I wanted to set up a Dell GX-270 with 1G ram and 40G hard drive as a basic web-browser, email, open-office  machine that is simple to use. I like KDE, at least the version that came with KUbuntu 10.04, and I’m not interested in the new Unity desktop. Having heard lots of good things about Linux Mint on the Linux podcasts, I decided to try it out. So I downloaded the 1.1G DVD iso and burned it to a disk.

Booting from the DVD it ran a live version providing a desktop with the install icon/button, but no other menus or options. Clicking on the install option did nothing for ages; it was so slow I thought it had crashed. Eventually the install process popped up along with an error message; something about a ubi-language failure and a note suggesting that the install may not work or may be broken if it does install. A great lot of use that is.

I didn’t want to sit through the install only to have a broken system that required hours of research and repairs. So that was the end of my experiment with Linux Mint.

I got out the KUbuntu 11.10 CD and the install completed in about 20 minutes with no problems. I then installed Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC and Konqueror which took another 5 minutes. Then in Firefox I added a few Bookmarks and a new home page. To the desktop I added links to run Firefox and Thunderbird directly. This is a PITA process. Once upon a time you could drag or copy these from the menu to the desktop, but now you get a stupid little form to fill in. If you don’t know what to enter or where to find it you’re screwed and probably end up switching back to Windows. This sort of crap is just stupid and why Linux is not main stream.

Anyway, I got it going and it seems OK. A bit more testing and we’ll see what happens.