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Total Linux lightweight here but I just wanted to post from my Linuxmint 15 machine. I have tried Ubuntu in the past and left impressed but ultimately tired of fighting various problems.

This is the first install where everything went without a hiccup. Everything is there for media playback,flash and internet out of the box. I bought a rosewill usb wireless adapter and when I plugged it in I was expecting some sort of driver status but instead it just notified me that wireless networks were available. Amazing!

My first experience with WINE was good but I didn't work it out very much.

Anyone have thoughts on Mint vs Manjaro vs Lite? Those are just some of the reviews I've been reading. I want to decide on a distro, back up my main rig and cut the win7 strings.

Coran Fixx wrote:

Total Linux lightweight here but I just wanted to post from my Linuxmint 15 machine. I have tried Ubuntu in the past and left impressed but ultimately tired of fighting various problems.

This is the first install where everything went without a hiccup. Everything is there for media playback,flash and internet out of the box. I bought a rosewill usb wireless adapter and when I plugged it in I was expecting some sort of driver status but instead it just notified me that wireless networks were available. Amazing!

My first experience with WINE was good but I didn't work it out very much.

Anyone have thoughts on Mint vs Manjaro vs Lite? Those are just some of the reviews I've been reading. I want to decide on a distro, back up my main rig and cut the win7 strings.

I am a fellow Linux n00b and I've been running Mint 14 for about three months now. Had an old laptop that ran like crap with Vista, and decided to try Linux for no other reason than to try Linux. Figured if anything it'd be something to tinker with, and occasionally surf the web, etc.

Started off with Ubuntu, but that didn't work due to graphical issues. So I tried Mint 14, completely expecting to try it for a few weeks and then move on to something else.

But the thing is, it's worked so well that I just haven't gotten around to removing it. I've started using it as my primary work-from-home laptop because the VPN and remote desktop (Remmina) work so much better than my company laptop running Windows. For that purpose, it works like a champ. Aside from that I use it for surfing the web and not much else. I haven't even attempting anything like gaming. The laptop is pretty old, running a Celeron.

The install went perfectly; it found everything and installed everything correctly without any problems. Networking works better than it ever did with Windows - though I blame more of that on the bloatware that Lenovo installs than on Windows. Was able to connect to our wireless all-in-one printer very easily - haven't gotten the scanning features to work, as those are handled via software, but then again I haven't really put much effort into that.

If I could just figure out how to get Netflix to work, it'd be the perfect laptop... well, aside from the pathetic battery life and weighing a ton

Coran Fixx wrote:

Anyone have thoughts on Mint vs Manjaro vs Lite? Those are just some of the reviews I've been reading. I want to decide on a distro, back up my main rig and cut the win7 strings.

I use Mint on some old Dell laptops at work. They have Broadcom wireless cards in them, and it's easier to install Mint then get the drivers working in Fedora or Scientific Linux.

I haven't use Manjaro or Lite. This is actually the first I've heard of those.

Deciding on a distro kind of depends on what you want. Mint is a good desktop distro. It has all the codecs, and what not, people like, and you can get most Ubuntu specific software to install on it since most of the changes are cosmetic. 6 month release cycles get to be a pain unless you stick with the LTS.

OpenSUSE has a great desktop experience as well, but it's not as well known as the other top distros. Yast is awful, but it does have longer release cycles.

Fedora is solid. It's Red Hat's beta play ground, but the release engineering quality is impeccable. It sticks very closely to the principles of being a FOSS distro, so don't expect niceties like it offering to install the Nvidia drivers for you. However, since it is a Red Hat project, it's well supported by third parties.

RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux are super stable. The userland software can be a little stale, but it's rock solid.

cphite wrote:

If I could just figure out how to get Netflix to work, it'd be the perfect laptop...

People have gotten it working, but you'll need Wine to do it.

cphite wrote:

If I could just figure out how to get Netflix to work, it'd be the perfect laptop... well, aside from the pathetic battery life and weighing a ton

A bit hackish, but it works rather well, and it's as good as it gets, since Netflix does not acknowledge the concept of a desktop OS other than Windows or OSX:

http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2012/11/ppa ... p-app.html

Forge wrote:

A bit hackish, but it works rather well, and it's as good as it gets, since Netflix does not acknowledge the concept of a desktop OS other than Windows or OSX:

http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2012/11/ppa ... p-app.html

Got it to work on Kubuntu 12.04 LTS (daughter's laptop) with minimal grief and I'm a total Linux noob. Linux experiment is to stop the ritual nukes from orbit caused by a 15YO who will click on anything if it promises more anime.