Linux Mint 17 is Out!

[hatt]

Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more


When you never have to activate or license your software, break a-way! Heck, install Ubuntu or Mint and use that for your life's computing work but install other distros in a virtual machine to play, test and learn - You have nothing to lose.
I can't break away from Windows. I haven't started Win8.1 is a couple weeks but if I don't have it there waiting I'll have anxiety attacks for sure.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: hatt
Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
When you never have to activate or license your software, break a-way!
I can't break away from Windows.


I meant that Linux, being free as in "no-cost" and free as in "freedom", allows you to break the system all you want: You can always just start over again. Without licensing or activations or serial numbers or secret keys you never have to worry about buggering your stuff up.

 

[hatt]

I got what you meant UC.

The Win8 installation is adding a lot of complexity/unknowns into my system. Thus preventing some experimentation because I don't want to have to "fix" windows again. It's already quirky to get both systems to boot.

 

[Garak]

You see, I avoided that with my Linux install. I formatted the hard drive completely, and Windows was history.

 

[hatt]

We have a four year sub to Office 365 my wife uses for school. She's not the most computer literate person in the world. And doesn't really want to learn. If her laptop goes I'd like to have her a backup. She can barely operate Word so an abrupt shift to LibreOffice would probably be a disaster.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: hatt
She can barely operate Word so an abrupt shift to LibreOffice would probably be a disaster.


LibreOffice is free (both as in "no cost" and as in "freedom") and works on Linux, Windows and Mac; so there's no harm in tryin' 'er out!

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: hatt
We have a four year sub to Office 365 my wife uses for school. She's not the most computer literate person in the world. And doesn't really want to learn. If her laptop goes I'd like to have her a backup. She can barely operate Word so an abrupt shift to LibreOffice would probably be a disaster.


I'm not necessarily a LibreOffice fanboy, but I will say that I prefer the pre-ribbon interface of LibreOffice to the 2007+ versions of Microsoft Office. I have Office 2013 on our family desktop at home, and frankly, it's tough for me to use. I use Office 2007 exclusively at work, and 2013 is that different. It tries too hard to interface with Microsoft's cloud service in my opinion, at least on Windows 8.1.

I have LibreOffice on my Xubuntu computers, but also installed it on our family desktop (Win 8.1). My wife uses Office to do small stuff, but I've started to do our budget spreadsheets and the like in LibreOffice. I have everything sync'd via DropBox so I can work on any of it on any machine. But the Office 2003-style interface of LibreOffice appeals to me. It's immediately familiar because it's a pretty transparent copy of the "old" Office. Going to Insert menu -> Table... is still more intuitive than finding the Insert ribbon in "new" Office.

 

[ClutchDisc]

I use Libre Office for most of my school work. I love how easy it is to use! I do have MS Office 2010 on my windows 7 netbook and it doesn't impress me at all.

 

[The_Eric]

I'm hoping that 17 will be very similar to 16, which I have installed now. I'm just waiting a few weeks for the nerds and geeks to make sure it's tweaked just right.

Thanks to helpful and encouraging members like uc50 and Garak (special thanks again to Garak for bailing me out of a self imposed driver issue), I made the transition some time ago from XP. At first I was worried about compatibility, drivers and other things- but it was a non issue. Mint comes loaded up and ready to run! Heck, when it was time to install a new HP laser jet printer, it took me half the time to do it on my Mint based machine as it did my wife's 8.1 laptop!

As a side note, 16 absolutely flies on my AMD 5200+ dual 2.7ghz with 4 gig of RAM machine. It makes it "feel" like a much newer, better endowed machine! Personally I think that it's faster than my wife's 64bit i5 3230m @ 2.6ghz powered laptop with 6gig of RAM running 8.1.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Are you running MATE? I can tell you, I've been running Mint 17 RC for about a week now and it is as solid as can be. I haven't run into a problem yet.

 

[The_Eric]

Yes, my bad... I'm running MATE

 

[ClutchDisc]

Originally Posted By: The_Eric
Yes, my bad... I'm running MATE

It'll look basically the same to what you see in Mint 16.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: ClutchDisc
Originally Posted By: The_Eric
Yes, my bad... I'm running MATE

It'll look basically the same to what you see in Mint 16.


Although both Cinnamon and MATE are new versions in Mint 17 LTS (which is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) the LTS versions rarely (read: never) introduce anything groundbreaking in the GUI or workflow. They're also based on Debian Testing rather than Unstable, so sometimes even the individual application versions are not far advanced from Ubuntu 13.10/ Mint 16. The point of the LTS releases is to be better tested and more stable, not to introduce anything different or new.

Apparently, also, Clement Lefebvre (the guy who runs Mint) announced that even the next three "interim" Mint releases through 2016 will be based on this Ubuntu LTS rather than Mint tracking Ubuntu's interim releases. This'll make upgrading from one Mint version to another trivial.

 

[hatt]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Originally Posted By: hatt
We have a four year sub to Office 365 my wife uses for school. She's not the most computer literate person in the world. And doesn't really want to learn. If her laptop goes I'd like to have her a backup. She can barely operate Word so an abrupt shift to LibreOffice would probably be a disaster.


I'm not necessarily a LibreOffice fanboy, but I will say that I prefer the pre-ribbon interface of LibreOffice to the 2007+ versions of Microsoft Office. I have Office 2013 on our family desktop at home, and frankly, it's tough for me to use. I use Office 2007 exclusively at work, and 2013 is that different. It tries too hard to interface with Microsoft's cloud service in my opinion, at least on Windows 8.1.

I have LibreOffice on my Xubuntu computers, but also installed it on our family desktop (Win 8.1). My wife uses Office to do small stuff, but I've started to do our budget spreadsheets and the like in LibreOffice. I have everything sync'd via DropBox so I can work on any of it on any machine. But the Office 2003-style interface of LibreOffice appeals to me. It's immediately familiar because it's a pretty transparent copy of the "old" Office. Going to Insert menu -> Table... is still more intuitive than finding the Insert ribbon in "new" Office.

I just don't use Office enough to notice the changes I guess. I took a college course on Office 2003 so I was pretty familiar with it. When she has a problem I can usually figure it out in a couple minutes but it doesn't seem very intuitive I'll give you that. I told her I'll get her a new fancy computer(all the other students have Macbooks, she says) when she starts her masters program. I may have to be sneaky. "Look honey, Linux. All the cool kids are doing it."

 

[hatt]

I'm officially Windows free. Mint 17 FTW. I even got the network scanner working. Although the Canon software is a little quirky. I have to open it through the terminal or Gimp. I may try xsane if I decide to worry about it. I don't scan much. Didn't worry about installing the AMD Catalyst drivers this time. Displays are working fine. Different backgrounds for each display would be nice but apparently Cinnamon doesn't support that.

Now I'm wanting to try Ubuntu.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Ubuntu is great. I use 14.04 on my Laptop everyday. Ubuntu with Unity runs the best on newer hardware.

 

[hatt]

I've watched a couple youtubes with Ubuntu/Unity. I'd like to see what it's about. Mint/Cinnamon is very Windows like. If you're breaking away you may as well try to breakaway a little further. Looks like the Linux choices are almost endless.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: hatt
Looks like the Linux choices are almost endless.


There are hundreds of Linux-based OS's (called "distributions") out there. Most use one of a handful of Desktop Environments which present you with your User Interface. Ubuntu's is Unity, and Ubuntu also has several derivatives featuring other Desktop Environments: Kubuntu uses KDE, Xubuntu uses XFCE and Lubuntu uses LXDE. Ubuntu Gnome uses Gnome, which is the Desktop Environment from which Unity, Cinnamon and MATE are derived (or "forked"). Linux Mint's main two editions feature MATE and Cinnamon although they usually release KDE and XFCE editions about a month after their two main ones come out... Freedom is chaotic!

Note that any application you wish to use will work in any Desktop Environment.

For someone who is migrating away from Windows and wants a toolbar at the bottom of the screen with, from left to right: a menu, window management and system indicators (just like the Windows toolbar) it is hard to argue with Linux Mint. Use the MATE version for older hardware and the Cinnamon version for newer, whiz-bang graphics. People coming from a Mac might prefer Ubuntu's Unity interface.

 

[ClutchDisc]

Originally Posted By: hatt
I've watched a couple youtubes with Ubuntu/Unity. I'd like to see what it's about. Mint/Cinnamon is very Windows like. If you're breaking away you may as well try to breakaway a little further. Looks like the Linux choices are almost endless.

Exactly what I said. I wanted something totally different than windows, so I took the plunge right into Ubuntu. I really love it, it's my favorite Linux dostro.

I use Mint 17 too, and like that a lot as well. It resembles windows in some ways but not to much. It certainly functions a lot better than windows!

Give Ubuntu a try and let us know what you think!

 

[sleddriver]

I just installed it on a stick and used it to boot an old Dell B130 LT. Loads much faster than the latest version of Ubuntu/Unity. I opted for Cinnamon.

It was up and running within a few minutes. I look forward to test driving it some more. I didn't have to enable the touchpad as in the previous release.