Posted on 11/24/2015 2:30:32 AM PST by markomalley
Is Linux Mint a terrible desktop distribution?
How bad is Linux Mint as a desktop distribution? One redditor shared his...er...frustration with the...er...horrifically difficult experience of installing Linux Mint on his computer.
Itripovermyownfeet shared his thoughts in the Linux Mint subreddit:
This is awful, when I install Linux on the desktop I'm expecting to be able to waste a solid 8 hours chasing down random issues that were solved on all other modern desktop systems by 2008. I went into this hoping and wishing to have to crawl through linuxquestions.org threads from 2006 to figure out why plugging in a second monitor doesn't work with X.org.
I want the peace and quiet that you can only get from spending 45 minutes trying to get alsa/oss/flavor of the week sound manager to work properly. I miss the subtle delicious pain of trying to figure out what I have to do to get Gnome 3 or Unity to provide desktop functionality that came standard with Windows NT 4.
With what you've done here I am no longer able to do any of these things. You've taken the awful travesty of an experience that trying to do anything production on a Linux desktop is supposed to provide and made it usable, sensible, and working out of the box. This is why I can't call Mint a Linux desktop. It's just a desktop... you monsters.
(I plugged a second monitor into my HDMI slot and it just worked. I have literally never experienced that since working with Linux since the days of Redhat 3. You've taken away a cherished time honoured tradition of having a terrible experience using a Linux desktop from me forever.)
His fellow redditors shared their...er...anguish at having to deal with Linux Mint too:
AusMattyBoy: ”Talk about clickbait, was about to unleash the fury, was not necessary lol”
Gandalfx: ”I almost fell for the same trap, but I've been burnt before and the high number of up votes tipped be of. He is not the first who infuriatingly robbed others of the joys of counter hating. How dare he!
Could “reverse trolling” be an appropriate term for this?
@OP I feel your pain (kind of) but there is still hope: You can install an alternative desktop / window manager and still spend some good hours getting it to work the way you want. Bonus points for a tiling wm. ^^”
NotFromReddit: ”I'm so sleep deprived, I got half way into the post before realizing it's a joke.”
Crcr: ”I know what you mean, Mint has been this way for me since version 12 & it's starting to get old, the usability out of the box drives me nuts.”
Bomberokmn: ”A decade and a half ago, I really enjoyed setting up Slackware from almost scratch. I learned a lot, and wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
Now, I have more interests and obligations. I don't have hours to spend hacking away at the keyboard, trying to make some janky kernel module work so that I can run X on an onboard video card. Seeing Linux mature to a point where I can download an ISO, send it to a USB drive, reboot and have a fully functional system in under half an hour is incredible.”
Colonelpanic420: ”Mint is a fantastic distro if you just want to run linux, not spend a ton of time setting it up, and go. It was my go-to for my work machine for a while. Not because I wasn't familiar with other distros, I just because I could set it up and not have to tweak it too much to get to a point where I can do my job, and off I go.
Though Mint doesn't get to take all the credit for things "just working" - a lot of that is because the kernel drivers are so much better than they were when we all started messing with this crap 20 years ago or whatever (well that's me anyway ymmv.)
I got bagged on for using Mint for a while by co-workers who had spent the time to setup their favorite distros just the way they wanted them and I'm like eh I got stuff to do bruh ain't no time to get that i3/config file just the way I want it for my preferred user experience. Xfce will do just fine lol.
That said, Arch and sid are the Sonny and Cher of my heart.”
Foofly: ”I tried to explain to a friend that the installation experience is better than Windows these days. In addition to having way less driver issues in general. He didn't believe me since his last experience was almost 10 years ago”
Introspeck: ”Early Fedora installs used to have me literally screaming in rage. My wife would stay well away from me for the 8 hours it took to finally get it working.”
Okko7: ”Whenever I install on a new machine, I'm bored because there is nothing to fix anymore.”
Rxke2: ”I actually checked his history to see if he was a troll... To discover, no, not at all. (Of course I only had read the title at that point, heehee) ”
lol had to reread twice...i thought it was originally another linux rant on why it wasnt windows...
i use ubuntu..actually use it twice...a server for movies etc and a client running kodi
get the odd issue and now and again an annoying feature where you go...seriously..why is this not standard but overall...its bullet proof..had both running over a year...no failures. but i do run updates on the kernel regularly...
might give mint a go over christmas break...
thanks for the post...
linux mint is currently the best for starters
veterans tend to like ubuntu for some reason (i hate the ui)
Installed Linux Mint 17.2 Mate with absolutely no hiccups. System runs fast, quiet, and cool. The only thing I did that was not straight out of the box was optimized the file journaling to reduce the writes to the SSD (see here) and logically integrated the extra hard drives into the file system as described above (see here and here). Those tweaks were simple and worked the first time as well.
I wish doing Windows installs were as easy.
I liked Mint, except that the WLAN wouldn’t connect to anything on an older Dell laptop, no matter what. I Googled the crap out of the issue and no joy. I saw a number of people with the same issue. Finally threw 7 on it and put 10 on it while I was in the hospital a month ago for something to do.
I have Ubuntu and didn’t sign up for the headaches. Thought about switching to Mint.
I’ve installed Mint on VMware player and it works great.
I have a 64 bit Intel i3 box running Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. Mint 64 bit will install on the hardware but then can’t find the operating system (won’t boot up). Mint 32 bit installs and boots.
Are you using GRUB or another bootloader?
I completely disagree with this.
The only issue I have (maybe someone reading is aware of how to update this) is my Adobe Flash is no longer current.
How does one update Adobe?
Whatever is the default. I went thru the same steps on both versions.
Flash 19 is embedded in the Chrome browser. For Firefox, etc., you need to install Flash. The most recent downloadable version is Flash 11.2. To update that, you can either go to the Adobe website and download or:
From a terminal window:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer
(Just copy/paste each line in a terminal window and go to town)
Thanks.
I’ll try that. Much appreciated.
If your computer is UEFI (rather than BIOS), older versions of GRUB sometimes run into problems. The current version shipped with 17.2 is claimed to work. So you might wish to use that.
OTOH, if you have adequate RAM, there's nothing wrong with running it in a virtual machine. (I run Win 7 in a virtual machine on this box).
Very nice AMD/Gigabyte combo!
I also run Linux Mint (17). Switched from Unity/Ubuntu on the recommendation of my Linux savvy son.
Mint has performed flawlessly on my older systems: AMD 64 X2 and currently an Intel Q6600.
Thanks. The SSD makes a huge difference: can’t recommend it highly enough. And they’ve gotten cheap!
Mint’s main guy, Clement Lefebvre, does not want you as a Mint user if you support Israel. To my understanding he has not “updated” his request.
It’s a great distro.
Search terms: Lefebvre Israel Mint
I will continue as you suggest. My Win7 is supported for another 3 years. I will re-evaluate a hardware Linux install at that time.
The Linux store used to sell tins of caffeinated mints.
Really jazzed you up. Don’t know if they still do.
The only real problem I have with Mint, is that I haven’t figured out how to get Quanta Plus installed. It’s my preferred editor for web stuff.
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