To the knowledge of some of my teammates here at eGroup, I decided to accept a challenge of running nothing but Linux Mint 14 on my MacBook Air for the entire month of February. The ultimate goal was to test its usability during my daily work regime while not being disruptive. In other words, in order to pass the test, Linux Mint 14 needed to "just work" without impacting my ability to do my job, deliver service for our customers, and continue in the field work, as is usually the case.

After (now almost 40 days), I'm proud to say that I have succeeded, and it wasn't nearly as hard as I was originally expecting it to be.

To start with, Linux Mint is based off of Ubuntu, which I've used on and off for a few years now. It's kind of the new "hot and trendy" Linux distro for its ease of use, wide device support, and the options it provides for its desktop environment.

The Website is <a href="http://www.linuxmint.com/" target="_blank">Linux Mint</a> (just don't judge the distribution by the appearance of the website).

While some strongly dislike the Unity interface on Ubuntu, I have no issues with it. Some complain that it's too slow, or too "Windowsy", and maybe it's because I'm that accustomed to Windows that I don't notice, but I've never had issues with its performance (and that includes running it on a 5 year old Shuttle PC I have at home). The interface itself, while a little more "bold", has a kind of polished elegance about it.

Moving to Mint and away from Unity, I will say the Cinnamon desktop environment experience on Linux Mint 14 was much more enjoyable - from the smoothness of the "Start menu" to the hot corners which I now find myself addicted to. <span style="color: #ff0000;">
<a href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Linux-Mint-Cinnamon-Start-Menu.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-7957" alt="Linux-Mint-Cinnamon-Start-Menu" src="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Linux-Mint-Cinnamon-Start-Menu-300x168.png" width="300" height="168" /></a></span>

To avoid impact on my ability to do my job, I used the Citrix Receiver to hit our internal Citrix XenApp deployment for all Office application needs, including and especially Outlook, as well as some of our other Windows-native applications. And, while it comes with LibreOffice, the free, compatible, and open source Office-like product, I still needed Outlook. This was a no brainer for me, since I use the Citrix Receiver every day on the Mac-- as do millions of others. But if you don't, the Wine software is the way to go. <span style="color: #ff0000;">
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I've used my own device for work for almost 2 years now (I really live the <a href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/ebook-7-steps-to-a-sensible-byod-strategy-so-you-can-sleep-at-night" target="_blank">BYOD dream</a>), and having applications and desktops delivered to my preference of device is very liberating. Without that ability, I couldn't have run this challenge.

On the client side, offline and accessible locally, I found that almost every one of the "really nice to have" applications was available for debian-based Linux distributions (of which Ubuntu and Mint are), including Skype and Spotify. For anything else, the use of the free "Wine" Windows app emulation layer did the trick. <span style="color: #ff0000;">[INCLUDE A SCREEN SHOT- SR: Don't have one to post at the moment]</span>

While onsite with customers, simply connecting to their servers via RDP provided me access to any systems that did not have tools available for Linux clients.

Most of those I told about this little challenge asked me why I would even bother. Well, and the answer is simple: I believe it will become a valuable skill set to have for technologists ranging from the home user, to the veteran sysadmin. I believe, and have shared this belief with my teammates, that Linux, in all of its distributions, will continue to grow in popularity, riding on the back of cloud computing. And with the "bleh" response to Windows 8, and Canonical's push of Ubuntu into more and more client devices (including smartphones), growth will come on the end user front as well. Do you agree? Am I nuts (yes)?

Do you think you could survive 30 days using Linux exclusively on your personal or work computer? Give it try and let us know!