I gave Ubuntu Linux the flick on my main PC. The Unity desktop was driving me insane, Ubuntu 11.10 didn’t seem to like my new Asus Z68XP-UD3R motherboard, Skype wouldn’t work without v4l2ucp, VLC wasn’t installed by default, the internet connection through the ethernet controller on that board was pristine fine on my Vista installation on a different partition, but kept bouncing up and down like a sine wave in Ubuntu, and kept dropping out all the time.
So today, I went and installed, after consulting Distrowatch, Linux Mint, a distro that is based on Ubuntu 11.10, but doesn’t use Unity but Gnome 3.2, and has certain drivers and codecs preinstalled.
The Welcome screen looks like this :
I’m happy so far, the installation onto my OCZ solid state disk went smoothly, although I have 3 internal harddisks in there as well, it took about 15 minutes all up to be up and running, and all the things I need to feel comfortable seem to be working, from VLC to mp3 playback to web browsing. Mint wants you to try the Chromium browser (it’s Google’s Chrome without the spyware), I’ll give it a go I promise, but whether this works for me will depend on what addons are available, since I can’t really imagine browsing without bbcodextra, forecastfox, adblock plus and flashblock.
For now I’m happy to have escaped Unity, and the quirks that have made generic Ubuntu ever harder to use in the last 24 months or so.
