Bye Linux Mint

I’ve been using Linux Mint since I got back from Europe(August 2009).  Overall I’ve been pretty happy with the Operating System.

On a day to day basis my must have applications are a terminal, vim, and a browser(usually Chrome).  Sometimes I jump into some image editing software but for the most part I’m editing code and browsing the web.  I mostly use all web apps for anything else that I need such as Tracks for GTD. I’ve even switched to using Hootsuite for Twitter, it’s pretty much a web based Tweetdeck just without the resource hogging.

While the OS is pretty nice overall, there are some little things that just didn’t work.

1. Printer compatibility is lacking.  I bought a Lexmark printer and installed the Lexmark provided driver.  It worked for a few days, then stopped working.  So I did some googling and found another solution using the z600 driver for another printer. No success after a few hours of compiling and installing the driver software.  A printer should just work, which it did not.
2. Selecting the audio output device.  When I really need to concentrate I use my big, bulky headphones. Since the headphones are USB based I have to tell the audio to switch from the earphone plug to the USB driver.  This involves going into the control center and going to the sound section and then selecting one of 3 drivers installed for the USB headphones.  Why is there not one? Why can’t I just pick from “Miniplug” or “USB”? On all my previous OS’ this was automatic when plugging in the headphones as it should be.
3. Disconnecting a dual monitor.  With Ubuntu/Mint to get a menu bar on the dual monitor you have to add a new panel and then add whatever items you would like to it.  Before I knew this, this was probably the most annoying “feature” and I almost dumped it for it immediately.  Also, because without a panel on the dual monitor and a “window list” item any window on the dual wouldn’t show up on a menu bar anywhere.  Also once you right click the panel on the main monitor and select “New panel” it puts that panel on the main monitor, to get the panel to the other monitor you have to alt+click+drag(pretty hard to find how to do this) the panel to the other monitor. When I disconnect my laptop from the dual to take it over to the couch it doesn’t refresh the desktops and figure out “Oh, you disconnected the external monitor, let me readjust things to a single desktop setup”, which forces me to mess with the panels some more, this should just work.

I know that Ubuntu will get it right very soon and they have made some amazing progress already. Afterall, Ubuntu has only been around since late 2004.

I know there are probably some fixes to some of the things I mentioned. I don’t feel like digging and googling around to figure out how to make things work on my computer, I just want them to work.

You shouldn’t be working for your technology, your technology should be working for you.