Info Ok Linux Mint, I'm impressed

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
17,580
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136
Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon on a Dell XPS 9343 laptop picked up everything as it should including scaling the hidpi screen (3200x1800) correctly, and the new wifi adapter I installed (which Win10 did not recognise), and the touch-screen interface.

It probably would have handled secure boot fine if I knew what I was supposed to be doing on some weird Dell enrollment screen that appeared, but I disabled secure boot and it all appears to be ticketyboo.
 
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crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
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Nice! There are quite a few of us on the Anandtech team using Mint now for our distributed computing rigs. It'd be nice to know what your experience with Mint is in the long-term.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
17,580
9,272
136
I'm sure if I migrate away from Mint there'll be a rant thread here :) I've been using it since Sept 2022 (migrated from Lubuntu/Kubuntu 20.x due to issues).
 
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crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
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I'd like all my PCs to be on Mint eventually, but unfortunately a lot of software is still Windows only. At some point I'd like to implement type 1 hypervisors in the 2 remaining machines that require Windows-only software.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
17,580
9,272
136
I'd like all my PCs to be on Mint eventually, but unfortunately a lot of software is still Windows only. At some point I'd like to implement type 1 hypervisors in the 2 remaining machines that require Windows-only software.

Admittedly I'm still quite conflicted about dual-booting my laptop, I worry that it's making things unnecessarily complicated. I think the "it's a learning experience" argument (me trying a modern Linux distro on a laptop and seeing whether it's a viable option for me to sell to customers, especially with older PCs and the Win10 deadline looming in 2025) won through in the end.

On my desktop PC I have a Win7 VM that gives me the Xara graphics software and Microsoft Access. I also have a Win10 install for gaming. I intend to finish php'ing my database and make it all web-based eventually, but pet projects like that and migrating my Windows-running server to Linux will have to wait until the donkey work with my parents' estate has been finished.
 
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misuspita

Senior member
Jul 15, 2006
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I've installed Mint 21.1 on a ond laptop for my son and it is really interesting. Recognised all the things inside, which W10 didn't and had to search for drivers and it lives another day, cause with Win10 it was hellishly slow. I was thinking dual-booting myself, keep Windows for work related stuff and Mint for relaxing. Can't for now cause I dont have enough space on primary drive and don't want to do it on different ones. But it sure impressed me the way it worked from the start.

Edit - it's my first dab in Linux so for me was a rather pleasant surprise after years of hearing about command pprompts and sudo this sudo that.... No normal people will do any command promt, ever.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
17,580
9,272
136
I've installed Mint 21.1 on a ond laptop for my son and it is really interesting. Recognised all the things inside, which W10 didn't and had to search for drivers and it lives another day, cause with Win10 it was hellishly slow. I was thinking dual-booting myself, keep Windows for work related stuff and Mint for relaxing. Can't for now cause I dont have enough space on primary drive and don't want to do it on different ones. But it sure impressed me the way it worked from the start.

Edit - it's my first dab in Linux so for me was a rather pleasant surprise after years of hearing about command pprompts and sudo this sudo that.... No normal people will do any command promt, ever.
Command prompt - in terms of day-to-day usage, I go to the command prompt in Linux about as often as I do Windows. One notable point that I need a command prompt in Linux for is when I install the drivers for my printer and scanner. Linux can often do it itself just like Windows can, but the auto install is often not a particularly good job of it, e.g. the auto installed print driver only has a small portion of the printer's capabilities.

Whether I have to type sudo or run an elevated command prompt in Windows, or manually install a driver in Windows (ie. through Device Manager), or do a registry tweak, it's all pretty similar IMO. If a "normal user" won't do that then they'll just call someone who will. I have many customers who are flummoxed at the prospect of installing a program in Windows.

I don't think there's an easy-to-establish "gold standard" of "no OS should demand this of its users" (e.g. command prompt usage), the only idea I can think of in this respect is that if some documentation is written for how to implement xyz on an OS, then it should basically always work unless there are some extremely unusual and serious underlying issues going on with the OS/hardware platform. I don't think it really matters if the instructions rely on the command prompt or device manager or whatever, as long as they work and the instructions are well-written, the only problematic point would be if there was a way to easily screw up when following the instructions and that screw-up has destructive consequences. For example I once accidentally deleted HKLM in a Windows registry. It didn't allow me to completely do it, just significant portions of HKLM :) Instant OS reinstall.

I've flirted with *nix for over twenty years and have been using Linux full-time since 2018, and one thing that used to be the case was, for example I wanted to install a program: Fine, follow these instructions. The instructions didn't work, bizarre error message presented. Google error message, suggests abc is broken. Try to fix abc, hum, defg isn't right. And so forth. And that kind of problem typically happened early on in my attempt to test an OS, which for me was a showstopper.
 

misuspita

Senior member
Jul 15, 2006
389
421
136
I don't think there's an easy-to-establish "gold standard" of "no OS should demand this of its users" (e.g. command prompt usage)
In my oppinion anything that isn't explained graphically and you are required to have to know criptic commands beforehand it's not gonna get traction. No one is gonna research deep into this, and when I say no one I mean the general public. It has to have a icon, a link, present options, a menu, link, bullet points in the installer, whatever, but not require previous knowledge. But as I said, I was really surprised to see it worked better than W10 installer. In this moment in time it just requires marketing and big programs that are now Windows and Mac developed to be also Linux developed.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,201
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www.anyf.ca
I've tried lot of distros but always find myself going back to Mint. Since it's based on Ubuntu my train of thought is always to just use Ubuntu, but Mint is just more polished, and I'd say 95% of stuff just works. No need to dick around with much.

But yeah for a desktop OS, things should be fully GUI. I feel there is still improvement that could be made in this respect but it has gotten better over the years.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
17,580
9,272
136
The reason why I didn't try Mint until recently was I assumed that it being based on Ubuntu meant that it would at least have Ubuntu's flaws. I tried Debian briefly but found that it had different flaws :)
 

mxnerd

Diamond Member
Jul 6, 2007
6,799
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Mint has a version based on Debian -- LMDE5, and it's great too.
 

pcgeek11

Lifer
Jun 12, 2005
21,279
4,406
136
I have been using Linux Mint since version 5. It has always just worked for me. Tried many others and always come back to Mint.
 
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GunsMadeAmericaFree

Golden Member
Jan 23, 2007
1,240
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I installed Linux Mint on a thin client last year, an HP T620. I quadrupled the RAM, & also installed a much larger SSD in it.
I work at a school, and they just replaced all of the Windows PC's in rooms with several tiny Chromebooks. I absolutely can't stand
the keyboards on the chromebooks, because I can only type 1/4 as fast. The screen is also very tiny and down a lot lower than the old Windows
monitors, so hard to see. And don't get me started on the Chromebook touchpad. So instead, I put together my own Linux Mint desktop mini PC,
got a nice mechanical keyboard, an old Microsoft wired mouse that works great, an old monitor for $5 from a local guy, and put those things
together with the HP T620 and Linux. It boots up pretty quickly, lets me do email and other work related things. I even installed Google Voice and
set it up with an old phone number so I can have a separate # to text parents when issues arise, rather than having to use my personal # to text them.
Overall, I've been pretty happy with it.
 
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MovingTarget

Diamond Member
Jun 22, 2003
8,999
109
106
Bump for this thread. Recently switched my Win7 rig over to Linux Mint and I'm quite pleased so far. It is polished and quite frankly just worked without having to do all the other tweaking typically required of the last few times I've tried various Linux OSes. Then again, my hardware is relatively ancient these days compared to when I first joined these forums.
 

jamesdsimone

Senior member
Dec 21, 2015
616
164
116
I started playing around with Linux about 10 years ago. I think I started with Kubuntu then switched to Ubuntu. I hated the Unity desktop so switched to Mint. I know you can still get Ubuntu with Gnome but just went with Mint and have been using it since about 2016. I use it on my work desktop. Unfortunately, there is software that requires me to use Windows. There are still things I don't like about it or understand completely. I'm working on a new dual boot system that I am going to set up Win7/Mint. I have 20.0 all setup on a thumb drive. Is there any big differences from 20.1 that I need to set that up?
 

pcgeek11

Lifer
Jun 12, 2005
21,279
4,406
136
I started playing around with Linux about 10 years ago. I think I started with Kubuntu then switched to Ubuntu. I hated the Unity desktop so switched to Mint. I know you can still get Ubuntu with Gnome but just went with Mint and have been using it since about 2016. I use it on my work desktop. Unfortunately, there is software that requires me to use Windows. There are still things I don't like about it or understand completely. I'm working on a new dual boot system that I am going to set up Win7/Mint. I have 20.0 all setup on a thumb drive. Is there any big differences from 20.1 that I need to set that up?


No big differences.
 

crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
10,521
2,111
146
Mint 20 has been better for me, there are a few things that are problematic with Mint 21 on the software compatibility side. Probably not a problem for most users.
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,067
1,550
126
I gave my old win7 rig to my uncle. It is a DDR3 era machine. Still serviceable and runs modern titles albeit a bit slow. (4690k/16g/geforce 970)

I installed Mint as I think he would have a lot of trouble trying to get the hang of Slackware (my personal favorite distro). And Slackware might be harder to keep updated.

So far so good. Though he wanted to use a very old 720p TV instead of a monitor, and it appears to not like any of the HDMI cables we tried ... sigh... (he is using one of my old monitors for now.)

He can play all the OpenRA he wants (his favorite game of all time is "Red Alert"). Added bonus of NES and SNES emulators.
SNES style 6 button controllers worked right out of the box (no headaches to set them up)
Nvidia drivers installed easily and worked decently. (though I do prefer AMD's drivers in Linux)

Overall im impressed by Mint, though I have only spent maybe 10ish hours setting up the PC and playing around with it.