14 DAY TRIAL // A distribution that uses the word “ultimate” in its title always seems a little bit much, but the fact is that Mint Ultimate 17.1 is actually quite close to filling that bill. It's a new spin of Linux Mint and many users will find it quite interesting.
It looks like people are really interested in doing ultimate editions of Linux Mint. This particular one is called Mint Ultimate 17.1, but there is also another completely different version out there, Ultimate Linux Mint.
The two projects are not related, but they both seem to provide the same kind of experience for users, meaning a complete set of apps and various features.
It's not like Linux Mint is incomplete and it needs some new apps, but there are some people out there who feel that they can do better. This usually also means that Ultimate editions are pretty large, not matter who is building them.
The same can be said about Mint Ultimate, which weighs in at 2.8 GB. Depending on your system or Internet connection, this might be really important or not at all.
Mint Ultimate has the best-looking boot loader and that's a fact
We get to test hundreds of distros at Softpedia, so it's easy to compare one with another. The boot loader might sound like a trivial thing and the truth is that not many developers choose to customize it and give it a second thought. From time to time, someone might place a background, but that's pretty much it. As you can see from the second screenshot in the gallery, this is far better than most boot loaders out there.
The actual operating system uses MATE as the default desktop environment and the distro provides a very classic and basic experience that is more suited for people who really loved GNOME 2 or similar desktop environments. It's also quite light and it should work on most hardware without any problems.
The boot loader is not there just for fun. It also houses alternatives like Gparted, Darik's Boot and Nuke, MemTest86+, and Parted Magic Linux. All of these are actually very powerful tools for recovery and other purposes, and they might be the reason why the distribution carries the name Ultimate.
You can download Mint Ultimate 17.1 from Softpedia. Please keep in mind that only the 64-bit version is available. It's also a LiveCD, so it should be easy to test before the actual installation.
