Linux Mint never ceases to amaze me! First they came up with the heavily cinnamon version of otherwise deplorable Gnome 3 and now they have added XFCE version. And to be honest, it looks brighter and shinier than Xubuntu 12.04 LTS!
As usual, the 830 MB installation ISO is power packed and complete with most of the common apps that we need like adobe flash, codecs, java, firefox 12, pidgin, GIMP, shotwell, VLC, Banshee, Thunderbird, bit-torrent, LibreOffice, pdf viewer and there is software manager from where you can download plenty of apps (of Ubuntu repository). Only app I can think of which is not there, is Skype. Rest all common apps are already there. Amazing!
CPU and RAM usage
When it comes to XFCE, the benefit you get is of low RAM and CPU usage, far lower than KDE or Gnome. Mint XFCE uses about 280-300 MB of RAM and 5% CPU with only task manager running. Amazingly low given that I am running the 64-bit version with only 1 CPU and 2 GB of RAM! 32-bit version will definitely consume around 200 MB of RAM!
Overall
In overall, I liked XFCE version more than Mate or Cinnamon, given it is far less taxing and energy consuming. Plus, the way developers have tweaked XFCE to look like the Mate/Cinnamon version is amazing! Also, out of the box, you get almost all the applications that you would normally require in an OS. Definitely, the best general purpose distro right now in the Linux world. Hats off to the developers for creating such a complete, good looking and polished OS.
To see more screenshots, please visit my Picasa album. And thanks for reading my blog.
 |
| From Linux Mint 13 XFCE |
CPU and RAM usage
When it comes to XFCE, the benefit you get is of low RAM and CPU usage, far lower than KDE or Gnome. Mint XFCE uses about 280-300 MB of RAM and 5% CPU with only task manager running. Amazingly low given that I am running the 64-bit version with only 1 CPU and 2 GB of RAM! 32-bit version will definitely consume around 200 MB of RAM!
 |
| From Linux Mint 13 XFCE |
In overall, I liked XFCE version more than Mate or Cinnamon, given it is far less taxing and energy consuming. Plus, the way developers have tweaked XFCE to look like the Mate/Cinnamon version is amazing! Also, out of the box, you get almost all the applications that you would normally require in an OS. Definitely, the best general purpose distro right now in the Linux world. Hats off to the developers for creating such a complete, good looking and polished OS.
To see more screenshots, please visit my Picasa album. And thanks for reading my blog.
Hi Arindam,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review. Agreed, this one is certainly better-looking and more complete than Xubuntu Precise.
Mint - awesome as always!