You might be wondering why you’re reading something about Linux in a blog related to design.  I’m about to answer that question.

I’ve always had a geeky side which has led to experimentation with other operating systems, such as FreeBSD, Solaris, and Linux.  I had a brief period about three years ago where I got rid of Windows completely and used Linux for about a year.  I had to go back to Windows to be able to run stuff like Flight Simulator (a secret addiction of mine), among others.  I also got tired of troubleshooting stuff.  When things work, Linux is great.  When something breaks, it can be a nightmare.

One of the things I’ve always thought is that, even though the Linux community is very talented with programming and development, they were seriously flawed in the design department, both in general taste and usability. Dominic Humphries states in his Linux is not Windows paper:

Projects frequently start out as one man’s toy. He does everything himself, and therefore the interface has no need of any kind of “user friendly” features: The user knows everything there is to know about the software, he doesn’t need help.

He’s right. You should see the Ahlera intranet.  Everyone here understands it and knows how to use it, but if you bring someone new they stare at the screen completely clueless.  That’s because our intranet is for our use and we know the level of competence that the people that work here have.  Our intranet does not work for any other company because it wouldn’t pass the minimum usability standards.  And yes, I know how weird that sounds considering that our studio focuses on usability.

This weekend I started to wonder what the Linux community was up to so I headed over to DistroWatch to read up on the news.  A good way of seeing which distros are hot is by checking out the Page Hit Ranking column to the right.  I saw a distro that I had never heard of before in the number 3 spot: Linux Mint.

I headed over to their website and was immediately impressed with the neat web design.  Compared to web designs such as the ones Damn Small Linux, CentOS, or Slackware have, this design is rockin’!  It is also funny to see how the first three third-party ad banners to the right highly contrast with the general design.

I downloaded a copy of their Elyssa release and ran it on VirtualBox.

Here’s Mint’s opening statement in their About Us page:

Linux Mint’s purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution.

The tagline also stated that the distro was elegant:

From freedom came elegance

That’s what I was expecting.  An elegant distro.

When I got to the login screen I remember thinking: “Hmmm, will this be the one?”

The login screen was very nice and it started the long chain of neatness that ended up in me writing up this post.  As you can see it is very simple and it introduces the pinstripe concept that is present throughout the default UI to the user.

The desktop is almost icon-free and very minimal.  The task bar is small and the “Start” button shows the codename of the version.  Notice how the pinstripes are present in the taskbar as well.  Very nice, very minimal, very good.

The menu is very clean and elegant, as well as highly intuitive.

Mint has a custom feature added to the terminal with funny quotes and phrases along with simple ASCII art.  Some people might find some of them offensive so they can be turned off at the installation screen.  Notice that the daiver@mint appears in “mint green” color.  Nice touch.

The GIMP is also included by default with the distro.  I still can’t use it with the dexterity that I have with Photoshop, but it has come a long way since I last used it.

The control panel included with MINT was very intuitive, offering both icons and text.  Those of you used to Windows will feel right at home with it.

Visually, I’d say that this is one of the nicest default themes I’ve seen on a Linux distribution, even though I’m more of a KDE guy because of Amarok mostly, but I have to admit that I love what Mint did with GNOME.

Technically, I also have to say that Mint has been the easiest distribution to install and use that I’ve ever tried.  Up until mint PCLinuxOS was the easiest distro to deal with, but it has been officially displaced by Mint.  There’s a new version of PCLinuxOS coming out soon, so who knows…

Congratulations to the Mint team for putting together a visually appealing Linux distribution that is easy to use. It seems that the Linux community is starting to focus on the graphical aspect of their things, which is great news for everyone.  There’s nothing wrong with functional stuff.  The question is, why not make functional stuff that also looks good?

I think Mint and Ubuntu are two distributions that are working hard on it.