MINT HAS LANDED!

Before disappearing off the edge of the screen for a sabbatical, Jonni Bidwell delivers important guidance on Mint.

Before disappearing off the edge of the screen for a sabbatical, Jonni Bidwell delivers important guidance on Mint…

Ever get the feeling that your current Linux set up is just ‘okay’? Maybe it’s functional, maybe even tidy, but lacking that je ne sais quoi that would make it awesome, outstanding, something your friends would be jealous of.

Well, on sait quois – or we at least know a few things that could help you towards desktop satori. Whether you’re planning to install the freshest edition of Linux Mint, or revamp your existing install (be it Mint or otherwise), we’ve got some guidance for you. We’ll deliver the low-down on theming and other customisations. We’ll cover flexible partitioning with LVM, so you can add extra distros with ease.

Sometimes things go wrong, but we’ll show you how to do swift GRUB repairs and restoration of backups using the Mint live disc. As you may infer from all that, we’re big fans of Mint. But there’s lots of wisdom we’ll impart that can be applied to any distro. We’ll cover adding desktop environments and customising them to your whim, and we’ll furnish you with some lesser-known apps that you really should get to know better. Linux boot times are pretty impressive these days, but if you’re one of those people whose ears prick up at the prospect of booting five seconds quicker, we’ll show you how to analyse and optimise boot times with evil Systemd. If you’re not one of those people, maybe our insight will turn you into one.

Beyond that, we’ve got a delicious cornucopia of little tips that we wished we’d known about before – everything from lesserdocumented command line frobs to Mint’s oh-so-simpleto-use firewall. There’s something to be said for sticking with default settings, and out-of-the-box setups are designed to offend as few people as possible. But there’s a lot to be said for making your home your own too. Right, let’s get on with it then…

don’t start from scratch “Your existing install can be tweaked, maybe even perfected, by following tips and exploring variations thereof in this feature.”