UPDATE PACK 5 FEEDBACK THREAD

[notty]

My only complaint is that UP5 is taking 3 times longer to update than it would to install and configure a fresh copy of Mint. This isn't counting the download time.

Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2

[mockturtl]

I've read in the web feed a couple of days ago that UP5 was not yet safe if using the ATI fglrx proprietary driver,now looking at the current page the warning is gone,does this mean that the latest ATI driver is in UP5 now?
If so,would it be safe to upgrade now or there are known bugs for this driver?

Hi mark1mint, see this post. The driver is indeed in the repo.

[jasmineaura]

I can see that you've lost volume control too.

just noticed that when you pointed out
edit: the notification area is there but the volume icon is not (after applying the mate1.4 updates
edit2: installing mint-meta-debian-mate (as advised in the UP notes solved this issue)

Just noticed here too that volume control was gone. In my case, mint-meta-debian-mate was already installed. So was mate-applets-common. But mate-applets was "rc" (removed, config kept), so it must've been removed during upgrade. Installing mint-applets manually resolved this issue (added volume control manually to notification area afterwards).

Edit: I see now that mint-meta-debian-mate is updated, and replaces mint-media-gstreamer with mint-media-pulse.
---

An issue with mate-power-manager. Occasionally, after waking up from resume/hibernate, clicking the battery status indicator in notification area shows duplicate battery entries. And since I enabled notification of full charge, it would notify me that "batteries are fully charged" (plural), though I only have 1 battery. The problem is of course resolved with a reboot.

N.B.
Upon changing /etc/modprobe.d/i915-kms.conf from:

Code: Select all

options i915 modeset=1 i915_enable_rc6=1 i915_enable_fbc=1 lvds_downclock=1 semaphores=1

to

Code: Select all

options i915 modeset=1 powersave=1 semaphores=1

I get freezes fairly quickly. Switching back to the first line, no freeze.

This puzzles me as it's supposed to be the same thing?

# modinfo i915 | grep powersave
parm: powersave:Enable powersavings, fbc, downclocking, etc. (default: true) (int)

# apt policy linux-image-amd64
linux-image-amd64:
Installed: 3.2+45
Candidate: 3.2+45
Version table:
*** 3.2+45 0
500 http://mirror.rts-informatique.fr/linux ... /incoming/ testing/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Intel HD 4000 on a Core i5-3210M , and Radeon HD 7670M (which I disable on boot via rc.local):

# cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
0:IGD:+:Pwr:0000:00:02.0
1:DIS: :Off:0000:01:00.0

lspci -nn | grep -i "HM\|VGA"
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation HM77 Express Chipset LPC Controller [8086:1e57] (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Thames XT/GL [Radeon HD 7600M Series] [1002:6840] (rev ff)

[sobrus]

My only complaint is that UP5 is taking 3 times longer to update than it would to install and configure a fresh copy of Mint. This isn't counting the download time.

Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk 2

Fresh copy of Mint isn't installed from packages. It is already decompressed and pre-configured. Just copied from DVD. That's why you can't select which packages you want to install.
Installing from downloaded packages takes much longer, as you have to decompress new files, remove old ones, replace and configure them - it means *lots* of random I/O on single drive.
Watch IOWait during update process. If it is high - your HDD is just not fast enough.

And apt-get is indeed much slower than opensuse zypper - it took about about 20 minutes to update my system even on SSD.
I presume all distributions using apt share this "problem".

[Monsta]

and someone whispered me a secret do you still see the same lost in font rendering if you change to a completely different theme than the mint themes?

Well... I've tried some other themes not related to Mint and haven't found any changes in the font quality. Should there be any? Please reveal your secret

[clem]

Hi there,

A couple of brief answers:

- Mint-X-Metal was replaced by Mint-X (part of the mint-themes packages)
- In MATE the sound applet comes from mate-media-pulse (along with mate-settings-daemon-pulse)
- The fonts in UP4 were using the Ubuntu patches.... pinning libcairo and fontconfig was tedious though and that wasn't done in UP5. So what you're seeing now in UP5 are the Debian fonts basically. Ideally Debian would have that fixed... of course we all know that's not going to happen any time soon, so we'll need to find a better way to tackle this issue.

[Monsta]

pinning libcairo and fontconfig was tedious though and that wasn't done in UP5

Oh. Do you mean the old libcairo and fontconfig (1.10.x/2.8.x) or the new ones from Quantal (1.12.x/2.10.x)?
I know the old ones couldn't be used anymore because some programs now require libfontconfig1 >= 2.9.0... but what about the new ones?

[clem]

The new ones can certainly be used, but the problem with pinning them is that it makes it hard for people to follow testing or that it can create problems when upgrading.

[sobrus]

If that's not a bug then it's alright. I had no idea about libcairo patches.
We're not using Ubuntu, so we shouldn't expect Ubuntu patches.

[killer de bug]

Clem,

Does it mean that if we do not follow Testing, installing the new libcairo will increase the quality of the font ?

[clem]

Well yes, libcairo and fontconfig are in a much better state in Ubuntu than in Debian.

[killer de bug]

Ok, I'm using cinnamon 1.6 and nemo, with UP5 working well.

How serious is the risk of breakage if I install these two libraries ?

[Monsta]

What a disappointment.
I can't install libfontconfig1 from Quantal because some wise guy made only amd64 version of it dependent on libc6 (>= 2.14) - and even Wheezy now has only 2.13-35.

Will probably have to rebuild all that stuff from source and make the proper Debian packages...

[BucolicBuffalo]

Jumping to the end of this thread and not surfing the other 12 pages, it would seem that everyone has a font issue. Somebody PLEASE!!! fix this! I thought by installing the True Type installer in Synaptic that it solved this issue. Apparently not.

[sobrus]

I wonder if this method works:
http://noz3001.wordpress.com/2011/07/01 ... an-wheezy/
It involves just extracting part of ubuntu deb file to /etc/fonts

[Trapper]

I wonder if this method works:
http://noz3001.wordpress.com/2011/07/01 ... an-wheezy/
It involves just extracting part of ubuntu deb file to /etc/fonts

Well, I tried this and it definitely improved font rendering.:

I backed up /etc/fonts

I downloaded fontconfig-config_2.10.1-0ubuntu3_all.deb

http://mirrors.us.kernel.org/ubuntu//pool/main/f/fontconfig/fontconfig-config_2.10.1-0ubuntu3_all.deb

I extracted the /fonts folder from it and copied over /etc/fonts, and merged it with etc/fonts, overwriting all files that required overwriting/replacing.

I absolutely have no idea yet if this has broken anything. I note that we're using version 2.9.0-6. I didn't find a like ubuntu version of that so I went up to the next higher available that I could find. I guess another option might be to go back to ubuntu 2.8.0-3. ??? Maybe someone can locate a ubuntu 2.9.0-6 version?

Outside of the fact that it immediately improved my font rendering, I have no idea if this is actually a viable workaround. I will use it for a while and see how everything performs.

[sobrus]

Great news. I am at work now, but I will try it on VirtualBox once I get back home.
I don't know how many files actually need to be replaced. Maybe just a few?

[Monsta]

I've managed to somewhat improve font quality with a simple script which I've posted here. Need a few testers now to confirm it works not only for me.

[drjster]

I wonder if this method works:
http://noz3001.wordpress.com/2011/07/01 ... an-wheezy/
It involves just extracting part of ubuntu deb file to /etc/fonts

This is the first thing I did after installing UP5 and noticed an immediate improvement in font rendering (looks just like UP4). It's been a few days now and haven't seen anything bad happen as a result.

BTW, I used fontconfig-config_2.8.0-2.1ubuntu3_all.deb, not a later version.

[LexMK]

I have the regular LMDE, using the default repository. Today the updater tried to update 1.301 packages, install 150 new ones and remove 21, yet the UP5 hasn't been released yet. What's happening?