Linux Mint 12

[dedanna1029]

This is a beauty of a distro. I was hesitant for a while because debian distros wouldn't work on my desktop computer very well, they were slow and sluggish. However, this on the netbook is a sight that all Linux users should see.

I've had no problems with it, except when I click the mouse in certain places, and get a brief graphics glitch that I need to sort out. That is the only thing so far that I have to contend with.

The netbook boots faster, it shuts down faster, and who couldn't do with that? Gnome-colors Wise is installed, and looks really pretty on the desktop. I've installed the extensions I need in Firefox, I've installed Kopete (which I use quite frequently when in Linux; it's my favorite IM program). The Iron browser now has .deb for Debian-based distros, and ,rpm for rpm-based distros, so I snagged that as well; I'm here now in it.

The installation was smooth, it found the wireless connection at school right off the bat (in fact, it found all the hardware on this thing easily and quickly), the updates afterwards were fast, and for a distro that has everything installed that one could possibly use (except for those like me who like those odd packages here and there), that is an amazing feat. The installation itself didn't take 45 minutes. Normally, I'm nit-picking at a distro right after installation (and during it) for hours, trying to get it just right, but so far see no need here, other than installing Clementine, which I've done. I'll worry about codecs (which I think are already installed) and such later. All the plugins needed were installed already for browsing the internet (flash, java, etc.), and it was rare and ready to go pretty much when installation was finished.

The desktop itself is a not very obtrusive green and gray color, and since green is one of my two favorite colors, well... it's gorgeous to me.

For now, I have a learning curve, so am going to start here.

I am well pleased. This is what I was greeted with on first boot (post-installation reboot). Clickety-click the thumbnails:

Bada-bing,,,,



Bada-bang,,,, the first place I headed afterwards:



Bada-bong. Even first load of Firefox is really pretty:



Mandriva and Fedora, eat your heart out (sorry).

OBTW: I did not dump Windows for this installation. It's a dual-boot, as it was easier (the partitions were already there from the attempt at the Fedora installation) but it won't take me but about another day to dump it and go full with this.

[dedanna1029]

Here's one for you. A couple of nights ago, I had gone through in synaptic and marked some proggies for installation. Seeing the time, I saved the markings file and quit synaptic - it was going to take a good while to install them. In them, were some games that I had on my previous installations of all the distros I've ever run - nothing extra or outside the scope.

Last night, I loaded up the markings file in synaptic, and went for the install. There were some 400 packages (almost). Synaptic did its thing, then I shut down the computer and went to bed. I got up this morning, had tea, etc., and then loaded up the computer.

It booted with a really pretty graphic boot, saying "edubuntu." When I got to the login screen, that was even prettier, a very colorful screen with nice colors.

When I logged in, and went to my desktop, it had the same Linux Mint background that I normally keep on it.

So, what am I on, edubuntu or Linux Mint? Let's find out (and I'm finding out for the first time, too) --

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.:[ dedanna@dedanna : 10:49:24 : ~ ]:.
:) uname -a
Linux dedanna 3.0.0-20-generic #34-Ubuntu SMP Tue May 1 17:28:21 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
.:[ dedanna@dedanna : 10:49:27 : ~ ]:.
:)

hhmmm... Your guess is as good as mine. That's how the Linux Mint uname comes out, too.

[viking60]

It is a *buntu!
Mint is the no 1 Linux distro mainly due to the Ubuntu Unity experiment. And yes it is pretty good. I think that is the one distro I would recommend to a business wanting to replace Windows with Linux.
It is fairly stable without to many surprises and looks good.
Personally I am to "Archiefied" though

[dedanna1029]

Well, I would do Arch, if it weren't for them supporting Gnome 3, and if I had any guarantee it would work on the netbook - have found a couple of bugs going on with wireless.

Now, with all that being said, a few little niggles have come up on the Mate desktop since I did this last night. I'll post screenshots in a bit.

[dedanna1029]

So like, what is this that's displaying in the title bar of my kopete window (edited - it's no one's business who I talk to on it)??? I thought it was supposed to say, like, Kopete or some such? lol



And oh, my, no menu going through the top of the gimp editing window for File, Image, Edit, etc.? This just happened a bit ago, it stopped displaying. I can only get that by right-clicking in the window now. It just up and disappeared all of a sudden:



And wtf is this when I click to save as a different file format in gimp (in this case, from .png to .jpg)??? See that "new manager" thing? Seriously, W.T.F.???



There's other little niggles like these, too, but these will suffice for now.

[viking60]

That Gimp message looked strange.

[dedanna1029]

Yeah, it does.

I reset the ~/.gimp-2.6 folder, logged out, logged in again, and it quit doing that as a popup, but still sends the same message out in the status bar.

[dedanna1029]

Just noticed no menu bar at the top for totem, either. Oh, yay.

Edit: Neither does gnome mplayer, or several others. This is strange. Some have it, some don't.

[dedanna1029]

Now I'm downright mad. I've just reset all of the appropriate ~/.xxxx folders for .kde, .gnome, and .mate.

I STILL have NO menus in a lot of proggies. It's doing this in KDE and Gnome, as well as Mate. For totem, it HAS to have the menu, because there is no equivalent alternate right-click menu like there is in gimp. I gotta get it back somehow. I think edubuntu, although pretty, is going to go bye-bye (if I can figure out what installed it in the first place).

Yet Clementine has the menu, Firefox has the menu, and others do.

I don't understand.

Any clues?

I got it back in Dolphin via a "Show menubar" option I found in the wrench icon, but there still is none in Gnome or Mate, and there's no "show menubar" in them to do this with. So, I still do without the File, Edit, View, Go, Help, etc. menus in windows.

[dedanna1029]

I'm going to have to clean install again. Couldn't get it to go back no matter what I did.

[viking60]

Linux mint comes with inxi - out of the box
You can even do a

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inxi -r

to check out your repos.

[viking60]

OK I always get confused about the difference between apt-get and aptitude command so I checked it out.
Basically they do the same but aptitude is the more modern system with more functions and better logs.
Also if you run

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aptitude

you will get an interactive display in your terminal showing you how many packages have upgrades etc.
You can check them with u mark them with U and download them by hitting g twice.
....
or you could just do an

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aptitude update

to sync your repos and an

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aptitude upgrade

Most people do it with apt-get update and apt-get upgrade and that does about the same, and maybe a bit faster. Aptitude will do it tidier though.
The real difference comes when I try to search for a program - like opera.

aptitude search opera

Gives a neat one liner while the equivalent apt-cache opera gives me a TLDNR list.

And I am not sure how apt shows installed programs but

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aptitude show opera

gives a nice info telling me that opera is not installed what it depends on etc..

To list reverse dependencies you can do an

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aptitude search ~Dopera

and the apt version is

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apt-cache rdepends opera

Now here the aptitude command provides way more info about the dependencies.
So should you use apt-something or aptitude?
You decide! To me aptitude seems to be the safe and most intuitive bet. Millions of conservative Ubuntu/Mint users who are used to apt-get will disagree with me.....