Linux Mint 5 Elyssa officially released!

[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

[nico]

A List of things that don't work

Sound Blaster X-fi audio card - kills linux


I have SB x fi working perfectly

[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.

[solar1951]

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

[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:

Code: Select all

## 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:

Code: Select all

$ 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.

[mcurran]

The updated mintUpdate seems to have a lot of bugs. I few I noticed were: The lock appears broken upon startup and remains broken until manually opened, run, and then reclosed (pretty sure, unless there is a timer like the previous version where mintUpdate reloads itself every so often; however, I have not seen it fix itself by doing that - If so, is the memory dumping still fixed?). When you click refresh and the system is completely updated, it no longer says your system is up-to-date or whatever, and the install updates button does not refresh/fade out - So there will be no available updates, but the GUI does not register this.

All this could be because I'm currently running kernel 2.6.24-19-rt, but I'm pretty sure I noticed the same issues with the default kernel (2.6.24-16-generic). Please let us know if you are aware of these issues and if there is any ETA for completion.

Also, probably going to create a new thread for this, but only need a quick answer: Is there going to be any work on fixing the forwarded issue from Hardy with Elyssa, where the boot vga driver configurations are not detecting the best possible resolutions for each system and just using the universally compatible low resolution of 640x480 or whatever it is? This does not affect performance, but it would be nice to have native resolutions for grub and usplash without any extra work... I might be out of luck myself, since I don't believe it's possible for vesafb to render my natural resolution of 1680x1050 (conflicting arguments all over the web, but I have not been successful in fixing), but if anyone knows how I might be able to fix this; please let me know. I've already tried updating my usplash.config file, updating initramfs, setting vga as 872 in grub, adding fbcon and vesafb to initramfs modules, and also unblacklisting vesafb in the framebuffer - These all work too some extent for usplash, but the background does not stretch to fit my screen and I also get the green flashes and tearing you get when there is a resolution switch between screens and the framebuffer is not working smoothly. Also grub remains at the prehistoric resolution regardless.

Just wanted to mention these here to hopefully present the scope of these two ubuntu kernel bugs - So if you have any comments please post...

[bdjohnso10]

Thank you so much for this beautiful distribution. All of the useless programs and junk are removed, has a beautiful interface, and comes with restricted playback.

I absolutely love it,
I appreciate the hard work so much