This is like Greatest Hits week, visiting all the of the old favorites from the past year; today is the turn for LinuxMint, an Ubuntu (Feisty) based distro that is very easy to set up and a wonder to use, even on older hardware. A preview is below, and more after the flip:
LinuxMint is from Ireland, and is much less picky about how 'Libre' a distro is is; all of the codecs, etc., are available as soon as you boot into your new desktop, so there's no need to go hunting for them to get the full web experience (not that it's that much trouble in totally 'Libre' distros, just sayin').
This version, 3.1 'Celena', ships with the Beryl compositing window manager and the GNOME desktop. As it is based on Ubuntu, the installation process is just as simple as ever: choose your language, keyboard layout and language, time zone (by clicking on a nifty map for your nearest city), Name, user name, password, disk partitioning scheme (I chose guided, use entire disk), and then you're off to the races.
And swift it is; after only 17 minutes I was logging into the LinuxMint desktop, where I was met with a new (at least to me) feature: the ability to enable the root account (Ubuntu only normally uses the 'sudo' account), which, once enabled led me into the familiar lovely LinuxMint desktop environment.
As I mentioned earlier, Beryl (and not Compiz-Fusion) is included with this version of LinuxMint, and getting the spinning cube and the Mac OS X-like 'expo' effect is as simple as going to the Beryl Manager, clicking on it, and then spinning wildly to your heart's desire. No need to logout, reboot, etc. As a matter of fact, I used it during the liveCD portion of doing the installation, just for kicks.
After checking out all the usual test sites (Youtube, deezer, mp3 streaming, etc.) to make sure all the codecs were in fact operative, there was something of a hiccup in my test machine, totally unrelated to LinuxMint: apparently installing five different systems all in the space of a couple days did the old lappy in--it'll have to be cannibalized for parts (HDD, ram, etc.) before it's recycled.
Back on topic, LinuxMint 3.1 is a superb effort by Clem and his team; there really is almost no easier distro to set up and get going, with everything ready for you to enjoy the full web experience out of the box--all it takes is a computer (preferably with Vista on it), fifteen minutes of your time, basic knowledge of geography, name, and time zone, and you're good to go.
It'll be interesting to see where they take this once Ubuntu hits the next release (Gutsy Gibbon, 7.10), due out shortly; unless you really, really need to write fire on your desktop, I imagine staying with a distro based on Feisty Fawn (7.04, current release) will be a good decision for the medium term. Update: If you decide to get this, then the torrent is absolutely smoking right now; it took only an hour and a half, as compared to the twelve plus hours to get Freespire (which no one wants, but will check it out for a laugh). You can get the torrent at Distrowatch or Linuxtracker.
As always, if there is anything I have left out, please leave a comment; additionally, if there any tech-related questions/comments (Open Source or no), then have at them. Cheers!