Linux Mint 10 KDE Release

Linux mint 10 kde was released yesterday, and I've tinkered with it a tiny bit. It seems very good to me. There are things I've already liked and disliked about the OS, but it's something I'll be contuing to mess with for a little while. What do you guys think about it?

Have they started putting any of their own branding or anything into it? I always thought it was cool they offered a pretty solid KDE implementation but found it a bit odd they just left KDE looking very vanilla, considering how the Gnome version is pretty Mintified

eldersnake wrote:Have they started putting any of their own branding or anything into it? I always thought it was cool they offered a pretty solid KDE implementation but found it a bit odd they just left KDE looking very vanilla, considering how the Gnome version is pretty Mintified

I've always thought the Gnome version was just the Gnome version, with a few of the tools I find essential in Ubuntu left out. My one big gripe about KDE was addressed in Mint 8 KDE, that was the substitution of Knetworkmanager with Gnome's network-manager. The KDE version, last I checked does not recognize CDMA based mobile broadband modems and phones as modems, commonly used here in the USA instead of GPRS based devices. Mint 9 KDE went back to knetworkmanager. This isn't a big deal to fix, but if you install and your only internet connection at the time is the CDMA modem, you're kind of stuck at a road block.


It actually does look "Mintified." See for yourself:




They even "Mintified" the KDE menu. Very cool!




New features in Linux Mint 10 KDE

nice

I like the Kde version of Mint.... far better than Kubuntu imo and alot more love goes into it...........
It's a shame that the Kde version of Mint is always months behind in release than the main (gnome) edition........

I will definately give this a review in the next couple days

they may have been holding out for KDE 4.6.

You're quite right Wayne, I think I'm a bit behind the times with Mint

Although I think that menu (Lancelot I believe it's called) is available in a lot if not most distributions of KDE, it's makes sense that they would use it, it's pretty nice and quite similar to the MintMenu.

Yeah, I really liked that menu a lot. My main gripes with the OS so far is that there is way too much stuff installed by default, and even with all that stuff I still find myself installing stuff that I find missing. xchat is missing by default I beleive, and it would be nice to have for the newbies since it takes you straight to the mint channels when you open it. There's also a lot of linux mint 9 kde wallpaper which I believe wasn't in linux mint 9 kde. I don't know I'll have to give 9 another look if I feel like it. My final gripe with it is that the usual mouse themes aren't there, and I usually switch to an oxygen blue mouse. That aside I like it a lot, especially what they've done with the menu. I'm definitly going to continue messing with it for a while.

I've never really liked Mint. Sure its good for a newbie, but not so good when you (sortof) know what you're doing.
How is it on speed compared to Kubuntu?

Well ok this is Kubuntu in vbox, but bootup time is faster than Maverick Ubuntu in vbox.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkAiRjp1CNs

How so? It's pretty much Ubuntu with all the restricted stuff pre-installed. The coding will be different of course since it's a different OS but anything I've done on Ubuntu I've had no problems with Linux Mint.

Kaddy's video review yesterday didn't leave me with a very good impression. It looked awful slow and unresponsive to his mouse clicks.

Yeah, it could use some speed. It isn't that bad but that is something that needs to be fixed. What I don't understand is the multiple applications that do the same thing like vlc and gnome video player. I just can't figure out why they do that, just pick one.

jonathan wrote:Yeah, it could use some speed. It isn't that bad but that is something that needs to be fixed. What I don't understand is the multiple applications that do the same thing like vlc and gnome video player. I just can't figure out why they do that, just pick one.

My pick would be VLC. But why Gnome video player on a KDE desktop? That seems even more baffling to me.

Yeah, and why do they pick it over the KDE version? That means they're pulling in gtk dependancies along with qt. Makes no sense.

Quids wrote:I've never really liked Mint. Sure its good for a newbie, but not so good when you (sortof) know what you're doing.
How is it on speed compared to Kubuntu?

Well ok this is Kubuntu in vbox, but bootup time is faster than Maverick Ubuntu in vbox.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkAiRjp1CNs

I know what you mean, Linux Mint is great for my family, it does everything it needs to (like the aforementioned printing out of the box) just fine and they aren't very computer savvy people, but not what I use personally.

In my experience Kubuntu is fairly fast, from boot up to general use, though I did find for doing lots of things at once or playing games performance dropped off quite a bit compared to something like Arch or even Fedora. But Mint does seem slower somehow. That's my experience on my machine anyway.

I've never tried kubuntu. I've heard others say it's the worst KDE distro ever. I never know who to listen anymore, because anyone will say anything sucks ass.

I also thought it was the worst KDE distro until I tried 10.10 which IMO is actually quite alright. But you're right, especially in the diverse world of open source, anything can suck depending on who you talk to =P

Yeah, like some Slackware geek bashing Ubuntu because it downloads x,y,z dependancies. Well look who it caters to. It's doing its job if it's getting all the software working without much intervention.

I don't think Canonical ever put many resources into Kubuntu, it really shows with a complete lack of their own programs such as Software Centre and Ubuntu One.
Kubuntu looks pretty much like you would expect any KDE distro too look. Theres no fancy artwork like you find in Ubuntu.

I would say Kubuntu is at least one year behind Ubuntu.
Same goes for Xubuntu as well.

On the other hand Mint 10 KDE looks like it had a lot of work done. Seeing the review vids at first glance it looked very like Mint 10 Gnome.

Speaking of Kde Distros

I installed PcLinuxOs on some old folks computer yesterday as they were having lots of virus trouble with XP which was a pain in the ass to bother fixing.... and I couldn't be bothered re installing XP and chasing Drivers....

Wow PcLinuxOs is a really underated Distro. They have put in so much customisation and attention to detail into Kde. It's been a while since I've tried it but
It is definately up there with the Best of them. I'm really impressed, and they were really happy with it too. Rolling Release, no need to piss fart about reinstalling and it's just as simple to use as LinuxMint with all codecs/flash/graphics drivers out of the box.

PclinuxOs and LinuxMint are both Awesome for converting New users to Linux. Pitty Pclinuxos don't get as many donations as Mint does....

Hmm never tried pclinuxos myself either.
How do you reckon its speed holds up in comparison to mint etc?

I have heard a few times that it is a pretty awesome distro too.

Speed is good in PclinuxOs
Another thing I like is that it is independent now (apparently) It doesn't rely on Mandriva anymore although it was originally based off it
where as Mint clones each Ubuntu release.....
Give it a spin guys

I have PCLinuxOS Gnome edition on my desktop at home. I agree. It's way under-rated. The Lxde blows Lubuntu out of the water, in my opinion. My daughter lives on the other side of the country, she runs the Lxde version, and I maintain it for her remotely with Teamviewer. Whichever desktop you choose, PCLinuxOS runs well on every machine you install it on. It uses a modified Synaptic package manager that installs .rpm files. Just about every package you can imagine and then some is available.


My only two gripes about it is there is no equivalent to Mint or Ubuntu's "Software center," all package management is done with synaptic. That's not all that difficult for a newbie to grasp, but Mint is more friendly in that regard. The other is updates. There is an updater application in the repositories, it's not installed by default, and after you install it and use it for a month or two, you figure out why. It rarely, if ever works. So a user needs to open up Synaptic periodically, hit "reload," then "mark all updates," to see if anything is available.

Yeah it does sound sweet then. And from some YouTube vids I've seen of it, it even looks good appearance and presentation wise. You can even get an E17 version.

It's amazing it's so underrated really.

Not having a Software Centre isn't much of a disadvantage in my opinion.... Although I suppose it would be nice to include one... Maybe they will in future... I spose they could take the ubuntu software centre and rebrand it with the available packages in their repos Like Debian did (unbranded)

I would like to see an automated update reminder/manager in PclinuxOs though..... don't know why they have never included that....

but apart from that.... it's pretty darn stable, and Apt-get for Rpm rocks. Packages seem to get well tested before releasing into the repos and they even went to the extent to disable "search and launch" mode which is overly buggy in kde 4.5.4x. Kde 4.6 will hit their repos very shortly when they have tested/tweaked it.... looking foreward to see what they have done to it.......

PcLinuxOs is now my lazy man's distro of choice when I'm not booted into my main Desktop Arch. hehehehe
Spose it's good to keep a non bleeding edge distro installed for Production instead of doing work on a much buggier Bleeding Edge Distro such as arch.
Although I will never Fall out of Love with ArchLinux heheheheheheheh.