Linux Mint "Olivia" 15 is released

Postby **viking60** » 01 Jun 2013, 17:22

Mint is somewhat of a flagship to win over Windows users.

This is the distro that will give you all the software and all the features you need and you will have no trouble with installing it.

When it comes to using it, you can chose a desktop environment that will look pretty much like Windows 7 so you will feel more at home than with Windows 8.

Mint 15 has all the goodies like Libreoffice - Yes you can use your Excel spreadsheets directly in calc and you will not notice much of a difference.
The Libreoffice suite is very compatible with MS-Office files.

Gimp is there and I prefer it over photoshop. A first-timer coming from Windows will want to install the Cinnamon desktop environment while many Linux users prefer the Mate environment that has set out to look more like Gnome2.

You can install over 60000 apps so you can have all you want - and set it up according to your needs.
And Java and Flash works out of the box.

For experienced Linux users Mint is an equally good alternative and it comes with many DE's that gives them the options to set it up according to their preferences.
Mint is a fork of Ubuntu without the Unity DE which was unpopular enough to put Ubuntu two places down on the Distrowatch popularity list.

MintSources is an improved way of handling personal packages archives (PPA) compared to Ubuntu's "Software Sources" tool.

Mint 15 also lets you easily set up your repos and conducts quick speed tests for you so that you can pick the fastest.

Mint 15 also introduces a driver manager for proprietary drivers from NVIDIA and AMD - the gamers will love it. .. And the others won't need it.

It looks like Mint 15 is consolidating it's position as the distro to recommend at least to newcomers.
Experienced Linux people might want even newer software and could consider the quite user friendly Arch fork; Manjaro which uses the Mint installer.

Postby **rolf** » 01 Jun 2013, 20:41

All these reviews sure are making for some greener-looking grass.

:wall:

I'm just having problems with my Brother MFC665-CW that is, probably, more the fault of the drivers than the distro, tho. :think:

Thanks for the reports. :greetings

Postby **viking60** » 01 Jun 2013, 21:30

Yes there is not much standardization with printers. The time has come to update my main box too: I have been waiting for a Mandriva solution and ROSA and Mageia are OK I guess.
Mint is probably a good "set it and forget it" distro. But the drawback is that you "have to" freshly install every new version - every 6 months.
They strongly advise against the Ubuntu "one button click update" - but it can be done in Mint too. Mint comes with nice GUI backup tools to help you out with this bit though.
Manjaro is a semi roling release and you only have to install it once. The very nice guys over there will iron out the worst quirks from Arch before they put it in the distro/repos and you really have access to everything that Linux can offer.
The default DE is XFCE which is very good and they use the lxdm login manager. I have installed both openbox and KDE on it, but you can download the dedicated versions where all is done for you.

So Manjaro is the closest to my main box at the moment. Suse has this repo Jungle where I always get lost and Ubuntu is simply not good enough IMHO. Fedora is to experimental and they brake stuff almost on purpose and Centos is too far behind on the software.
Mepis used to be good too.
On my laptops; Arch rules.

Postby **rolf** » 01 Jun 2013, 21:43

Thanks, that's helpful. Sounds like, if I break faith with rpm, I would give a go with Manjaro! :berserkf

Postby **viking60** » 01 Jun 2013, 22:01

Yeah

That sounds like a good decision - we can always go back to rpm later. And you can install your RPM's in Manjaro too.
http://nemrod.se/guides/install-rpm-pac ... rch-linux/

The package manager pamac is good enough and there is another package manager only depending on X that is even better pacmanxg4 so that bit is taken care of.
The pacman CLI manager is better than urpmi IMO and it is really easy to build packages with PKGBUILD files.

But everything is built already so it is enough to install the files from the AUR (Arch User Repos) which are made available out of the box in Manjaro.

You can use the Arch wiki for Manjaro - and that is the best documentation you can find in the Linux world

Postby **R_Head** » 02 Jun 2013, 03:56

I can say I am new to Mint. Will like to use it on an older PC with a Pentium 4; what would be a reasonable amount of RAM? Tried on a Dell D600 with 512 MB RAM and did not wanted to load at all; just hung.

Postby **rolf** » 02 Jun 2013, 04:43

The default DE is XFCE which is very good and they use the lxdm login manager. I have installed both openbox and KDE on it, but you can download the dedicated versions where all is done for you.

So, I got the latest x86_64 KDE community iso, verified sha1sum, burned with wodim, and verified the burn with 'writecd -cmp', all checked out.

I had looked through the Manjaro wiki to get some idea of the installer. When I chose to load the graphical version with non-free drivers, it just seemed to hang for me, too. Maybe 5-10 minutes of waiting.

I can see a few lines in the tty:

I think my hardware is cursed, as so many installations fail at an early stage:

Code: Select all

[rolf@localhost ~]$ inxi -F
System:    Host: localhost.localdomain Kernel: 3.6.10-nrj-desktop-1rosa x86_64 (64 bit) 
           Desktop: KDE 4.10.3 Distro: ROSA Desktop Fresh Free 2012.1 Desktop
Machine:   Mobo: ASUSTeK model: P8Z68 DELUXE/GEN3 version: Rev 1.xx Bios: American Megatrends version: 3304 date: 04/17/2012
CPU:       Quad core Intel Core i7-2600K CPU (-HT-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 1600.00 MHz 2: 1600.00 MHz 3: 1600.00 MHz 4: 1600.00 MHz 5: 1600.00 MHz 6: 1600.00 MHz 7: 1600.00 MHz 8: 1600.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GF100 [GeForce GTX 470] X.Org: 1.13.3 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1280x800@59.9hz, 1280x800@59.9hz 
           GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 470/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.3.0 NVIDIA 319.17
Audio:     Card-1: C-Media CMI8788 [Oxygen HD Audio] driver: snd_virtuoso Sound: ALSA ver: 1.0.25
           Card-2: NVIDIA GF100 High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel 
           Card-3: Logitech driver: USB Audio 
Network:   Card-1: Intel 82579V Gigabit Network Connection driver: e1000e 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: 88:88:88:88:87:88
           Card-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller driver: r8169 
           IF: eth1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: c8:60:00:08:cd:60
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 6123.1GB (42.8% used) 1: id: /dev/sde model: OCZ size: 61.9GB 
           2: id: /dev/sdc model: Hitachi_HDS72202 size: 2000.4GB 3: id: /dev/sdb model: WDC_WD1001FALS size: 1000.2GB 
           4: id: /dev/sdf model: ST2000DM001 size: 2000.4GB 5: id: /dev/sdd model: ST31000528AS size: 1000.2GB 
           6: id: /dev/sda model: OCZ size: 60.0GB 
Partition: ID: / size: 27G used: 8.4G (32%) fs: reiserfs ID: /home size: 928G used: 734G (80%) fs: reiserfs 
           ID: swap-1 size: 4.19GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap ID: swap-2 size: 1.07GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
RAID:      No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 29.8C mobo: 39.0C gpu: 70C 
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 976 fan-1: 0 fan-3: 0 fan-4: 659 fan-5: 3879 
Info:      Processes: 215 Uptime: 5 min Memory: 980.0/15950.9MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 1.9.7

I tried several variations including just the default installation choice, and the best I could get was text install. Here, there is not the opportunity to view partition contents, like in diskdrake, so I logged as root:manjaro on several tty to run fdisk, list the links in /dev/disk/by-uuid, mount partitions to view contents for some assurance that I would not format something in use. In Rosa, I had printed out the output of some commands to keep track of what was what:

I identified a 50G partition that wasn't needed, set that as /, the only partition, and let loose the dogs of Manjaro. One thing I fuzzed on was making swap partitions, as several are already in place and the Mandriva variants seem to set them up automatically at install. Not so Manjaro, it seems. What I saw working with this might be some sluggishness but I don't know if no swap would have anything to do with that. RAM is 16G.

I declined the bootloader installation step, as I wanted to keep the known working grub2 from Rosa. I'm not too happy with grub2 but, booted to Rosa, 'update-grub2' simply generated a new entry for Manjaro, which I used for several attempted boots.

I can get a login screen and desktop:

but that's it. Mouse works, keyboard is responsive, but no menus, not with right-click or anyhow, keyboard is responsive. I left it like this for at least 15 minutes while making dinner with no change, so, if sluggishness, it is extreme. There are ttys but no response to keystrokes, no login:

Maybe I will try again with the official iso, when I have recovered. :wall:

Postby **viking60** » 02 Jun 2013, 09:15

That is a known issue (Nvidia issues) for some nonfree snapshots, If you are cursed by your hardware - be a bad boy and go for the nonfree version.
I have not tested the community Kde version. I simply installed the KDE metapackage with the package manager and it all worked.
What you could do now to quickfix it is:
as root

Code: Select all

pacman -Syu

To install a minimal KDE this is all you need;

Code: Select all

pacman -S kdebase-workspace kdebase-konsole

But then again that is hard to do without a working keyboard in tty :-D

Regarding the swap it should be as big as your memory (16 mb ?) and can be created in gparted as linux-swap partition.
That behavior is strange though :think:

I'll give it a go on my Nvidia box later...
Edit;
It looks like you are not allone
This testbuild has solved the issue for some:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/manjar ... s/yfdogan/

R_Head wrote:I can say I am new to Mint. Will like to use it on an older PC with a Pentium 4; what would be a reasonable amount of RAM? Tried on a Dell D600 with 512 MB RAM and did not wanted to load at all; just hung.

Mint should use about 1-5% CPU and some 255 MB of memory. This is actually very good but people seem to have more luck with Manjaro on pentium4.
http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.no/2013/ ... -4102.html

It looks like there is no guarantee that the one using the least RAM and CPU actually is the one running the best...

Postby **viking60** » 02 Jun 2013, 12:37

@rolf
Here is what another guy did to fix a similar problem;

Hello, I successfully installed Manjaro KDE 0.8.5.2 through CLI mode cuz GUI didn't work for me also (i think that problem is whit GPU drivers but mhwd "configured" my sistem..)

First boot and I got black screen, so I added "nomodeset" to boot line and got it works, after that I just follow http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Catal ... st_Drivers and it's OK now. After kernel update from 3.8 to 3.9 I got black screen (only screen is black, system is up and works - i reboot if blindly from console, and with nomodeset boot's as expected..

mwhd is the kernel administration system in manjaro.
Maybe his solution could contribute to me saving my honor?
Remember: If you get it up and running you never have to do it again.....

Postby **rolf** » 02 Jun 2013, 22:09

Ok, I tried the DVD and added 'nomodeset' to kernel options. This got me much the same as before. Useless tty :lolup

There are ttys but no response to keystrokes, no login:

The F7 Gui terminal is black, but I discovered I can get a gui login screen by killing X, Ctrl-Alt-Bckspc. That leads to :lolup

At some point and under which booting conditions I don't remember, I find that the session type selection is all unselected, when I click on that button. If I select the kde plasma-desktop, I am logged into a dark Goth theme at my monitor's native resolution, which is hard for me to read. Although my locale is US, there is some strange spelling in one of the applets:

that is, probably, hard for exotic foreigners to understand how it is a problem:

So, I can play around, change to a brighter theme. There is no sound but that's not so important. What is important: I click on the live-installer button and it never opens. I try from root command line and nothing happens, the prompt never returns. Thinking to be clever, I tail /var/log/messages.log for what is reported at the time I try to start live-installer. It is gobbledy-gook but maybe someone can interpret it. I copy it to kwrite and and think to login, here, and make the report. However, konqueror, the only browser, takes minutes to load and, when it does, it can't open any pages or a google search. :wall:

Next, I plug a usb memory device to bring the console output treasure back to the real world. Device notifier offers a choice to open in file manager, which I choose, which freezes the notifier, nothing happens. I find there is a timeout and the notifier closes. So, I go to root console, make a mount point, and try to mount it. Mount tells me, "unknown filesystem, vfat". :wall:

At last, I mount my Rosa /home partition and redirect a command line echo of the gibberish to a txt file in my Dropox,

To review, this is what happens in messages.log when I try to run the live installer. :lolup

However, there is now a login on the ttys, where I log as root and do the 'pacman -Syu' voodoo. About 3G to download, which is done at a very fast rate, and seems to complete, but it does not help to get live-install to run.

:wall:

Using my new tricks, I can log into a kde plasma desktop on my installation of Manjaro. Mostly, it is working, except I can't comfortably read the native resolution of my monitor, 1680x1050, which is 16:10, but this edid and/or the nvidia driver will not let me change it to what is comfortable, 1280x800, also 16:10. I've had this problem for years and spent too much time with the shifting nvidia driver switches, scripts, workarounds. It was pretty easy to accomplish with Rosa but, I fear, here is where my experiment with Manjaro crashed and burned.

:wall:

I tried to do too many things at once, too quickly. I wanted to switch from Folder View to Default Desktop, to try to get my preferred resolution with nvidia-settings, run as root. This allows me to save the configuration as permanent and I think I have to study the Manjaro docs about which file, what procedure. My choices led to a desktop with no icons, no menubars, no Alt-F2 run command.

I'm only doing all this to avoid doing my home-office work, so maybe I'll return to the cause after getting that work done, after looking at the wiki. :berserk2

Postby **viking60** » 03 Jun 2013, 00:06

I bet the goblygock is Turkish.
But given this experience I cannot see why you should install Manjaro. If the installer does not work then you might go for Arch directly - that will work better.
It involves some chrooting and partitioning and you do not get a GUI at the end of the install.
But you can simply do a pacman -S kde and off you go. You might have to install kdm too.
This will give you an absolute control over your installation and after the systemd transition which was a bit bumpy for us old Arch users because we had to change a lot (that new users do not have to) - Arch is back to it's good old stable self again.

You will be confused on a much higher level regarding your Linux system if you manage to see it through. And it will be way easier than looking for cryptic bugs.

And at the end of the day; even I have managed it so how hard can it be? :-D

And my wife is using it and she just found out where the power off button is...so it can be made very user friendly (She is using Openbox but she wouldn't know).
All you need is two computers one that has the Arch beginners guide opened - and the one you are working on.
...or you could use the guide to fix your Manjaro problems

Postby **rolf** » 03 Jun 2013, 00:59

Well, yes, I did install Arch once, before, and it is an option. You have really figured out a lot of options and made recipes for us, thanks. :greetings

I will get to it when homework is done, whenever that may be. Thankfully, God has invented Mondays. :-D

bjoernvold.com

Linux Mint "Olivia" 15 is released

Linux Mint "Olivia" 15 is released

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Re: Linux Mint "Olivia" 15 is released

Re: Linux Mint "Olivia" 15 is released

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Re: Linux Mint "Olivia" 15 is released

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Re: Linux Mint "Olivia" 15 is released

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Re: Linux Mint "Olivia" 15 is released

Re: Linux Mint "Olivia" 15 is released

Re: Linux Mint "Olivia" 15 is released