Linux
Mint
is a Ubuntu-based distribution which aims to bring a more complete,
elegant and friendly desktop solution to its users. To do this, the
project offers multimedia codecs, Flash and Java support right out of
the box, along with some custom applications. Mint, the child of
Clement Lefebvre, has attracted a lot of attention over the past three
years. Some people are very happy with the product and provide the
project with a steady
stream of donations,
while others downplay the distribution, claiming Mint is just Ubuntu
with additional codecs and a different theme. It had been over a year
since I last tried Mint and I decided to see what the project currently
has to offer. Before setting out to test drive Mint, I had a chance to
exchange e-mails with Clement Lefebvre (pictured on the right) about
his creation...
* * * * *
DW: What's new in Mint 8? What are some of the new features people will enjoy in Helena?
CL: We
answered many of the requests we received after the release of Linux
Mint 7 and some of the changes we made were quite popular among our
users. The Update Manager now allows you to ignore updates for certain
packages. The level associated with each package is something we
maintain so this addition gives a lot more power to the user. We also
improved many aspects of the Software Manager and we implemented
numerous little things to make the system
more comfortable to use.
DW: One
comment that comes up a lot on the DistroWatch forum is that Mint uses
the Ubuntu repository, rather than host its own. Would you care to
explain why that is and if there are any plans to develop your own
repositories? I understand that Mint has a small repository of about
440 packages, could you tell us about that?
CL: Linux
Mint isn't just based on Ubuntu, it's fully compatible with it. Unlike
what Canonical does with Debian, we do not fork the Ubuntu repositories
or break compatibility with our base distribution. We use two
technologies to make the most of our package base while remaining
independent in our choices and the changes we want to implement: APT
pinning (which is well-known to Debian users) and adjustments (which is
a technology of our own). When we want something to act differently
than it does in Ubuntu we can either maintain the package ourselves or
dynamically tell our system to adjust the changes we require. Our
repositories are given a higher priority than the other ones, ensuring
that Linux Mint users pick the versions we maintain rather than the
ones coming from upstream.
Developing our own repositories
represents a massive amount of work. If you look at the various
distributions on the market you'll notice very few projects which have
the resources to both maintain their own packages and develop new
innovations on a regular basis. I can think of only a few, and these
are backed with corporate funding - with a business model that usually
requires them to shift their focus away from what matters to home users
and onto more lucrative activities such as business support.
Of course, with our own repositories we would become more independent.
I would personally like to slow things down and to be more conservative
on the base of the system and when it comes to hardware detection, to
ensure more coherence and less regressions between releases, but we're
more than happy with what's done upstream, whether it comes from
projects like GNOME, KDE, the Linux kernel team or even distributions
like Debian or Ubuntu. Every six months our own features shine on top
of a large amount of upstream improvements and the result is fantastic.
If our goal is to get to a perfect desktop then we're only introducing
change when we think we can do better. There's still much to do to
improve the desktop and so it's not the time for us to focus away from
this. We leave the system to upstream projects and we don't feel the
need to introduce changes in that domain.
On the things we do want to change, APT pinning and our adjustment
system give us the flexibility we need and so we don't need to
duplicate and/or patch every single package in separate repositories.
With regards to server loads, both Linux Mint and Ubuntu are mature
projects with mirror networks. For the distribution, a network of
mirror hosts is very important. It makes it easy for people to download
and use the operating system, it reduces the load on each server and it
improves the overall performance for each user. For the mirrors, this
is also very important as once they have the resources hosted locally,
they can offer them easily to their own audience. Let's take a national
ISP as an example. If many people in the country download and use Linux
Mint, that creates significant bandwidth and requests from this country
to our servers in Germany or Ubuntu servers in the USA. It's in the
interest of the ISP to mirror both Ubuntu and Mint so that the local
users find the same resources locally. To the distributions, that means
fewer things to worry about. To the users that means local servers, to
the ISP that means less outgoing requests.
I wish I could answer the question more briefly but there's so much to
say about the hosting strategy. To summarize, there's no real advantage
in maintaining our own repositories at the moment as it doesn't
represent any significant issues when it comes to server loads or our
independence as a distribution and it would require a lot of work,
attention and focus which would inevitably be shifted away from what
matters the most: improving the desktop.
DW: The
Mint web site makes it very clear that the project is based on Ubuntu
and, in turn, Debian. When you started with Mint was there any move to
work within the Ubuntu community more? Or did you see your creation as
being its own distro right from the start?
CL: The
project was independent from the very start and although the system
itself technically qualifies as an Ubuntu flavour (since it's both
based on and compatible with it, and since the base system is almost
the same) the distribution itself, in terms of direction, structure and
ways of working is completely different. We consider Ubuntu as an
upstream component and, as prominent as it is within the end result,
it's still something we consider as a part, which can be changed,
modified, patched and configured to fit in. The same way we're
committed to use GNOME as our desktop, we're committed to use Ubuntu as
our package base, and the reason for this is simple: these components
give us the best results to get the job done. That doesn't mean we're
not looking elsewhere though. We're often trying out different
desktops, in particular with community editions such as KDE, Xfce,
Fluxbox. And we're interested also in porting our technology to other
package bases such as Debian (for which there's a project planned) and
Fedora. Because of the complexity of these upstream projects and
because we're focused on our main task, we're not actively involved in
working with them or in developing our own desktop or package base.
DW: Your
site offers professional support packages at reasonable prices. Do you
have any support clients, and if so, are they mostly home or business
clients?
CL: We
only have a very small number of customers and they're mostly home or
small business clients. We're expensive when compared to Canonical,
Mandriva or other support offerings in the Linux market and that's
because the support is done by the development team itself. We're also
careful when it comes to support as we want to remain focused on the
distribution itself rather than on commercial activities revolving
around it. Our business model is extremely light and very efficient.
We're funded by our user base and the on-line activity it generates and
that allows us to be successful without worrying about whether or not
what we're doing is lucrative.
DW: Mint seems ideal for home use. What features does it have which would appeal to businesses?
CL: It's
robust, predictable, modern, comfortable, efficient - all the reasons
why you'd want to use it at home also make for an ideal workstation.
It's quite popular among small to medium companies. Our project is
small though, and it lacks independence, long term strategies,
marketing, PR and support structures. For these reasons, it doesn't
appeal to large businesses, where Red Hat, Novell and, to a lesser
extent, Mandriva and Ubuntu are more viable solutions.
DW: There are a lot of applications on the CD. Do you use any special compression methods to make it all fit?
CL: Yes, the live CD is compressed with Squashfs. There's about 2.5 GB compressed within these 700 MB :)
DW: What comes next? What will we see in Mint version 9?
CL: It's
a bit too soon for me to talk about this but we're planning on two
significant developments - a community website with a hardware
database, ideas (similar to Brainstorm), blogging, social-networking,
support, software portal and many other features. And a complete
re-write of our Software Manager. This time we want it to be
package-centric (so hopefully it will replace Synaptic) with over
30,000 packages, user reviews, combining the best from the current
mintInstall, the GNOME application installer and the Ubuntu Software
Center.
DW: Anything else you'd like to share? Words of wisdom, comments?
CL: We're
having a lot of fun making Linux Mint. Whether it's integrating
upstream projects, implementing our own ideas, interacting with the
community, it's always fun. And it's a pleasure for us to see people
getting excited about what we do and users happy with our releases. And
then there's also so much more than Linux Mint, so many distributions
to try and to download, so many other software applications to install,
there's a world of fun for everyone to enjoy. I think that's the beauty
of open source, that energy and how easy it is for developers to build
on top of what's already there and how exciting the whole thing can be.
I hope this will last. There's also important questions to be addressed
and conflicts to be resolved when it comes to free software and open
source and we shouldn't avoid them, but to all people who bring joy and
excitement to us and who keep Linux going, I'd like to say thank you.
That's the most important aspect of all and that's what we're all here
for.
DW: Clem, thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer questions. It's greatly appreciated.
* * * * *
Linux Mint comes in five different flavours, depending on the needs of
the user. The Main edition is a GNOME live CD for 32-bit and 64-bit
machines. There's a Universal edition, which removes certain software
to make the product legally distributable all around the world and
includes additional language packs. Rounding out the options are the
KDE and Fluxbox editions. The disc images can be downloaded free of
charge from the project's website or purchased for a small fee of
US$10. While my copy of the Main edition was downloading, I took a look
around the Mint site.
The distribution's web site is easy to navigate with clear menus and
plenty of useful information. Aside from the download and donation
pages, there is also a project Wiki which contains a lot of useful
information, HOWTOs and frequently asked questions. There's a forum for
people who want to chat, share experiences and ask questions. There are
links to reviews, a project blog and a contact page for people who wish
to speak directly with the developers. The Mint team also offers
professional support agreements at a reasonable price. One of the most
impressive features of the site may be the project's software portal.
Mint has a small software repository of 438 packages which the user can
browse through by name, by category and by popularity. Users are able
to download the packages and install them with just a single click.
Additionally, users can login to write reviews of the software and rate
products to help future users find what they need. Some of the software
modules which caught my attention were World of Goo (the demo), Opera
and Google Earth.
With my latest CD image downloaded and burned to disc, I sat down to
test drive Mint 8, code-named "Helena". The disc begins by showing a
green-themed GRUB menu which provides a few options. The user can boot
into the Linux Mint live desktop, start Mint in Compatibility Mode or
kick off OEM mode. The OEM option starts the installer without booting
into the live desktop and the Compatibility Mode tries to run the
desktop with the VESA graphics driver enabled and APCI turned off.
Selecting the default option takes the user to an Emerald City edition
of GNOME where the application menu and taskbar sit at the bottom of
the screen. A few icons for exploring the file system and a launcher
for the system installer sit in the upper-left corner of the desktop.
The installer takes the user through the usual steps of selecting a
preferred language, the proper time zone, and keyboard layout. When we
arrive at the partition manager, there are three options available to
the user. The system can take over the entire disk, try to install Mint
alongside any other OS on the drive, or the user can manually arrange
partitions. The manual partition manager is pretty straightforward,
giving the user the ability to set the size, format and mount point of
each partition. The installer supports most common file systems,
including ext4, ext3, ext2, JFS, XFS and ReiserFS. The only feature I
missed here was the ability to encrypt an entire partition, but it is
possible to encrypt individual home directories. In the next step, the
installer asks the user to create an account and a password. The final
screen provides the option to configure the boot loader and then the
installer goes to work copying over the required files.
Linux Mint 8 - the system installer introduces itself
(full image size: 348kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
When booting up Mint from the hard drive for the first time, there's no
further configuration required, the user is sent directly to a login
screen. Once logged in, they're presented with a welcome dialogue
providing helpful links. These links direct the user to the
distribution's manual, the forum and the release notes. There's also a
link which will connect the user to Mint's IRC chat room where members
of the community can provide assistance. The next thing I noticed was a
padlock icon in the system tray. This icon changes, depending on
whether updates are available and it provides a subtle way to let the
users know their update status. The program blissfully does not nag the
user if ignored, a habit some distributions have fallen into.
Though it takes just 2.5 GB of hard drive space, Mint comes packed with
useful software. The application menu is loaded with a disc burner,
text editor, calculator, file search utility, GIMP, OpenOffice.org,
Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, a BitTorrent client, IRC client, movie
player, audio player, a system information tool and a few applications
to transfer files. Mint also includes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)
for developers, popular multimedia codecs, Flash, an application to
perform backups, and Java. To tweak the system, there are tools to
customize the look and feel of the desktop, manage printers, configure
the firewall, use Windows wireless drivers, two package managers and an
update program. All of these system configuration tools can be accessed
separately or via Mint's all-in-one Control Center.
Linux Mint 8 - using features in the control center
(full image size: 225kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
While on the topic of software, let's explore the two package managers
offered by Mint. The first is Synaptic, which will be familiar to
anyone who has used Debian, Ubuntu or other members of that family.
Software categories are displayed in the left side of the window and
(often cryptic) package names and a description are displayed to the
right. Mint uses Ubuntu's repositories, providing over 28,000 packages.
The other program is Mint's own mintInstall, which has a similar look
to Synaptic with a few important differences. The main difference is
that mintInstall connects to Mint's small repository of 438 packages.
The categories are arranged in a more intuitive fashion, and each
available program is given a popularity rating. Optionally, clicking on
a package displays a screenshot of the desired program in action along
with user reviews, similar to the way things are arranged on the
project's web site. The update manager is also customized, acting very
much like Ubuntu's update tool, but with an additional rating system.
The ratings (ranging 1 - 5) tell the user how important and safe an
update is. Critical updates which have been tested are rated as 1 while
less important updates or ones which may break existing functionality
are rated closer to 5. The user has the ability to select which levels
of updates will be visible to the system (allowing dangerous updates to
be hidden) and which levels will be automatically selected for download
when the Update Manager is run.
While much of the software in Mint is what you could expect to find in
its parent, Ubuntu, there are some highlights I feel are worth
mentioning. For example, the Backup Tool application is a great way to
archive the user's home directory with just a few mouse clicks. The
File Uploader allows users to create links to remote computers and
drag-n-drop files from their local machine to the remote server.
Combining these tools means a user can back up their files and send the
archive over a secure connection to another machine with six mouse
clicks and no typing involved - handy for users with less technical
experience. Mint also comes with Giver, a file sharing tool which
allows users to transfer files to other people on the network using a
simple point-and-click method. I can see this being a very useful tool
in a small office environment. The graphical Ubuntu firewall
application is pre-installed on Mint, which is good to see.
A program called Domain Blocker gives the administrator the ability to
deny access to web sites - handy for concerned parents and people who
wish to block advertisements. The application menu itself is an unusual
creation. It attempts to merge the main GNOME menus (Applications,
Places and System) into one large menu. The new approach took me a
while to get used to, but I find it's growing on me. One last
application I was happy to find pre-installed was APTonCD. This tool
gives the user the ability to save all cached software packages into a
CD image and, optionally, burn them to a disc. The benefit of this is
that a person with several computers to set up can download all the
available updates onto one machine and then transfer the updates to a
USB drive or CD. The updates are readily available for the next machine
without using any bandwidth to re-download the packages. There are
other ways of doing this, of course, but APTonCD is probably the
easiest option for end-users.
Linux Mint 8 - finding software and getting assistance
(full image size: 294kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
My test drive with Mint included two computers, a generic desktop
machine with a 2.5 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA graphics
card; and my HP laptop with a dual-core 2 GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM and an
Intel graphics card. As far as detecting and using my hardware was
concerned, Mint performed perfectly. And, to date, it's the only
distribution which can make that claim. Recent versions of both Fedora
and Ubuntu come very close, but Mint worked flawlessly with no manual
configuration. My desktop was set to the desired resolution, sound
worked out of the box, my laptop's touchpad worked properly, the webcam
functioned as desired, my printer was detected as were my wireless card
and Novatel mobile modem. To see how Mint would perform with fewer
resources, I ran the distribution in a VirtualBox virtual machine with
variable amounts of memory. I found Mint was very responsive with 1024
MB of RAM and performance continued to be good down to about 512MB.
Below that point, applications became sluggish.
With such a large collection of applications and a tendency toward
user-friendliness, I excepted Mint to disappoint when it came to
security. By and large, I was mistaken. The Mint team walks a careful
line between giving the user what they want and protecting them. For
instance, when using the live CD the user is logged into the system as
a non-root user, called "mint". This user is able to mount local hard
drives and read from them, but write access is denied, preventing
accidental data loss. Once installed locally, the Mint administrator
can grant new users administration rights, regular desktop rights or
set them up as unprivileged users. Though administrator tasks can be
performed (by privileged users) via sudo, the root account is also
available for people who wish to use it. By default, the home
directories of regular users are left open for other users to read, but
the root user's directory is locked down. I was happy to find that Mint
doesn't run most network services by default, leaving secure shell, for
example, disabled. The exception is Samba, which is running with
reasonable defaults.
Linux Mint 8 - creating a different look for Mint
(full image size: 265kB, screen resolution 1366x768 pixels)
During my time with Mint I experienced no application crashes, no
lock-ups and no cryptic error messages. Care has been taken to make
features accessible to the user without being annoying and without
getting in the way, making Mint not only a user-friendly, but enjoyable
experience. While Mint caters to novice Linux users, the developers
have tried to make their distro appealing to the more experienced crowd
as well. For example, having GCC installed out of the box is convenient
for developers. For people who don't like the custom Mint application
menu, it can be swapped out for a more traditional menu with a few
mouse clicks. If the user isn't thrilled with the constant green theme,
it can be replaced in seconds. People who don't like the Mint software
manager can use the popular Synaptic instead. For free software
enthusiasts who don't want to download proprietary software, there's
the Universal edition of Mint. And, while some people might be
concerned about bloat from all of the extra applications, Mint requires
less hard disk space than Mandriva and only slightly more space than
Fedora. The Mint team provides their product free of charge, but also
offers support for people looking for business solutions.
Mint isn't perfect -- no distribution or operating system is -- but it
does very well. There is only one thing on my wish-list for Mint: more
documentation for some of the small applications, such as the Backup
Tool, Giver and the File Uploader. These are great little programs and
I think more users would feel comfortable with them if they came with
some examples. That desire aside, I am very impressed with Mint 8, both
the product and the project as a whole. It's ideal for Linux newcomers
and more experienced users who want their computers to function right
away. I found the system to be responsive, friendly and immediately
useful. I highly recommend giving Mint a try.
