OK. Rather than complain about Ubuntu (and it’s limited out of the box experience), I am genuinely waiting for Linux Mint 5.0 (Elyssa). And so... After many sleepless nights and a lot of work I am delighted to announce that the first release candidate for Linux Mint 5 Elyssa was released and that it is now available for download.

Let’s face it, Linux has come a very long way. I recently installed Linux on my little brother’s old computer and the only thing he said about it was that “Windows” was running much faster and that it looks different now. What he thought was a different looking, newer Windows XP was actually Linux Mint 4.0.

I finally found time to download and install Linux Mint 5.0 today, and happily wiped my already-feeling-outdated Ubuntu 8.04. The moral of the story is, Linux Mint 5.0 (Elyssa) is not a “rock your world” kind of distro, but it certain is easy to use as promised.

Not too long ago, I subscribed to a Linux magazine for beginners called Tux. Fantastic magazine, but the last I heard they were "headed out," so to speak, due largely to a lack of funding. However, unlike bigger publishers, which include Linux Magazine, Tux was special because they were giving away the magazine in the PDF format.

Linux Mint, a community Linux distribution that includes some proprietary elements for a better "out of the box" user experience, is now available in an edition with KDE as its desktop environment.

I’ve noticed that Linux newbies take so much pride with their newly installed distro that they will most likely spend a lot of time searching the web for Linux-themed desktop wallpapers. So, I decided to provide here or share some of the best (in my own opinion) Linux wallpapers that I have collected before. I hope you will like a few of them, at least. Here are my "25 Coolest Linux Wallpapers" in no particular order

Before continuing I’m going to say up front I purposely avoided using Mint because I was under the impression it was just an "Ubuntu with some nice stuff added to it". And there’s a few distros out there like that.

I have used more than eight distros — AntiX, Debian, Fedora, Fluxbuntu, gNewSense, Linux Mint, Wolvix and Xubuntu — but these eight are the ones that I use most, talk about most and would recommend to those looking for a distro.

I'm running a computer institute and I have new, middle and advanced users. People who know Linux very well and those who don't even know "L" of Linux. Recently, I've been trying different distros. Trying a distro is always based on the reviews I read on the web.