little questions about mint os

[fleamailman]

coming from kubuntu, things are different and done differently too on mint so here are my questions



first off, I need japanese fonts
next, do I only have one desktop
third, how to upgrade
forth, if I put mint on my daughters machine as dual boot with XP, are drives ready mounted

I think this has been the easiest distro to date, and all my wifi USB keys that worked for kubuntu work for mint so I am really pleased

[Fred]

fleamailman,

Greetings

First, If you are coming from Kubuntu, ie you prefer KDE, you might want to try Mint 4 kde Community Edition, beta 044. Even though it is still in beta it is pretty stable.

To answer your questions:

If the fonts you want are available for kubuntu, they can be used on Mint 4. Mint 4 uses the Ubuntu repositories.

No, you can have up to 16, I think it is, desktops. I am going to wing it a bit here because I don't have a copy of Mint 4 Gnome on my computer to look at right now. But I believe you can right click on the menu bar and select to add the desktop applet. Poke around, you will find it.

Not sure I understand the context here. Mint doesn't have an auto update routine like (K)ubuntu does. Actually, my personal opinion is that this might be a good thing. Things always seem to be slower, buggier, or just plain broken after an upgrade in (K)ubuntu. I usually recommend that when you install you use a separate partition for your /home directory. Then when you upgrade to the next version all your desktop settings and personal data structures will still be in tact. This makes for a more trouble free upgrade method. Of course that still doesn't mean you shouldn't maintain backups.

Yes all the drives and partitions should be auto mounted on startup by default.

Hope this answers your questions.

Enjoy,

Fred

[MagnusB]

coming from kubuntu, things are different and done differently too on mint so here are my questions



first off, I need japanese fonts
next, do I only have one desktop
third, how to upgrade
forth, if I put mint on my daughters machine as dual boot with XP, are drives ready mounted

I think this has been the easiest distro to date, and all my wifi USB keys that worked for kubuntu work for mint so I am really pleased

2. No, right click on the panel, click on Add to panel and select workspace switcher (I think it is called, I am using the norwegian translation ATM). By default you have 4 virtual desktops, use Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right key to switch between them.
3. If you mean upgrade to a newer version, Clem usually put out release notes on the Main edition on how to use a dist upgrade, but like Fred pointed out, a clean install is much better, but contrary to him, I find it better to not keep the home folder on a separate partition, as all the settings stored there can cause a conflict when you upgrade the system (my opinion, though, but I usually keep backup of my data anyways, so it is not an issue for me).
4. Linux mounts ntfs disks, XP can not read ext3 disk without installing ext drivers. FAT32 partitions could sometimes be problematic, but usually they mount just fine