Linux Mint 12 is a DISASTER !!

[linux_mint_fan]

I've always liked Linux Mint and all past versions up to including version 11; it worked fine with my Dell XPS M1730 laptop. Tonight when I checked the website, I discovered the final release of Version 12. I eagerly downloaded the 64 mit iso and burned it on a DVD+R. When I tried booting it from my DVD drive, the screen repeatedly flashed white then red then green and blue over and over again. Nothing else came up on the screen. I am very disappointed with Linux Mint. Tried the same with Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit and the same old thing. Am going to stick with the "old" Mint 11 until Mint and Ubuntu clean up their act!!

[colyn]

The usual question...what speed did you burn the iso at? Do a slow burn.. You may also have a bad dvd..

I downloaded it today and gave it a try. Overall it worked fine with no problems but since I am not a Gnome fan (I use KDE) I'll be removing it from my laptop. I found no issues with it..

[linux_mint_fan]

I did indeed burn the DVD+R at the slowest speed (4x) using K3B. Maybe I will try another fresh DVD+R. As I mentioned, I "burned" the iso on a 8 G flash drive, tried to boot from that, and the same thing happened. As I also mentioned, this same boot fail problem happened with Ubuntu 11.10

[michaelzap]

So how do you know that Mint 12 is "a DISASTER !!" if you could never even boot it up? You apparently have either a hardware conflict (I'd bet it has to do with your video card, and pressing e at the Grub menu and adding "nomodeset" to the end of the Grub command might fix it). Maybe you should reword your subject to something less inflammatory that might actually make people want to help you like, "Can't get Mint 12 Live CD to boot on my Dell XPS M1730"?

[mank_in]

You did not see automatic boot in X second? If you see that press enter and start compatibility mode.
Maybe hold spacebar while booting helps.
I think the problem is ubuntu 11.10 and mint 12 installer don't know primary VGA to use in your SLI Laptop. ( or maybe kernel 3.0 problem)

[Kevin108]

Boot it with the option acpi=off That seems to help a lot of people get in so they can install it. After that, boot in with recovery mode and install the updates. See how much disaster is left after that. Two incomplete panels is still pretty disastrous but the solution for that issue seems to be coming quickly. Until then, I'll be sitting in 11 with 12 installed and waiting.

[linux_mint_fan]

In the first place, my apologies for my harsh and rash "disaster" heading for Linux Mint 12. I am so used to everything clicking when I've installed past versions of Mint. This took me by surprise and I did get a bit impatient. Thanks for your advise in using the command "nomodeset" in the custom boot. That still did not improve the situation any, but when I added "acpi=off" along side of it, the OS booted up nicely from the thumbdrive; the screen display came up nice. The "acpi=off" command was suggested to me by Kevin108; I even went to the extent of installing it on the hard drive. I even installed the drivers for the Nvidea card and wireless devices. However when I rebooted as directed, the screen displayed a series of bootup messages and then just stopped there - no GUI interface. Turned off the laptop, popped off the hard drive and re-installed the older one with Linux Mint 11. I feel rather discouraged, but at least I have Mint 11 to keep me going. Perhaps Mint 13 will have these things ironed out!

Again, thanks for your (and Kevin108's) advice.

[Kevin108]

Like I said, I had problems with it not wanting to boot and freezing after installation. The first batch of updates took care of everything though, so that may be worth a try for you as well. I'm not in love with Mint 12 myself but I installed it alongside 11. If it ever gets to where I want it to be with changes to the panels, I'll make the switch, resize the partition, edit Grub and forget all about 11 (which has its own issues still). In the meantime, we're dealing with a release that has only been out a few days. Give it some time. If it's not right for you, you're not out anything but a blank DVD.

[linux_mint_fan]

Thanks for your input. Glad I'm not the only one with Linux Mint 12 problems. After installation but before reboot (you have to do that in the wake of "activating" the Nvidia card driver), I got a 212 package update. Installing the packages did not seem to help. Like I said, I'm sticking with version 11 right now; hoping v 13 will be a more fortunate experience. Nevertheless, I love the concept of Linux.

[Kevin108]

12 isn't a finished product so you might get it running yet. There are ways to figure out what is causing you problems but someone a hell of a lot more knowledgeable than me will have to help you with that. All the same, there's something to be said for finding what works for you and sticking with it.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[michaelzap]

It is a lot of major change in one release, and there is some pain involved for some folks, unfortunately. I'm actually not running Mint 12 myself either (I find all my systems do much better on a Debian base than an Ubuntu one, especially since Natty). That said, I did update my main LMDE system to GNOME 3 with MSGE extensions and I'm not unhappy with Shell this way (despite the rough edges and lack of options).

Sorry if I was snippy with you earlier also. I just thought about all the work that Clem and others have put into Mint and how difficult it is for them to create something new given so many conflicting demands and shifting technologies and in that context your subject seemed especially harsh and ungrateful. But I have been known to flame in frustration myself from time to time (who hasn't?), so it's not as if I don't understand where you're coming from.

I've seen many similar reports of hardware conflicts like this on the Ubuntu forum, so my guess is that the problem is "upstream" of Mint. The good news then is that Canonical should be working to resolve it, but the bad news is that in practice they seem to focus mostly on developing new bling and rarely devote many resources to fixing unsexy bugs. Back when I used Ubuntu it seemed as if every release introduced new hardware glitches for me on different machines (the Intel video glitch, frequent wifi drops, no surround sound with PulseAudio, etc.), which was part of why I started using Debian instead.

I agree that Mint 13 will likely be more polished than 12. I'm looking forward to the next LMDE release with GNOME Shell, and I actually hope that Mint drops its Ubuntu base altogether in the future and just sticks with Debian. You might want to try that also when it comes out and see if you have better luck.

[vger7]

michaelzap said:

I actually hope that Mint drops its Ubuntu base altogether in the future and just sticks with Debian.

+1000

[linux_mint_fan]

Thanks for your message. I believe that Mint has a Debian? I think I've seen it posted on their website. If so have you tried it? Is it user friendly?

[craig10x]

that would be lmde...but it is debian testing, so it does get breakages and regressions...and it's not so simple to install (manually partitioning only...no easy install options like the ubuntu based installer on mint main edition)...so unless you don't mind occasional tinkering and troubleshooting, it's probably not the best way to go...not really for a newbie at all..

and if mint main edition went debian stable, sure it would be pretty rock solid and reliable, but it would not be a rolling distro and in fact would contain a lot of old packages as debian stable only comes out every 2 years, and would then require a re-install when the next version hits...you'd do better just putting on ubuntu 12.04 or the mint equivalent of mint 13 which could be used for several years (long term edition)...if you didn't want to re-install too often...

there's no real advantage for mint main edition going debian stable...and actually, a few disadvantages

[w2ibc]

that would be lmde...but it is debian testing, so it does get breakages and regressions...and it's not so simple to install (manually partitioning only...no easy install options like the ubuntu based installer on mint main edition)...so unless you don't mind occasional tinkering and troubleshooting, it's probably not the best way to go...not really for a newbie at all..

and if mint main edition went debian stable, sure it would be pretty rock solid and reliable, but it would not be a rolling distro and in fact would contain a lot of old packages as debian stable only comes out every 2 years, and would then require a re-install when the next version hits...you'd do better just putting on ubuntu 12.04 or the mint equivalent of mint 13 which could be used for several years (long term edition)...if you didn't want to re-install too often...

there's no real advantage for mint main edition going debian stable...and actually, a few disadvantages

I would totally roll with a Debian Stable Mint. But I am one of them guys who would rather have rock solid stability over the "latest and greatest"

[michaelzap]

Thanks for your message. I believe that Mint has a Debian? I think I've seen it posted on their website. If so have you tried it? Is it user friendly?

That's what I'm running now on my two most important systems (including this one). It's usually refered to as "LMDE" (Linux Mint Debian Edition). Debian is a little bit different from Ubuntu (even though Ubuntu is based on Debian), so you have to learn to do some things slightly differently, but it's very nearly as "user friendly" as Ubuntu.

The main difference in terms of usability is that Ubuntu has become severely bloated with things that in my opinion don't add much value and make it sluggish and problematic, but Debian can take a little more effort to setup and maintain. The latest LMDE gives you the option to update your system with periodic "update packs" that have been tested and packaged by the Mint team, which is very different from the usual way that Debian is updated. With regular Debian, you choose which repos to follow (stable, testing, or unstable) and the system is updated constantly (it's a "rolling release"). Some people (myself included) really like this, but it can be frustrating at times (such as when the stable repos have outdated software but the testing and unstable ones are breaking things too often). I'm currently tracking unstable on this system and testing on the other, and I've had no major issues on either for quite some time.

If Mint were to base all their releases on Debian they wouldn't have to deal with Ubuntu's extra bloat and removing all sorts of packages that have nothing to do with where Mint is going (Unity, global menus, etc.) before they even get started, and a lot of other developers find Ubuntu's repos too unstable to deal with in general.

[michaelzap]

that would be lmde...but it is debian testing, so it does get breakages and regressions...and it's not so simple to install (manually partitioning only...no easy install options like the ubuntu based installer on mint main edition)...so unless you don't mind occasional tinkering and troubleshooting, it's probably not the best way to go...not really for a newbie at all..

and if mint main edition went debian stable, sure it would be pretty rock solid and reliable, but it would not be a rolling distro and in fact would contain a lot of old packages as debian stable only comes out every 2 years, and would then require a re-install when the next version hits...you'd do better just putting on ubuntu 12.04 or the mint equivalent of mint 13 which could be used for several years (long term edition)...if you didn't want to re-install too often...

there's no real advantage for mint main edition going debian stable...and actually, a few disadvantages

Er...not really true.

The LMDE installer will do basic partitioning for you (it is missing an option to encrypt, however). And the testing repos have been extremely stable for a while now. Most Ubuntu releases get their packages from Debian unstable, and testing is more stable than that.

Also: Debian stable is also a rolling release and you would never need to reinstall your system unless you wanted to. Not sure where you got that idea. Stable does get far fewer software updates, but that's the point of running stable (for those who want to do that).

[craig10x]

the next version of debian stable will automatically roll into the current version of debian stable if you have it installed?
you mean when a new version comes out you get all the updates for the new version? wouldn't that tend to break your system?

sounds like that would be like upgrading to the new version of ubuntu...which can be rather problematic (as compared to a fresh install)...

another point...the only reason why LMDE had good font rendering is because Clem adds in the ubuntu font rendering patching to libcairo...otherwise (using just the rendering as debian comes with) it wouldn't look so great...

[Kevin108]

12 isn't a finished product so you might get it running yet. There are ways to figure out what is causing you problems but someone a hell of a lot more knowledgeable than me will have to help you with that. All the same, there's something to be said for finding what works for you and sticking with it.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

Just came across this, so I thought I'd quote myself and reply with the help I said I couldn't offer. Maybe it's weird, but this is how I learn.

check /var/log folder for logfiles

dmesg.log , kern.log and xorg.log are the common places where to search for the info.

[podagee]

ive thought the same as my first approach to mint 12 but eventually got it up and running perfectly.
@mank_in:it couldnt be the vga cards cause im pretty me and linuxmint_fan share the same,945gma(950) video card.on previous installs of 64bit ubuntu 11.10 and mint 12,there is a lot of issues with it.another thing linuxmintfan could try is booting up the 32bit dvd and try it out.it'll work just not to what your 64bit actually could put out.
just did a check on the xp its nvidia so the drivers should be available in additional drivers.