Oh Mint12...why don't you love me?

[xox101]

I really...REALLY...want to love Mint12 as I have loved and fought with every version of Mint since those heady days of Cassandra and an IBM A22M. It's been a love affair that has lasted through two long term relationships complete with members of the opposite sex. You know...those annoying human beings that don't understand why you spend hours trying arcane strings of gibberish in your terminal! Probably contributed to the end of both of them to be honest but Mint12 I have decided really does not want to love me back.

My old and trustyT40 and T42 could not run 12, my Toshiba Equium with a dual core AMD processor could run 12 but complained so much I removed it, my ASUS with an i5, SSD and 8gig of ram struggles to run 12 64bit within Virtualbox (Gnome 3 refuses to raise it's ugly little head and installing Cinnamon makes no difference) and finally my recently acquired Lenovo X200 with a dual core processor, 4gig of ram, SSD and a bog standard run of the mill so common it would be called cheap if it was female Intel 5300 wireless card is giving me two fingers even though it accepted Mint11 like a long lost prodigal son fleeing Windows tyranny!

Two days of fighting to get wireless working only to end up with WICD installed instead of Network Manager and forced to use G instead of N has left me physically drained and is not what I call progress! I can normally set up an install of Mint inside a couple of hours and have done so many times. My mother's T40 runs Mint10, my father's Fujitsu runs Mint10, even my ex landlady's Toshiba runs Mint10! My traveling T42 runs Mint11, the aforementioned Toshiba Equium runs Mint11. And i am secure in the knowledge that they are safe...protected by that Minty goodness from Windows afflictions and maladies!

But Mint12, I fear you are the straw that breaks the camel's back, from wireless woes to battery inconsistency (when I started typing this I was at 3 hours 45 minutes, I am now at 2 hours 38 minutes and I only started typing 10 minutes ago!) to having to update the kernel to the bleeding edge just to get the bleeding bluetooth to work I have had enough.

If things don't rapidly change I am going, nay, running back to 11 where i know I am safe, where my wireless works without Windows Wireless Drivers and WICD, where my battery indicator reports something which can actually be trusted, where installing themes is as easy as visiting a place called Bigisi and clicking a button, where the font on my panel is not so small that I have to put on reading glasses just to tell the time and where the font on Firefox is not so big it does not look like a child's first computer.

Perhaps I have just been unlucky and to be serious for a minute, in all honesty I have never had so much trouble installing Mint as on this laptop.

Please someone tell me I am not alone, that Mint12 is worth it? Please?

[Tuxi]

I have an Athlon 64x2 4000+ 2gbdual and 7200rpm sata2 HD (ext4), and linux mint 12 (Main GNOME3) run with an impressionant performance!
My LM12 in idle only consumes me 250mb of ram, and with full work (10 instances of firefox+ libreoffice per example) consumes 450mb or 500mb maximum! Its consumes less memory than a XP (sp2 Pro) (320mb idle), Vista SP2 (800mb idle) and Seven (700mb idle).
However LinuxMint uses Gnome3, wich is more hardware exigent than LM11 that uses Gnome2.
Effectly as you say, LM12 has more compatibily issues than LM11; respect for better performance you should try the new LinuxMint 12 LXDE!

PD: Login using MATE, or Gnome CLassic not improve your system performance?

[xox101]

I am actually running Cinnamon as my desktop manager, at least i am trying to. It or Mint12 itself has now decided that I need to log in twice before it will allow me to get to the desktop. No apparent reason as far as I can see. I have also lost the ability to copy and paste every so often. The only way I can get it back is to reboot. Just another couple of bugs to add to the list.

[Aethyr]

The advent of GNOME 3 and the rest of the stuff it brought with it could seriously be the death of the Linux Desktop. Not all Linux users are dedicated down to their marrow. Many have quit, many will in the future, and I completely understand them. The latest offspring of the GNOME team is the worst by far, and a serious contender for the top spot in the "worse pieces of software ever written" list. Some noobie-users have learned to adapt, and they will get used to Unity/Shell/Cinnamon/whatever crappy GNOME-based desktop rises next. Others can't adapt, and will go back to Windoze/OSX.

As for myself, I have ventured in territory that I previously never dreamed of approaching. And the journey has not only been painless, it has been enjoyable and full of astonishing beautiful surprises. I am talking of switching to KDE, and, as far as my laptop is concerned, to Linux Mint 12 KDE. Where the main edition has massively failed to establish itself as an even remotely usable operating system, LΜ12 KDE has been... perhaps the absolute best experience I've ever had with an out-of-the-box Linux distro to date. Stunning functionality, absolutely no issues, incredible stability, a beautiful and amazingly responsive desktop that absolutely shames anything I've ever used before. Once you fall for the K lady, there's no going back...

Congratulations to Clem for putting together this flawless, stunning edition of Mint. If you're looking to run Mint 12, this is the way to go, no doubt about it. LM 12 KDE should have been the main edition, instead of the atrocious failure that is the actual main edition...

[Tuxi]

Mmm in my case i like Gnome 3 , but gnome 3 has serious limitations for the moment and is much less optimized than Gnome 2.x series. Another cuestion is that for productibility purposes Gnome 3 sucks, but for home use Gnome 3 is good and different from other interfaces as windows.
Linus Torvald who most of his time had used KDE, when KDE4 appear he passes to Gnome2, and now with Gnome 3 he is using XFCE xd.

In a future i will prove XFCE, for productibility is better than Gnome 3 and KDE 4 series, and is totally optimized.
The good of GNU/Linux is that you can choice and all is libre.

[craig10x]

sorry, can't agree about kde being better then gnome 3...i have dabbled with kde over the past few years but always end up returning to gnome (now gnome 3 of course)...i would rather run mint 12 main edition with cinnamon then kde anyday...though i think kde has some programs that are better then gnome's (and i use them on my gnome installs) i find that in most cases, i prefer the gnome versions...

KDE may have a conventional style desktop, but i have found many aspects about it that are on the "quirky" side...to me, it always has a sort of "weird" feeling about it...and it also goes overboard in customization options (even though you don't have to use them)...gnome is just simpler to use, and smoother too...

As far as looks, well actually i use to think kde looked really cool (eye candy and all) but currently, i am running ubuntu 11.10 with unity and it's absolutely gorgeous looking...much nicer looking then say mint 12 kde or kubuntu...plus it is smooth, snappy, easy to use and very stable...with none of the kde quirky aspects....

I know kde has it's fans but i'm not one of them... I have tried the "klady" as you put it numerous times but it just doesn't do it for me...gnome will always be
my "love" even in it's new form
And gnome 3 shell desktop isn't bad at all (once you add some extensions) but i actually prefer the unity desktop (and cinnamon on mint of course)...

[TropicalMonkey]

What is going on with Linux Desktop?

I could not stand the new Gnome 3 and came here looking for ways to increase the font size.
So far I could not find a way to do that..

I am going back to Linux Mint 11. Once I feel Mint is too old, if the new Mint is still PITA, may be I will have to go back to Windows. I liked the freedom I had with Linux but nothing is permanent.

[Tuxi]

What is going on with Linux Desktop?

I could not stand the new Gnome 3 and came here looking for ways to increase the font size.
So far I could not find a way to do that..

I am going back to Linux Mint 11. Once I feel Mint is too old, if the new Mint is still PITA, may be I will have to go back to Windows. I liked the freedom I had with Linux but nothing is permanent.

If you dont like the LM 12 GNOME3 MGSE , you can use the LM KDE or XFCE options! and if is not enougth, there are much more distros availables with other styles and shells! There are a lot of options on gnu world, incluiding some distros that emulates on 100% the windows shell, or if you want a free alternative to windows (and your love windows), you can use ReactOs that is a 100% free clon of windows (but is in alpha state).

[Wol]

Having wasted another afternoon trying to install Mint 12 I have to say that Linux is just for geeks. All I get is a black screen - and if I reboot into Windows 7 I have to spen another hour and several reboots getting things working again, such as the internet and Firefox.

I really really want to use Linux, but until it "just works" I can't spend the time.

The idea is good, but it seems to me Linux has gone down the good 'ole American / Micro$oft route of making itself more and more complex so that you spend more time sorting out problems than using it.

[Tuxi]

Having wasted another afternoon trying to install Mint 12 I have to say that Linux is just for geeks. All I get is a black screen - and if I reboot into Windows 7 I have to spen another hour and several reboots getting things working again, such as the internet and Firefox.

I really really want to use Linux, but until it "just works" I can't spend the time.

The idea is good, but it seems to me Linux has gone down the good 'ole American / Micro$oft route of making itself more and more complex so that you spend more time sorting out problems than using it.

The major difference betwenn GNU/Linux and and a os like windows is that (except for that GNU is libre) windows is full tested, and linux not. If you want a GNU/Linux well tested and stable, you will install an distro like Suse enterprise desktop (paid or an rebuild of this distro, i dont remember name), Oracle Linux (Red Hat enterprise linux re builded is fully free), o any fork. However this are otrher distros than LM

[seppalta]

Why doesn't anyone mention LXDE? It works great regardless of the underlying operating system. I presently have 6 systems running on 4 computers of various ages and brands, none of which has less than 2gb ram. These include Mint 12 gnome3-etc 64-bit (LXDE desktop), Mint 11 LXDE and Lubuntu 11.10 (both 32-bit and 64-bit). The big stuff worked out of the box, the other stuff easy to set-up and all are very stable - what works one way today, works the same way tomorrow. With simplicity often comes beauty and functionality.

[3fRI]

Why doesn't anyone mention LXDE? It works great regardless of the underlying operating system. I presently have 6 systems running on 4 computers of various ages and brands, none of which has less than 2gb ram. These include Mint 12 gnome3-etc 64-bit (LXDE desktop), Mint 11 LXDE and Lubuntu 11.10 (both 32-bit and 64-bit). The big stuff worked out of the box, the other stuff easy to set-up and all are very stable - what works one way today, works the same way tomorrow. With simplicity often comes beauty and functionality.

I find that Mint (and other distros I've tried--regardless which version) tends to work differently om my 32-bit laptop than it does on my 64-bit desktop, However, I agree with you about LXDE. The more I use it on my laptop, the more I love it. In fact, I plan to run it on my desktop as well.