Linux Mint 11 RC – bug reports

[aelfinn]

It seems hardly anyone else has noticed, so I’ll just say that the Katya RC is available from mirror servers, eg Heanet.

[aelfinn]

And I’m wondering: why don’t you put up torrent files as well to reduce server load?

[hemimaniac]

Well the testing releases are rarely associated with torrents as it is "TESTING" Not for everyone, but you will notice with a quick peak into the public releases there is always a .torrent for those.

[bennachie]

11rc hit the Australian mirrors about twelve hours ago, and I've had the chance to do some initial testing of the 32-bit DVD version (I'll install the 64-bit version tomorrow). In general, the system seems to work very well indeed, and the various updates and improvements under the skin are noted and appreciated.

I have run into a few minor issues. The most concerning of these is that the version of USB Startup Disk Creator included in Katya, like its predecessor in Julia, does not create a bootable USB stick - and the options relating to persistence are greyed out, so that is not the issue. As so often before, unetbootin came to the rescue. Since the equivalent package in Ubuntu now works correctly, it's difficult to understand why this has not been fixed in Mint. I assume that perceived licensing issues were behind the decision to omit msttfcorefonts from the default DVD installation for Mint-11. However, given the reputation of Mint as a distribution that simply works out of the box, and its consequent attractiveness to recent converts from Windows (as well as to more experienced users concerned with the somewhat fragile states of Unity and Gnome3 at present), this seems something of a pity. I note that the fonts are included in the ubuntu-restricted-extras package, and that the font installer can be downloaded separately from the repositories.

I was not impressed with the choice of gThumb as the standard image viewer, but such choices are always a matter of taste, and there are plenty of readily available options.

[aelfinn]

Some minor issues from me too:

1. The installer has at least two problems: On an existing Ubuntu installation, it gives an update to Mint 11 as an option. This is not recommended as it messes up pretty much everything—I tried it out of curiosity. And then the words “Warning” next to two install option are almost unreadable. And after the upgrade from Ubuntu to Mint, the installer crashed when I clicked on “Restart Now”.

2. Sometimes a button in the lower right-hand corner of window will be partly occluded by the resize handle.

3. I have had a couple of windows (qBittorrent, Nautilus) where I couldn’t click on stuff. Any mouse action of certain rows of files had no effect; using the keyboard to select them worked, though.

[ldconfig]

Boots to black screen on my wifes gateway laptop core i3 with on chip video.

[chipps61]

This is a very clean looking release, I love the theme and default background - nice job there, guys, look forward to the final.

I do have an issue with ATI graphics with this RC however, that I didn't have with Mint 10. I did a clean install and formatted both / and /home as ext4 so as to give a clean shot. I get no splash or progress screen at all during boot, however grub's menu and the desktop itself both appear normally in time. I downloaded/activated the proprietary ATI drivers, and did all updates. I then made the big mistake of enabling compiz like I did with Mint 10 on the same machine, and my system didn't like that choice at all. It basically freaked out - all my window borders and controls disappeared, and various other broken things happened, including not being able to select anything with the mouse. Doing a 'metacity --replace' in a terminal did restore some normalcy temporarily, so I'll be spending some time going in that direction.

From what I've been reading, the new Ubuntu itself appears to have the same issues, just thought I'd bring it up. Anybody else having better luck with ATI and this RC?

Also a minor issue with the installer. No matter what network name I typed in for this machine, it kept saying the name already exists, choose another. After choosing any other selection on that screen except network name, that message went away.

System: i7 custom build, 6gb RAM, 2.5 TB, 1GB ATI Radeon HD 4600 series video card, Mint 11 64-bit RC.

[steviejay]

Just finished the install together with all the usual customising and tweaking. Fairly impressed so far. No major hassles but a couple of irritating minor ones.

My laptop also boots with just a plain black screen, no Mint logo.

Also I cannot change cursor themes. It appears that I'm stuck with DMZ (white) for the foreseeable unless someone knows of a fix for this?


ACER ASPIRE 7540 - Linux Mint 11 Katya - 2x AMD Athlon(tm) II Dual-Core M300 - 3GB RAM - HDD = 320GB (977MB used) - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Series - Resolution = 1600x900

[hemimaniac]

The Black screen is by design, it would really be nice if peeps actually read release info before spouting off about nothing.

I quote

'Black splash screens
In Linux Mint 11 the boot splash screen is now completely black. It doesn't show a logo with green dots as it used to. This is by design. Once the system is installed the boot sequence is relatively fast. The black loading sequence doesn't look out of place and it looks consistent across all computers, whatever driver you're using."

and there ya have it

[exploder]

Thanks hemimaniac!

[z06gal]

The Black screen is by design, it would really be nice if peeps actually read release info before spouting off about nothing.

I quote

'Black splash screens
In Linux Mint 11 the boot splash screen is now completely black. It doesn't show a logo with green dots as it used to. This is by design. Once the system is installed the boot sequence is relatively fast. The black loading sequence doesn't look out of place and it looks consistent across all computers, whatever driver you're using."

and there ya have it

I was thinking the same thing. Lol

[tdockery97]

Yeah, I can confirm the bug when enabling compiz effects with the ATI driver. The reason I didn't catch it earlier is that I don't use compiz. The rotating cube is cool looking but doesn't really serve a necessary function. So while I understand it's a problem for some people, for me and my pc Mint 11 still gets a big thumbs up.

[exploder]

The black plymouth theme was used because plymouth is so difficult to fix with the 11.04 base. The only fix I saw for plymouth with the 11.04 base was a script and on my 25" widescreen monitor plymouth still looked horrible. The black screen really was the best possible solution and just as Clem said, the system boots fast and it gives everyone the same boot experience.

[MrD]

Ubuntu 11.04 had an issue with 43xx Broadcom wifi cards. STA driver was activated upon install and you had to mess around to get wifi working, by removing STA in Hardware Drivers, checking in Package Manager that BCM and B43 drivers not installed, resetting, installing "bcmwl-kernel-source" and resetting again, leading to STA driver correctly installed.

With Mint 11 RC, STA is not activated upon install, it will not work for 3211 wifi cards anyway, neither BCM or B43 drivers are installed. Method for ubuntu 11.04 does not work. Steps to rectify:

1) attach ethernet
2) check STA not activated, search Package Manager on BCM, B43, ensure nothing to do with them installed
3) search and install "firmware-b43-installer" (automatically includes dependency)
4) remove ethernet and reset and you should have wifi.

Also:

On the software compatibility side of things. Ailurus will not run now, and Skype from skype-ubuntu_2.2.0.25-1_i386.deb package downloaded from authors site for Mint 10 is having major issues, hard to kill in task manager, messages bouncing back, password login errors and appearing to be online when it is not. I'm going to install that from the new software manager and see if the problems go away, although it is reporting the same version. Update: repository Skype is having the same problems for me too. Siezes up, messages don't go either way, friends don't see me offline, have to use force quit and kill in task manager before i can restart program where it runs for a while before siezing again.

[steviejay]

OK i stand corrected on the black boot screen thing. I guess I'm in the minority that doesn't bother too much with release notes.

Still having trouble with changing pointer themes. It don't want to know.

[karashata]

I made a list here with all of the flaws I've run into in my testing, though I'm sure I could clarify anything that might not make sense, and I'm sure I haven't found everything I might ever encounter yet. The list is compiled pretty much entirely from just going about my normal use and keeping an eye on things that aren't working like they used to or are experiencing obvious problems.

I'll keep running things as I usually do and whenever I come across something not right I'll update that list.

[karashata]

...
Also I cannot change cursor themes. It appears that I'm stuck with DMZ (white) for the foreseeable unless someone knows of a fix for this?
...

You could try running "sudo update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme" to change it. It appears that Compiz doesn't use the cursor theme set in Appearance anymore and defaults to the system cursor theme.

[Az4x4]

One thing I've run into is with the Mint 11 Software Manager. When clicking on FILE, EDIT, VIEW and HELP nothing happens. No drop down dialog boxes open so choices can be made. Maybe it's just me, but if it doesn't work on my system it probably doesn't work on others as well.

[doubled]

I am unable to shutdown or reboot with Mint 11 RC. I have to use Alt+SysRq+REISUB. It's the same with the Unity desktop in Ubuntu 11.04, so it must be an upstream issue. I don't see a reference to this issue in the "known problems."

[Edit] Found that the issue persists in Ubuntu and Mint when using Quickstarter with LibreOffice. One solution is to turn off Quickstarter. The more elegant is to do that first, then open a huge file "main.xcd" in /usr/lib/libreoffice/basis3.3/share/registry/ (better to use nano than gedit, because the file is so large), find the key "DocumentStoreUIEnabled" in the very long first line of the file and change its value to "false." Save and quit nano. Now go back and enable Quickstarter (It's under Tools --> Options --> Memory). When you try to shut down this time, you should succeed. I found this solution in Ubuntu bug report 562027.

[thouartsimple]

I found a rather interesting bug. If you try to remove the gnome-panel's shadow through Compiz' window decorations, the screen will flicker like crazy every so often if you click on things, left or right.

I simply changed the Shadow option from "any" to "(any) & !(class=Gnome-panel)" and the shadow went away, but the ugly problems came. I am using NVIDIA proprietary drivers.