Linux Mint 18 - a viable alternative to Windows and MacOS

Linux Desktops OS have been around for a while.  One of the best distros out there recently released their most recent build - Linux Mint 18 - or "Sarah" with either the Cinnamon or MATE Interfaces.

 Over the years I've testing various Linux Desktop options from Ubuntu and others and Linux Mint always provide the easiest transition for most users.  

 Basically it looks and feels like any modern GUI operating system. 

















Like Windows it has a start button in the lower left hand corner along with a task bar that contains quick launchers for apps like Firefox, a Command Prompt and a file system explorer.   It comes with the long standing Thunderbird Mail app as well as instant messaging apps like Pidgin and HexChat.

 It also comes with Office Libre, a complete productivity suite - so word processing, spreadsheet & presentations along with media apps for music, videos, etc.  

 And it's all for free !   You can go to https://www.linuxmint.com/ download the ISO, burn it to a DVD and boot a piece of raw hardware to it.  It installs very easily with only handful of questions like time zone, login id, keyboard and in minutes your running.  

 Also like Windows or MacOS it comes with full update capabilities and it also has a pretty comprehensive store of some 83,000 apps.   Now sure that doesn't compare to the hundreds of thousands of apps in the Apple or MS Stores, but you'd be surprised what is there - like Spotify, Skype and DropBox.  You can also install leading media players like VLC and XMBC. 

 Microsoft and Apple really don't support Linux desktop - so apps like Office and iTunes can't run natively.   While there is a capability in Linux called WINE which is a API set that can allow some Windows app to run on Linux, results can be mixed.

 But if your an O365 or Google Docs user - you can run the web versions.  Or you can easily create a Windows VM and run all of those native apps in there.

 You can also install Google Chrome and get access to all of the Chrome Apps

 It takes a little bit to get used to all of the app names in Linux - but many of them are quite good at what they do.  

 Linux Mint is fast, light secure and very stable and it runs great on older hardware.  

 Versus the server world, where Linux is a market leader with a very broad install base, Linux on the desktop is still a niche OS with barely 2% market share worldwide and it's difficult if not impossible to buy a new PC with Linux pre-installed - which has limited it's growth.

 Bottom line is this.  Linux Mint 18 in my opinion is one of the best Linux desktops out there.  It's fast, stable and secure.  If you want to bring some life back into an old system, go install it.  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.



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