As part of my brief tour through some alternative operating systems I uncorked and tried out Linux Mint 17. So far for all the different systems I’ve tried, this was the most pleasant and simple installations that I’ve had so far. The system boots up into a Live CD environment, letting you try before you buy. I also found the lack of “Scary Text” during the system startup to be a very nice touch. When the OS gets started it works well out of the box. X Windows with the window manager works as it should, without any misgivings. The updater worked well from the first pass and only required one pass to get all the updates that the system needed. The application suites provided worked really well, LibreOffice, a host of web browser choices, but the only thing that was missing was a Calendar application. I thought about iCal and how well that works with Exchange, and wondered if there was an app in the Linux space that could do something similar. My admittedly cursory search didn’t yield any results. Arguably it is a non-issue as the entire Exchange experience for me can be done on the web, so pffft.

There really wasn’t much to write about Linux Mint 17. The OS got a green star on my selection board and led to the disposal of PC-BSD. Next up are Elementary OS and CentOS. I suspect that the last one will be a boondoggle, but only time will tell.