I'm starting to get into my groove for using Linux Mint. It's better than what I thought it would be. I'm also starting to think about how I'd like to structure my 30 days. I'm thinking about splitting my time between Mint, Ubuntu (which looks plain sexy and I now want an Ubuntu phone, but that's another story), Tails and maybe another. We'll see.

For now I'm stuck with Mint for 8-10 days. And I think I'm gonna like it.

My Linux Mint journey for the day: 

My initial goal was to fix the screen resolution from dainty to usable. It didn't really go as expected. I kept selecting System Preferences (that worked great), but on the screen I couldn't find the Display option. And then when I clicked Display from the footer nav, I got nothin'. It happened a half-dozen times more and I couldn't figure out how to get the screen I wanted, so rather than turn into a crazy person (repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome), I decided to give up.

A nit pick about the Settings area…The initial display for settings makes sense. The sub-screens are a little confusing because there isn't an arrow to return to the previous screen. There is a "All Settings" type button, to see all, but a back button would be more user friendly.

Yes, I'm a little disappointed. I like Mint, but that's not making me feel so great about it.

I noticed a disc on the Desktop to install Linux Mint. I then realized that I got it to run on Parallels, but it wasn't really installed. I was a tad disappointed and confused, but I decided to click on it and install it. 

It was a standard guided installation, so I felt pretty comfortable – until I got to Step 2.

I panicked.

I'm using an emulator, so it's quasi-partitioning my computer to use a different platform. I understand that. But to tell the user that all of his files will be wiped out because the system doesn't see anything, that's scary. I clicked on another option to create a partition, and I wasn't very successful there. I got worried about what I was doing. Will I delete all my files? Will everything go away? Will I kill my hard drive? Another panic point.

After trying this out twice, I decided again to avoid insanity/crazyland, and just move on to something else.

If anyone has any suggestions to me as to what to do here – let me know. I'm just scared to proceed.

After all those challenges, I decided to see what it was like to use Mint's MSOffice equivalent products: LibreWriter and LibreCalc. 

Yes, it was comforting to use something familiar.

Here are my high-level thoughts on LibreWriter after 30 minutes of tinkering:

• It includes some advanced features like Comments. I was surprised – those are hard features to include and they had them.
• The icons were a little odd – being in greyscale just didn't have the impact. It was also hard to see them in the high resolution – they were baby size. And some of them didn't make sense. The "save" button wasn't what I would expect to see.
• To save themselves with the icon challenges, they had rollovers with text. It was helpful, but the icons really should be more meaningful.
• Creating tables was kind of fun! It was very similar to MSWord with the rollover grid.
• There were also icons in the footer specific for a table. That was an interesting way to treat it. Once the user found it, it was incredibly useful. And the icons that are active are in color – which is also useful.
• There were also some themes/colors for tables. They weren't bad, but weren't great (colors and fonts could use a little work).
• Color features – it would be nice if the colors were organized as they are in MSWord or Office, or at least displayed as a spectrum. 

In LibreCalc:

• If you select "undo," the content in the cell is removed. Not good.
• Why is there a gallery in a spreadsheet program? I didn't understand this.
• What is the navigator functionality? Why is it there?

I just noticed that LibreOffice is an open source product. I wonder if I should send this info to them? Maybe this should also be made better know in the Mint OS? I had no idea until just now, looking them up online to make sure I got the product names right.

Summary of Day 2:

• Difficult installing permanently – not to just run it
• Challenges with screen resolution
• Feedback on LibreOffice – but would like to see that highlighted on the Mint site that this is being used. That's not super clear right now.

I look forward to getting your thoughts/feedback!