8 Months into Linux ..Mint

This month marks roughly about eight months since I started using Linux (more precisely Linux Mint (LM)) and I have decided to share my experiences thus far.

I wrote about My Journey from Windows to Linux ..Mint in this post detailing what really drove me to this operating system.

Linux Mint as one of the many Linux distros out there has fit comfortably in my day-to-day workflow as a software developer. Below I list some of the cool things I have found Linux Mint to be simplifying my life.

1. Non-intrusive System Update Notification - a small icon on the panel is the only notification you see when Linux Mint is due for an update. You can choose to ignore the notification if you want to continue with your work and be productive.
2. Transparent System Update Process - with Linux Mint, software updates are categorized into categories e.g. Security, software... and for each update a detailed changelog is available. This means you know what each update does beforehand and you can choose to ignore the update if you so wish. I like this feature a lot.
3. Optimized Packages for Software Installation and Updates - whenever you install or update software in LM the updates are packaged in highly compressed files. This means that you not only safe on data costs but the update process becomes faster and much more efficient. I remember this one time when I had to install Microsoft Office and the download itself was +4.5GB in size.
4. Rich App Ecosystem / Repository - with the Software Manager you can find all the apps you need in one place which I find really convenient. LM also supports Flatpak, Snap Store and other popular software centres as well. There are tonnes of great open source software available like LibreOffice, Okular PDF, VLC etc which compete with the proprietary versions of Office, Adobe, Windows Media Players that a lot of people are accustomed to. For a developer like myself, I find that my tools of the trade like PHPStorm, MySQL Workbench, VirtualBox and the like are natively supported which is a great plus for me.
5. Low Memory Footprint - I found that for the same decent set of hardware resources LM out-performs Windows 10 by miles. Boot up times are much faster and operating system memory usage is much lower as compared to Windows 10. This means that the OS allows me to be productive without getting into my way.
6. Out-of-the-Box Printer Support for most printers - LM comes by default with support for most printers meaning you don't have to spend time finding drivers for a new printer you want to use.

There are loads more great features I enjoy about LM but these are the top ones I could think of at the moment.

Even though I have mostly enjoyed using LM so far, I have encountered a few challenges that I will list below:

• Sometimes my Cinnamon crashes and will need to be restarted. There is a dedicated "Restart Cinnamon" button available which means the developers are aware of this issue occurring from time to time :)
• Sometimes you will need to hit the console in order to fix something or carry out a certain task. If you are not coming from a development background this can be a challenge. However, the more you work with the console the more you realize how powerful it is.
• When starting out initially especially after coming from Windows you will realize that you will need to re-install the OS every now and then (at least that was true for me) after making some breaking changes. I think this is blamed more on teething issues rather than the OS itself.

Despite these issues LM is indeed a joy to work with. However, I don't want to waste any more of your time but if you are a Windows user I suggest you give LM (or any other Linux distro) a try and I promise you won't regret it.

Cheers and Linux ..Mint FTW.