I downloaded mint expecting only basic things to work and planned to only fiddle with it for fun and just to see what it was actually like to use linux, but now I can definitely see it replacing my old windows OS. I absolutely respect all the developers and other people who devote their time to make and provide support for something that genuinely works in a comparable way to the standard, and to do it in a way that follows true to a selfless ideal. bravo, I'm very impressed.
(question>)Despite how much I love mint, there are still a few bugs. After maybe the 7th boot, the mint logo only appeared for a few seconds before the screen went blank. after about the regular boot time, the backlight turned on and the login screen faded in. However, a few boots later the backlight turned on, but the login screen wouldn't appear, it was just blank. after some searching, I found someone with a similar problem ( not exactly the same though). He was able to solve it by going into the bios and changing the SATA from IDE to AHCI. I gave it a shot and found that it was already set to AHCI, so I changed it to IDE. Now it doesn't show the mint logo on boot at all, but at least the backlight turns back on and I get the login screen. I've tried it both ways several times and both seem consistent.
so basically, is this a safe fix? Does it sound reliable? I don't know a whole lot about hardware and I'd rather be safe than sorry. I'd rather have the logo, but it's not a huge problem to me as long as I can still get the thing turned on, I don't want to do anything that could potentially screw up my whole system for the sake of an image.
also, is there a "repair network connection" button anywhere? making a new wired connection and switching when one isn't working seems to work, but once again I'd like to feel a bit safer. No biggie though.