Upon reading that Linux Mint 7 had been released I just had to give it a try. My big laptop, the Acer Travelmate 290 is already running  Linux Mint 6 to my great satisfaction. So I thought I would give Linux Mint 7 (code named Gloria)a go on my Acer Aspire 1 netbook.

I have actually little to say about it because after one false start it just installed with no problems, and works so well that I am actually writing this webpage using it.

 Like many modern Linux distributions Mint is supplied as a "live CD". Initially you boot from the CD into a slightly slow, but fully working Linux system. It is only slow because of the time it takes to access the data on the CD compared to a hard disk. Once it is up and running there is an option to install to hard disk.

 Installation is simplicity itself, but for me there were two minor difficulties. My Aspire 1 already had three operating systems on it. The first difficulty was that I had to select manual partitioning of the hard disk. It is wrong to call this a difficulty. It would be more accurate to say this was a self imposed extra step. The second difficulty was that I forgot to delete some files in my existing home directory. These files are ones where the file (or directory) name is preceded by a dot (or period). In particular it is the files that are for things like desktop configuration that need to be deleted when a different desktop (type or version) is being installed. I forgot to do this first time, and got some error messages the first time I booted up from the hard drive.

 On my second attempt, with a clean home directory, the installation was as smooth as silk. Now running from the hard drive everything is far more responsive and a joy to use.

 It took about one hour, maybe less, to do the complete installation, and to install 93 updates. Then another 15 -20 minutes to select, and install, some of my favourite applications. Of these the most significant were Audacious which is an excellent mp3 player that can be skinned to look exactly like,  and act the same as the old 2.x version of Winamp. Next came VLC, the rather excellent video player. Finally came Cheese which is a webcam viewer. The latter was not essential, but is a quick and simple way to check the operation of the Aspire 1's inbuilt webcam.

 In conclusion I can say that Linux Mint 7 is very nearly  perfect for the Acer Aspire 1. The screen resolution is correct with no mucking around. The sound works faultlessly. The WiFi works perfectly. The one thing that does not work is the inbuilt SD/MMC memory card reader. I am sure that with some work that could be made to work too. Another thing that Linux Mint7 does not do is to magically make my fingers, or thumbs, work the lousy space bar on this dubious keyboard. Every so often I have to stop typing, and go back and insert missing spaces between words. I expect I will have missed at least one missing space somewhere in this piece !