Linux Mint 5 Elyssa officially released!

[poision]

mint 5 is really gr8...but i m missing amarok n xine there..why no amarok in this version???

[Bruce R]

It's an Amazing distribution !
A really Great job by the team.
I love the way that it's retained the newbie-friendliness of Daryna and avoided the start-up menu complications of 'the Heron' (which it seems to be 'leaner and meaner' than) and even in LiveCD mode, Elyssa matches XP responsiveness on my old 3.0GHz Northwood rig. When installed on more recent Core2 (E2160 and E4600) rigs, it really flies. ACIDrip has improved over Beta releases, able to Preview but mencoder then balks, so Daryna continues in use. When that gets fixed Elyssa will become my preferred distro. 'the Heron' might have caused some lost M# sleep. Elyssa will really rock them. Meanwhile, if ordinary folk can find a friendly Geek to install and fully set up Elyssa for them, they will be taking to it in droves ! Once installed and set up it's a breeze for ordinary folk, without the interruptions and 'technical' problems of other 'popular' systems. (I'm already 'shelving' VHP, and may end up restricting XP in favour of Elyssa or 'the Heron' in my dual-boot systems, whilst positively recommending Elyssa UserGuide reading to other newbies !)
Edit PS adding Amarok / VLC was easy with Software Portal, but had to use Synaptic to add ntfs-config and sensors.

[TMoo]

Hey guys!
I just installed Mint 5 and as always it is amazing. I have one minor bug to report, tho. On my laptop (1680x1050 resolution) the bootscreen (the one with the green bar going from the left to the right) isn't fullscreen. With Daryana it worked fine. Has anyone else encountered that and knows how to fix this? It's not a big problem... but hey, it would be one step closer to perfection.

[Lim-Dul]

Has anyone else encountered that and knows how to fix this?

Yes, many people have encountered that including me. Possible solutions can be found in several topics. Check them out:

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=13391

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=13176

The tool that is most likely to solve this problem is startupmanager (sudo apt-get install startupmanager) - set your splash resolution to 1024x768 no matter what your monitor's resolution is.

[SpudGun]

Installed mint 5 a week ago now, and installed every update going, no problems at all, this distro is fantastic, i love the open as root bit and the right click to check md5, nice touch, great work guys.

[feinar]

Hi.
Have just tried the liveCD..
Cannot get my wifi to work..
This was not a problem with Daryna...

Have an ASUS mainboard with WIFI AP something.. (M2N32-SLI Deluxe/WIFI-AP)

Installing Windows driver, "yes" on hardware present, but then I get: "wlan0 does not exist??"

How come? What to do?

[hotweiss]

Hi.
Have just tried the liveCD..
Cannot get my wifi to work..
This was not a problem with Daryna...

Have an ASUS mainboard with WIFI AP something.. (M2N32-SLI Deluxe/WIFI-AP)

Installing Windows driver, "yes" on hardware present, but then I get: "wlan0 does not exist??"

How come? What to do?

I have an Atheros Wifi card in my desktop... For some reason it didn't work with the lived CD, but once I installed it, it worked perfectly.

I just dumped Vista off my desktop!

[hotweiss]

For those of you with Nvidia video cards, enable the Ubuntu proposed repositories and update. You should have the new Envy installed which has the new 173.14.05 drivers. I noticed a performance improvement with these drivers, plus they support a lot of new cards...

[Lim-Dul]

Thanks for the hint, hotweiss. I already had enabled the repos you mentioned but didn't check EnvyNG for updated drivers. Indeed the performance seems to have gone up, even for things like the desktop cube in CompizFusion (although given my hardware I didn't have any real issues before either). Finally the Linux drivers are closing in on the drivers I'm using in Windows. =)

[Guest]

Thanks for another great release!

I only having one trouble (for now however :p ), how do I change from Simple Compiz Config Settings Manager to CompizConfig Settings Manager. Whatever I do in CCSM doesn't change, I had to delete SCCSM, but them Costum is removed for Appearance>Visual Effects, and if I would like to change on and off the Compiz Effects by clicking Extra, everything is reset every time :/

[hotweiss]

Thanks for another great release!

I only having one trouble (for now however :p ), how do I change from Simple Compiz Config Settings Manager to CompizConfig Settings Manager. Whatever I do in CCSM doesn't change, I had to delete SCCSM, but them Costum is removed for Appearance>Visual Effects, and if I would like to change on and off the Compiz Effects by clicking Extra, everything is reset every time :/

Just go into the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings in Preferences menu.

[Guest]

Thanks for another great release!

I only having one trouble (for now however :p ), how do I change from Simple Compiz Config Settings Manager to CompizConfig Settings Manager. Whatever I do in CCSM doesn't change, I had to delete SCCSM, but them Costum is removed for Appearance>Visual Effects, and if I would like to change on and off the Compiz Effects by clicking Extra, everything is reset every time :/

Just go into the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings in Preferences menu.

I've tried that before deleting SCCSM, but the changes made in CCSM doesn't seems to cooperate ...

[Guest]

Actually, it seems like the changes appear in both SCCSM og CCSM, but they will not apply to the desktop for some reason.

[hotweiss]

Thanks for another great release!

I only having one trouble (for now however :p ), how do I change from Simple Compiz Config Settings Manager to CompizConfig Settings Manager. Whatever I do in CCSM doesn't change, I had to delete SCCSM, but them Costum is removed for Appearance>Visual Effects, and if I would like to change on and off the Compiz Effects by clicking Extra, everything is reset every time :/

Just go into the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings in Preferences menu.

I've tried that before deleting SCCSM, but the changes made in CCSM doesn't seems to cooperate ...

You have to reboot for some reason...

[lesleyp]

Greetings.
I have been experimenting with Linux for over a year now, and had finally settled on Mint as my favourite distro. Many thanks.

However, it is with regret that I have decided to part ways with Linux in general. Whatever the merits of any distro in and of itself, my end user experience as a whole as been dismal. I use two computers in two locations, and basically can't use most of my peripherals, so have to keep going back to windows to do things or finish things. Despite hundreds of hours scouring forums and fiddling at the terminal, I just can't get most peripheral to work. My Netcomm ADSL modem is the only thing that works properly. Yes, I know it's the manufacturers fault, but there are a hell of a lot of them to argue with. I even purchased a new printer that was said to be supported. Turned out It only worked with very basic functionality. The last straw was my recent purchase of a Creative SoundBlaster X-fi audio card. It doesn't have any Linux support, and ALSA doesn't support it. Creative is the biggest sound card manufacturer, and X-fi has been on the market for more than two years. In the end, it's irrelevant who's fault it is, if it doesn't work...it doesn't work.

I'm very much impressed by the concept of communities producing software for ourselves. I'm an old leftie. But I've got a lot of otherwise useless hardware, so it's back to windows.

A List of things that don't work

Sound Blaster X-fi audio card - kills linux
X1 Lexmark printer - zero functionality
Canon IP4200 - minimal functionallity: eg no high resolution (I print lots of photos), no printer maintenace like cleaning jets
X2 TV tuner cards - don't work
X2 scanners - don't work
X1 camera - doesn't connect to computer
X1 mobile phone - doesn't connect to computer, can't transfer files and music
X1 winmodem for dial-up internet

So for the foreseeable future i'm out of here. I do appreciate that efforts that so many people put in to Linux, and am sorry that it just doesn't work for me.

Regards,
Lesley

[Lim-Dul]

Thanks for sharing your Linux experience... It's a pity things didn't work too well for you but I guess listening to what disappointed people have to say instead of the "Linux is perfect" zealots is what will make the OS a better place for end users some day.

I have to admit that I had similar experiences with Linux in the past but Mint is the first distro in which everything works as expected in my case.

On a side note: I found a topic titled "What can Windows do that Linux can't?" on the Ubuntu forums. I think that it is a classical sign of how some people don't understand the situation on the OS market. The question should be "What can Linux do that Windows can't?". Windows doesn't have to prove anything - it sits there with its colossal market share and it's Linux' task to draw users away from it, not the other way round. I found very few things that Linux can do that Windows can't (after installing some additional software, of course) from an average user's perspective so the main arguments that remain are that the system is free, stable and more secure.

Free - well - "time is money" isn't just a stupid proverb. If you are a freelancer like me you will know EXACTLY how much money an hour of your work is worth and since most people are brought up in a Windows-dominated environment adapting to Linux WILL take many, many hours. I can say for myself that I spent so much time on exploring Linux initially that in a sense I spent more money on it than I would have spent on all the Windows OSes, Office Suites and commercial software I would ever buy. Was it worth it? For me yes, because I'm a curious person always seeking new knowledge, but I still don't think that it's a step many users are willing to make, especially since it doesn't give them any immediate advantages. Of course brilliant user-friendly distros like Mint, PCLinuxOS, Dreamlinux, maybe Sabayon and of course the forefather of them all, Ubuntu, improve the situation but Linux still "isn't there".

Stable - yep, the system itself doesn't crash and I have yet to see a kernel panic although I've been using Linux for certain tasks for many years now. However, all the additional stuff, that is some OSS applications, libraries etc. WILL crash - some of them all the time. Many of them will be annoyingly buggy... Average users don't distinguish the core part of the system and the additional applications so in their eyes the system ISN'T stable. In fact it may seem much less stable than Windows...

Secure - I guess it is. Of course there aren't so many malware applications targeted specifically at Linux and security holes are fixed quite quickly BUT since every Linux guru (even the evil variety =) knows the system inside out there's a whole new category of danger... Any misconfigured Linux computer (and desktops set-up by newbies are that by default) with loads of crap installed on top of it (with the additional stuff very often having its own security problems which aren't fixed that often) will be quite easy to get into by an expert. I remember when several years ago I set up Slackware on an old PC at school and it took our local Linux guru a whole 5 minutes to take over the root account on it - don't ask me how he did it. 0_o

Well - these are just my two cents and I'm writing all of this sitting in front of my (now) beloved Linux Mint. ^^

[hotweiss]

Lesleyp, you'll come back to Linux just like I did. I went from Windows to Linux, back to Windows and finally back to Linux. Once you get Linux set-up it stays the way it is, Windows on the other hand deteriorates over time. What made me come to Linux in the first place is a Vista reboot which caused all of my desktop data to mysteriously disappear. I tried setting-up hardware on my old Toshiba and couldn't get some items working just like you, but luckily some Linux guru came along and solved all of my problems. Have you tried asking on ubuntuforums.org? Yet, after I built my new desktop I felt that to get the most out of my hardware it is best to go back to Vista. After some random reboots I once again came back to Linux. What really got to me was when I backed up my data in Vista and then tried to retrieve in Mint, it was not there. Dam you Microsoft, Vista told me it was successfully copied.

As far as your X-Fi is concerned, it doesn't work very well in Windows either. I returned mine for three reasons: there was no improvement in sound quality, I lost the ability to utilize my front audio ports and the microphone input was very faint. It's not 1995 where you need to get a Sound Blaster to get sound from software. One good thing that Microsoft did is that it standardized hardware via DirectX, so in actuality a $10 card will do the same thing as a $100 X-Fi. When you are on the Linux platform make sure to research the hardware compatibility before buying it.

[psyodin]

well i have been using the LM5 for a bit now and it is fantastic. many thanks to yall for your efforts as everything works and the install was flawless. my linux journey is almost a year old now, after tasting many of the flavors linux has to offer i prefer mint

i think i converted visiting a robot tech at work to mint and linux yesterday, very easy to do when you know the product just works. thanks again

[Lim-Dul]

i converted [...] a robot tech at work to mint and linux

You've got robots who work as technicians? And now one of them is running on Mint? Amazing stuff - welcome to the future! ;-)

[nico]

A List of things that don't work

Sound Blaster X-fi audio card - kills linux


I have SB x fi working perfectly