New Microsoft VP consigns the PC to irrelevance

GrayGhost2 said:

My Toshiba has NVIDIA GeForce 315M (graphics card)
Might this be a problem with MintMate ?
From Jimbo's comments (I assume) MintMate is RC not final release ?

@essenbe +1 ... any results yet ?

SPECS:
Toshiba Satellite C665
Motherboard: TOSHIBA Portable PC
Display Adapters: NVIDIA GeForce 315M
OS:= Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit), sp1 (Build 7601) OEM
UI:=Classic Shell Start + Classic Explorer
Windows Indexing = disabled

I have it installed and all the software updates installed. I haven't had a chance to 'play' with it much, but did look through the software and it comes with a full compliment. I installed wine, and there are several options. I have found no problem with anything and not my Graphics card (GTX 780) The release notes state the only problems are with Optimus set ups. But, they say that they will be fixing it. So, So far everything works well and it is well laid out. I did try a few things and went on the net for a while just to see how thing were working and found no problems. To someone like me, who is not Linux savvy, Mint is a good choice. Every distro I've tried, just works, right out of the box.

jimbo45 said:

Note also until the FINAL you won't get any LIVE CD's just yet.

The ISO I downloaded runs fine as a Live Linux DVD. :)

essenbe said:

@lehnerus2000, so far what are your impressions of it? I'm downloading it right now. I'll put it in a VM as soon as it finishes. I think I have too many VMs right now to keep up with. Something has to go.

I've had to move all of my VMs to an external HDD, as my internal WD HDD has started chucking sectors and occasionally vanishing from my system.


I've noticed a couple of things.

Remember to back up your fstab file (if you have created a custom one).

When I first tried to build a VM, I used VMware Workstation 7.
LM 17 didn't like it and wouldn't boot properly (some sort of display driver issue).
It might not be suitable for installing on older hardware.

It worked when I tried VMware Player 6.

It took ~10 minutes to install in a VM and then ~12 minutes to get the latest updates.
My slow internet (and failure to set my ISP as the Repository) didn't help.

On my real machine, I did a clean install this time.
Previously, I installed LM 16 over LM 15, so that may have caused the couple of glitches I noticed in LM 16.
Installing from the DVD to my real machine took ~20 minutes (and then ~12 minutes to get the latest updates).

The "Restore Data" tool on the opening splash screen didn't work correctly.
Whilst it transferred my files correctly, it didn't restore my previous software packages.

My friend located the option to use the backup package list in Synaptic, which worked correctly.
My backup package list includes:

• GParted (Linux Mint doesn't seem to have a GUI based HDD/SSD manager)
• Wireshark

The original ISO included FF 28, but the updates will download FF 29 (be warned).
I spent some time trying to rollback FF, but in the end I had to copy the FF 28 packages from my LM 16 VM.
I haven't tried to reinstall FF 28 yet (or blocking FF updates).

I still haven't found out how to transfer my old panel setup to a new install.
Manually setting that up always takes me ages (and it did this time too).

Boot time seems to be about the same as the previous version (~20 seconds). :)
It seems to run smoothly.
The Mint Menu was a bit "sticky" in the previous version, it seems more responsive in LM 17.

So far it has been a "boring" upgrade (i.e. few issues or surprises) so I have no complaints.

essenbe said:

Every distro I've tried, just works, right out of the box.

That has been my experience with Linux Mint (MATE) versions 14 -17.

Additional
One new feature that I really like, is W7 style side-by-side window snapping.
Just like in W7, you can drag a window partially off of the desktop and it will change colour, at which point you can release it and it will snap to 50% of the screen width.

jimbo45 said:

BTW VMware workstation 7 is so old I'm surprised you even bothered firing it up. No problems at all running it on VMware workstation 10.0.2 (current version) or player (6.0.2).

It works for the majority of my VMs (W8 and LM17 excluded).

I was able to fix my FF issue, using a LM 16 VM running on VMware Workstation 7 (v7.6 actually).
I retrieved the FF 28 packages from the VM and eventually they were copied to my LM17 install.

jimbo45 said:

@Lehnerus2000 - if you are feeling adventurous have you tried installing either VMware workstation or player on LM17 and starting a virtual machine using LM17 as the host.

I can't install VMware Player 6.0.1 due to some sort of kernel object issue.

I had to run a W8.1 VM using VMware Player 6 on Linux Mint 16.
It could also run all of my older VMs without any issues.

jimbo45 said:

Now trying LM17 with KDE !!! I like KDE -- although that might not be other people's choices -- Linux gives you many many choices for desktop UI's.

My friend uses KDE on his Arch Linux machine.

I tried KDE for a couple of hours on an OpenSUSE VM.
I didn't like it, so I swapped it for GNOME 3, which wasn't much better.

FF 28 comes on the ISO, when you do the updates, if you de- select the FF update, it does not install FF29.

essenbe said:

FF 28 comes on the ISO, when you do the updates, if you de- select the FF update, it does not install FF29.

I know (post #122).
I wasn't paying attention when I ran the Update Manager.

Yea, I missed that.

In the interests of fairness; I had to reinstall LM17, as I discovered that the permissions on my home directory were screwed up.

I probably failed to set the correct options on the backup tool.
I normally just manually transfer my files to a different HDD.

So far it has been a "boring" upgrade (i.e. few issues or surprises) so I have no complaints.

Not quite as "boring" as I initially thought.