Linux excavations - Debian, Redhat & Maya

     Recently, I had tried several Linux variants in my AMD laptop.  As everyone say, I too loved Ubuntu before it entering to Unity mode.  Once Unity came in picture as default, I had to look for much better flavor.  I would say, Unity is for kids to play around.  Linux is always far better than any other desktop operating system and Ubuntu plays a major role in that to bring it as more people friendly.  I tried Debian, Fedora 16, Mint Lisa & Ubuntu 12. I liked Mint 10; some how I wanted to try the latest flavor.

     Debian - This is the base platform for Ubuntu and Mint.  But Debian is powerful and I recommended if you are really interested to play harder with Linux.  Set up itself very minimal and you won't get any wireless driver support.  You have to plug in the network cable, if you want to have complete installation once the base part finished.  Everything has to manually configure.

     Ubuntu 12 - I just want to try the "improved" Unity.  So decided to install it.  But how fast it got installed, faster than this I removed.  Because there is no fall back interface as we can see in Ubuntu 11.  This is not anymore good choice for me.  Like Microsoft, Ubuntu will give you chance to upgrade your distro directly from existing one.  Ultimate decision is in your hand.

     Mint 12 ( Lisa ) - Hmm .. this was much better and even I could consider to stay on it.  But some how, I wanted to try out something else to see how other looks like.  If Ubuntu's base is Debian, Mint is a customized Ubuntu with some good features.  It's much better choice. I found its best part is, Mint do not force any user to do distro upgrade.  If you want to stay back with same distro you can as long as you wish.  Since I wanted to dirty my hand in Linux for the time being, I had again gone for another variant. 

    Fedora 16 - Do you love Red Hat?  If you do, then go for this.  Fedora 16 is much much better than its earlier releases and adopting most of Red Hat features.  You won't see default flash plugin support for firefox browsers.  You need to do manual installations.  Like this, some small amount of customizations needs to be done.  Shutdown is faster than startup.  Like this very much.

Again, my mind was not ready to stay on that flavor.  I wanted to try something new.  Heard that Maya releasing with two types of desktops; Mate and Cinnamon.  Heard that Cinnamon is already available in Mint 12, but have to manually install.  But this time, it is coming together with its new version.  So, decided to switch over again.

Maya with Cinnamon - As I have Lisa 64-bit DVD, decided to install this first and do distro upgrade.  Gone through several forums.  Everyone was warning do not attempt the distro upgrade in Mint.  I do not have any personal data, so I decided to go ahead.  Here is my procedure:

• Modified the /etc/apt/sources.list file with Maya and Precise.  Got reference from Pastebin.  
• Now run the command 

         # sudo apt-get update

• Once that completed, run the distro-upgrade.

        # sudo apt-get distro-upgrade 

Sit back and relax; keep praying.  This will download and install around 1GB data.  When installation starts, you will receive few questions and have to answer so, come back after 1 or 2 hr (depends on your Internet speed) to watch the progress.

After the upgrade completed, if you wish you can try again the command to search and install any remaining update.

# sudo apt-get update

It will not ask for any re-start.  You have to do that manually to load for your Maya.  Now everything will be Maya, so pray hard.  If you have luck, if will load properly otherwise you will have some brand new "features" visible (lol).  For me, once it reached login prompt, the screen starts flashing with black and white.  I can't even see or do anything; only one option press the power button to kill it off.  I think my display driver was not installed properly or something else is wrong.  So the 3 hrs attempt was in vain.

Moral : Do not attempt to upgrade Mint from existing release to latest.  Always do fresh install.

       Now, as a good listener, I downloaded Cinnamon 64-bit DVD image and burnt.  Booted from it.  Liked the features very much than Lisa.  I would say, it is even more better than any other flavors.  Yet to discover Cinnamon features.  As a quick look I feels, I was gone back to my Windows environment with good graphical interface.  The task bar was at lower, standard icons are visible at right corner like windows, tool bars are placed in task bar etc.  Some play around with Cinnamon settings, it gone back to native Linux mode.  Tried new themes bundled with this; but my icons remains same.  I have to dig further.  There are lots of application available ( because it uses Ubuntu repositories ).  There are lot more features to explore.

If I get time, will write again with my update.  Till then, post your comments so I can improve myself.