Linux Mint FTW!!!!

Wow. As I said earlier, XP broke and I got sick of it so I was going to maybe try out a new flavor of linux. Damn am I glad I did. I'm no linux-fu master like Martin, so installing a new distro for me is usually like an MMA match where I'm 100 pounds undersized and a bit drunk. I also have always hated all the jackasses that say "It's so easy to install, just throw in the cd, install, and everything works out of the box" because it never does. Never did, anyway. Enter Linux Mint. I literally downloaded the live cd, installed, and when it was finished installing I had a fully functioning laptop. Wireless worked. Hibernate/Suspend worked. Going on battery power automatically adjusted screen brightness and such. I could play DVDs and MP3s out of the box. It even comes with linux equivalents of Quicksilver and XPad already installed for fuck's sake! Along with equivalents of MS Office, photoshop, itunes, and a bunch of useful utilities. All the annoying stuff about linux is gone for me, leaving just the beauty of a free stable system. Linux Mint is based off Ubuntu but they build in a bunch of stuff that makes it useable and intuitive for jackasses like me who don't think you should have to obtain root user privledges to move a file to a different system folder.

Since installing I've added Google's Picasa beta (iPhoto-like app) and VLC (media player) and both installed effortlessly. I have a wallpaper for my apple that has an apple shaped penguin face that reads: OSX- because making Linux user friendly was easier than debugging Windows. It's a terrible and very geeky joke, but it's kind of true. Apple's OSX just made a unix based system for simple folks like me. Now there's another.

I'm not saying it's for everyone, but if you've ever wanted to give linux a try to see what the buzz is all about, download the live cd and pop it in. You don't even have to install, you can run the system off the disk to try it out.

Added incentive, here's what my desktop looks like as I write this:



Badass, right?

e.

PS: Publishing this post on this machine was just way easier than on my MBP. Damn.