So, I’ve been using Linux Mint for a while now on this laptop, and so far I’ve had very few problems. In fact, I don’t think I’ve had any since the day I installed it, and I think those were just stuff like the wireless drivers not coming pre-installed or something.

Here’s why I like it so much: First of all, it’s surprisingly usable out of the box. I started out using Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions always seemed like a bit of a gamble to me, but so far Linux Mint has been very stable. 

Second of all, it’s fast. This laptop used to run Ubuntu 11.04, because when I installed 11.10 on it it was so slow it was unusable, and even afterwards I figured it was a goner. But I also figured that reinstalling the OS and maybe going with a different operating system couldn’t hurt, which I’m glad I did because not only does this thing work perfectly fine now, but it works well enough that I have no desire or need to buy a new laptop.

I mean, before it couldn’t even run Chrome, now I can run a web browser, and have a couple of background programs.

Thirdly, it’s just sort of… nice. It’s not as exciting as Fedora was, when I’d have to spend hours just to play a DVD, and the desktop environment isn’t anywhere near as interesting as Unity or Gnome 3, but it’s perfectly fine. It looks nice, it works nice, and it’s not slow. Even if it is a little boring, it’s reassuring and easy to use, and in a Linux distro that’s worth a lot.

I’m still excited to try the new version of KDE, though.