Try something different? ...really just an old friend
After not exactly liking where Ubuntu HAD been heading over the last few releases with its 'improvements' and schemes, I tried the first Natty BETA and...headed for the hills...or should that be Minty Fields....
As a graphic/web designer and 'power user', I had also regularly sampled Fedora and SUSE, but found support a little lacking, at least definitely not as much as available for Ubuntu.
A bit of a leap of faith and some googling later(nomodeset on ATI Mobility 1600) and Linux Mint Debian Edition(LMDE) was installed, updated and purring away.
As someone who basically liked the look&feel of XP(and gnome), likes a LITTLE bling(but not in your face) and could not get to like KDE, LMDE, to me, is 'just nice'...subtle colour scheme, 'modern, minimalist' icons, window borders you can actually grab to resize and a different, usable menu with everything important at hand(which you can disable if you really don't like it)
...and boy does it perform...I don't think I have seen mainstream Linux(Ubuntu SEEMS to get slower with every release) so spritely in a good number of years. Network(&USB) access is approx 30-40% faster(copying large downloads to a Media Center), faster screen refreshes, gnome just works&quickly, flash works better, and high loading does not seem to be as much of a problem as Ubuntu...all on the same hardware.
...AND, as Ubuntu is based on Debian, most of the huge volume of Ubuntu community contributions(forums, fixes etc) work well....almost too good to be true! ;->
I would be lying to say it was perfect...some 'nice' things are missing(but probably expected shortly), it needed a LITTLE more configuration, and a rolling, bleeding edge release can be problematic(googling for answers found Ubuntu suffering similar issues) at times, but Linux is FUN AGAIN! ...and there seems to be a substantial community growing up around it, on top of what is a available for Ubuntu.
If you want SAFE, try Linux Mint, if you want FUN, try Linux Mint Debian Edition.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
