My OperaHelena - Ubuntu's Alter Ego - the new Mint as a Must-Have
Thursday, December 3, 2009 8:31:28 PM
The name has it: Helena. It reminds me of Helena of Constantinopel, the mother of Emperor Constantine I. It is a noble name indeed. Maybe that caused my high expectations when I got the opportunity to try the latest Linux MINT 8 release of that name. When you read my blog, you may have noticed that I often referred to MINT. The reason is, that MINT sits on top of Ubuntu and improves various aspects of its rather 'crude' core. I was surprised by Helena. She is a beauty with tons of charm. A Linux distro that everybody ought to test and start using. A great, free, gift for friends who still dare not try Linux. Have you downloaded Helena already? Then share some of my experiences and thoughts...From freedom came elegance is the slogan accompanying products from MINT. The recent release of Mint 8 complies to that and not only for its nickname: Helena. The team from Clement Lefebvre has done it again: a vastly improved release upon its solid Ubuntu 9.10 base. It is incredibly simple to install, a pleasure to run and it is fast.
The novice user hardly has anything special to take care of - several issues plaguing Ubuntu have been preset to the most common denominator and work automagically. Amongst others the immediate availability of a root permission option in its file manager Nautilus and offering a configuration tool to do even more. Important for those with more complicated stereo sound equipments who wish to change the standard stereo setting to their extended likings without need to use the Terminal. The file manager takes you to the File system to adjust very specific details. For example, my 5-1 surround sound speaker system worked 'out of the box' after changing /etc/pulse/daemon.conf ->default_sample_channels from 2 to 6 speakers. My 'standard change ritual' for distros with innovative pulse-sound. In fact not necessary anymore, then the new sound volume mixer allows to do the same with a click. The famous and efficiency improving Fusion Cube has quite good presets, making multi-workspace activities a pleasure. The software composition of Helena is very consistent and sufficiently extended with impressive options to expand. Even the bulky Open Office Suite is present to satisfy the (psychological?) needs of former Microsoft addicts. I really wonder who need this huge suite these days, but it is there and does replace MS Office. No miracle that Mint ranks amongst the Top 4 Linux distributions.Url movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgjuJZ4zQoc
The installation of Helena goes flawless from the Mint 8 LiveCD. In about 15 minutes I was up and running the quite nice, new green desktop. Some upgrades were advised by the Update Manager that keeps a keen eye on Helena's wellbeing. Most impressive I found the improvement of the typical "Mint Menu slab", that offers an efficient oversight on all available software. Mint was ahead of time when it introduced this slab some distros ago. Although I usually don't like menu-sidebars and other intrusive and obstructing (large) menu-panels I quickly fell for Helena's interpretation. 
This worked flawless and fast. The only quirk I found came from my hand: when moving the mouse to automagically activated menu-categories and sideways to select an item from the associated program-list it could happen I hit the nearest category and found another list under my mouse-pointer. A slightly less 'nervous' handling of this well-integrated menu is the solution. Alternatively one could use a standard Gnome (XP-like) menu that pops up right out of the Taskbar. That choice is yours and accessible per simple mouse-click.
Helena's software manager is -as the video already showed- a very clever auxiliary to find useful free software. It even shows reviews, snapshots and ratings for a package. A 'recommended' option offers rapid insight on what is best. This is very well-done indeed and will be of great help for novice Linux users. I just selected the MS Fonts from its list. The no-longer-novices, an ever larger crowd, will appreciate their good old Synaptic Package Manager that also is available. 
The MINT software repositories and the main Karmic are preset, but the list is expandable. Something I would NOT immediately do, then otherwise not yet installed drivers and programs may already be available under Helena's hood! For example: to expand Helena with the quite interesting new KDE 4 Windows Manager (kwin) to have an even more efficient 'compiz' workspace only requires the installation of 'fusion icon' to select 'kwin'. Kwin must be downloaded and set-up in nice 'oxygen' 3D with some intriguing effects by pressing Alt+F3 and selecting its manager from the menu that pops up. Helena's base already is capable of installing some fine KDE programs and have them run well in an appropriate environment. It is not necessary to install the (large) KDE desktop software suite as such to make some fine KDE programs run. Installing the good CD/DVD burner 'K3b' already installs a minimal KDE library. So does installation of the upgraded 'Dolphin' file manager. I see no need to use Plasma on top of this here. If you wish to run sessions with the full KDE 4.4 Plasma ideology you can install it indeed and log out to log in again changing the Gnome base for KDE, as described in an earlier blogpost.
Mixing Gnome with KDE4 still is somewhat problematic depending composite behavior of your graphics card. Be aware of that; it might turn your usually blue KDE4 background screen to black. The Mint-8 Gnome desktop -3D windows with shadows and 'cube' as it comes- is pleasing, with a relaxing green touch and green bubbles background, is quick on the mouse and very stable indeed.
The success of Mint 8 Helena is in its details. Based on Ubuntu Karmic (or 9.10) it fills in some shortcomings that otherwise would confuse new users. I didn't need the Terminal that much anymore to get to, or do certain things. To correct 'swappiness' I took Nautilus to take me to /etc/sysctl to enter as a last line: vm.swappiness=20. It brings down the use of your hard drive for swapping software components. An activity that slows down a computer, causing wear and tear if used on Solid State Drives. If you have more than 1.5 Gb of memory you can apply this setting. It also keeps the computer cooler. The success of Helena also comes from its short learning curve, something new users will appreciate. It is a straight forward software system that can easily be used right away in the office and small business segments. MINT offers (payed) professional services to these markets. Having said so: gamers will learn that Helena fails any games on its LiveCD. Quite right so, then the vast selection of really good and space-consuming games at the Mint repository, a.o. WarZone 2100 and Warsow, leaves little to be desired. Just download what you want. Networking and chatting also leave little to be desired.
Helena, as Mint 8 is for me the best distro of 2009. It offers the new, improved Ext4 journaling file system to safely handle all your data. It also offers copious alternatives to safeguard your data, from parental control, firewall, up to making system and file-backups on CD or DVD. Helena can be configured as start-up assistent from a USB-pendrive. The best of all still is an intrinsic feature of Linux itself: it hardly collects any viruses. No need for anti-badware software. It offers a nice desktop and a fine selection of up-to-date software, a.o. many new games from its repositories. Oh, and lest I forget: FireFox 3.5.5 runs immediately YouTube and allows you to download a movie. Opera browser runs as well fine and is available in the Software Manager. No need for complicated Java and Flash exercises. All is already pre-installed! Isn't Helena a nice gift for some skeptical friends? I wouldn't hesitate to download or buy her and make somebody happy during this Holidays Season...
John
You must be 
(67%)
Mad Scientistqlue # Thursday, December 3, 2009 11:24:34 PM
L2D2 # Thursday, December 3, 2009 11:35:54 PM
Angelikiellinidata # Thursday, December 3, 2009 11:41:05 PM
Mad Scientistqlue # Friday, December 4, 2009 1:33:16 AM
To my knowledge, there is no way to boot from your desktop using an icon. Most Linux distro's use grub, which, when installed correctly, offers you a simple text menu at start-up to select between the installed operating systems. If you install from the Ubuntu live cd, the installation is automatic and intuitive. You don't need to know anything fancy, it does all the hard work for you. But please make a good backup of your current installation first as there is always some chance that things may go wrong.
Ubuntu seems to detect most modern hardware automagically. I'm sure John will be able to help you if you run into any specific problems. (even I may be able to help, although my experiences are mostly limited to my netbook).
Another excellent source of help is www.linuxquestions.org as well as Ubuntu's own forum that is automatically linked in the default Firefox installation.
Whatever way to decide to try though, I cannot stress enough how important a good set of backups are before you even start. Even experienced computer experts make mistakes and the easiest way to fix mistakes is to restore from a recent backup.
dirkthetomster # Friday, December 4, 2009 1:49:58 AM
Dr. John v. Kampennepmak2000 # Friday, December 4, 2009 7:01:51 AM
Linda: dual booting is in detail explained here, here and AV here, but Read this First. Never be 'afraid' to repartition your hard drive. That truly is a myth about Windows. The problem with the latter is a 'secret' partition it has and the fact that this (old) DOS suffers from huge file fragmentation - the more on the hard drive the worst that gets. The computer gets slower as a first sign that things might go wrong. VISTA has a built-in defragger for it - that's why it is so slow. You never know where Windows stores its data from which files. Hence the myth... and necessity to defrag first in some cases when over 50% of a HD is full of Windows stuff. If more (60%) you'd better not dual boot at all and above 85% Windows even quits... Now, when you install MINT (8) the installer offers you the option to repartition. But also VISTA has this ability and I used that earlier. Via the Control Panel and Administrative Services you can get access to the Registry determining the storage media. Here you simply make 20-25 GigaByte free (empty that is) by shrinking the often way too large Windows partition (what a waste). The same applies too to the repartitioner in the Installer. You must apply Manual Install. See this here visually. Gparted (the program that in fact makes the repartitioning) is intelligent enough to known where to go and what's possible and what not. When you made, say: 25 Gb free (I delete (!!) the freed-up space, so it gets unallocated, which is the most easiest of ways to proceed), I continue the installer (forward or next button) to have MINT (Ubuntu) install itself automagically on the FREE space. That's an option, so very handy to use when you just deallocate a partition on your Hard Drive. All the rest is self-explanatory... Give yourself a desktop-name, a password and let go! That's about it. When you are expert enough to understand you better run VISTA as a virtual operating system (see below) on top of Linux, would want to make the '/' boot partition, /Home and 'swap' yourself (for ?? reasons) you can make things manually completely as desired... You need not change the GRand Unified Bootloader (Grub) for this, the Grub does this itself and will automagically offer you the choice to either use Vista or Mint and whatever more is on your HD. BUT THAT WAS NOT YOUR QUESTION!! You want to switch between OS's.... That only is possible when using either OS as a "virtual machine" using Sun's VirtualBox program. For Linux it comes free. MINT has it in its repository. Install it, and install (!) either one OS as a 'virtual OS'. So you would install Vbox on Vista and install MINT on that. Then you can even 'integrate' both OS's nearly seamlessly and exchange data on the fly between them. All these choices are yours and depend on your insights, demands and hardware (hard disk capacity). For the very keen of eyes: the above movie demonstrating MINT Helena runs from VirtualBox!! I wonder which OS sits below this...haha. When you have done these procedures a few times, it is like turning a page in a book or ripping one out...
Dr. John v. Kampennepmak2000 # Friday, December 4, 2009 7:25:43 AM
L2D2 # Friday, December 4, 2009 7:18:27 PM
I have 246Gigs free of 298, so I have a lot of space. Have bookmarked this page. May do as suggested once, just use live Linux CD. You said new Mint is live CD?
Dr. John v. Kampennepmak2000 # Friday, December 4, 2009 9:17:33 PM
Once you have the LiveCD you can try that provided your computer has its BIOS set to be able to start from a CD/DVD drive. That is often the case, sometimes not. The DEL key (sometimes also F5 or F8) opens the BIOS right after switching the computer on. Now you can find the parameters for your CD/DVD drives (yes/no). Running on a LiveCD doesn't alter one single bit on your hard drive and Vista. Here you'll find the Installer.
CAVE: the LiveCD starts automagically in about 9 seconds. However when you tap a key a lovely GRUB menu pops up... Should you have a problem with automagically Live-starting, then look here for the second option of the list (in fact: verbose mode). I discovered that sometimes (hence with my older computer) the so-called X-Server got not enough time to settle itself. You then blunder into a 'low res mode' for the LiveCD, something you also have with Windows when a videodriver fails, or when using the administrative recovery mode to boot.
Now remember in case of a boot emergency (that I don't expect for 'normal' users) to read carefully when your password is asked from the Terminal you then see. To get out of such a situation, enter: sudo reboot (to restart anew), or try: startx to restart the X-server. That is the worst case scenario, worst it can't come when a LiveCD refuses to engage. You only need to know these few tricks.
In your case you could tmho with ease use the Installer in partioning mode 'side by side' which will take automagically about 30-50 Gig from your hard drive and reconnect Vista orderly again, so you can choose Mint or Vista from the bootloader (Grub). That is graphically shown before you proceed (or go manually if you don't like the idea). In MINT the Grub is nicely decorated, so it doesn't look 'too computerish' after all. From that point it will take about 20 minutes before you can see the next movie in YouTube... on Mint from your HD.
Right after booting the first time (which will take slightly longer than 25 seconds due to scanning your hardware etc. to set up Mint) you will see right below in the taskbar a symbol of a lock. This is the update indicator. Just update the system to the very latest state of things and you're go. Don't forget to go to (menu) the Control Center to set up Keyboard (delete the Irish one f.ex.), Compiz Config (to click the Cube on, as well as Rotate Cube!) - you switch to the 3 other live workspaces with Ctrl-Alt-arrows (I use that now while I write to verify this, having NTV-Germany running for the latest TV News), then open your Home folder and find in the Nautilus file manager under Edit the Preferences, where I set 'single keyclick' to open files and folders. That is for then enough to get the hang of things, I think. Have great fun and take your time to view everything.
L2D2 # Friday, December 4, 2009 9:58:05 PM
Dr. John v. Kampennepmak2000 # Saturday, December 5, 2009 3:06:27 PM
http://on-disk.com/index.php/cPath/28_153. They offer all OS's, even Windows and many extras. Recommended and just a dollar more expensive, but with guarantees.