Linux Mint 5.0 Builds Upon Ubuntu Hardy
MintInstall is the distribution's preferred interface for installing packages -- though one can still use Synaptic or simply apt-get for installing Debian packages. MintInstall has support for installing .Mint packages from the Linux Mint Software Portal, Debian packages from the GetDeb Portal, and last but not least is installing Debian packages using APT from the Linux Mint or Ubuntu repositories.
Two of the other packages that ship with Linux Mint and outside of Ubuntu main include APTonCD and the Envy utility for setting up the ATI/AMD and NVIDIA display drivers. The non-light edition of Linux Mint 5.0 ships with Adobe Flash and Sun's Java 6 by default. As a note, the difference between Linux Mint and Linux Mint Light isn't a lightweight desktop environment, but it's just a few megabytes smaller by stripping out the software packages that aren't freely distributable -- such as binary-only drivers and the closed-source versions of Flash and Java.
Found in Linux Mint 5.0 are also the traditional Linux desktop applications one would expect. Some of these packages include GNOME 2.22, Pidgin, GIMP 2.4, OpenOffice.org, Firefox 3, etc.
At the core of Linux Mint 5.0 are the same packages as is found in Ubuntu 8.04, such as the Linux 2.6.24 kernel and a pre-release of X Server 1.4.1.
Our first time experimenting with Linux Mint was with 3.0 Light last year and since then this distribution has evolved quite nicely from its theme to the included package set. The theme for Linux Mint 5.0 is very nice and a number of Linux users may find it more appealing than Ubuntu's default. Linux Mint 5.0 is far more than just a re-branded edition of Ubuntu 8.04 with its extended package set, custom Mint utilities, and other innovations. While we feel Linux Mint isn't yet as unique as say Zenwalk Linux, it certainly is a worthy desktop Linux distribution and one worth trying.
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