Hello and Goodbye.

[Lucifer]

This is my first post, and my last.

I have been running LM8 Helena for a few months now, and was initially very impressed, the only exception being the tendency for Firefox to crash (I noted the cause of the problem on the forums and removed the offending component). I even recommended it to some friends; some of them have adopted it and seem quite happy.

However, from being a reasonably fast system, LM8 has become increasingly slower with each update, to the point that it makes Vista look fast! In addition to this, the system randomly resets my settings for my printer, etc., which slows things things down even more; and the internet browser crash returned, although I solved this by installing Epiphany (and Lynx, both of) which work(s) far better than Firefox.

Another major problem is increasingly regular Kernel crash, always following a recommended update. I am writing this in 'live cd' mode, because after yet another crash (following an 'Ajax(?)' Java error), I no longer have a connection manager, and it is nowhere to be found on my system; and I have been unable to find a solution on any forums, etc.

Given that my only option now is to completely reinstall and use up my broadband allowance on updates, I have decided to change to another (Linux) operating system, probably an RPM-based one. There seem to be too many problems with Ubuntu-based distros. For a start, 10.04 (and presumably therefore LM9) does not recognise my hardware). It seems that on-the-surface 'GUIs' and 'apps' are more important than underlying system integrity and hardware compatibility, especially with 'old' hardware suddenly becoming 'obsolete' with each 'upgrade' (that is neither very much 'towards humanity' nor is it very 'green'!). Upgrading to a new operating system every six months does not make a system better, let alone stable.

I would appreciate it if the administrator would remove my name from the register.

Farewell.

[exploder]

Sorry to hear things did not work out very well for you with Mint, the Ubuntu base can be frustrating at times. I sincerely hope things go better for you with the distribution you switch to.

[Mr. B]

Well, too bad for you it didn't work out... But why do people always think they have to upgrade every six months? If a version of Linux Mint or Ubuntu works very well on a system then one should be able to run a regular release for 18 months. If it's a LTS release someone can run it for 3 years because it's supported that long and provided with updates.

So again..... there's really no need to "upgrade" every six months.

By the way, we could say that the regular versions between the LTS versions are just for testing new stuff and improve things for the next upcoming LTS release. But.... if, in this case, Ubuntu messes up things badly the other distro's based on it are getting the same smack. However... Mint 9 is in many ways more stable and far better compared to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Also, i have never seen or noticed that Mint, or any other Linux distro, got slower in time.... never.

[Robin]

I'm sorry your experience was unpleasant, and I hope your next distro experience will be a positive one.

I have come to feel that it's generally better to stay one version behind the current release of Ubuntu/Mint (and probably Fedora as well, from what I've read) in order to avoid the most troublesome bugs that often take a few months to fully work out and for those fixes to appear in updates.

Best of luck with whatever you find.
-Robin