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.<span style="color: #ff0000;"> [EXPLAIN WHY PEOPLE HAVE ISSUES WITH IT]</span> But 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;">[INCLUDE A SCREEN SHOT, NEED TO VISUALLY SHOW THE SMOOTHNESS]</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. <span style="color: #ff0000;">[THIS SEEMS CUMBERSOME AND WILL EVERYONE HAVE CITRIX TO DO THIS, WOULDN'T THIS BE A NEGATIVE AND A POTENTIAL IMPACT TO YOUR DAILY WORK PROCESS?]</span>

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]</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<span style="color: #ff0000;"> [SKILL SET FOR WHOM? NEED TO CLAIRIFY]</span>. 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. 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!