Linux Mint 13 is performing very badly in all its versions

[Bobo-the-Cat]

I am a seasoned user of Linux Mint (and financial contributor in the past) and having been running Mint 6 for over 3 years very successfully - it has been very stable. But the time came to upgrade and I decided to go for the latest LM 13. This was installed on the same machine I used for LM6 - a 64-bit Dell Inspiron 530 with 3.2 Gig Core 2 Duo processor, 4 Gig of RAM and a Seagate Barracuda disk drive (new) which has passed all of its Seagate tests. The machine was originally supplied by Dell in 2008 with Ubuntu installed - so its about as Linux-friendly as a PC can get! I would expect good performance on a machine of this calibre.

With 64-bit Linux 13 and Mate I was straight-away into difficulties with performance - Firefox (versions 11,12 and 13) were taking up to 30 seconds to launch (with CPU at max) even with all add-ons removed. Thunderbird 13 was the same. There were times when the whole screen would go blank (all ikons disappearing) for up to a minute before the screen was re-drawn. It seems that this release cannot cope with more than one activity at the same time. So a browser launch with, say copyng files to a network drive at the same time is a disaster! In fact all launches were slow to respond. An attempt to use the simple scan utility caused my Epson Photo 3490 scanner to "jam" half way through a scan and I have only been able to sort this out by re-installing the scanner on a Windows 7 machine!

With 64-bit Mint debian and Mate I had exactly the same experience.

With Mint Debian and XFCE - Firefox would not launch at all! If I tried to launch it in a terminal session nothing happened and there was no error output!

I would expect the very basics of Mint to work - browser, email, scanner etc. In my view LM 13 is nowhere near as good as earlier versions. I am very disappointed and have now had to install Debian from another source as I have wasted so much time on LM13.

I believe that Mate/Cinnamon are not a good idea as they are another layer that will slow things down. Why not abandon Ubuntu and go back to a pure Debian source like the one I am now using instead? But they are not the only problem as the XFCE release also failed to work properly. So it seems LM 13 itself has severe issues.

[DaComboMan]

One shoe doesn't fit all...

You know Bobo, a friend of mine bought the latest Asus laptop with Windows 7 Home,
i forget all the specs but i expected it to be 100% faster than mine (LG) which is already 2 years old,
but it isn't.

LM13 works fine on an old Dell Vista with only 1G of memory.
Much quicker than my LG with 3G!

Also, on dual boot on my LG, i noticed LM to be much more responsive than Ubuntu, so go figure?

[Bobo-the-Cat]

Previous versions of LM have been fine on the same hardware - LM13 is slow. The difference is between LM13 as compared to previous versions (v 6 - v10) on the sma hardware. So the way it figures is the issue looks more likely to be with LM13.

[AAAAH!ERMAGAWD!HELP!]

Recap of this thread:

User Bobo-the-Cat said, "Linuxmint 13 runs much slower on my computer. That must mean Linuxmint 13 runs slower for everyone."
Everyone else: "It's just your computer."

/thread

[dagon]

Everyone else: "It's just your computer."

No, we don't know that do we? Isn't it better to try and find out the reason this particular computer isn't working well... which isn't possible off course since bobo-the-cat has left Mint for Debian so the problem is solved, sort of.

@Bobo-the-Cat
The trick is to post your problems before leaving. That gives people a chance to come in and try and help out.

[Bobo-the-Cat]

@AAAAH!ERMAGAWD!HELP!
I don't think everyone said this! Just the one so far. I have seen others with the same issue as I have. The issue remains that it is slow on a good machine and that I have had no similar performance issues with LM to date. The hardware has not changed. I have now spent 4 days+ on three versions of LM13 and am now out of time for now. I will have to try and follow threads where others have slow response times witha view to trying a re-install in the future.

@dragon
Thanks for your constructive remark - perhaps I should have sought help sooner. I will keep watching the forums as there are several others with similar screen freezes and slow launch problems.

[munin]

I use Mint 13 Mate on a 5 year old Acer Aspire 9303 with 1GB ram and an AMD Turion dual core 1.6GHz, and everything works a bit faster than Win 7 on my new Acer with 4GB ram and a much faster Intel processor. I have used Mate for a bit more than a month, and so far only a couple of minor problems to make things a bit more interesting. It seems I have very compatible hardware, and one reason I have had so few problems might be that I keep things very simple. No network, no printer or scanner or anything else connected.
To sum it up: Mint Mate is the best, fastest and most stable OS I have ever used, and I have used or tested about twenty of them. Unix, Linux and Windows.

[BrianD]

@Bobo-the-Cat
The trick is to post your problems before leaving. That gives people a chance to come in and try and help out.

This, of course, presumes they came to the support forum in search of support. ...and not merely to post a parting rant/vent/complaint on their way out the door.

I see similar scenarios on the IRC help channel almost every day. They usually go something like this --

07/03/12 13:00:00 NewMintUser: just installed Mint and not working at all. Worse than anything I've ever seen. Nothing works right. If I can't get this straightened out, I'm going to have to go back to Windows.
07/03/12 13:00:10 HelpfulPerson: Which version of Mint are you using? What kind of hardware do you have it installed on? What have you tried that isn't working right? Are you getting any error messages?
07/03/12 13:00:22 NewMintUser: everything's borked. was this supposed to be released like this? who's in charge? I was going to contribute, but not if I can't get anything to work right!!!!!!!!!11111!!!
07/03/12 13:00:31 HelpfulPerson: Which version of Mint are you using? What kind of hardware do you have it installed on? What have you tried that isn't working right? Are you getting any error messages?
07/03/12 13:00:49 NewMintUser: what a bunch of bozos! none of you clowns know anything?? My neighbor's aunt's pastor's gardner was right -- windows is better!! later chumps!!!
NewMintUser has left the channel.

[DaComboMan]

I enjoyed reading Munin's post.
It compensates for aggressive or illogical behaviors.
Too bad we can't give an appreciation star to someone's posts.

[AAAAH!ERMAGAWD!HELP!]

@AAAAH!ERMAGAWD!HELP!
Just the one so far.

You didn't count me, but then again, clearly you're not concerned with how it runs on everyone else's machine.

edit:

Science, according to Bobo-the-Cat:

Tests first sample. "No need to test the hundreds of other samples in the trial".

[xenopeek]

The forums give a skewed view of the quality of a release, as mostly the users with problems are making posts (it is a support forum after all). Of all the users not having problems with the release, only some are active on the forums (giving support) to give some perspective on this. This doesn't diminish your disappointment with this release not working for you, but perhaps keep this in mind as your read posts of other users with problems.

Not all hardware manufacturers support Linux for their products (and of those that do, some do so very badly), making some products' drivers also not very good. If you are unfortunate, and have such products in your computer, it can indeed be a challenge to find and resolve driver related issues. That seems to be the case here, as most users are running this release fine, but some users (those here on the forums posting problems) do have problems.

To all, let's back off a bit. This is topic in danger of getting too personal.

[AAAAH!ERMAGAWD!HELP!]

However, I hate it when users have an issue and lash out on a FREE PRODUCT.

There's nothing wrong with LM13.

Saying it is just because it won't work with your hardware is the behavior of a spoiled brat.

Bob-the-Cat even mentions he's a "financial contributor". Sorry. Linuxmint owes you nothing, Bob. Just say thank you and learn to fix your computer.

[dagon]

Ok. Nothing good is going to come out of this. Bobo-the-Cat is now a happy Debian user and is welcome to bring up the mentioned problems again.
With Mint installed...

Happy hacking everyone!

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