Hello Everyone! Today I am reviewing Linux Mint 6 Code named Felica. The country that this distribution came from is Ireland. I have been keeping an eye on this distro as I believe that this one can start innovating rather then just use what Ubuntu has for its OS. So far the developers have now been working on a KDE version (RC1) XFCE version (Final) FluxBox CE version (RC1) and of course the Main Edition which is the GNOME version (Final) all of which look great! All versions of Linux Mint other then the GNOME version are Community Editions.

When I turned on the Virtual Machine I have been using on this Laptop to write this review I encountered a strange problem.

/sbin/hwclock returned 256

I am not sure why it returned 256 but when it is the first thing you change when you try something out it worries me quite a bit. I would really like to know why that happened as there have been no updates applied so that must be part of why it has happened. I also think that it may be a bug that was never fixed for release. But enough of that.

I love that green theme. Green may be the color of the future… or for now it is the color that is making marketing so much better… There are a lot of ads that are saying being green is good… I say just use the words energy efficent. The green is just a really nice color. I really do not mind blue or orange/brown but it is nice to see since right now outside my window all I see is white: White clouds, White trim, and White snow. The grass is still there… I think but most of it is covered in Snow, which by the way never snows in my hometown in March. The grass I do see is a very nice shade of green, darker then the Mint theme but not bad for this time of year.

Most days I have 6 computers at home: server, media center, Dads work computer, Sisters laptop, Moms crazy ancient computer and of course when I am home so is my laptop.

2 Computers in my house have Linux on them, The others have Windows. The server has Ubuntu 8.04 and my laptop has Ubuntu 8.10 but is also a testing ground for different distros.

While Mint 6 may be a competitor to the other Linux Distros there is not much difference between Ubuntu and Mint. Sure Ubuntu has the Orange/Brown theme for default and Mint has the Black/Green theme but there is nothing more important then how it works on the hardware you have.

They have some known issues on their site:

1. Open Office 2.x vs 3.x. I see no problem with going to 3.x but Linux Mint 6 Developers decided to stay with the Open Office 2 branch which is fine but a little innovation could be great in the Linux World these days.
2. gnome-themes-extra conflicts with mint-artwork-gnome. OK I see a problem and I am betting that it is a pretty sad conflict even though using GNOME has its ups and downs I really don’t know why they need both to be installed or maybe they should modify the package so that both packages are in the one and there would be no conflicts there?

There are a few more conflicts but none of which I feel are too important not to say anything about that may bring down the review even more then it already is.

Overall the performance of the Linux Mint on the specs that I always use for reviews are quite quick and is pretty fun to see something that is a different color then Ubuntu.

Since there are quite a few issues that I have seen I would have to give it a 4/5 because overall there may be a quite a few issues but that is worth fixing so that there can be a better product.

Ryan Orser.