Linux Mint 18.2 was released at the beginning of July 2017, and you can already read the quick screenshot tour of Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon, the flagship of the Linux Mint team.
Apart from Cinnamon, there are also MATE, Xfce and KDE versions. Linux notes from DarkDuck has previously reviewed Linux Mint 17.2 KDE. It was about 2 years ago, in August 2015. Let's have a look at Linux Mint 18.2 KDE now.
The ISO image, as usual, is available from one of many mirrors and via torrent. The Linux Mint 18.2 KDE 64-bit image is about 1.9 GB in size, which is quite a lot, 300 Mb bigger than a 2-years old release.
I burnt the image to the USB stick with the dd command and plugged that USB drive to the port of my Dell Inspirion 17 laptop.
Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!
Booting up
The boot process of Linux Mint 18.2 KDE 64-bit is very simple. There is a countdown on the boot screen that takes you to the Live version of this operating system after 10 seconds of waiting. If you touch the keyboard during that time, you have some other options like OEM install, troubleshooting and so on.Once the actual boot sequence starts, there are no more questions. The boot time is very short.
First impressions
The freshly booted system leaves you on the black-colour themed desktop. The wallpaper is black with just a Mint logo in the right part. There are several dozen alternative wallpapers available out of the box. Just right-click the empty desktop space and choose "Configure desktop".The panel is at the bottom of the screen, and it is also in black colour. The left part of of the panel has only a menu button with Plasma (KDE) logo on it. Yes, the menu button is not Mint-themed. But you can change the icon by right-clicking it and choosing the "Configure Launcher Settings" item.
The right part of the panel contains the notification area with clocks, volume, battery and network indicators, network and bluetooth indicators, clipboard and USB managers, printers, notifications and some other usual suspects. There is also the Instant Messenger icon that calls up the Plasma Messenger.
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| Linux Mint 18.2 KDE welcome screen |
The freshly booted Linux Mint 18.2 KDE system only took about 420 Mb of memory, which is on par with the 17.2 version, and less than half as much as the Cinnamon version.
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| Linux Mint 18.2 KDE resource usage |
Network connection
There were no issues with connecting my laptop to the wireless network. Linux Mint 18.2 KDE correctly configured the wireless card and found my home network. I had to type the password and then I was connected. The only "but" is that, as usual in KDE, I had to type in the password twice.Keyboard layout
Linux Mint 18.2 KDE comes with English US layout by default. If you don't like it, or want to add more, you can follow the guide.The indicator appears on the panel once you configure more than one layout, and it can be either text or flag.
Applications
Linux Mint 18.2 KDE comes with a decent set of applications, which you can expect from the 1.9 GB ISO image.Firefox 54.0 is default and the only available browser in the default distribution. There are also KMail, KTorrent and Konversation (IRC chat) applications in the Internet section of the menu.
The Graphics section of the menu sports GIMP image editor, Gwenveiw image viewer, Skanlite scanning utility and digiKam image manager.
The Multimedia section includes Amarok and Dragonplayer players, K3B disk burning utility and the Multimedia codecs installer.
The productivity tools of Linux Mint 18.2 KDE include the full suite of LibreOffice applications, even with Math and Base tools. There is also a Kontacts utility.
Of course, there are several dozens of smaller utilities, both KDE-specific and generic, like Firewall configuration, Ark, KCalc, Konsole and so on.
The default application manager for Linux Mint 18.2 KDE is Software Manager (mintinstall). All Ubuntu and Mint repositories are just under your fingertips.
Multimedia
Amarok is the default player for MP3 files in Linux Mint 18.2 KDE. As you could guess from the previous section, there are no multimedia codecs available in Linux Mint 18.2 by default. Instead, there is an installer that takes you through the necessary steps.Amarok also asks you to install plugins when you try to play an MP3 file for the first time. You have a choice between gstreamer-plugin-ugly, gstreamer-libav and gstreamer-fluendo. I selected the first (ugly) option and clicked the Install button. The installer found half a dozen dependencies, all of which were installed in a matter of seconds. Amarok started playing the music immediately after that.
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| Linux Mint 18.2 KDE multimedia |
Conclusion
Linux Mint 18.2 KDE left a very nice impression on me.As you may know, I now use Kubuntu 16.04 as my default operating system. It fulfills my requirements. But now, after checking this new release from the Mint team, I am seriously considering switching to it.
Fast, slick, trouble-free, hassle-free. Just how the OS should be.
If you remember, I liked the 17.2 version two years ago too, but my hardware was a bit too slow for it. My new laptop is powerful enough for running the KDE system.
Let's see if I would be lazy, or really go about switching.
If you are interested in getting Linux Mint 18.2 KDE, or any other Linux Mint flavours, or in any other Linux distribution in general, why not visit BuyLinuxCDs.co.uk site where you can order a disk with your favourite operating system? The disk will be delivered right to your mailbox!
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| Linux Mint 18.2 KDE desktop cube |
Video used on the screenshot https://youtu.be/XeY6qpAl-fs
I was surprised when you mentioned that KDE uses less memory than Cinnamon, but I did my own test, and the clear "winner" was KDE, 505MB, vs 717MB for Cinnamon.
ReplyDeleteIt used to be that KDE was a resource hog, and Cinnamon was considered "slimmer". How things change!
Yes, I was surprised too...
Deleteare u live in 2012 ?
Delete2017 now
Deletesee below
ReplyDeleteThe browser is the only "task" that there isn't a comparable QT replacement (though Qupzilla shows promise). There are solid QT based applications for all other "tasks" including the office suite.
ReplyDeleteSolid Qt applications means they're of solid construction, e.g. fully functional, high quality, and high stability. In my experience Qt applications generally follow the KDE style, and so offer more functionality (kate, dolphin, Wireshark has now been ported to Qt, kdenlive, etc).
ReplyDeleteThere might not always be a Qt equivalent (firefox ships as default on a lot of distros which is GTK based), but generally a KDE distro will ship with Qt applications instead, whilst a distro using a GTK based desktop environment such as Gnome or Unity, will ship with GTK applications, so it depends on what disto / DE your looking at (I'm using KDENeon - other than Firefox, I'm not sure it comes with any GTK applications).
LXQt is still work in progress, but will eventually replace the GTK LXDE. Until LXQt is mature enough, distros will just stick existing GTK apps in, but ultimately they'll be replaced with Qt ones, otherwise you running both Qt and GTK frameworks at the same time, which isn’t very efficient.
is LTS? and 32 bit available?
ReplyDeleteLinux Mint is based on LTS version of Ubuntu since version 17.
Delete32-bit versions are available too.