Is Mint 9 what it's hyped up to be?

I know there's a few Linux users on this forum, so I'm wondering about something. The latest release of Mint, which is 9. No matter whether I install it as 32 or 64 bit, a regular install or a VM, it's the slowest Mint that I've used lately. Keep in mind here that it's based on the latest release of Ubuntu (10.04), which also sucks. With 4GB of RAM, nearly any 64 bit Linux OS should fly, but this one isn't. I even tried formatting (as suggested) in ext3, instead of ext4. No better. And startup is terrible. I'm seriously thing of going back to 8.

Has anyone else here had negative experiences with the latest Mint besides me? It's not Windows, but it's the next best thing to it.

I've not tried Mint 9 yet, but I'm going to give it a while in VirtualBox next week if I get a chance. I quite like the fact that Mint comes with all the codecs and other little tweaks that I'd normally install... but if there's a real performance drag in this release, that's a big shame.

Once I've installed it, I'll post back here . In the mean time, I look forward to reading what others think about it .

I haven't used the final release. I tried the release candidate and it was just as fast as 8, if not faster. I was particularly impressed, however, with the subtle changes to UI options. I much prefer my window controls to be on the left, a la OS X, and Mint 9 has an option for it, which I like. You can still get that by using themes in 8, but it's nice regardless.

I'm not using it full-time at the moment, regrettably. If and when I can go back to using Mint, I'll install 9 with full confidence. I do miss Gnome... Windows' interface is so restrictive, clunky, and unintuitive once you've experienced Gnome and Compiz.

Mabye it's the fact that it takes forever to get to the login screen, that's the slowest part about it. Once you're logged in, it's fine. But on the home screen, there's a list of things, and one of them is "known problems". You click onto it, it takes you to the Ubuntu site, that's where you're recommended to format in ext3, rather than the default (ext4). Something about the software manager would work better.

Perhaps it will get better with time, and it will fire up faster. Mint does stay on top of things well, more so than any other Linux OS that I've ran. Some things are out of their control, as they're running on Ubuntu's base, and hopefully the startup issue will be resolved soon.

For me, booting was even faster on Mint 9 than 8. I wonder what's causing that issue... Is Mint's bootloader the dedicated bootloader on the system?

As for ext3/4, I prefer ext4. It performs a little better for me... But I've also had a system crash render the filesystem useless b/c I was using ext4, so it's a gamble.

Hum...
I find the UI ok, but even with all the features it has, I will never be a mint user.
About the boot, it's "normal" that it is slow compaired to Windows. Linux takes time to load all the drivers before letting the user use it, while Windows boots up and continues to load drivers, while still letting the user use Windows.
I think that's a big plus for Windows compaired to Linux.

I quite like the fact that not only does Mint load faster than Windows, when I get to the desktop I can actually use it. I'm not at all a fan of watching the neon circle go round & round while crap is being loaded into the system tray one icon at a time.

I found much of the reason for it starting slowly, was the USB port that the drive was plugged into. The two side ports are different, according to the device manager. I have two side and four rear USB ports.
1) Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller (side ports).
2) Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller (rear ports).

After discovering this, I plugged the drive containing Mint 9 into one of the side ports, what a difference it made! I now have 7 Home Premium running in Oracle's Virtual Box inside of Mint, it runs faster than Mint itself ran in the back ports.

Plus, one other thing to consider, this was the original hard drive that came with the computer last November. It's mounted in a case with it's own power supply, and it's still a perfectly good drive (320GB SATA, 7200 RPM). But a USB port is not the native connection for this drive, so performance will drop some. However, this same drive, plugged into my laptop, runs circles around the installed drive within it.

So finally, I do have decent performance out of Mint 9, and now am a happy camper.

Probably because the laptop's drive runs at 5400 RPM versus the 7200 RPM for the external drive. Probably the drive's onboard cache is bigger too on the external drive.

And probably because the laptop is about shot, too. If only it were newer, I'd buy a decent drive to install in it. A like replacement can be found for as little as $50. But that would be like putting a new transmission in a car that's burning oil. Any money spent will be towards my desktop. As soon as that laptop crashes for the final time, I'll be getting a new one, one that has 4GB RAM, 500+GB drive, and one of those four cylinder (quad) processors under the hood. No more eBay refurbs for me, thank you.