So this week I have tried and tested the latest Freespire 2.0.6 and Linux Mint both built on Ubuntu. Freespire was a nightmare - I actually uninstalled it and replaced it with Freespire Beta 1. Beta 1 had some glitches but nothing like what I was experiencing with the 2.0.6. The worst glitch of 2.0.6 the one that caused me to take it back off - I added a CDRW and rebooted - Freespire had no idea what to do with this and locked up during boot - oh my god! - took it right back off (Freespire that is not the cdrw) - I had Mint on the same pc and it found the new cdrw (used) and took care of installing the new hardware with no problem. In fact, everything important to my day to day computing has worked flawlessly with Linux Mint and I highly reccommend it. I can play Runescape in Firefox , Daimonin installed without a hitch, YouTube works, and lmms installed perfectly via apt-get. The Linux Mint software repository is a bit limited but if you know how to use apt you will have no problem finding as much as you need. I have been having trouble finding a single distribution that would do all four things I listed above but Mint works - the unapproved video card driver was the only thing that did not work - I tried it and only had 640X480 or 800X600 - the default driver worked better and gave me a much higher resolution. The design, look and feel, is very nice too and comes with some nice looking wallpapers.
