don't like distro-hopping too often as it's seriously addictive and completely frustrating! Once I've settled on my two distros (PCLinuxOS and summat else) that's usually me done. Once I've got things working nicely I don't mess about with it until fresh release time. Ubuntu forced my hand this time, having been a bit crap for me over the last couple of releases, but I discovered an alternative pretty quickly and without any hassle.

The hardest hop recently for me has been on my oft-mentioned Eee PC 701. The tiny hardware specs make it seriously demanding, so finding the right thing has been tricky, resulting in many false dawns and lots of trial and error. You want something lightweight but functional, and also up to date, stable and secure. So far I think I've found that in Crunchbang (thanks to its Debian base), and I'd really prefer not to have to do any more searching!