With yesterday marking the 17th day I've been with Linux, I have yet again opted to switch distros.
Although I started out with Mint, I went briefly to Ubuntu 11.04, back to Mint and I think I have found my home...
Pinguy OS.
I was reluctant to switch as my monthly bandwidth cap is already over the 55% mark, however I felt like it was the right time and fortunately I had already downloaded it a few days ago (and saved the ISO).
All I had to worry about was updates and the odd program I had to install, which thanks to Pinguy isn't much.
The only faults I could find while reading about Pinguy is that it's 'bloated'. Yes it includes a lot of different programs, however most of them I would have installed anyways, plus I discovered a few programs I never heard of before. Of course having said that, some people find Mint & Ubuntu to be bloated.
Arguably the leading cause for the switch now was stability. Mint felt a little buggy at times. Nothing serious just minor annoyances. Pinguy on the other hand felt fast and stable.
For an operating system that includes as much as it does, it runs quite fast.
Two noticeable differences between Pinguy & Mint, where Mint is the winner would be:
1. Mint uses less RAM. Conky on Mint stayed around the 800-900MB mark, where as I'm a little over 1GB on Pinguy. Having 8GB of RAM installed this makes little difference personally.
2. Start-up time. I never cared or payed attention to how my Windows booted up until I installed Mint. From boot menu to opening the browser it is about 30-40 seconds in Mint.
I find Pinguy to be about 50 seconds, still faster than my Windows 7 but only slightly.
Like I said though, boot times aren't a deal breaker for me.
I love that Pinguy uses Mint Update and menu, but also has the gnome global menu, Ubuntu Software Centre and many other of the pluses Ubuntu has that Mint may lack.
Perhaps minor, but one thing I love with Pinguy over Mint...Apt! When I went to the Adobe flash website, it gives the option for an Apt download, which Pinguy installs with no problem. Mint doesn't offer this (of course both Mint & Pinguy include flash).
As someone who uses Kdenlive, initially getting it to render MP4's can be a headache. I did manage to find an easy solution in Mint. In Pinguy, I didn't have to do a single thing to it as everything needed was installed!
Again, I did find an easy work around for Mint & Ubuntu, but I love that in Pinguy I didn't have to do a single thing!
Pinguy also maintains a blog with up to date news, tips and downloads.
Through the blog I managed to get the new Firefox before it was released (not beta). I installed the new Linux kernel (3.0.0.8-generic) without issue...actually it's much better with it!
I hope I don't jinx myself, but I'm absolutely loving Pinguy and the way it's running so far!
