Hello from Down Under(Australia)

[mintnewbie63]

Hi to all Linux Mint Users, I am a newbie on computers and Linux distros, my name is Gary, I started on a Vista laptop in 2007 an ACER 3684 wxmi and after four recovery's within six month's I gave Linux a try I had found a couple of disk's with CentOS, UserOS and G-OS then I come up Mint5, I had problems with CentOS so I mainly ran Mint5 and G-OS until UBUNTU 8.10 come out, everything worked well BUT the proprietory codecs a hell of a time for me to find how to get them, make them work, and then try to add applications like Skype, Googleearth, Picasa, the only help I had was from Linux forums and I like to Thank you for it, in 2009 I got Ubuntu9.04 and Mint7 Gloria this time I knew a few things more so it was easier for me by the way this time I also had a new home made desktop ASUS brand M3A78-EMH HDMI Motherboard, AMD Athlon X2 5200, 320GB WD harddrive, 2GB DDR2, I installed Mint in the desktop and Ubuntu in the laptop but I had sound problems with both I tried everything, I fixed the problem with Mint7 installed on the laptop and an Alsa configuration topic I found in the Mint forum, but I could not fix the sound problem with Ubuntu9.04 or the desktop, lately I got Ubuntu10.04 and Mint9, I could not install any of them on the desktop I found a topic on the Mint forum how to remove 'dmraid' I did it and Magic it worked so I got Mint9 on the desktop as for Ubuntu10.04 I installed it in the laptop but the software centre crashed the screen went dark and everything froze I had to cut the power of it, finally I installed Mint9 in the laptop as well, both computers are working without any problems, so to all Linux newbies out there lookup your distros forums, ask for help, no need to go back to windows.

Kind regards,
Gary

[MALsPa]

Welcome to the Mint forums! Wow, many people would have just given up after the problems you've encountered! I'm glad you shared that. Most hardware problems have a solution; folks at Linux forums quite often go out of their way to help someone out. That one of the nicest things about Linux!

[Pierre]

You Beauty - another Minty User.

But what a way to find out about Mint

still, as long as you get here.

[Oscar799]

Hello Gary,
Welcome to Mint Forum
We have a community site http://community.linuxmint.com/ with lots of tutorials,software reviews,a hardware database and ideas for future development.
We also have IRC channels, open MintMenu>Internet>XChat and you will be automatically connected to #linuxmint-help and #linuxmint-chat.
Seems you had a baptism of fire(I had one of those too)but now you know if a problem is fixable there is probably someone here who can help you fix it,which is good to know