My husband and Mint

[sarahmarienc]

The darn man was on my computer last night and saw that my updates manager was unlocked. Well trying to be helpful, (awww!) he downloaded all the updates. The problem? They were UBUNTU (level 3 mostly) updates! So now my mint is running quirky and slow at shut down and start up and it looks FUNNY! Ahhhh! I just finished burning all my files and folders to a cd since my hdd is not partitioned right. SO I guess now would be as good a time as any to try out mint 6 and repartition my drive properly. Need to go write down the instructions now. Fun friggin' stuff. Darn that well-meaning man of mine.

[FedoraRefugee]

Hello Sarah,

Be sure to set yourself up a separate data partition this time for all your personal stuff. Makes changing/upgrading with clean installs much simpler. In fact, you could also set a separate /home also if you wanted and you could still use / and swap as primaries. I tend to just keep /home in / myself and just redo everything on a fresh install. Keeps things fresh. Stuff like the .mozilla file can be dragged to your /data for the switch then just dragged back into the new install.

As a side note, I can sympathize as I now have a weird combo of Mint Elyssa base with Intrepid and Lenny packages running Xfce and Fluxbox. Got to be careful with those repos! I disabled Mint update and just manually update anyway.

[sarahmarienc]

Yah, I am still trying to figure out how to partition my hard drive. I am so lost. I guess it's just that I'm not sure how it all works. I'm reading the wiki and some other posts here on the forum trying to figure it out. I guess since I'm starting from scratch it won't be so hard. I don't know. We'll see.

[Fred]

Sarah,

One of my daughter's is named Sarah. Good choice by your Mother/Father.

If I may be so bold, I have a suggestion. Trade you hubby in on a puppy. If trained correctly they always do what you tell them. When was the last time you told your hubby to go lay down in the corner and be quiet, and he did it!? They love you no matter what you say or do, and they instinctively know when you need attention and when you want to be left alone. They are loyal, devoted, and will never backtalk you or get angry with you. A simple pat on the head and telling him he is a good boy will make his day. Now that is low maintenance.

And of course if it doesn't work out or he gets old and decrepit, you can just take him to the pound and trade him in on a later model. What more could you ask for?

Just an idea.

Fred

EDIT: By-the-way, my wife was down in your neck of the woods a few weeks ago. She and several of the women she works with get together and go fishing at Kure Beach every year. That woman loves to fish.

I don't know what your knowledge level is but I would be happy to help you with your reinstall if you wish. Look at the thread below if you haven't already.

http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... 90&t=11872

[sarahmarienc]

Sarah,

One of my daughter's is named Sarah. Good choice by your Mother/Father.

If I may be so bold, I have a suggestion. Trade you hubby in on a puppy. If trained correctly they always do what you tell them. When was the last time you told your hubby to go lay down in the corner and be quiet, and he did it!? They love you no matter what you say or do, and they instinctively know when you need attention and when you want to be left alone. They are loyal, devoted, and will never backtalk you or get angry with you. A simple pat on the head and telling him he is a good boy will make his day. Now that is low maintenance.

And of course if it doesn't work out or he gets old and decrepit, you can just take him to the pound and trade him in on a later model. What more could you ask for?

Just an idea.

Fred

FRED!!!!!!! This made me laugh so hard. Thanks so much!! I can't help that he doesn't know a bit about Mint because he's a Windows User. He's not very computer saavy yet. I hope one day he will be. He cracks me up with the things he "wants help with" on his computer and the internet. But I do love him and I'm sitting here laughing and shaking my head over how he was TRYING to help me out. LOL!

[viking777]

Are you sure the updates are what made your system unstable? I have everything checked in Mint Update including level 5 (guaranteed to damage your system or something like that ), I also have all the Ubuntu repositories enabled but nothing has made mine unstable or funny, but then again I am using Felicia and I am used to fixing things so I don't mind living on the 'wild' side, not when it comes to pooters anyway!

I don't suggest my techniques as a course of action for those new to Linux, I think your suggestion re level 2 is sound, if a little over cautious. I also agree that you should take the opportunity to move to Felicia as it is exceptionally good.

PS I don't know what Elyssa is like as I have never used it the last time I tried Mint it was Daryna and Felicia is a huge improvement on that.

[Zwopper]

My tip is:
/ - 5-10GB
Swap - 2GB
/home - 3GB
/home/YOUR_USERNAME/storage - the rest

This way you keep your files away from your personal settings, if you need to reinstall I shoud be fast.
If you on the other hand want to keep your personal settings you just have to keep both /home/ and /home/YOUR_USERNAME/storage.

Just my humble opinion...

[piratesmack]

I wish my wife used Linux... But nooooooooooooo, piratesmack doesn't have a wife


Anyway, this is how I usually partition:
- Swap (I usually make it twice the size of the RAM, but no more than 2 GB)
- 6 GB / (Formatted reiserfs)
- 4 GB /usr/local (Formatted reiserfs.)
- Remainder /home (Again formatted as reiserfs)

Everyone partitions a little different, I'm sure you'll soon find your preferred partition setup.

I use reiserfs because it seems to perform better than ext3 on my computer.
/usr/local is where locally-compiled software goes. I compile a lot of software from source code, so I like to keep a separate partition for it. That way I can reinstall without losing my custom self-compiled software.

[FedoraRefugee]

I wish my wife used Linux... But nooooooooooooo, piratesmack doesn't have a wife


Anyway, this is how I usually partition:
- Swap (I usually make it twice the size of the RAM, but no more than 2 GB)
- 6 GB / (Formatted reiserfs)
- 4 GB /usr/local (Formatted reiserfs.)
- Remainder /home (Again formatted as reiserfs)

Everyone partitions a little different, I'm sure you'll soon find your preferred partition setup.

I use reiserfs because it seems to perform better than ext3 on my computer.
/usr/local is where locally-compiled software goes. I compile a lot of software from source code, so I like to keep a separate partition for it. That way I can reinstall without losing my custom self-compiled software.

The story is coming out!

[sarahmarienc]

I got my partition set up and put Mint 6 RC1 on here. I did the same dumb updates hubby did, or very similar and it gave me the same broken issues. Did a clean install yet again, made ubuntu updates invisible in update manager and everything is working fine Yay! I did have to go in and manually select to updates that I had made invisible to resolve other bugs but it didn't cause any problems. There are something like 140 level 3 updates (from ubuntu and 3rd party) that I can't see but so long as my system is running well, and it is, I'm not taking the chance again LOL!

[FedoraRefugee]

No worries Sarah,

Right after our partitioning discussion last weekend I snagged the Felecia repos myself and upgraded my Elyssa install. Now, my install already had many Intrepid and even some Lenny and Sid packages and a lot of custom stuff some compiled and others with dep bits from here and there. Anyway, the results of that upgrade were so buggy I just wrote it off. Instead of just DLing Mint 6 I put 5 back on. Then I figured since this is a clean, fresh install why not try to upgrade this? I did it again and got everythi8ng right except my wireless. I run an Atheros 5007EG, which the new 27 kernel now recognizes...Except in Intrepid for some stupid reason. Needless to say, with 4 methods available to get this wireless working including the Intrepid backports package with Ath5k and even blacklisting the things I needed to, no matter what I did my wireless would not work. And I am no novice, this is a serious worry for me. I then installed F10 just to check it out, it is okay but the reasons why I left Fedora are still a problem, then I installed Mint 5 again. I am now back to where I was but now I am worried about upgrading to Mint 6. I need to research this driver issue.

[sarahmarienc]

No worries Sarah,

Right after our partitioning discussion last weekend I snagged the Felecia repos myself and upgraded my Elyssa install. Now, my install already had many Intrepid and even some Lenny and Sid packages and a lot of custom stuff some compiled and others with dep bits from here and there. Anyway, the results of that upgrade were so buggy I just wrote it off. Instead of just DLing Mint 6 I put 5 back on. Then I figured since this is a clean, fresh install why not try to upgrade this? I did it again and got everythi8ng right except my wireless. I run an Atheros 5007EG, which the new 27 kernel now recognizes...Except in Intrepid for some stupid reason. Needless to say, with 4 methods available to get this wireless working including the Intrepid backports package with Ath5k and even blacklisting the things I needed to, no matter what I did my wireless would not work. And I am no novice, this is a serious worry for me. I then installed F10 just to check it out, it is okay but the reasons why I left Fedora are still a problem, then I installed Mint 5 again. I am now back to where I was but now I am worried about upgrading to Mint 6. I need to research this driver issue.

Sorry about your driver! That stinks.Sounds like lots of work getting things back to working again. Yuck!

[piratesmack]

I got my partition set up and put Mint 6 RC1 on here. I did the same dumb updates hubby did, or very similar and it gave me the same broken issues. Did a clean install yet again, made ubuntu updates invisible in update manager and everything is working fine Yay! I did have to go in and manually select to updates that I had made invisible to resolve other bugs but it didn't cause any problems. There are something like 140 level 3 updates (from ubuntu and 3rd party) that I can't see but so long as my system is running well, and it is, I'm not taking the chance again LOL!

Around the release of Linux Mint 5, there was some gnome update that was causing problems. I think installing the update made it so you couldn't change the wallpaper or something similar. But anyway, ever since then I usually disable level 3 updates since they are only believed to be safe... not actually tested yet.

[sarahmarienc]

I got my partition set up and put Mint 6 RC1 on here. I did the same dumb updates hubby did, or very similar and it gave me the same broken issues. Did a clean install yet again, made ubuntu updates invisible in update manager and everything is working fine Yay! I did have to go in and manually select to updates that I had made invisible to resolve other bugs but it didn't cause any problems. There are something like 140 level 3 updates (from ubuntu and 3rd party) that I can't see but so long as my system is running well, and it is, I'm not taking the chance again LOL!

Around the release of Linux Mint 5, there was some gnome update that was causing problems. I think installing the update made it so you couldn't change the wallpaper or something similar. But anyway, ever since then I usually disable level 3 updates since they are only believed to be safe... not actually tested yet.

Thats the conclusion I came to with updates as well. Level 3 are not tested and are just assumed to be safe, and they arent Mint updates they are ubuntu or third party. So why risk it?!

[Old Marcus]

I got my partition set up and put Mint 6 RC1 on here. I did the same dumb updates hubby did, or very similar and it gave me the same broken issues. Did a clean install yet again, made ubuntu updates invisible in update manager and everything is working fine Yay! I did have to go in and manually select to updates that I had made invisible to resolve other bugs but it didn't cause any problems. There are something like 140 level 3 updates (from ubuntu and 3rd party) that I can't see but so long as my system is running well, and it is, I'm not taking the chance again LOL!

I've installed all level 3 ubuntu updates so far, and not had a single problem.

[sarahmarienc]

Level 3 updates are really there to fix a specific problem you are having. If you aren't having a problem theres really no need to install them. I used to always install them too and one time it messed everything up.

Lots of people do install them all... And it takes it messing something up for many of us to learn that we don't need them. That's the beauty of it

[piratesmack]

A friend of mine installed a level 3 update once... Ten years later.... Bam!... Herpes!

[FedoraRefugee]

I am brand new to mint and already am struggling. Never used linux before so i'm pretty clueless. I also downloaded a bunch of updates and now want to wipe the drive and start over. How do I format and partition to prep for version 6? I can't stand windows so please help me!!!!

First off, you would probably get more attention by starting your own thread and putting it in the appropriate help section.

Relax! The best way to learn Linux is to bork your system 2 or 3 hundred times and reinstall!

You do not need to wipe your drive, just stick the Mint 6 disc in and run the installer from the desktop. You can just let it do the partitioning/formating for you if that is the only OS on the computer, but if you want to explore by all means choose custom partitioning just to see how your current Mint install is partitioned. There are a hundred different ways to partition and about as many threads on it already in this forum so I will not give you any advice here. Just dont be scared roll up your sleeves and dig in. Look at it this way, the worst thing that could happen is you have to install Mint all over again!