Linux Mint Wants To Be Your (Work) Friend

Note: This was cross-posted on Recomposing the Pines today.

It's true. I won't go into depth on why it's true, I'd rather leave you to figure that out yourself if you're so inclined. But I wanted to do a little mini-post here simply to say that I've been using Linux Mint (first version 13 and then version 15) for all of my work-related tasks since mid-summer, and it's been absolutely fine.

A lot of people seem to have the perception that Linux = Difficult, or that you have to be some sort of crazy computer whiz to be able to use it. I say this because that was exactly my perception until I tried out Mint.

There are, it turns out, a lot of different distributions of Linux. Many are obviously built to serve particular purposes (for example, Puppy Linux is built to work well on old computers and netbooks, but has less flash and functionality than something like Ubuntu). Many are unique in ways that would be basically unnoticeable to the non-guru, but are, I'm told, mightily significant to The People Who Know Computer Things.*

But, generally speaking, Linux is appealing to a certain kind of person (read: "not just a computer person") because it is the early-90s, manual-transmission car of the operating system world. At a time when it's getting harder and harder to look under our "car"'s hood and find the radiator, to learn to change the oil by ourselves, or to diagnose a fluid leak without hooking everything up to a computer, Linux still has an easily navigable, wide-open space under the hood, easily identifiable and removable (and installable) parts, and so on.

Obviously, in this metaphor, a lot of people are going to prefer to have a car that "just works." Of course, that is, until it doesn't work, in which case you either have to take it in to the mechanic (Windows) or just buy an entirely new car (Mac). But if you have a modicum of interest in at least slightly understanding the machine in front of you that likely contains your entire professional (and maybe personal) life and on which your ability to discharge your workday responsibilities relies, Linux gives you a foot in the door.

Mint, specifically, is built to mimic the Windows UI (pre Win7) in a lot of ways. It comes prepackaged with a lot of software and drivers, to the point that if you're one of those weirdos who can happily sit at a work-provided computer for years and never think about installing new software, or changing your desktop background, or changing the arrangement of the taskbar icons.

Mint 15 UI with the taskbar and an image preview open.

I've never really had any trouble with Mint on install before, and I've installed it on five different computers now, from three different manufacturers. The only times I've had issues that required some serious troubleshooting was when I started trying to install new programs, change system settings, etc., and most of those "errors" and system failures were more a result of my own clueless flailing around than any inherent instability in Mint.

Fortunately, basic functions work well "out of the box," as it were, and pretty much all the software you'll need to perform typical work-related tasks are already installed, and your sound, graphics, etc. should work right away, to a surprising degree. I installed Mint recently on a two-monitor setup in my new office, and both monitors came online immediately -- something that didn't happen even when I installed Windows 7 on the same computer.

Different is terrifying!

I guess the big catch for using Linux for typical work tasks would be that you'll need to learn how to navigate some programs that are going to be a little different than what you're used to. For example, there is no Microsoft Office. There is, however, LibreOffice, which for my money is faster, more reliable, and nicer-looking than MS Office anyway.
Plus, it can save documents, slide shows, spreadsheets, etc. in all the typical Microsoft formats, so you can pull the same documents up later on a computer in the meeting room and have them run just fine. Admittedly, sometimes there's some formatting, etc. lost in the process of moving from LibreOffice to MS Office or vice versa, but honestly I've never had as much trouble as I've had moving from, say, MS Office 97 to 2003 and back or 2003 to 2010 and back, and so on.

If you want to try Linux Mint, but not totally commit, the site I linked to above will explain how to make a LiveCD and boot your computer from it. In this state, you'll be able to play around with Mint "on" the CD, so there are no changes made to your computer while you test it out and see how you like it. If you want to install Mint alongside Windows 7 (or lower), so you're not making One Big Choice as much as letting yourself make the choice every single time you boot up the computer, you can do this. In fact, this is how all my computers are set up: they start up to a simple menu at which I choose either Linux (for 95% of my day-to-day tasks) or Windows (for the occasional movie-editing or sound-editing task that it does better than Linux, plus video games). There's a really easy-to-follow tutorial for this, which is right here.

Anyway, once I got everything installed, I found Mint to generally be more reliable, faster, and better-looking than Windows, at least as far as doing the typical word-processing, emailing, and messaging tasks that I do at work every day. I boots up way faster, too.

If you want to explore the system a little bit more, it actually lets you, too, and as long as you don't jump into doing things like editing system kernels right off the bat, the learning curve is pretty shallow and there's a number of great communities online that are willing to help you figure things out and answer newbie questions.

Oh, plus everything's free. I suppose I should have mentioned that before. Mint itself is free, and all the software that comes with it is free. All the programs you might want to install are free. Don't like the default music player? There are literally hundreds more to choose from, and none of them cost a cent. The Adobe Photoshop analogue? Free. High-end music editing programs used by real DJs? Free.

You get the idea.

Anyway, just something to think about. Switching to Mint will likely stretch your brain just a little bit, but in a good way. Plus, over the last few months I've come to find that it's not just a good alternative for work than your typical paid operating system, it's actually better in a lot of significant ways.

* I finished my undergrad a measly nine credits short of a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, and do not consider myself smart enough to be counted among these people.