The lack of activity at the blog reflects a lack of change on my desktops. Over the last three years this blog has recorded my gradual migration from a mixed Linux \ Windows (7) environment to a Linux only computing system. To be fair this was mostly a flirtation with other distros with Ubuntu playing the old reliable role. This reliance on Ubuntu  peaked with version 10:10 and was struck dead by 11:04 (the first Unity release). After which the blog became a celebration of Linux Mint, an Ubuntu derivative, with it's more 'traditional' Gnome 2 desktop environment which was thankfully forked and became the excellent MATE. Earlier this year I embarked on a side project using antiX Linux M12 Core, based on Debian Testing with an Xfce Desktop Environment, built with performance in mind for Wine to run games (yes, predominantly World of Warcraft).

The reason why activity here has been so low is that antiX was such a revelation. I was labouring under the misconception that using such a stripped down environment would involve a large degree of compromise, having to live without many of the applications and utilities that make computing possible and straightforward. I started out rebooting to a full fat environment, say Linux Mint with MATE.

I've always tried to navigate a narrow line between performance and good looks. I continue to sacrifice performance to Desktop Environments, applications and graphical utilities that are easy on the eye and out performed by uglier examples. If I have to look at it all day it shouldn't make me wince. Stripping everything out of a distro and leaving end users with an excellent network manager (Ceni) and Apt package management, and not a lot else, is a stroke of genius. My first step after deploying a distro is ripping out what I don't want, use or like. The second step is then to install and build things I do use all the time and prefer the looks and operation of. AntiX Core lets me skip step one and go directly to installing only those things I really want, I just don't install anything until I miss it. Xfce is a concession to pretty but it is a lot lighter than KDE, Gnome3 or MATE.

The revelation is that instead of rebooting periodically switching to Linux Mint, to do things I couldn't do in antiX, I gradually learned how to build the missing functionality into my antiX environment. I reached the tipping point and began to actively pursue solutions to the functionality gaps in my installation, there is now nothing I need to do with my PC that I cannot achieve with antiX. I was pleased to get to that point with Linux...but to achieving it with a minimalistic distro that I have had to build up myself, which didn't arrive fully formed 'out of the box' really feels like progress. However, this all sounds very complicated doesn't it? Perhaps it does, but it isn't. Let me show you.

The most difficult part of the process could actually be installing the distro. Download the antiX-13.1_386-core-libre.iso from Sourceforge, it's tiny so no need to trouble your torrent application. Either burn to CD or use your favourite USB mutliboot application to create a bootable USB sitck. Boot up to you chosen installation media. You'll be disappointed if you were hoping for a slick GUI installer, but don't let it worry you. After antiX loads you'll see all the information you need right there above the login prompt: log in as root with the password root then you can begin the installation with the command cli-installer. If you know your partition layout the installer presents no problems whatsoever. If you want resize partitions and create a new one to house antiX I cannot recommend the Gparted live CD highly enough. If you don't understand partitioning and you're not simply replacing everything you have on your hard drive (losing all that data) then I'd recommend educating yourself, learning the appropriate use of Gparted, or reconsider adding another distro altogether. Otherwise you will lose all of your data precious.

If you want to get clever, I strongly recommend using Gparted to pre-partition your drive before you start. Split the disk into three. Use a calculator and work backwards, make the last partition on the the disk, sda3/hda3, about 1 gigabyte in size (1024 Megabytes) or three times your amount of physical RAM. The middle partition on the disk, sda2/hda2 should be as large as possible because you're going to use it for data. The first partition sda1/hda1 is for your antiX install my desktop has balloon to 12Gb but the fresh install on my netbook is almost 2.3 Gb, a lot of which is LibreOffice (hey, I like it!) When asked if you want use a separate location for you /home drive select option y and assign it to sda2/hda2 at this point this is a fresh /home. Now if you're unlucky or reckless enough (raise hand) to trash your operating system you can reinstall, choose option y again for separate /home drive but in this circumstance this is not a fresh /home (so don't format it).

If it's simply a question of installing antiX on a new hard drive or a drive you are re-purposing, and don't care about the data on it, then when the installer asks you where you want install to enter hda1 for a SATA (or PATA IDE) drive or sda1 for an SSD drive. For filesystem ext4 is a reasonable choice. After entering a username and a matching pair of passwords for your user and for root the system will install very, very quickly. That last question to answer is whether or not to install the Grub boot loader to the MBR, answer y if unsure. Now you can type reboot and when the PC restarts remove your installation media.

Now the work begins. Log in with your new user account and lets start working the command line. My first job is usually to enable the Debian Testing repositories, this will give you more flexibility and up to date package choices. Enter sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.d/debian.list and simply remove the hashes (#) from the all three lines in the Debian Testing section. I also enable the Liquorix repo listed in /etc/apt/sources.d/various.list. If you're not using a wired connection or it isn't set up correctly run the excellent Ceni network managment tool and set up your network connection. When you've made a connection and got an IP address let's do a sudo apt-get update.

If (like on my desktop PC) you need to install Nvidia proprietary network drivers I recommend the SMXI script. Simply enter smxi at the command line and navigate through the menus, there are plenty of automation options for installing alternative kernels, Xorg: the graphical display server, as well as a range of desktop managers and desktop environments. If smxi isn't for you your first step is probably installing Xorg: sudo apt-get install xorg. It's not rocket science. Next should probably install a desktop manager which will provide a graphical login prompt. I opted for Slim but it does require some dirty configuration file editing. If simplicity is what you're looking for GDM3 will work out of the box, but it's bloated and pretty slow. Other desktop managers are available. the command to install Slim is sudo apt-get install slim.

Now we're ready for our graphical desktop environment. The installation process doesn't get any more difficult though sudo apt-get install xfce4 xfce4-goodies will get you a working Xfce desktop and file manager (Thunar). If you want to mount hot pluggable removable media you are certainly going to need to issue this at the CLI: sudo apt-get install thunar-volman gvfs.  After rebooting and logging in for the first time you'll probably be a little disappointed with a few things not least the absence of themes and more importantly icons in your (not very) pretty (at the moment) desktop. You might want to make your first job sudo apt-get install gnome-icon-theme then get yourself into Applications | Settings | Appearance | Icons and select your Gnome icon set.

I'll be honest with you one thing I'm currently struggling with in antiX and Debian Wheezy is Wine. Debian has it's own approach to multiarch and while that might be perfect good even better than the model openSUSE and Fedora are using it presents a problem when you try to install 32-bit Nvidia drivers for Wine on an AMD x86_64 platform. The Liquorix repositories I recommended enabling earlier have pretty up-to-date Ubuntu Wine packages; 1.6 and beyond. The problem doesn't seem to be with Debian multiarch or Wine, but installing the 32-bit graphics drivers required by Wine for DirectX gaming. This is not to say it's impossible to get it working. I have an installation of antiX Linux M13 Core x64 on my desktop PC and Wine 1.6 rc5 that runs DirectX games a treat. I have no idea how I achieved this miracle and I have been completely unsuccessful in replicating this feat. Long story short if you're installing wine: sudo apt-get install wine1.6 for gaming make life easy for yourself and stick with the i686 version and don't go down the x64 route until Nvidia drivers can deliver in a Debian multiarch environment.

Not only is Linux not a politically sound hair shirt, antiX Linux is not a lightweight compromise. It is stripped to the bone, but ready for you to build into something tailor made to your own personal needs. After applying myself to learn more about Linux and Debian antiX Linux has become everything I used to rely on Ubuntu for. So there is no competition this year, antiX is light and flexible and antiX Linux M13.1 Core can build from a network connection and a package manager to be whatever you want, just what you want and no more than that.

I'd like to pretend that 2012 was a year of upheaval and change and that new players muscled their way onto my Desktop, it would make for more interesting reading. However I simply found myself back using the the old reliables. After a brief test drive of Linux Mint 13 'Maya' I'd decided that Cinnamon, as much potential as it demonstrated, was still not ready for prime time and my workhorse computer needed something more solid. I decided that I couldn't stay using Katya forever, even if the distro was near perfect, I needed to push forward, change is good.

I decided to give Linux Mint 13 'Maya' with the MATE Desktop Environment a quick spin, before Nadia arrived...then I could look for another more mature DE, perhaps Xfce, perhaps the Linux Mint variant. So I took out the magazine cover mounted DVD I had and launched the Maya MATE live session and began carving up my drive to make some space. I love that the Mint live session includes GParted, if you're installing a new distro this is the tool, unless you have the good fortune to have access to the KDE Partition Tool. Once your distro is deployed it's value shrinks to almost nothing so saving some precious drive storage is sound idea as most users simply won't need it again, those that do probably won't have any issue installing it.

All my plans to merrily go about thrashing and over-revving several others from the current crop of popular distros promptly fell at the wayside. I really shouldn't have been surprised, MATE is Gnome 2 after all, however it's difficult to convey my feelings about Maya. I loved the simplicity of Ubuntu, it seemed to make everything possible. Some people dislike the on-a-plate delivery of Ubuntu and prefer the power and flexibility of an Arch, Gentoo or Sabayon. Fine, no issue with that, but when you want a distro that's simple to install, simple to set up and gets out of your face so you can work Ubuntu 10:04 was perfection and I hit none of the snags that some experienced from 10:10. When I felt I needed to move and tried Linux Mint 11 Katya for the first time it was simply like coming home, it was all Ubuntu had been and more.

It felt exactly like I'd wanted Ubuntu 12:04 to be, Ubuntu 10:04 only better and more polished. Using Maya for the first time I seriously questioned the rationale of not wanting to backslide into Gnome 2 and a 'legacy' Desktop. MATE is, naturally, as good as Gnome 2.32 but with plans afoot to make use of the Gtk3 tool-set MATE is looking forward as well as back.

2012 has been disappointing and pleasant for the same reasons. The Linux Mint team have delivered a distro experience that has simply been exactly what I was looking for. Cinnamon has pushed the boundaries and made the Gnome 3 tech usable by replacing the Gnome Shell and throwing away the Gnome team's design brief. The Gnome team had announced that they were removing Fallback mode from Gnome Shell, a Gnome 2 panel-like interface for 2D desktop users, then in a belated turnaround they've recently announced a Classic mode return with project maintained extensions delivered in tarball for those who wish to opt for the Classic (read old-fashioned, Gnome 2) experience.

Perhaps we'll now see a gentle repositioning by the community. Old fashioned and traditional might surreptitiously be replaced with standard or user friendly. Modern, fresh and cutting edge may be edged out in favour of bleeding edge. I was (unsurprisingly) insulted by the suggestion (made on the Ubuntu Forum) that 'I simply didn't like change' and found it difficult to 'transition to a modern interface design'. My scorn of Unity (and Gnome Shell) would've been tempered if it was a developmental alternative, the first steps to a new Desktop model and associated way of working. Having someone accuse me of being unable to cope with a bleeding edge interface design would have me responding more moderately that 'for everyday, productive computing that was probably so'. My approach and review of Gnome Shell and Unity would've dwelt on the positives and innovation and not those parts that made everyday use onerous (Global Menus, Overviews or Dashes, appalling task switching, no window controls).

It may well be (two years) too late for the Gnome team to respond to it's user base and survive, but frankly who cares, we have MATE and I frankly can't wait for the next iteration of Cinnamon. As for Ubuntu if the upstream distro continues to ship with as many regressions I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Clement Leferbvre announce the use of Debian across the entire Mint stable and not just for the rolling LMDE.

So for my needs, the undisputed champion and distro of 2012 is the MATE 1.4 sporting Linux Mint 14 'Nadia'.

_A lot of blog space has been given over to reviews of Linux Mint, everyone loved Julia and Katya has been almost as well received...in most quarters. Forgive me for my limited reading but any critical reviews seemed to fall into one of two camps: 1) do we really need another 'child' of Ubuntu and 2) why use Mint when you could simply use Ubuntu? Why use Ubuntu when you can just use Debian? Well, there are in fact many ways in which Ubuntu distinguishes itself from Debian. In exactly the same way, Mint has much to offer compared to it's upstream 'parent'.

I can't help wondering if those same people are now sneering at anyone criticising Unity, but of course it's only the attitude that is the same. Perhaps many of the people who questioned the raison d'être of Mint then, are now quietly jumping off the Unity ship. It's clear that at least some of the smug celebrators of Unity's 'modernity  and freshness' (I'm sneering now) have decided to quietly leave Ubuntu themselves for pastures new. Ubuntu has unquestionably declined in popularity this year, but whether that has translated into fewer actual desktop deployments, rather than just Distrowatch page hits, is debatable.  It is even more doubtful, as many less unquestioning pundits have suggested, that Mint has overtaken Ubuntu in terms of desktops in use.

Still, as the blogosphere suggests, many Unity-sceptic Ubuntu users have given up and decided to try Linux Mint. So after the briefest of cursory brushes with Juila in 2010, I thought I'd really give Katya a chance to woo me on the desktop. What's the worst that could happen? I fall in love with the Mint Menu or concluded that even Global Menus are better than this?

I'm well aware at this stage that Linux Mint 12 is out but for a couple of reasons I decided to retro test Katya. First as a rescue CD on a system with a corrupt boot partition and later I decided to test what I know, as the Mint Team had decided to stick with Gnome 2.x for Katya.

There is nothing to tell of the installation, using pretty a pretty much unchanged Ubuntu installer, everything including repartitioning my hard drive was simplicity itself. I was pleased to see a 2.6.38 kernel as booted into the OS for the first time.

The logon screen (right) is both simple and well presented. I approve. I'm not completely sold on Mint's penchant for green...but I'm in no way offended it is heavy on the utilitarian grey, brushed steel look.

When you log into the desktop (image above) everything looks professional and, if you'll excuse the pun, well polished. Seamless integration is a strong selling point of Mint, it aims to be every inch as consistently branded and well fitted together as Ubuntu itself. Job done.

When I first poked at Helena, last year, with a metaphorical long and suspicious stick, I was not the Linux user I am now. I was put off by the green branding and the infamous Mint Menu, that I tried to edit and succeeded only in breaking the favourites, which I took as a sign and disappeared in a sulk to another distro. Fresh green is not for me so how about a nice, muted Debian blue and a change of wallpaper. I'm determined to give the Mint Menu a chance and it really doesn't bother me greatly even in it's default and unedited form (heh). Now I know it has an underlying Gnome 2 architecture and as I know how that works I poked around and created two new bars in the the traditional panels layout. I observed that I could replace the innovative Mint Menu with Gnome's traditional Applications, Places and System menu's, but resisted.

I told you I like that wallpaper.

_I will say it again I have two, 24" monitors; screen real estate is available to be used...a second panel for task switching at the bottom of the screen is logical and intuitive in this kind of environment. I have never used a standard Gnome 2 panels layout on my netbook. I actually prefer xfce in that environment: 9" screen and screen real estate at a premium.

The Mint Menu is an interesting bit of design. KDE has always had a more Windows-like interface, superficially at least, than Gnome. The KDE panel invokes memories of the Windows Start Panel as it has developed from it's introduction in XP to it's final iteration in 7. Gnome has always broken down the Start Panel functionality into three menus available from the top panel. Mint Menu is a KDE-like panel in Gnome. It's important to stress at this point that that shouldn't put you off, the Mint Menu is far better than KDE's. It's closer to the Lancelot layout of KDE than it's default style. Mint Menu as a panel stands head and shoulders above KDE's and yes even beats the godfather of all panels Windows' itself. Good job.

Of course another enormous plus point for any Debian/Ubuntu user is use of the APT package system. This inculdes the interesting download option I read about. Issuing the command sudo apt-get download command followed by a package does just that: downloads the .deb to your /home folder. Perfect for those of us with a need to take more control with dpkg or simply take the package to a non-networked machine.

_Attention to details can make the difference between a very competent distro and an excellent one. Ubuntu has it's paper cuts initiative and of course Mint benefits from that. One of the things I like best about Mint (and Ubuntu) is the consistency across the OS. I appreciate that the Rubbish Bin is referenced nowhere in the distro as anything other then Rubbish Bin. Another boon (is this from Ubuntu?) is Delete. As an ex-Windows user, I constantly right-click files while holding down shift and select Move to Rubbish Bin from the context menu. In Linux this does absolutely nothing, so it's nice to see a dedicated Delete entry on the context menu. It's a small thing but a great thing.

Some distros look and feel like they're stitched together from many disparate open source components, mainly because they are. Anyone can do that, if you'd like to try Arch Linux or Linux From Scratch are definitely worth a look. What distinguishes a good distro from any homespun software collection is consistency and branding. All the disparate components are seamless integrated, look and work well together. If you've never used a less polished distro than Ubuntu, openSUSE or Fedora this is something you won't won't relate to. Integration and consistency is only something you notice when it's absent. When a OS component pops up and is so glaringly alien then you notice it: that component and the lack of consistency. You'll certainly notice if a component doesn't work or won't work in combination with others.

Which software ships with a distro is an issue for many, but with a package system like APT and repositories and PPA any Ubuntu based distro makes a default software package redundant. As you can see above I grabbed my media player of choice Audacious, which I recommend you try if you don't need all the things Banshee is capable of. The capable Brasero disk writing app is included in your newly deployed desktop as is VLC's media player along with the more conservative GNOME MPlayer and Movie Player. Flash is, of course, installed by default no problems with YouTube, either running the live DVD or using Katja out of the box.

The browser of choice is my favourite: Firefox, I don't dislike or love Chrome, leave it I'm sure it's great, I just love Firefox. Pidgin delivers IMs and mail is managed with Thunderbird, my default choice too. Transmission is a stable and capable bittorent client for those who just want to get things done, it's great, it works, I use it all the time. Java is Sun's at version 6. As you'd expect, proprietary hardware drivers are a trivial installation issue via a functionally GUI. Debian this is not. If you crave patent free, open source purity Mint has a version to cater to your tastes and rest assured I'll be giving that an extended test in the new year.

I was pleased to see LibreOffice bundled simply because it saves me removing OpenOffice and then installing Libre by hand. GIMP is here so another download task saved. I like that no games are installed by default...I rarely use them and often end up clawing back the wasted space. Tetravex, any card games, Mines and Mahjonng always get installed for idling away a ten minute coffee break.

I know what I like and I like to try new things. The best approach really.

The Software Update Manager received a lick of paint this release. Eat your heart out Windows users, this is how Linux does updates. Why break updates into Priority and Optional? Everything is optional in Linux...but we'll label important/security updates with a higher level just for you advice, you control the deployment of each and every update.

The really nice thing about this component is that if you click Install Updates it does just that. You can now forget all about updates as it won't come back and report unless there is something to know, if everything is successful it simply closes. If you want information Mint has it in the log, otherwise you won't be told things you can do nothing with like: Everything completed fine, now interact with me to make me go away.

_Two clicks launches Software Manager from the top level of the Mint Menu. If you need some new software this is the place to start. Not sure what you want, then recommendations and reviews may assist in steering you to the apps you need. It's simple, attractive and does the job. What more could you possibly ask for?

For those yearning for the power of the Synaptic Package Manger, don't. It's here and you can use it if you wish. I have a place in my arsenal for Synaptic but most of time I'm happy to use the Software Manager.

However, as heretical as it might sound from a renegade Windows user, my preference is to open up the terminal and and use APT at the command line. I never thought I'd ever say that but there you go.

I felt at home immediately with Katya. So I installed Wine and tried to run Windows games. I have nothing to report other than the Wine is at 1.3.15 and installed completed and my games launched, played and performed perfectly well. That is all.

So how did Linux Mint 11 Katya fair on my main box? Well four weeks later it's still installed. I succeeded on installing Managler the open source Ventrillo client to use with Ventrillo Voice Chat services. This means that with the quite reasonable performance Wine delivers presenting a Windows API to Warcraft I now have few reasons to boot into another OS, so I haven't.

I have persevered with the Mint Menu start panel and it's...well it hasn't bugged me enough often enough to rip it out and go default Gnome. With less fresh, zinging greens and more restful, subdued blues there is nothing to put me off any aspect of the interface. Almost everything I need or want is either installed or a short sudo apt-get install package away and worked out of the box.

I entitled this the inevitable review as Linux Mint gets a lot of attention, I felt it would be much more interesting to be reviewing Arch or Gentoo or some tiny gem I'd happened upon. However, sometimes I just want to do some work or play some Warcraft and so I want a workhorse distro that handles it all with grace and stabilty, So as many other reviewers have found, I inevitably have discovered that I really, really like Mint and can't wait to try the Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) and Linux Mint 12 Lisa.

In conclusion, my post Ubuntu, 2011 distro of choice is Katya, my Distro of 2011, the one I'm using full time on the main box, is Linux Mint 11 "Katya".