So, you can look at Linux Mint as a more polished (take a peek at my Mint 8 desktop above!) and kinder, gentler version of Ubuntu that simply does EVERYTHING right out of the box, like:

• Playing any video or music format (DivX, Windows Media Audio/Video, Ogg, and tons more that I didn’t know existed).
• Detecting your Nokia celly so you can connect to the Internet with it (on XP you have to download Nokia PC Suite to do this!).
• Detecting all of your hardware and installing the proper drivers during the install process without you even noticing.
• Setting up Flash in Mozilla Firefox right off the bat.
• Ditto for Java!
• Plus lots of other “little” things that make you say, “Wow!”

Suffice to say, I heart Linux Mint. Really. Things just work on my laptop — or on any other old or new system that I’ve test driven it on. Ya don’t believe me? Well, take a peek at the following screen shot where I’m running the ever popular (and FREE) Evolution email client that was given to the community by Novell. It can connect to my GMail via IMAP or POP3 — and it’s sooo slick. By the way, it’s touted as an Outlook killer in every way — except for all those annoying Outlook bugs. Well, you know deal when you’re using Microsoft products. Oh, Evolution can even connect to a Microsoft Exchange mail server, too.

Of course I do this to show peeps down here that Linux Mint is a better alternative to Windows from this point of view:

• Your system is responsive and runs fast since it’s not saddled with layers and layers of archaic, proprietary Windows “technologies” that have, unfortunately, become a nightmare (or headache) for Microsoft in order to maintain backward compatibility — ie. millions and millions of lines of bloated Windows programming code going back to Windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista and now Windows 7. I truly feel sorry for Microsoft on that note! Have you ever wondered why Windows XP, Vista or 7 takes up so much damn hard disk space?
• No chance in Hell of catching a virus, trojan, or worm that’s so prevalent on the Windows “platform”. I really believe Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky, Esset, Trend Micro, Panda, Grisoft and other well known Windows antivirus software companies just love the insecurity that’s built into the Windows architecture starting from the late 1980s to the present — all the way to the bank. If they had to depend on Linux, OS X, or a popular BSD Unix variant like NetBSD, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD, they’d all go out of business. No sh!t.
• Easy system updates and software installation thanks to its remarkable Debian lineage.

Related links

• Raiden’s Realm – Review: Linux Mint 8
• Reviews for Linux Mint (from DistroStuff)
• Linux Mint Raises the User-Friendliness Bar
• Linux Mint Review: Fantastic Distro!
• Linux Mint 6 Felicia Review : It Must Be Christmas
• My Ubuntu Linux desktop before I moved to Linux Mint
• Ubuntu Linux rocks!!!
• GNOME desktop screenshots via Google Image Search

5 Reasons why Ubuntu 9.10 is better than Windows 7

Wow, there are 263 comments in response to the article so far. No doubt some addicted Windoze (er Windows) users are going to try to make Linux look bad. But Linux cheerleaders don’t sit on the sidelines any more. They’ll defend their OS of choice until Hell freezes over (not gonna happen with this global warming thingy going on).

So, what’s your take?

Remembering the good ol’ days…
By reading ComputerWorld religiously, I was able to keep abreast of the latest trends with regards to: DB2, Informix, IBI’s PC-FOCUS 4GL, COBOL (gasp!), PowerBuilder, Oracle, VAX/VMS, Windows (unfortunately), Sybase, Unix, Texas Instruments IEF (Information Engineering Facility), Cognos PowerHouse, Lotus’ bad mis-steps with 1-2-3, DEC’s powerful Alpha AXP chip et al. Heck, this magazine used to magically disappear — for a few days or permanently — whenever I visited someone’s IT shop. After all, they weren’t that serious about IT I thought; it’s just that it was “the IT magazine” you had to have in your office if you wanted to look good. BTW, Byte, PC /Computing, and PC Magazine kept me up to date in the DOS/Windows era of computing and all the battles for market dominance between Intel/AMD, and Borland/Microsoft. ComputerWorld on the other hand was more for CIOs and high-end IT decision makers.

A new Information era…
Today, I don’t even read the above magazines in print any more. Thanks to the Internet, I get my full dose of IT news by visiting sites like Linux.com, DesktopLinux.com, LinuxPlanet.com, ZDNet.com, OSNews.com, Oreilly.com, CNet.com, ServerWatch.com, Internet.com along with the granddaddy of all FREE Open Source Software projects, SourceForge.net.

Ubuntu 9.10 Feature Tour

Now, I can’t live one second without my fabulous and FREE IrfanView graphics app from my good Net pal, Irfan Skiljan, all the way from former Yugoslavia. He’s such a kool dude who now resides in Austria. Anyhow, he was way ahead of his time back around the mid 1990s when he developed what was then a landmark program. I’ve been using it for about 10 years now.

IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support. One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIF support. The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support. {source}

The only problem I have with Irfan is that his addictive program only works on Windows. Doh!!! No worries though. Thanks to Sun Microsystems’ unbelievable FREE VirtualBox application, I can run Windows, various flavours of BSD Unix (ie. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD), various Linux distros, and more as though they were installed on separate computers — all on my laptop. This, folks, is called virtualization and in this particular market, big names like VMWare, Parallels Desktop, Xen and others reign supreme. But VirtualBox holds it own against all of them. And did I mention its FREE, FREE, FREE? Heck, it seems like the best things in computing these days are FREE.

With my dual core Pentium processors, I can run XP via VirutalBox inside the protective confines of Ubuntu Linux and NOT ever have to worry about all the crap that goes with running XP on a standalone machine. Now, if I “catch” a nasty virus on my USB flash drive, no worries. I merely insert it on the Linux side in the Nautilus file explorer and delete em. Try that on Windoze!

Screenshot
Take a peek at my Ubuntu Linux desktop (as the host operating system) running Windows XP (as a guest operating system). You see, XP is just another program. I can suspend it and restart it later or take a snapshot for backup purposes. I’m loving this!!!

* Update *

• Well, I’ve moved from Ubuntu to the amazing Linux Mint distro which is simply a more “polished” version of Ubuntu. I’m lovin’ it! (13 comments so far)