Review: Linux Mint 7 KDE (Page 1 of 1)
Written by
Steve Lake
Posted on: Oct 23, 2009 at 03:31pm
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Linux Mint is one of those user friendly distributions I love to talk about. It seems to have everything a new user will need, and more. It also runs great, and keeps getting better with each new version. But is Mint 7 KDE an improvement on its predecessor, or has the ever venerable Mint KDE tripped and broke it's crown? Let's look and find out.
LiveDVD
Booting up the LiveDVD you're greeted by a simple countdown, that if allowed to expire, will start you booting. If you hit return before it expires, it will give you a list of six items you can choose from for booting. This includes a standard and compatibility mode installer, an option to jump straight into the installer, check the install disk integrity, or a memory test. You can also boot straight into the hard drive and load whatever OS is already there.
If you load the first option, it will boot you into the desktop of the LiveDVD. It'll take you a couple minutes to complete, so go grab something to drink while you wait. In some instances, the loader for the desktop will actually drop to a black screen but never finish loading, at which point you have to do a ctrl-alt-backspace in order to kill and restart the Xwindows loading process.
Mint 7 KDE uses the KDE 4.2 desktop, so when you load the desktop, it will default to the “Desktop View”. Changing it to the more familiar “Folder View” is actually pretty easy, but if you want to do that, you'll have to make the changes to the desktop after its installed, because anything changed in the LiveDVD won't be there after reboot.
KDE 4.2 also comes with two menus, the new “tasty” menu and the classic “kicker” menu. To switch between them is pretty easy. Just right click on the existing menu, then select the second option for the classic menu. It's a bit on the lean side eye candy wise, but that's fine.
The list of included programs is impressive as always, however, there are a few substitutions that will likely raise some eyebrows. These include the absence of Pidgin, but the inclusion of “Dragon Media Player”. I don't understand these couple of changes, but the fact that most of the old standbys are still there is an encouraging sign.
Application load times and overall speed of the LiveDVD are very good, given that KDE4 is used, and it shows a noticeable improvement over the previous release of Mint KDE which was introduced with an earlier version of KDE 4.2.
Once nice addition I noticed is that Synaptic is now prominently included in the KDE menu alongside of MintInstall for the first time in several versions. I'm glad to see that back, and I hope they continue to use it for the foreseeable future.
The amount of included eyecandy is also very nice. It's a step up from previous versions, but not anything that would be greatly overboard. So in other words, it's subtle, but well done. Hardware is also handled well, with everything being detected and properly installed right out of the box, which is somewhat to be expected, as I've never had issues with it on hardware before, ever.
Install
Overall the install is more or less identical to all previous installs. IE, just click next, next, next, etc. There are some nice changes to certain parts of the install, including the time zone selection option. That is one of the better laid out screens for choosing your time zone that I've seen. It gives you a very visual representation of where you are in the world, and where your city falls into which time zone.
Another interesting little change in the installer includes a warning when your password isn't long enough to be properly secure. That's a nice touch, and will remind people, hopefully, to make sure that they're using properly strong passwords.
Install takes about 20-30 minutes and does a pretty good job. I certainly didn't find any issues with the system after it was installed, so that's a great sign.
New and Updated Features
Mint 7 KDE comes with a wide range of new features, as well as some old standbys. This includes Linux kernel 2.6.28, KDE 4.2.4 and Xorg 7.4, as well as Amarok 2.1 and an updated MintInstall. MintUpdate has also seen some improvements, including changes to how the ChangeLogs are handled, as well as package sizes and improvements to usability.
MintUpload has also undergone some welcome improvements, including the removal of all advertisements, the addition of some nice enhancements to the GUI, SCP/SFTP support, and more. Firefox now comes with both the Moonlight plugin and support for Silverlight 1.x, neither of which I'm happy to see. But if people want it, I guess it's gotta be there.
There's also a lot of other improvements, but most seem focused towards stabilizing Mint KDE in the post KDE 4.x transition. And while I'd have liked them to have gone to KDE 4.3, Mint KDE 7 went into feature freeze before 4.3 was declared production ready.
As an interesting aside to the shorter than normal list of new features in Mint KDE 7 is the face that there were two fairly annoying bugs left in by accident, however, the release notes explain how to fix these. I would figure that it'd be easier to just submit a patch that'd resolve the issues rather than tell people how to fix them. But who am I to say?
Overview
Upon loading the desktop, Mint gives you a welcome screen that gives you links to explore Mint 7 KDE, get help, or contribute to the project. For those who aren't familiar with the KDE 4 interface, it's a bit different than the 3.5.x line, but it's still KDE, so if you've used KDE before, you can find your way around 4.2 fairly easily.
In general, what you get in the LiveDVD is what you get on the desktop. The biggest advantage of the installed version is that you get to keep your settings and you get a speed improvement. As for speed and load times, they're very good, and a far improvement over the previous Mint 6 KDE.
One downside to Mint 7 KDE is that it uses the new Dolphin file manager, which isn't Mint's fault, but rather something KDE did. A simple way around that is to simply use a different file manager, such as Krusader. However, there are times when you have no choice BUT to use Dolphin. I'm not at all happy with it, and don't think it should be in there, but if you only use it once every couple of months, then you're fine. But I certainly wouldn't use it as your daily driver file manager.
Conclusion
Overall I like Mint 7 KDE. The use of KDE 4.2 is good, but it leaves you wanting a bit more. And that's in no way the fault of Mint. It's just the fact that KDE4 is still maturing. But as for the things that are controllable by Mint, everything is in great shape with no noticeable flaws that I could find.
I'm sure there are, as nothing is completely bug free. However, I kicked it around for a while and it ran without problems. So I give it a two thumbs up and my recommendation once more. It's definitely a great distribution for new users and should easily be included in any collection of distributions you might have for giving to people interested in trying out Linux.
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