Will Mint become a "rolling" install-once-and-update OS ?

[brjoon1021]

That pretty much sums it up. I want a distro that I can install one time, pretty much, or at least not more than once a year and have it stay current by updating with synaptic or that kind of thing. Also, I really don't want to lose my settings each time ...


Thanks,

B

[scorp123]

I really don't want to lose my settings each time ...

Wouldn't happen if you put your stuff on a separate /home partition

http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... _partition
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... 068&#33068
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... 1949&#1949

[GrayWizardLinux]

I am not trying to start an argument here because that is not my intention in the least.

But if you know squat about this stuff then we new people to linux do not have a freaking clue what to do - even following sertain instructions. they always assume we know what the partitions are clled and if not where and how to find this stuff etc.

I got a new laptop in and immediately overwroet the Microsoft partition and did the simple install on the hard drive. would be nice if there was a pre-formatted /home partition that you could set the size say - 3GB out of a 40 GB HD which leaved 10 GB for OS and Apps. but when you have no clue what the heck you are doing and you are dying to get into linux and MInt you kind of go for it with a hell of a committment and a whole more naivete.

If this works the way it is - my feelings are - screw it - keep running it until a year or two down the road i fell adventurous to try to to a complete re-install of a new system. But if it works then why the hell break it.

right now - dying to try beryl and see what that is about - but my level is nil so forget that for now and enjoy the best working linux system I have ever had to this time and use it and test the stability and longevity of it and be glad it doesn't suck like the other 2 times I tried it.

Just my feelings. so far I love it.

I just wish I did not corrupt the system by trying a few apps and deleting them when not relevant. I hope this didn't goof it up that bad. I should have kept it a bit more pure. add the few apps i needed and left it as is.

If this thing runs with no issues for the next year or two I can definitely say that this has been a stable and legit distro/version/OS. I can also that that this would be the MOST POSITIVE of linux experiences one could imagine. To me, That is Success!

Again, no ill will intended.

best wishes,
GrayWizard

[scorp123]

they always assume we know what the partitions are clled and if not where and how to find this stuff etc.

Wikipedia. Seriously. Lots of good infos there. And reading a well written book helps too. To my apprentices I always suggest "UNIX for Dummies". It's well written, covers pretty much all the basics and yet it's funny as hell with tons of jokes in between. So reading that stuff is even amusing. I guess a fluent reader can be through with it in a few days. Your Linux experience will be so much better afterwards.

and you are dying to get into linux and MInt you kind of go for it with a hell of a committment and a whole more naivete.

Well .... "dying to get something" is the wrong approach anyway. Patience is your friend. Death is not.

Committment is good though ... Do you remember when you were a baby? Or do you have any babies somewhere somehow in your family? Like 1-year olds? That's about the age they try to stand up and walk ... Do they succeed at first attempt? NO. They fall flat on their nose. They maybe even fall so hard that they might hurt themselves and cry. Does that stop them? NO. They try again. Again, and again, and again ... Until they stand on their own feet and really can walk on their own. And once they reached that point there is no stopping and they will soon run ... clumsy at first, sure. But run they will. Faster, faster and faster (and a really worried Mum and Dad running closely behind them trying to keep up with their little one .... <== that's where I am now, trying hard to keep up with my 1-year old daughter )

What I want to tell you: That you kind of "screw up" your first Linux installation is sort of 'natural'. We all did that the first time we installed Sometimes it takes two or three more attempts to get it right. That's natural. You can't know everything. I use Linux since 1996 and even after almost 12 years of using it I still learn something new each day

dying to try beryl and see what that is about - but my level is nil so forget that for now

Isn't Beryl preinstalled on 'Celena'? So you'd probably just need to click on its icon to activate it ... If you already have the right 3D-enabled drivers (Nvidia's and ATI's can be downloaded and enabled auto-magically via the "envy" command; Intel cards should work 'out of the box') then Beryl should work the second you activate it. From there onwards it's just a matter of fine-tuning it to your taste.

I just wish I did not corrupt the system by trying a few apps and deleting them when not relevant.

Just don't do anything like that as the almighty God-like "root" ... But other than that you should be pretty safe. What really "corrupts" here and there are the sometimes stupid config files some apps place into your home folder. They usually have a dot in front of their name and are per default "invisible" (can be changed in most file managers, e.g. "show hidden files"). So "Thunderbird" (the e-Mail program) for example stores its settings in a sub-folder called ".mozilla-thunderbird". So let's suppose you totally corrupted your e-mail settings and you wish to reset them. Uninstalling and reinstalling Thunderbird won't help you!! For your corrupted settings are still there! Instead you'd either have to repair the settings inside the ".mozilla-thunderbird" folder underneath your /home directory ... or you just delete that ".mozilla-thunderbird" directory and thus completely reset Thunderbird's configuration.

Beryl put its stuff into ".beryl*", all the Mozilla-based browser put their stuff in ".mozilla", Azureus puts its stuff into ".azureus", and so on and so on. Remove an application's config directory and its settings will be totally reset to default values.

As for removing stuff --e.g. if you really dislike an application and you decide you won't use it any longer-- just make sure you do all this stuff cleanly via e.g. "Synaptic" or the command line tool "apt". Don't try to manipulate your programs manually .... Doing stuff like trying out programs via "Synaptic" shouldn't be too problematic. It will warn you if whatever you try to install or remove has problematic dependencies (e.g. too many other things would have to be installed or removed too ....)

Hope this helped ...

[GrayWizardLinux]

yes- it helped a lot Scorp.

I have homemade pizza in the oven I have to attend to but i will comment further in a while.

Thank you!

p.s. my breads and pizza are incredible!




ok there is a 2004 dummies by the regular people and a 2006 version by a lady - the earlier version has the better reviews. the later might be more valuable due to recent info.

what do you think?

re: beryl and the drivers.... I am not sure what drivers i have loaded or what I need or what. sorry I am that basic to all of this. I am new to linux but pretty much on the road to death re: my old age. probably 2 - 3 times as old as you are!

I did use synaptic to load / install and to remove too.

[brjoon1021]

HI,

the thread starter here... I would be fine with keeping 3.0 for a LONG time IF there are going to be updated packages for it. My other favorite distro (PCLOS, referring to .93) completely stopped updating packages towards the end of its life while the developers spent their time and energies on the new version coming out. An upgrade was not possible by the way, so either stick with a dead distro running three or four updates behind of Firefox and TBird, Amarok, etc... or completely start over.

Not to be critical but I am hoping that Mint is not that way. The upgrade path is not recommended by the developers and is sort of offered as a second choice. So, the thing that I have to wonder now is what happens to the people that don't want to upgrade from Cassandra just yet. Will we still get updated apps, etc... ? If so, then I will probably only do a clean upgrade with the CD when I really NEED to. I have been multi booting a bunch of Distros for about a year now and the upkeep is killing me timewise. It was fun, getting to be a chore now. So I want to settle down to a handful of distros that I can just keep, update without breaking and enjoy: Mint, PCLOS, Pardus, Mepis, Sabayon, probably a few others. I have over 20 now, believe it or not. It is hard enough to remember how to update packages on that many... : )

So, a couple of you have suggested that if I make a separate partition for /home updating Mint should be a breeze, for the most part when each new release comes out, right ?

By the way, Mint takes over the MBR when it installs which is really a drag. I wish that would be addressed. I went from over 20 distros being chainload booted by PCLOS's GRUB to lots of problems booting many of them when Mint just took over. Now I have a GRUB list the length of the US Constitution with weird entries for every kernel, Memtest 86, etc... for each distro. Some of them are just called Debian, slackware or Fedora even though I don't even have Debian, Slackware or Fedora installed. Please change this guys. I have installed over 40 different distros over the last year and I am pretty sure that I did not overlook a choice to put Mint's GRUB in the root of the partition. Ubuntu does the very same thing, every time, unless you download the "alternat" CD which allows for such "advanced" practices as choosing where GRUB goes.

Thanks,

B.

[nelamvr6]

A separate home partition is not always the answer for everyone. Personally,, I love rolling release distros, and am only trying Mint out, but yeah.at any given time my home might contain 500mb of data all the way up to 16+gig. I just can't sacrifice 40ish gigs to a home partition that I might not use...

????


How are you not going to use your home partition?

You are entitled to your opinion, obviously, but my opinion is that EVERYONE would benefit by having a separate home partition.

[scorp123]

I would be fine with keeping 3.0 for a LONG time IF there are going to be updated packages for it.

Uhmmm ... I don't think that Mint 3.0 fits your bill then. Maybe you should try Debian or one of the Ubuntu "Long Term Support" releases? Or Gentoo ... that one pretty much is "rolling".

Not to be critical but I am hoping that Mint is not that way.

See above

The upgrade path is not recommended by the developers and is sort of offered as a second choice.

Because there is so much stuff changing between the releases. An old corrupted config file somewhere somehow that has no bad effect yet can have drastic effects if you upgrade and a program's new version tries to get along with that old corrupted config file .... And please bear in mind: Mint is a very very new distro. Such things are bound to happen as the devs add or remove stuff, or tinker with new ideas until their distro finally looks like they envision it ...

So, the thing that I have to wonder now is what happens to the people that don't want to upgrade from Cassandra just yet.

Nothing. Just continue to use your system. If it runs it runs.

So, a couple of you have suggested that if I make a separate partition for /home updating Mint should be a breeze, for the most part when each new release comes out, right ?

Not only upgrading, but also changing distros is very very easy that way. I switched some of my boxes from SUSE 9.3 Professional to SUSE 10.0, then to OpenSUSE 10.2, then to MEPIS, then to Mint, then to Ubuntu, then to Fedora, back to Ubuntu .... All my settings are still there. You just have to make sure you don't kill your /home partition during installation and that during setup you create the same user name (and the same user id "uid" and the same group id "gid") ... and voila, you should be fine. The more similar distros are (e.g. Debian, Ubuntu, Mepis, Mint) the easier this is; with distros that are too different (e.g. OpenSUSE vs. Ubuntu) there may be minor problems, e.g. leftovers from the previous distro's specific tools (e.g. dead icons on the desktop that are supposed to launch a SUSE-specific tool ... after a distro-switch to Ubuntu such icons have no effect and no use anymore and can be safely deleted) but such minor problems are usually easily fixed.

By the way, Mint takes over the MBR

Only if you let it to. There is an "Advanced..." dialogue towards the end of the installation where you could fine-tune that.

when it installs which is really a drag. I wish that would be addressed. I went from over 20 distros being chainload booted by PCLOS's GRUB to lots of problems booting many of them when Mint just took over.

Agree with you there, that's annoying.

[scorp123]

A separate home partition is not always the answer for everyone.

Huh? It definitely is the right answer for the average user who wants to keep his settings between reinstalls or upgrades.

I just can't sacrifice 40ish gigs to a home partition that I might not use...

That's a different issue altogether. If you're just trying out distros ... fine. You could just do that too in VMware or VirtualBox. Or you could re-use an already existing /home partition. /home partitions can be shared between distros ... seems you didn't know that? I do that from time to time and even use the same user name and thus the same user's directory ... just to see and find out how well the very same settings play out on different distros. Nobody forces you to create a 40 gig /home partition if you don't plan to use it anyway

But for the rest of us, who install Linux because they intend to use it: Yes. make sure you have a separate /home !!

http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... 1949&#1949

Quote from there:

So ... given how certain mount-points get written to a lot and others don't, I'd order them the way as written above. Now let's assume you have a 100 GB disk you want to partition, and you will use your system for WWW (e.g. to host your personal homepage on it + a small forum?) and maybe for some FTP (e.g. to exchange files easily with other users?), here is the partitioning I would suggest:

• /dev/hda1: /boot, 50 MB min., 150 MB max.
  /dev/hda2: /, 2 GB min.
  /dev/hda3: extended partition, up and until the end of the disk
  /dev/hda5: /usr, at least 5 GB
  /dev/hda6: /opt ... if you want it. 2 GB should be enough
  /dev/hda7: /srv ... if you really want it. At least 4 GB
  /dev/hda8: /var ... at least 2 GB.
  /dev/hda10: /home ... at least 75-80 GB if we take a 100 GB disk as basis
  /dev/hda11: swap ... 2x the size of your RAM, but not more. If you have like 2 GB RAM, then 1x the size of your RAM should be enough.

[brjoon1021]

Will Firefox and Flash be upgraded in the future for Cassandra and earlier versions of Mint?

[bobpur]

I realize some of you are students in high school, college or otherwise a little low on the pay scale. Believe me, you won't here my name in the same breath as Trump, Gates or Rockefeller either.
What I'm suggesting is to get another computer to "Break" and leave your good one alone. No high spec, stupid quick gaming monster but a cast off 2 or 3 yr old Emachines (For instance) that has specs similar to your good one and use it to experiment with distros.
My good machine is a Dual core AMD, RAID 0, SLI, X-Fi card in a big Antec case with too many fans. It's got 1TB of storage another 300 gb on two Raptors (RAID 0). I have lots of movies, music, photos, Files, software and quite a few distros on it. I don't want to "break" it by screwing around with the OS. No, it's not Linux. Some day, maybe.
Over time I've helped other people with their computers (mostly friends, neighbors and relatives) and when they got new ones, I became the new owner of their old ones. I have several that way plus a couple others I've scavenged parts off of. Not to mention a laptop or two.
I know this is probably off the subject of this thread, but I just wanted to make a suggestion that might save someone some grief down the road.
I'll go be quiet now and leave everyone alone:)

[scorp123]

Uhh no, I started off on Slackware back in 1996. I know my way around

Good

and I know what can be done with it and merged between distros and partitions. I don't need your 1337st look on it and you talking down to me like I don't know anything about it.

Aaah, and this from someone who claims that he started with Slackware in 1996?

You missed my point all together.

Maybe. I am just a limited stupid human being ... like everyone else here. Errors and mistakes are bound to happen at some point.

The point was often times I save very large files into my home directory. If I limit this directory to 20gigs or so and don't use it all then that's X amount of gig's that could be better allocated some place else.

And why not create one really big huge /home right away and then use that one across your installations??? Seems you missed that point. On my 'experimentation machine' I have several really large disks. The biggest one (400 GB) is always /home no matter what distro I try. The rest of the disks (200 GB + 2 x 300 GB) are divided up between the distros I have on that machine. The point being: I don't need to care about how much space I allocate or waste for /home ... it's always the same disk anyway on all the distros I try. I just have to make sure I don't format it during the install .....

Besides --As you may have noticed-- this thread was opened by 'newbies' who may lack the level of knowledge you have. So this was about keeping one's settings after several installs. So I fail to see the point: Why do you jump into this thread and then post confusing answers such as "having a separate /home is not always the right answer" ...... Again: You're talking to a lot of newbies here. For them and for now this is *the* *right* answer.

Sorry that my thoughts don't match your "right answer for every average user".

That's why I have 2000+ postings so far where I helped an endless number of newbies get their problems sorted out ... and you have not. You just come here and create confusion. You're not helpful. Try to look at it from that point of view.

Sorry if you're taking my 8ish post count on this forum as I'm just some stupid linux noob.

Yeah right, I see you for the first time, I see you post --for newbies-- confusing stuff such as "having a separate /home is not always the right answer" and then it should immediately strike me: "Oh wait, this guy has used Slackware since 1996 -- he maybe knows a thing or two ..... " Get it into your head: I don't have a magic crystall ball here and I don't do Tarot cards. I have to judge you from what you post.

I guess having 2000+ posts entitles your opinions to be the right ones

That + plus the many "Thank you, you solved my problem" messages I get

Quite honestly, that's about my only real problem with Mint. It's very polished and I like that, but everything is done for everyone automatically. There's no need to dig in, there's no thought process going on, there's nothing more than what's done for you. Now you can't even stay in control of what's updated anymore and what isn't. The thing dumbs it down for the end user who might mess their system up.

Well ... not everyone is into Slackware. Or Gentoo. Mint's goal is to be "newb friendly" if I may put it that way.

I realize that's off topic, but in this thread, people telling others how their systems should be installed and put together simply because it's the right way to do things and everyone else should abide by those ways is simply not the case with all users and all distros.

Read above. Not everyone here has your level of knowledge. You keep forgetting that it seems. For the average 'newbie' it's better if you tell them "do it like this, it's the right way" => It helps them and they don't get into some problems. When they get more experience they will automatically realise "Thanks for your suggestion, but I think I now have enough knowledge to do it my own style like this ..... " <= been here, seen that. And that's good. But you have to get people started somewhere. You can't tell a newbie "Do as you please, not all answers are right for all users ..." <= That's just utter confusing and not helping.

I'd like Mint a lot more if it were based upon something other than the Ubuntu way of doing everything;

Well ... feel free to write your own OS then. Some people around here have done exactly that

People should be more open minded to helping others instead of bashing them

Funny that *you* say that

The entire point to the whole thing was that a rolling release distro doesn't have the LIMITATION ....

Your 'limitation' seems to be that you fail to understand that this is not really a "guru forum" for this kind of pseudo-philosophical discussion but a place many newbies come to and search for help. You really think confusing the hell out of them by writing all the stuff you posted is going to help them?

[scorp123]

What are you guys going on about?

His point is that with a 'rolling' distro you don't need a separate /home .... While technically correct, I don't think this info is helping anyone here. It's just confusing for the average users here who want to keep their settings. Hence the suggestion of us mods (= Husse, maty, clem + myself) to create a separate /home if you can.

He's debating that this answer "isn't right for everyone". Maybe so. But here and now it is.

Really, it was annoying to read and went nowhere, I don't even really understand what you guys are trying to get across

That's precisely my point. He didn't even try to solve the OP's problem or questions, instead he kinda started attacking me and 'nelam' for giving the pieces of advice that we gave.

As I said ... such behaviour isn't really helpful.

[jondkent]

Reading through all the above comments I haven't seen any reason _why_ I shouldn't be able to apt-get dist-upgrade if I choose to. The changes between 3.0 and 3.1 do not seem to be that major and certainly not enough to required a completely new installation.

And /home is not just the issue. What about the contents of /etc and the configs there in? The re-install for each release makes it very difficult here. I wouldn't mind but Mint is Debian based and there is little reason not to have this ability.

I like Mint alot, love it, but this just makes my life hard and thats what I wanted Mint not to do.

[linuxviolin]

The re-install for each release makes it very difficult here.

You can do an upgrade if you want... http://www.linuxmint.com/upload/Celena_Upgrade.pdf
(http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5490)

[clem]

Each release gets package updates for at leat 1.5 years. It is possible (although manual because we haven't looked at a mintDistUpgrade tool yet) to upgrade from one release to the next. If we were to maintain our own repositories and not rely on Ubuntu we could implement 100% of our changes within packages and define meta-packages strategies so your upgrade would only consist in changing your sources.list and upgrading-dist-upgrading with APT... but we're small, and Ubuntu is doing a good job anyway and right now we don't plan on maintaining our own repositories.

Clem

[scorp123]

... but we're small.

People forget or simply don't know that this is more or less a 'one-man-show' .... your 'one-man-show'.

[jondkent]

You can do an upgrade if you want... http://www.linuxmint.com/upload/Celena_Upgrade.pdf

Thanks for that, exactly what I needed.

I understand that Mint is small, which I suppose is more of a reason to get this basic stuff right at the start, its a right pain to fix later, just look at Redhat/Fedora and rpm/yum....yuk!!

Of course if more help is needed..........

[cmost]

Linux Mint, like Ubuntu is designed as a Workstation OS. It's user friendly and requires a minimum of fuss to setup and maintain. While its never been intended for bleeding edge or nonstop tinkering, many people enjoy doing just that with their PCs. After all, the best way to learn Linux is to break your system a few times and then go through the challenges involved with tracking down the problem and fixing it. For people who enjoy this, then distros like Gentoo, Sidux (Debian Sid), or Arch may be more appropriate. These distros are so called "rolling" distros and are up-to-date the moment a dist-upgrade (or equivalent command) is issued. Sometimes, an upgrade breaks something; therein lies the challenge. For the rest of us who use our computers for serious day to day productivity, we need stability and we need things to work. We don't mind being a version or two behind the cutting edge so long as everything works and is relatively secure. We might upgrade our entire OS maybe once a year, sometimes less frequently. Many apps can be upgraded manually (i.e., OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird, and many others) via downloadable DEB packages. Alternatively, one may add third party repositories where up-to-date packages can replace official versions. For people who value stability AND cutting edge, then virtual machines become your best friend. You can run any distro you want and tinker without fear of hosing the host OS. I say do your research and pick a distro based your computing wants and needs. We have over 500 distros to choose from for pete's sake!!!

[scorp123]

We have over 500 distros to choose from for pete's sake!!!

Exactly. Total freedom of choice