Linux Mint is an Ubuntu based distribution of Linux.  Ubuntu is a distribution that is receiving extensive software support.  Unfortunately their are a number of programs that are available to Ubuntu users that are not available for other distributions of linux.  So I was anxious to try Mint and find out if the things that I have  read about it will be true in my case.

What I have read:

I have read that Linux Mint 7 provides support for proprietary drivers which can be useful for certain pieces of hardware.  For example accelerated 3d and 3d desktop effects.  I have also read that Linux Mint provides better support for virtualbox.  Since many linux users utilize that program I was anxious to find out if I had found an Ubuntu based distro that would make it easy to set this up.

What I found:

Their does seem to be some support for proprietary drivers.  But the support seems to be half baked.  With the drivers for my nvidia which works fine in Mandriva crashing everytime I booted the system up.  When I finally did manage to get in by running in low graphics mode.  I tried out other drivers and spent hours researching I found that at best a few individuals got accelerated 3d and desktop effects to work once or twice and then upon reboot had the same problem all over again.

Then their is the claim that virtualbox installs

trouble free.  However upon installing virtualbox and setting up an os in it when I started it I got the same old problem that I used to run into with the display drivers.  Again this is a program that runs fine in Mandriva linux.  If you are not a gamer and don’t mind the low graphics mode, or perhaps if your card has better support then you may have a positive experience with linux mint.  However under the circumstances I cannot recomend linux mint to new linux users.  If you are going to run it with an nvidia in low graphics mode then you would be ahead to download the version that does not include proprietary driver support.

If you don’t mind tinkering with Ubuntu in order to enjoy the additional software support that Ubuntu enjoys then linux mint may be for you.  It has a very nice interface.  And various codecs were ready to go out of the box in my case.  I could run wmv files and flash player and no problems with sound in comparison to Ubuntu.  Their are also features available during install for importing your windows documents.  So their are some nice features.

For new linux users however I would not recomend this.  As such ones will find themselves tinkering with alot of things that work out of the box in other linux distributions.

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