I am very excited about the pending release of Linux Mint 7 “Gloria”. I plan to do a fresh install with it on my main work desktop when the release drops. Mint is a well polished and subtly but well improved version of Ubuntu. It’s releases tend to lag a month or so behind Ubuntu, but it seems like they use that time well. In my experience Mint has been more stable, better looking, and more complete in its features. I was thinking this morning as I was looking at reviews of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, “I wonder if Mint will have a netbook remix version.” That would probably be pretty cool, even though I don’t personally have a netbook to benefit from something like that. What might be better is if some of the specialized netbook distros like eeebuntu would learn a thing or two from Mint or maybe use Mint as their base distro. The next thought was that system76, a company that sells ubuntu laptops, should use Mint instead. There are probably good reasons for them to stick with a mainline distro though, for example they also make servers and Linux Mint is really meant as a desktop OS. So maybe there should be a company that makes just a small handful of machines that are designed for Linux Mint. I know I would be very interested in a laptop that was designed and built to the same types of quality standards as the Mint distro itself. I am thinking something comparable to Apple’s laptops. In my mind such a product would be a real competitor in the market as well. Maybe somebody with time and ambition will read this and be inspired…