Linux Mint 5 Elyssa officially released!

[Eric Weir]

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. . . .

This is pretty much my experience, though like the poster to whom you're responding, I've only been at it a year, and haven't reached the level of understanding, skill, and comfort that you have. Lately I've been vacillating between persisting with Linux and throwing in the towel for an iMac. The amount of time lost to fiddling -- I admit I have learned something in the process -- fills me with despair at times. I want to persist, but I also want to just use me system, not be fiddling all the time, especially when my understanding is marginal and improving slowly.

Regards,

[hotweiss]

If I install the initial set of updates, it borks my X config with the proprietary nvidia drivers. Doesn't seem to matter how I install them, I tried envy, the restricted drivers manager, and doing it manually. If I do it manually, it does install and I can bring startx up as normal via the command line using the nvidia drivers. After a reboot though, it pukes, and tells me there is no valid configuration. If I use the config tool that pops up on failure, it won't start the nvidia drivers, even if i manually choose them.

I just did a fresh reinstall, without the updates, and everything appears to be running as it should be (well, as it ran during the betas. Still have to set a decent resolution via 'sudo nvidia-settings', but it's done that since the first beta.)

Do you have a Nvidia 8500, 8400, 9600? If you do, enable the Ubuntu proposed repositories to download the latest version of Envy which supports these cards; download this version even if you have a compatible card. Now follow these steps:

1. sudo apt-get remove nvidia*
2. sudo apt-get update (to get the latest version of Envy)
3. sudo envyng -g
4. Select Nvidia on the left side, now click on Install the Nvidia driver (Manual Selection of the Driver), select 173, and finally click Apply.
5. Once the installation is completed, reboot and you will once again have a crisp screen.

[red-e-made]

Do you have a Nvidia 8500, 8400, 9600? If you do, enable the Ubuntu proposed repositories to download the latest version of Envy which supports these cards.

This might explain why I haven't had any of the graphics or wireless problems I see so many others talking about here - I check for and install all updates, one through five. I realize that this is not recommended for everyone, but I have my disk partitioned; if I bork the system, it just means a fresh install, not loss of data. And so far nothing has crashed on me. Graphics, sound, wireless, video, etc. - all running brilliantly. I love this distro.

[Husse]

Careful with the 4 and 5 updates
I tested on the laptop and it broke my wifi

[hotweiss]

Careful with the 4 and 5 updates
I tested on the laptop and it broke my wifi

Most likely step 1 broke your wifi, as nvidia* removes the restricted drivers module, which the Nvidia driver is part of. So if you have an Atheros chipset (the driver is part of the restricted drivers), you will manually have to install the MadWiFi drivers. There might be a cleaner solution, but I don't know of it.

PS-sorry, I found that solution on ubuntuforums.org

[Husse]

Actually I have a bcm4310 with ndiswrapper
But yes - any change to the restricted modules has some odd side effects - don't know why it is bundled all together

[red-e-made]

OK, so I gave Transmission a day in court and even though I was pretty attached to BitTornado, Transmission is in fact a great client. It's light, uses very little memory (about 7MB while downloading 2 movies and seeding one), has a nice interface and, being open source, can be configured with ease.

A bit of advice: downloading and seeding is all about peer connections. Transmission is automatically set to cap peers at 50. Which is ludicrous. But, this is easily solved by closing Transmission, going into /.transmission in your Home folder, opening the folder "gtk" and then opening "prefs.ini" in Text Editor. Change the value of "max-peers-per-torrent" to whatever you want - I chose 200. You might also want to change the value of "max-peers-global". Keep in mind that these changes won't take effect until you restart Transmission.

[valathor]

As for my first try at MINT and my second with Linux, I must say that I am totally impressed...
Very Newbie friendly and very nice features indeed,(with the exception of the small Atheros WiFi prob...)

All in All; GREAT job and I think I am impressed enough to stay(which saying is a very good thing, since I have the attention span of a cat)

Again and again great job and thanks a ton...

[diamond1]

so i am pretty new to linux. and i love mint, i tried hardy heron for a bit.. real buggy.. at least for me.. tried the ultimate version of hardy.. decent.. still buggy.. no wireless.. set up mint 5... holy crap, my atheros eg5007 whatever broadcom card.. works. installed the driver with the windows wireless drivers utility, disabled the resitricted ones... reboot.. and bam got even better signal than i did with windows ! haha connected without a flaw. not to mention compiz works fantastic.. had to write up my quick review as a new guy! i messed with hardy for a week straight before ditching it for mint so maybe that helped in setting up mint correctly but hey! i still like mint better.. but i guess it does depend on what your doing... for me, average usage.. no programming.. no gaming (mostly, yet.. haha) and email, multimedia... mint 5 rocks. flat out solid so far. no problems at all

[nateloth]

I just installed Elyssa and found the peppermint theme(while coincidentally drinking tea with peppermint leaves in it)... It might seem small but it makes all the difference. Elyssa ftw!

mint rocks, keep up the good work, I'll donate when I get payed next

[solar1951]

nice review here http://odysseus.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/linux-mint-5/

[KakarotUSMC]

Wow. Just wow. This is the first linux distribution that I installed on someone's PC after it was infected beyond repair with a Windows virus.

I applaud the absolutely outstanding work done here.

I even put one of the Linux Mint case badges I ordered last year on the front of the case.

Really like the Peppermint (sp?) theme.

Kudos.

[chowanec]

First impression, grub splash screen is UGLY!
Low quality, ugly fonts, motto is not visible under logo ... UGLY ... very ugly

With all due respect... that screen sticks around for about 5 seconds. I can live with an ugly screen that I only see when I'm rebooting.

Cheers,

Chow

[red-e-made]

First impression, grub splash screen is UGLY!
Low quality, ugly fonts, motto is not visible under logo ... UGLY ... very ugly

With all due respect... that screen sticks around for about 5 seconds. I can live with an ugly screen that I only see when I'm rebooting.

Cheers,

Chow

Incidentally, if you want to skip the grub splash screen, here's what you do:

Go into /boot/grub, right-click anywhere, Open in Terminal, and type the following:

Code: Select all

sudo gedit menu.lst

A text file will open. Change this entry:

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## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout      5

to

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## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout      0

And you're done.

[lr13]

Thanx to Clem and LinuxMint team. Great work guys!
Lookin forward for KDE Edition!

[hapihakr]

I followed the upgrade instructions found in the release notes. (http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa.php ... structions) I am happy to report that I have successfully upgraded Daryna to Elyssa with only 2 small hiccops. First, when attempting to install the additional software (section title "Install additional software"), I got an error (about dependencies, I think?) with a suggestion from apt that I run "apt-get -f install". I did that and then repeated the "apt install ...." command, which completed without error this time. Second, after completing the upgrade and rebooting the computer, I found that mintMenu was no longer on my panel (it was before the upgrade). This was easily remedied by right clicking on the panel, selecting "Add to panel" and adding "mintMenu" to the panel. Oh, and also after rebooting, mintUpdate found and installed some updated software, but that's to be expected. I have not noticed any problems with my system.

[spas87]

so i am pretty new to linux. and i love mint, i tried hardy heron for a bit.. real buggy.. at least for me.. tried the ultimate version of hardy.. decent.. still buggy.. no wireless.. set up mint 5... holy crap, my atheros eg5007 whatever broadcom card.. works. installed the driver with the windows wireless drivers utility, disabled the resitricted ones... reboot.. and bam got even better signal than i did with windows ! haha connected without a flaw. not to mention compiz works fantastic.. had to write up my quick review as a new guy! i messed with hardy for a week straight before ditching it for mint so maybe that helped in setting up mint correctly but hey! i still like mint better.. but i guess it does depend on what your doing... for me, average usage.. no programming.. no gaming (mostly, yet.. haha) and email, multimedia... mint 5 rocks. flat out solid so far. no problems at all

well any OS is fine for programing(and I realy like gEdit for writing C++ code in it and all the lovley colorin ) about games can't say that have played a lot in linux but it got few nice games especialy FPS about multy media it just rocks it runs everything you trow it (haha ) and it is realy better then window for every day use it is just the games and th wide range of stuff avaible for XP (well mostly because most of as new users of linux are used with Windows, probably 80% procents are replaced by others in Linux just take time to find and get used with them)

Linux MInt Rocks if you ask me ass well

[Husse]

Linux MInt Rocks if you ask me ass well

Hmm

[matias]

Hi there!

First of all, I would like to say a very big THANK YOU to the Mint developement team, because I think they do some outstanding job, and this has been my favorit distro since 3.0. By the way I have also some questions and suggestions, as

1. Why did you left out the xorg-tester applet? It was very useful I think in Cassandra. There should be something similar. (I've installed that xorg editor manually, but it would be nice to have it bundled to Elyssa)

2. I was looking around for quite some time, but I didn't find anything that could show me an overview of system hardware and drivers. There was an applet in Cassandra for this, why isn't there in Elyssa? For me, this is a major problem. Maybe only I was who overlooked something, but really, a current disto should contain a system overview about hardware and drivers! Actually I can access network and sound drivers for example separately, but I would need an overview where I could find everything from a to z.

And for one last thought, again I looked around and I didn't find the proper place to report, that my Gigabyte GF 8600 GT GDDR III 256MB (passive)video card seems to be working flawlessly after configuring with the envy tool, someone might be intrested in.

Keep it up with the good job!

[Guest]

I just tested out Mint for the first time, I'd been following it for awhile, and it seems to suffer the same issue as Ubuntu does. If you're using a Asus P5N32 motherboard(and possibly all nVidia 680i based motherboards, although I'm not 100% sure) you will not be able to get a wired internet connection to run without using the following commands:

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$ sudo su
# rmmod forcedeth
# modprobe forcedeth msi=0 msix=0
# /etc/init.d/networking restart

I got this information from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766629&page=2 and it worked great for me on Ubuntu and Mint.

This is False, i am on a Nvidia Striker "680i LT motherbord and it runs fine, i am on Dyrana tho, just wanted to point out that it worked in a older release.