Hey!   I'm a grandpa and a dad and a husband and a grouch.  I say what's on my mind (usually to my detriment), and I have a take no prisoners attitude.  A veteran of the United States Marine Corps (1971-1975) and privately employed. 

I've been using Linux for three years or so, when I dumped Windows Vista Ultimate for Ubuntu Hardy (?) or maybe whatever was just before that.  I don't rightly remember.  I'm getting old.  I think it was 8.04. 

Whatever...I had learned to download and burn .iso images to live CD's previously, and played around with a few distros until I found one that recognized all my hardware, which Ubuntu did. 

I was sick of all the bloat that Windows Vista was.  I hated IE, and had been using Firefox for years, end even Open Office.  So I was familiar with the concept of open source software. 

I had not, however been introduced to the concept of a whole operating system that was open source.  What a fantastic concept!!!  I couldn't wait to become liberated from Windows.

After using Ubuntu for a couple years exclusively, I started getting a little annoyed with the fact that it refused to run any "proprietary" software.  It began to feel somewhat confining.  I had begun to hear about this upstart derivation of Ubuntu called Mint.  I was sceptical, because that's how I am.  But I was on my third or fourth iteration of Ubuntu, and I decided to look for an alternative. 

Don't get me wrong...I really, really like Ubuntu (maybe not as well as I did at first)(I think it's going in a direction that it, and many others will end up regretting), and it will always be my first love ; )   But I found, probably as much as any of you, that it just was not fitting my needs anymore.

So I ordered a Mint 9 disc from osdisc.com (great company!) and played around with it for awhile.  I really liked the fact that it had all the features of my beloved Ubuntu, and then some.  I was smitten.

I currently have a desktop with two hard drives, one of which runs Ubuntu 11.04 (without the Unity desktop) and the other runs Mint 10.  I also have a HP laptop that I bought last spring.  It came with Windows 7 originally, and I did try it out.  For a whole week.  THEN I DUMPED IT AND INSTALLED MINT 10!!! 

I am currently waiting to receive my Mint 11 disc from osdisc in a couple days.  There is no doubt that I will be installing it as soon as it arrives. 

I had downloaded an .iso image of 11 a several months ago, and as a live CD it worked very well.  But something was not exactly right, because when I tried to install it on my desktop, the darned thing wouldn't boot.  I guess that happens to just about everyone from time to time.  But for a few bucks I can order any Linux distro I want, and although it cannot be absolutely guaranteed to be error free, I have never, ever had a problem with a disc I have ordered from osdisc.com.

So I'm a happy old grump, and I'm eagerly anticipating my new, Mint flavored OS.