Good day all, this is the Angry Systems Administrator. Today I’m going to review my impressions of Mint Linux. Mint Linux is a Debian distribution, not unlike Ubuntu, but very much unlike Microsoft Windows.
Now you may be wondering why I, a Microsoft Systems Administrator is looking at Linux. There are a number of reasons of course. I need to keep my skills up to date with as many Operation Systems and more and more companies are moving away from Microsoft and going with Linux.
In this case, I have installed Mint Linux on my laptop. The reason is simple and very annoying. This is an old Dell, and it was running Windows 7. It can’t handle Windows 10. Recently, the Microsoft Updates stopped coming and the system was falling behind. I finally formatted the laptop down and reinstalled Windows 7. It still wouldn’t update, and the various tools I have to run updates locally were also hanging. Enough was enough.
I had heard about Mint Linux a while ago and have it running on a desktop that we don’t use much here. I liked the interface so I decided to try it on the laptop. I downloaded the latest revision, “Sarah”, and installed it on the laptop. It went in easily, and both the hard wire and WiFi network connections hooked in easily. I then set up Wine.
Wine is a system that lets you run Windows applications on Linux. I’ve dabbled with it in the past, but have never really gotten it to work. This time I had it up and running in no time. I loaded the portable apps I use and they all ran fine. Most of them, however, have Linux equivalents, so I removed them. I have had trouble loading Quicken and from what I’ve been reading, it doesn’t like to run under Linux. Currently, I’m looking into other programs, notably GnuCash.
One of the big things is patching Linux. I’ve been working on test Linux servers so I’ve been working with the command line, relearning how all this works. Since most people don’t know how to use the command line, Mint Linux, (Actually all Linux distributions using a GUI, have a pretty little graphical program to help you patch and install applications. I’ve been using the command line since if a Systems Administrator is going to work with Linux Servers, then he or she can forget a GUI. By default, they don’t come with one and it isn’t recommended to install one.
My first and early impressions of Mint are good. It does what I need it to do, and it provides me with experience in a different Operating System. Best of all, it’s FREE! Considering the economy and the state of Anger Central’s books, free is always good.
Would I recommend installing this for the average users? It would depend on the user. It has the point, click and drool interface that people using Windows have become used to, but there are little details that the average user will find annoying. It will require some training for people used to the Windows environment. More advanced users could probably handle Mint Linux without to much difficulty. This, of course, leaves out that walking virus downloader, the Angry Webmaster. He has enougn trouble figuring out the On switch.
Thank you.
~The Angry Systems Administrator~
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