Ubuntu 9.04 or Linux Mint 7?

Hi, i have a dv5, should i go with ubuntu 9.04 or linux mint 7? i'm leaning towards mint more because i heard it worked out of the box more.

Also, i have a partition formatted as ntfs, i want it to be ext4, will i be able to formart that partition as ext4 or will there be problems on my hard drive.

 

I'd go with ubuntu cuz more support.

More companies like DELL and HP are selling their mini netbooks with ubuntu, so yea.

 

Mint 7 is way easier to use and has way more features out of the box than Ubuntu 9.04. I never had any problems with it, but of course, since it is based on Ubuntu, Ubuntu will always be more "advanced" and will always possibly have more support. It's up to you, but I liked Mint way more.

 

They're damn near the same thing. 99.9% of Ubuntu fixes will fix Mint too.

Mint is prettier and has a bunch of stuff included to help move things along out of the box. You have to like mint menu and customized front-ends like mint install. If you're new to linux you might really appreciate those.

I tend to think that Ubuntu is user-friendly enough as it is. You can customize the desktop and create your own aesthetic. Installing the extra media packages and drivers is not that hard, just click on a couple boxes. Mint menu kind of annoys me but that is just my opinion.

If you're new, give both live cds a try and see which one you like best!

 

ehhhh, probably Ubuntu....actually, that's what I'm using now for work and play. Mint is good, but you can make Ubuntu 'Mint' yourself save a few scripts maybe, and Ubuntu gets updated faster re new releases....

Try both the LiveCD's and see what float's your boat.

 

The main reason I did not try mint was that they did not have a 64 bit OS and if you have 4 gb of mem you wont be using it all.

 

^ true, that is a flaw that several distros have. I remember you wanted to try arch. Have you done that yet? try out crunchbang if you have time. It's highly configurable and just in general rocks.

 

I did wanted to try Arch but I could never get the raid 0 setup in Arch. So went back to ubuntu hehe.

 

LinuxMint has a 64-bit edition... http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/stable/7/LinuxMint-7-x64.iso

I'm running it on my Alienware and its perfectly stable.

To answer the OP's question, Linux Mint is basically Ubuntu with a prettier face and it comes with support for proprietary drivers and programs out of the box unlike Ubuntu. It has greater hardware support because of this.

Any fix that is put out for Ubuntu will fix Linux Mint too. And the Mint community is starting to become big enough that you could almsot consider Mint to be a branch of Ubuntu anyway like Kubuntu and Xubuntu.

 

I just installed mint six on my girlfriend's hp mini and she loves it. All of her friends are begging me to work on their laptops now.

 

Become a Linux admin and meet more chicks Mint, here I come...

 

Yes, Mint is sexy! Who would have thought?

Of course just now she went off and read the internets which are telling her that Mint is for wussy. I'm going to have to up the stakes once she gets her laptop ready for an install. Maybe give her a copy of bsd and say "get to work."

 

I am running Ubuntu 9.04 and it's way better than Mint. I play light games and do some school works with it (Ubuntu 9.04). So far, I've no complaints using it, just the minor incompatibilty with some few Windows apps. Thanks to Wine, Crossover, and PlayonLinux, most of my Windows apps successfully ran

Going back to your concern, I would go for ubuntu 9.04. Just like other guys said in this thread, Ubuntu has more support like applications, software options, updates, Windows software counterparts, etc. Running the Terminal in Ubuntu is really convenient and easy-to-use. Plus, Ubuntu doesn't come with bloatwares, etc. There are some pre-installed apps but you can choose to install or not to install them. One disadvantage of Mint is that, the pre-installed OpenOffice has no powerpoint presentation as accoding to this link. Such lacking office is really a NO NO for me since I used to make presentations at school. I'm sure you do too whether at work or at school (depending on your course).

Lastly, Linux Mint runs KDE; Ubuntu: GNOME. Although there are a lot of "debates" regarding KDE and GNOME, I prefer GNOME's interface better. More often than not, as based from long time KDE-users, KDE tends to have more bug issues and crashes compared to GNOME. And Ubuntu and GNOME have a diverse source of online supports coming from forums, reviews, etc

So, I suggest you go for Ubuntu (^^,)


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Hope this helped

 

No, Mint is primarily a gnome-based distro but they do release a kde edition too.

 

I think Mint's Xfce edition is their best work....

 

Yeah, it is a really nice display of xfce which can turn out really ugly in the wrong hands. But I think the xfce edition is a community edition, not that it really matters. It's just that sometimes the community editions don't get the same attention when it comes to support. But most anything that works for xubuntu would probably work for mint xfce.

 

The only thing that bugs me in Gnome is that the icons/separators/whatever in the panel love to shuffle themselves around when a program changes resolution. This bug has been around for ages and nobody bothered to fix it yet.

 

you can take MS approach to this! "That's not a bug! It's a feature!".

the shifting really doesn't bug me at all.

 

I don't have that....my resolution never changes....how can that be? curious

 

Run any fullscreen game or reinstall video drivers and you'll see how that is possible. Of course, it's safe to assume that developers don't game, and that they never have to reinstall their video drivers because they're so 1337. Or they use XFCE.

@ yuio, you could make a valid point if MS Windows would also do that. No version of Windows ever had this kind of bug.

 

in a few.....

OK ...launched a couple....no problem with shuffling panel icons....? didn't think I remembered that....I use Nvidia btw.

 

Answer: neither. Ubuntu is the next 'Microsoft' albeit won't 'control' the retail/commercial market but they're trying to control the Linux one.

The community sucks if you 'complain' or have anything negative to say. They can't take it. Bugs aren't looked after and there is a lot of talk from experienced Linux users about that. Try other distros before you follow the herd.

 

When Ubuntu starts to charge me 300$ for their full featured retail OS, or ties their OS to underspec'd overpriced hardware with half eaten fruits on it, I'll start to complain.

 

That statement is pretty much a shot at most linux users out there

 

Said like a true Ubuntu user. ;-) I find other Linux communities (e.g. forums) to have a more forgiving group that tolerate more.

Oh, btw:
http://glyphobet.net/blog/essay/140

 

I can't deny that. It was a long time coming after swearing it off several times. I use it for work, and it's the most practical distro for me right now. The last two releases have behaved very well for me.