I go way back with Linux on the desktop. I haven’t used anything else since around 1993: first rolling my own, a short time with Yggdrasil, then briefly Red Hat Linux, and then about 10 years of Debian, until I was seduced by the polish and promise of Ubuntu, where I have remained until recently.
While I continue to use Debian on my server systems, I switched my desktops/laptops to Ubuntu because it was based on Debian, yet held out the promise of a more polished interface with less need to tweak and tinker to get things right. I also admire Mark Shuttleworth and wanted his Ubuntu project to succeed, as I felt it would be very good for Linux in general. Indeed I think it has been.
Over the last year or so however, I have felt increasingly unhappy in Ubuntu land. Successive releases seemed to introduce major changes which I did not necessarily want, and the overall experience became slower and more cumbersome. Even the much lauded 6 Month Release Cycle became a pain (remember, I use Debian on my servers, and when you install a server against the “stable” release, and that’s it – 5 years later it is still running “stable” – and usually with an uptime to match!).
Gooey Mess
And then along comes Ubuntu 11.04, and Unity. Oh god.
Now, I’m no big fan of Gnome. I was very happy on KDE 3.x until version 4.x and it went all Gooey. I stayed on KDE 3.5 until it was basically unsupported, and only then did I switch to Gnome.
Gnome did the job. It let me manage my windows and workspace and largely kept out of the way. That’s all I want from a GUI – a Graphical User Interface – not all the Gooey mess that is Unity/KDE 4.x. Unfortunately, this Gooey infection seems to be spreading everywhere and Gnome itself will be following suit with the Gnome Shell.
This left me in a quandary. Where can I turn? Is there any safe harbour for an old-timer like me who just wants to get things done? Where can I find the stability and dependability of Debian, but with a slightly more refined desktop experience that is not going to turn out to be a Gooey dead end?
My first task was to find a desktop environment which a) I could live with and b) was not going to go the Gooey route. I did this by installing a virtual machine with Debian Testing on it, and proceeded to install all the available GUIs (apart from KDE, Gnome and Unity) and take them for a spin. It did not take too long to settle on Xfce, although in it’s raw state it left something to be desired in the looks department (what’s with the Rat logo?!).
Enter Linux Mint Xfce
Having decided upon Xfce, it wasn’t long before I came across Linux Mint Xfce. Ah ha!
- Based on Debian Testing – perfect!
- Rolling Release – always up to date
- Nicely Polished Desktop – I’ll take green over brown any day!
- Active and Helpful Community
- Xfce – not likely to turn to Goo(ey)
Downloading the install ISO, I decided I had better install to a virtual machine prior to taking the big step of installing it onto my main desktop PC. In actual fact, in the time it took to boot up the install iso and do the virtual machine installation, I had already decided to “Go Mint” on the strength of the live CD experience alone. An hour later and Mint/Xfce was up and running on a spare partition and I was ready to go.
My desktop PC is no slouch, but the first thing I noticed was the huge increase in speed as compared to Ubuntu/Gnome. Serious speed. Everything is faster – loading apps, switching windows, booting up. And no, I was not running Compiz or any other guff on Ubuntu which would account for it. It seems to me that feature creep and reliance on over-powered hardware is not doing Gnome/Ubuntu and the rest any favours. I much prefer my fast computer to actually be FAST!
Last night I migrated my last remaining computer over to Mint/Xfce – a Macbook 5,1 which had previously taken so much effort to get everything working on Ubuntu 10.4 that I kept putting off any upgrade. I had instead just installed the Xfce packages and begun using Xfce rather than Gnome.
I needn’t have worried. The install went as smooth as could be, and apart from having to manually install the WiFi driver, it works perfectly. Oh, and did I mention that it is fast? It’s FAST 