Last Saturday, 28th November saw the release of Linux Mint 8 ‘Helena’. Many will know Mint as being Ubuntu without the Brown, but with useful stuff like Flash. Being based on Ubuntu, Mint’s release cycle is generally about a month behind Ubuntu.
I’ve been looking for a new distro to put on my netbook, I’ve always fancied having a go with Mint, but never got around to trying it, so this seemed an ideal opportunity to give it a spin. Yesterday, I downloaded the ISO onto my desktop, however my Karoo connection was only slightly faster than dial-up yesterday, so I didn’t get chance to do anything other than make a bootable usb drive before bed.
This morning I booted my Acer Aspire One from the usb drive, and started the install process. From power-up, to removing the usb stick and re-booting, the install took about 30 minutes – or in realistic terms, the same amount of time it takes me to get dressed, iron a shirt and get ready for work.
For anyone who has installed Ubuntu, installing Mint is very straightforward. The questions asked during the install are exactly the same ones as asked during the Ubuntu install. If you have never installed Ubuntu, or for that mater any Linux based operating system, the process is very straightforward, the questions you are asked are very clear, and at every point during the install you are told what is going on.
Of course I haven’t had chance to have a proper play with Mint 8 yet, but I’ll be doing that very soon.
