Linux Mint 19 "Tara" - Cinnamon (64-bit)Through the years, starting back in the 90's, I've played with various flavors of Linux with Ubuntu being my favorite, so when the need arose for taking another look at Linux my first impulse was to return to Ubuntu. This all came about because my Dell desktop's OS, Windows Vista, is old and out of date and can no longer support the latest version of FireFox and that poses security risks, both with the OS and with FF as well.
This older Dell desktop serves very well for watching my movies and YouTube woodworking videos, so taking it out of service has no appeal at all and some kind of solution must be found. Windows 7 is nice, but it costs money and it's support only goes until January 2020, so then we're back to the same place. (...
if me are still around then!)
So, anyways, I'm thinking that it's been a while since my last foray into Linux, so why not take a good look around to see what's popular these days and that's when I found Mint.
My first thoughts are that it's smooth and easy for the download and install, the only issue came while burning the ISO, the first DVD was no good, but that may have been the DVD itself because it was several years old. (5+, or maybe 8+!) Installing Mint along side Vista was a treat because the installer divided the hard drive and then installed Mint with no problems and rather quickly as well, but unfortunately I did not actually track the time.
In use it works just as well as Ubuntu and while the controls and layouts are different from Ubuntu and certainly different from Vista, they are easily learned so first time users would likely be up to speed in short order.
So, will I keep it? Maybe, but who knows, it's for sure that Vista is not a viable system for this desktop, so if not Mint, then it will have to be Ubuntu, or something.
BTW...
my first desktop was a Hewlett Packard running Windows 95, I also had one that was running 3.1.
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