winstonfg0 wrote:A BIG thank you to all the people who have made Mint possible. After three or so years of Vista getting slower and slower on me (around 8-9 minutes to boot until disks stopped rattling), it finally died on me this morning (couldn't get past the 'Welcome' screen, even with a System Restore). Luckily I had a couple of installation DVDs created for Mints 13 and 15, and an hour later was up and running (using Olivia). Everything works fabulously, including Eclipse, which I use a lot; and I can even play my MP4 movies.
The thing I was most worried about - my Lexmark laser printer, which is set up as a network printer - works as well. The admin software discovered it immediately, I installed the drivers with a click and printed off a test page. Perfect. Now THAT'S how software should work. Webcam: same thing. The only thing left is my scanner, but I have no doubt it will be similarly easy.
So I am now officially an "ex-Windows user", thanks to you guys, and wondering why I didn't do it ages ago.
A couple of quick qeustions:
1. I notice that the software manager no longer shows OpenOffice any more; eveything is LibreOffice. Is this likely to cause me any problems, because my laptop (running an earlier version of Mint) has OpenOffice on it. I suppose I could install LibreOffice on that too, but I'm rather partial to OO.
2. There don't seem to be many Desktop display options, even if I use the "Advanced" window. Specifically, I can't see where to set a screensaver (I like the fireworks one).
Thanks again.
Winston
1. OpenOffice.org was discontinued. Forks are LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice. To try the latter (if it is not in Synaptic Package Manager), you can do this from a terminal window, which will add a PPA to your sources list and install AOO:
Code: Select all
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:upubuntu-com/openoffice
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apache-openoffice
2. Try right-clicking on the desktop and exploring the menu choices that you find. Without knowing the specific version of Mint you're using (IOW, Xfce, MATE, et cetera), it's hard to give useful specific responses, but I'd start with that and if that doesn't help, look for some kind of "settings" option in your main menu. Also, for more screensavers than you can shake a stick at (when you find how to change them) - maybe over 100, IDK - search in Synaptic for xscreensaver and install some/all of the packages that you find (xscreensaver, xscreensaver-gl, xscreensaver-gl-extra, xscreensaver-data, xscreensaver-data-extra, etc.). Note that marking some packages for installation will automatically mark some others, so you will not have to mark (/double-click) every one of them. At that point, I would then
uninstall the gnome-screensaver package (if it happens to be installed); using the xscreensaver frontend, instead, allows one the option of setting the options in the individual screensaver "hacks" (as they are called).
(Implied) 0. Now that you have Mint installed, suggest you install an anti-virus app and use it to scan your Vista partition(s), sounds like you've got unwanted "guests" living in your Vista house
. Eight or nine minutes just to boot, wow.
Regards,
MDM
