Some comments on Mint 12 LXDE
Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 5:20 pm
.
I am a frequent & habitual user of linux. I prefer an LXDE distro
with LibreOffice on a 2 Gb LiveUSB with persistence; I am
familiar with several such offerings. My computer is a Dell 1545
Inspiron laptop with internal Broadcom wifi. I have several comments
with respect to the current Mint 12 LXDE LiveCD in this regard.
1. The Mint site offers a fast download of the necessary LiveCD.
I was not initially aware of the Start-Up Disk Creator on the LiveCD
and tried both Unetbootin and PenDrive programs to make the LiveUSB.
Neither of these programs was apparently up-to-date. However,
Start-up Disk Creator worked quite well for this purpose, once found.
2. First, the good news. Mint 12 LiveUSB correctly ids my display,
video/graphics, keyboard, touchpad, wireless mouse and an external
wifi and provides the necessary drivers for these.
3. My Mint 12 LiveUSB boot-up times are on the order of two minutes:
twice that for Window 7 or a few non-Ubuntu linuxes on this machine.
The uninteresting black screen during boot is even more of an
exasperation during this long process, since no indications of
progress are evident. Two minutes is unsatisfactory; I hope I
may discover some reason and remedy for this situation.
4. My internal wifi is recognized but neither prepared-for nor
adequately handled by Mint 12 LXDE. My internal wifi requires a
Broadcom STA driver which the Mint 12 LiveCD offers but does not
deliver. I used an external wifi adapter to bring in the necessary
source material then compiled and installed the same.
Mint 12 LXDE is EXTREMELY clumsy in providing-for and installing
the necessary of the STA driver. Although I have found this to be
generally the case for all Ubuntu-related distributions I have tried,
I expected more from Mint. There are other non-Ubuntu-related
distributions which install this driver quickly, automatically and
without user intervention.
5. I use a wireless mouse. I can and need-to disable the Touchpad
to prevent inadvertent keyboard strokes from appearing. I added
synclient TouchpadOff=1 to one of the /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ files
to provide for this. There exist more clever programs that
sense typing and temporarily disable the Touchpad. These would be
a more elegant treatment.
6. I note that arranging for the desktop clock display local time
is going to be a challenge which I shall defer until later.
7. I need a reliable LibreOffice for important spreadsheet operations.
I am most interested to find if Mint 12 LXDE has adequately corrected
the lxpanel-freeze-on-LO-close problem plaguing many circa-2011 LXDE
installs using LibreOffice. I haven't made that determination yet.
This may take some time, since this problem, when it occurs, seems
only to occur only irregularly.
8. I notice Mint 12's FireFox 10 often causes a temporary cpu overload
and consequent system freeze when surfing. Pipelining is set to false
by default. This overloading quirk seems not to be unique to Mint 12
LXDE, but seems to have become either evident or more evident only
in more recent evolutions of FireFox or IceWeasel.
I'd be interested in your experiences and/or any helpful advice.
I am a frequent & habitual user of linux. I prefer an LXDE distro
with LibreOffice on a 2 Gb LiveUSB with persistence; I am
familiar with several such offerings. My computer is a Dell 1545
Inspiron laptop with internal Broadcom wifi. I have several comments
with respect to the current Mint 12 LXDE LiveCD in this regard.
1. The Mint site offers a fast download of the necessary LiveCD.
I was not initially aware of the Start-Up Disk Creator on the LiveCD
and tried both Unetbootin and PenDrive programs to make the LiveUSB.
Neither of these programs was apparently up-to-date. However,
Start-up Disk Creator worked quite well for this purpose, once found.
2. First, the good news. Mint 12 LiveUSB correctly ids my display,
video/graphics, keyboard, touchpad, wireless mouse and an external
wifi and provides the necessary drivers for these.
3. My Mint 12 LiveUSB boot-up times are on the order of two minutes:
twice that for Window 7 or a few non-Ubuntu linuxes on this machine.
The uninteresting black screen during boot is even more of an
exasperation during this long process, since no indications of
progress are evident. Two minutes is unsatisfactory; I hope I
may discover some reason and remedy for this situation.
4. My internal wifi is recognized but neither prepared-for nor
adequately handled by Mint 12 LXDE. My internal wifi requires a
Broadcom STA driver which the Mint 12 LiveCD offers but does not
deliver. I used an external wifi adapter to bring in the necessary
source material then compiled and installed the same.
Mint 12 LXDE is EXTREMELY clumsy in providing-for and installing
the necessary of the STA driver. Although I have found this to be
generally the case for all Ubuntu-related distributions I have tried,
I expected more from Mint. There are other non-Ubuntu-related
distributions which install this driver quickly, automatically and
without user intervention.
5. I use a wireless mouse. I can and need-to disable the Touchpad
to prevent inadvertent keyboard strokes from appearing. I added
synclient TouchpadOff=1 to one of the /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ files
to provide for this. There exist more clever programs that
sense typing and temporarily disable the Touchpad. These would be
a more elegant treatment.
6. I note that arranging for the desktop clock display local time
is going to be a challenge which I shall defer until later.
7. I need a reliable LibreOffice for important spreadsheet operations.
I am most interested to find if Mint 12 LXDE has adequately corrected
the lxpanel-freeze-on-LO-close problem plaguing many circa-2011 LXDE
installs using LibreOffice. I haven't made that determination yet.
This may take some time, since this problem, when it occurs, seems
only to occur only irregularly.
8. I notice Mint 12's FireFox 10 often causes a temporary cpu overload
and consequent system freeze when surfing. Pipelining is set to false
by default. This overloading quirk seems not to be unique to Mint 12
LXDE, but seems to have become either evident or more evident only
in more recent evolutions of FireFox or IceWeasel.
I'd be interested in your experiences and/or any helpful advice.