I was using LinuxMint 17.3 Xfce 64-bit on my entry level notebook since the day I got the notebook, close to a year ago. I was tempted with the possibility of using the latest and greatest when the newer versions of the OS were available but all my tries ended in frustrations and I got back to LM 17.3.
But, there was a bad judgement in updating the OS. I update the software using the command line, always. This is one thing that I got from the old days of using Ubuntu, when the GUI just used to freeze when updating or result in incomplete update which resulted in an unusable OS.
There was an update that showed in the LM 17.3 GUI update tool. Some system specific update, and that too in green color, which meant that the update was trusted. So, I tried to update the system from the command line. But, in there this update was held back. So, I updated using the GUI updater and from that day the boot splash would just blink rapidly until the login screen appeared. This blinking would stop when pressing the brightness control buttons on the notebook.
This resulted in a bad experience, since most of the time my notebook is used by my family members and they were not impressed by this behavior. I tried many things to rectify this problem. The closest I got was to show the grub menu. This eliminated the blinking but added more steps to open the OS. And, in the grub menu, the required OS entry was not the default, we would have to press the up arrow key to highlight the required entry and then press Enter.
So, when LM 18.1 Xfce was released I jumped to the opportunity to install the new OS. But the blinking problem was present in the new LM too. This just left a bad impression on me about LM upgrades. Well, since LM 17.3 was amazingly stable and the newer upgrades did not do it justice.
Now, I was looking for a worthy alternative. After extensive searching and reading reviews for many distros, I selected two distros: one was Peppermint 7 and the other a arch based distro. Why Peppermint? Because, it is Ubuntu based and has a very similar set of GUI and applications to LM.
Peppermint 7 uses a combination of Xfce and LXDE as its GUI. It uses the Xfce whisker menu and panels. The other thing is that it uses the same file explorer, Nemo, of LinuxMint. So the familiarity was already there. Plus I am more comfortable in using Ubuntu than other distros.
Installing Peppermint 7:
As in all UEFI notebooks, while installing, you are required to create a efi partition for installing the bootloader. My notebook hosts just one OS. The disk partitioning that I did was:
2048 MiB for efi | 8192 MiB for Swap | 25600 MiB for root | remaining for the home partition
The bootloader will go in the efi partition.
The installation takes its own sweet time to complete. At one time I thought to close the installation and go to the next distro, but then the installation progressed a little and I let it run its course. After installation, the system is very fast and smooth.
Applications:
Peppermint OS lets you combine online web applications with the desktop. And, by default, the application set is minimal. Even LibreOffice is not installed by default. During installation, the install wizard does ask you to install the updates and media codecs, but I did not select these options at install time. After install I got around 150 MiB worth of updates and around 80 MiB of codecs (+ 30 something MiB adobe flash). After this I installed the crosscore fonts and google chrome.
End:
It has been a short time that I have started to use Peppermint 7, but I am already liking its style and subtleness. The blinking issue that was in LM 18.1 and the updated LM 17.3 is not present in Peppermint 7. The Ubuntu base along with LM based software allows me to use the system in a familiar manner.
But, there was a bad judgement in updating the OS. I update the software using the command line, always. This is one thing that I got from the old days of using Ubuntu, when the GUI just used to freeze when updating or result in incomplete update which resulted in an unusable OS.
There was an update that showed in the LM 17.3 GUI update tool. Some system specific update, and that too in green color, which meant that the update was trusted. So, I tried to update the system from the command line. But, in there this update was held back. So, I updated using the GUI updater and from that day the boot splash would just blink rapidly until the login screen appeared. This blinking would stop when pressing the brightness control buttons on the notebook.
This resulted in a bad experience, since most of the time my notebook is used by my family members and they were not impressed by this behavior. I tried many things to rectify this problem. The closest I got was to show the grub menu. This eliminated the blinking but added more steps to open the OS. And, in the grub menu, the required OS entry was not the default, we would have to press the up arrow key to highlight the required entry and then press Enter.
So, when LM 18.1 Xfce was released I jumped to the opportunity to install the new OS. But the blinking problem was present in the new LM too. This just left a bad impression on me about LM upgrades. Well, since LM 17.3 was amazingly stable and the newer upgrades did not do it justice.
Now, I was looking for a worthy alternative. After extensive searching and reading reviews for many distros, I selected two distros: one was Peppermint 7 and the other a arch based distro. Why Peppermint? Because, it is Ubuntu based and has a very similar set of GUI and applications to LM.
Peppermint 7 uses a combination of Xfce and LXDE as its GUI. It uses the Xfce whisker menu and panels. The other thing is that it uses the same file explorer, Nemo, of LinuxMint. So the familiarity was already there. Plus I am more comfortable in using Ubuntu than other distros.
Installing Peppermint 7:
As in all UEFI notebooks, while installing, you are required to create a efi partition for installing the bootloader. My notebook hosts just one OS. The disk partitioning that I did was:
2048 MiB for efi | 8192 MiB for Swap | 25600 MiB for root | remaining for the home partition
The bootloader will go in the efi partition.
The installation takes its own sweet time to complete. At one time I thought to close the installation and go to the next distro, but then the installation progressed a little and I let it run its course. After installation, the system is very fast and smooth.
Applications:
Peppermint OS lets you combine online web applications with the desktop. And, by default, the application set is minimal. Even LibreOffice is not installed by default. During installation, the install wizard does ask you to install the updates and media codecs, but I did not select these options at install time. After install I got around 150 MiB worth of updates and around 80 MiB of codecs (+ 30 something MiB adobe flash). After this I installed the crosscore fonts and google chrome.
End:
It has been a short time that I have started to use Peppermint 7, but I am already liking its style and subtleness. The blinking issue that was in LM 18.1 and the updated LM 17.3 is not present in Peppermint 7. The Ubuntu base along with LM based software allows me to use the system in a familiar manner.
