Installing from my USB stick using UNetbootin was easy. I won’t be posting a step-by-step guide here because Linux Mint makes it easy enough for you to follow installation instructions. Just like Windows and OS X.
One important thing I will point out that is critical for people who plan to keep, even if at least temporarily, their current operating system is that you will need to go through repartitioning your hard drive. It’s not a typical procedure most people will know about or even bother with. For Windows Vista users, instructions can be found here.
Things generally went well but there were hiccups that are worth pointing out. Why ? Because the everydayperson will be frustrated when they encounter such issues. Yes, Google and forums help but that takes extra time and effort.
- Screen resolution doesn’t work out of the box. I have a widescreen 1280×800 pixel screen. I had to do some research via Google and found this simple enough guide to help me. Good thing Mint is based on Ubuntu.
- Battery life is much worse. Whatever the reason may be, the fact is my Lenovo Thinkpad’s battery life was so much better managed under Windows. Linux Mint is not able to match this — I feel it’s about 20% shorter. Again, ThinkWiki was of help here as some gracious soul provided his/her own guide on how to increase battery life.
There were quite a few other small problems that I noticed (such as the internal fan spinning full throttle all the time, or the “Active Protection System” not enabled), but they weren’t really going to stop me from using my Thinkpad for my day-to-day use.
Other than those two, everything else went pretty well. Audio, video, brightness and volume buttons, trackpoint, webcam, wifi, USB — these things just worked! I was pretty happy.
Next step: figuring out the apps that I will be using everyday.
Open Daily 
“If you run Microsoft Windows, insert the liveCD and a program called mint4win will launch automatically. This program is an installer for Linux Mint which runs on Windows. It installs Linux Mint within a file on one your partitions and it doesn’t touch your existing partitions. It also sets up a Windows multiboot for you. Of course the performance won’t be as good as if the system was installed in its own partition but if you just want to give Linux Mint a try this is a very good option. You can remove mint4win from the Add/Remove applications tool within Windows and this will remove Linux Mint and restore your boot exactly as it was.”
From the Linux Mint page
I’ve been using this alternative for a while and all seems to be just fine.
Hope to hear more from you.
@ JE – using mint4win is a sound choice. It’s like getting one foot wet.
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