Quote:I've never tried Peppermint Linux, but a full day to do an installation?

 

I personally run Linux Mint Debian Edition for desktop/laptop use, and generally use Fedora, CentOS or my own compiled versions for server purposes.  For the few programs that are Windows only that I have to use for work, I run Windows 7 in a virtual machine.

 

I recently did a fresh installation on my own personal desktop machine, and it maybe took two hours tops.  That includes a full office suite (Libre Office), programming and database software (multiple compilers, IDE's and MySQL), drafting software and multimedia editing/playing software.  Here is something that is usually not pointed out much when comparing desktop versions of Operating Systems.  With my base Operating System and all of the programs that I use installed, I am using less than 15GB of hard drive space.  My Windows 7 virtual machine with AutoCAD, Micro$oft Office and Adobe Acrobat Professional installed, as well as a few other misc. programs uses around 77GB of hard drive space.

 

What is interesting to note is that all of the software that I regularly use under Linux is free and open source.  The only software that I actually had to pay for is the software (including the Operating System) that I run in a virtual machine. 

 

A full day may be an exaggeration.  I think my case was a bit extreme because it was a netbook that was just released and I'm not sure anyone has ever even installed Linux on it before.  The main problems I had were constant black screens in grub, touch pad not working, and installation not booting.  I had to make quite a bit of BIOS changes to get it working.   I installed Linux Mint not that long ago on an older netbook with zero problems and it took like 30 minutes if that.  I just chose Peppermint because it was supposed to be the "Linux version of Chromebook" but I'm not sure the exact difference with Mint other than more lightweight.  The total installation ended up taking up around 7 GB of the 32 GB of space on the netbook.  Windows 10 was taking up close to 20 GB out of the box which isn't bad I guess, but isn't good either when there's only 32 GB.  When I get a new laptop I'm probably going to install Mint with Cinnamin desktop.  

 

I am still having issues with the netbook not waking up from suspend when the lid is closed (which I hear is a somewhat common problem with Linux).  It's not a huge deal and I found a workaround to manually hibernate it but that's still something I have to fix.

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