Updates seem to have been the problem

[Mallette]

Also, I am wondering if I now have 3 or so Mint partitions. This is my third install. This one was because after installing the 142 recommended updates the install was a basket case. I couldn't focus on text input boxes to input passwords (which I wish I didn't have to do anyway) and many mouse functions didn't work.

I noted there was not a "repair" option when reinstalling from the CD, but I assumed (idiot) that it would overwrite the existing install. I am not sure that happened, as it appears that the account options to be imported grows with each install.

Deal with that issue later, I suppose. With this install, I am pleased to see my M-Audio Audiophile USB up and running. So much to like here, but just don't know how to deal with the things like the above.

I certainly don't want to run all those updates again, but how else to stay current? Obviously, some of them have issues, but how to know what's a good witch and what's a bad witch?

Dave

[bennachie]

The default option is to install each new version side-by-side with the existing partitions. You will therefore probably have three instances of Mint (which should be showing up in the Grub menu) and your partitions will be getting smaller with each installation. It would really be better to go back to the beginning, choose the custom partitioning option, delete all your Mint partitions (they will be labelled in the bar chart, so you can work out which partitions are involved) then create three new partitions in the free space thus created. You might want to consider creating a ~10GB partition formatted as ext4 and mounted as "/" to hold the system itself, a nice big partition formatted as ext4 and mounted as "/home" to hold all your settings, documents and non-standard applications, and a swap partition larger than the amount of available RAM (about double is the usual guideline).

Then you can proceed to install Mint yet again. Any future re-installs (heaven forbid) should also use the custom approach. This time, you can use the existing partitions, formatting the "/" one but NOT formatting the "/home" one (thus avoiding a great deal of messing around, since your documents and settings will remain untouched). Any distro can potentially suffer problems after updates, but Linux Mint is actually much better than most, provided you don't change the default option under which only updates at levels 1, 2 or 3 are installed.

[Mallette]

I took a quick look at the "custom" screen but all the partitions had turned green and I didn't want to overwrite my Windows. I'll take a harder look and see if I can determine what is what.

A straightforward "Use Existing" would be more user friendly.

As to the updates, with a 142 and no way to know which is causing the issues I am going update free for a while until I figure out what's going on. Is there a "rollback" option anywhere rather than having to re-install?

Dave

[bennachie]

Go to the next screen, and you'll see a list of partitions. The Windows one will be formatted NTFS (the recovery partition, if you have one, will either be NTFS or FAT32). The Linux partitions will be ext4. I suspect that you will have a single partition for each instance of Mint, rather than the separate "/" and "/home" partitions I suggested. you will also have a "swap" partition (hopefully just one). Before you actually change anything, have a look at:

http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/ ... nglish.pdf

While it was written for Mint 7 rather than Mint 8, hence the references to ext3 as the default file format rather than ext4, it remains an excellent step-by-step guide.

[Mallette]

Thank you, sir. I'll take a look.

Weekends over, however, and I must do battle with Windows again...

Dave