RecentlyOrLately wrote:
Thought I would play around with Linux Mint.
Is there a preferred desktop ?
Looking for a description of each to help make a decision.
Available a
Cinnamon
MATE
Xfce
KDE
The DEs can be loaded from the package manager. I had to use
an archived copy of this article, because the pictures in the
current website were damaged by our good friends at photobucket.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121015...rial/view/1079
But don't be surprised if there are side effects.
Like some package trying to bump some other package
out of the way. A good design, should allow all to be
loaded into the same tree.
Doing it via the package manager, means not having to
download four entire DVDs. When you can get the OS portion
plus one DE on say the MATE DVD, then add three DEs
via a meta-package in the package manager.
Depending on your tolerance for surprised, I'd select
something in Mint 17.1 to 17.3 range. I've had a little
trouble with networking on the 18 series of Mint, where
the DNS entry has some sort of issue. I can set DNS to
8.8.8.8, and fix it the first time, but maybe later attempts
still won't be working properly.
You can see the mirrors keep the older ones.
http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/linuxmint/stable/
For example:
Index of /linuxmint/stable/17.1/
linuxmint-17.1-cinnamon-32bit.iso 26-Nov-2014 23:52 1G
linuxmint-17.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso 26-Nov-2014 22:56 1G
linuxmint-17.1-kde-32bit.iso 05-Jan-2015 11:46 1G
linuxmint-17.1-kde-64bit.iso 05-Jan-2015 10:47 2G
linuxmint-17.1-mate-32bit.iso 26-Nov-2014 10:50 1G
linuxmint-17.1-mate-64bit.iso 26-Nov-2014 10:07 2G
linuxmint-17.1-xfce-32bit.iso 08-Jan-2015 09:06 1G
linuxmint-17.1-xfce-64bit.iso 07-Jan-2015 17:37 1G
The DVDs will be in the 1.4-1.5GB range, but the file
size display on the server is a little lacking in
significant digits.
Download one, install it, add three meta packages, and
when you reboot, look for a Session chooser, so you can
select which DE to run during that session.
There was at least one piece of media, that put all the
DEs right on the media. But in a quick search, I can't
find that right now. The above will keep you busy for
a while.
You could also look for a Youtube video of each, but
you know what the quality of Youtube publications is like.
Paul