The Mint 13 desktop with Nautilus file manager in focus There is also a Cinammon settings menu shortcut (note the ^ icon) that additionally holds the panel settings options. The panel has the application menu (Mint menu) on the extreme left, followed by the show desktop icon, a few application launch shortcuts (Firefox, Terminal and Nautilus file manager, by default), the task manager, and finally the system tray that holds the clock, volume, battery indicator and Bluetooth, among other things. The desktop looks like what we’re used to (assuming you’ve used Mint before)… a slim panel at the bottom, and the rest of the desktop space is yours to fill up with all sorts of random folders and icons (of course, who like it this way). Bad news? The default Mint theme would fail to give you the high.įrom MDM to the desktop after login takes around a couple of seconds – now, that’s dead fast. Naturally, it comes with the age-old GDM settings options (available once you’re logged in obviously). The DM’s called MDM - a fork of GDM 2.20. It takes 5 seconds flat to shutdown, and 28 seconds to boot up to the display manager (DM), on an average. The installer makes you wait till the langues packes are downloaded and installed Since it’s a 800 MB ISO, the Mint team could have also packed the language packs in it, rather than making one wait at the end of installation. It’s the connecting to online software repos and then fetching stuff part that took a helluva lot of time.

The basic copying operation was done in a matter of minutes.

It took around 20 minutes to install on hard drive. The new partition screen that's added in Mint 13 installer It took me by surprise, and then I ended up clicking the “advanced partitioning tool” link to get back to the Ubiquity (Ubuntu installer) partitioner that I’m more familiar with. The only addition is an odd-looking screen that shows up as the partitioner. The installer’s look and feel has remained the same from last version - even the slides haven’t changed. Mint 13 is based on Ubuntu 12.04, and likewise it’s an LTS edition which will be supported for five years.

Linux mint reviews 2013