Linux Mint 17 "Qiana" KDE Review: Better than Kubuntu with pleasant aesthetics and superb performance


Linux Mint is one distro I always respect and adore as they seem to know better than others what an average user really wants in a Linux distro. Plus, it works on the majority hardware I have tried. The present LTS spin of Linux Mint, named "Qiana", is no exception and it is based on Ubuntu Trusty Tahr, with some Mint specific modifications. Consistency in user experience has been a hallmark of

Netrunner 14 "Frontier" Review: Looks and feels awesome to use with new animated wallpapers!


If you ask any Linux user to name the most attractive KDE distro, I guess majority will answer Netrunner OS's favor. Netrunner is the best looking KDE spin even in my experience of using hundreds of operating systems. It is also from the Blue Systems whose stable includes Linux Mint and Kubuntu along with Netrunner. Previous couple of releases from Netrunner rank got the maximum score among all

LXLE 14.04 Review: The best LXDE distro I've used till date


LXLE's USP in previous releases used to be Lubuntu with long term support, as Lubuntu didn't have a LTS spin till recently. And hence, the acronym LXLE from Lubuntu eXtra Life Extension. However, in 2014 with Lubuntu itself releasing an LTS version, I wanted to check how LXLE can entice users to continue using it over Lubuntu. As Ronnie Whisler's release notes states, it is time for the distro

Ubuntu on Touch Screen Laptop: Setting up Linux on Asus Vivobook F200CA / X202E / X200LA / S200E /X200CA



I am a big fan of Asus laptops and rely on them much more than any other Windows PC brand. With my Asus 1101HA (2008 model, 1.33 Ghz Intel Atom processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD) almost giving up after 6 years of decent service, I decided this is the time to buy another portable laptop. I have a powerful machine, Asus K55VM laptop with 2.3 Ghz 3rd Gen. Core i7 3610QM processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 2

Manjaro Linux 0.8.10 KDE and XFCE Review: Bang on target release after release!


I have used a lot of rolling release distros in last 5 years, but, for production purpose, till recently, I mostly relied on only a few - Linux Mint, Debian and Ubuntu LTS. Primarily because the so-called "install it once only" promise hardly worked for most of the rolling release distros and they inevitably break or become unbootable after a couple of major upgrades. However, my experience with

Adding Linux Mint Qiana Repositories to Ubuntu or Ubuntu derivative installation avoiding GPG error


I use a lot some of the Linux Mint packages like USB Image Writer and USB Stick formatter. I added the Linux Mint LTS release (Qiana or Mint 17) repositories to my Linux Lite 2.0 installation by running the following codes through the terminal:

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ qiana main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mint.list'

Now run an update.

$ sudo apt-get update

Linux Lite 2.0 "Beryl" Review: Evolving to a very good distro!


Linux Lite is a user-friendly XFCE spin of Ubuntu LTS. I came to know of it and reviewed in 2012, the version 1 of the distro based on Ubuntu Precise. The version 2.0 is released recently with Ubuntu Trusty Tahr as base. I downloaded the distro last week but reviewed Mint 17 Cinnamon as it sounded more interesting proposition to me. However, a reader's comment that Lite seems to have evolved,

Linux Mint 17 "Qiana" Cinnamon Review: With improved Cinnamon and Bang on Money release after release!


There is something about Linux Mint - they are specialist in making distros which just work! With the Ubuntu Trusty Tahr released in April 2014, I was eagerly waiting for the final release of Mint's version of the long term support release. Also, as I noted in my review of Mint 16, Cinnamon, as a desktop environment, has improved by leaps and bounds over the last few releases. I was more than