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Mint 18.1 Cinnamon Mint 18.1 MATE Scientific Linux 7
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We have two quite contrasting distros on the LXFDVD this month. While Scientific Linux has its roots in the scientific community, Linux Mint started as a respin of a desktop distro aimed mainly at home users.
Outside of the major and professionally backed distros, Linux Mint is one of the most popular, although it is difficult to measure user numbers with free software. Mint is available with a number of different desktops but the two it’s known for, and a substantial part of the reasons for its success, are Cinnamon and MATE. Both take the familiar GTK 2/ GNOME 2 desktop as used by Ubuntu before the introduction of Unity (was there every a software name that proved to be so inappropriate with hindsight?) and modernise it.
Of the two, Cinnamon is the most modern and, because of its use of hardware graphics acceleration, the more demanding of the two. That isn’t to say that Cinnamon is a heavyweight, it isn’t, but it runs best on relatively modern hardware, although cutting edge gaming rigs are certainly not necessary, which is why we have included the 64 bit version here.
That’s not to say that you cannot run Cinnamon on a 32-bit system, or MATE on a 64-bit computer (where it will really fly). If you want to try MATE you can simply choose the 32-bit MATE option when booting from the DVD. If you want to add MATE to an installed system from the Cinnamon version, you only have to install the mint-metamate package, which will download and install all of the software required to use the MATE desktop. Once installed, you only need to log out and you can pick MATE at the next login. Unlike with a live CD, the installed distro will remember your choice until you change it again. You can also set the default desktop in System Settings > Login Window > Options.
Linux Mint is still heavily based on Ubuntu, with the main exception of the desktops, so updates follow Ubuntu. This means that you get all the security updates that Ubuntu users get, but not necessarily the relatively short lifespan of the non-LTS Ubuntu distros. The version we have here, 18.1 (codenamed Serena) is a long term support release (LTS), supported until April 2021.
The Login details: username mint, and the password is blank.