Gramps50 wrote:LMDE Install
Let me preface this with the fact that I am not complaining about anything here this is just my observations as I installed LMDE and 1st started poking around. So far I really like what I have seen and I think Clem and the gang has done an excellent job in bringing us a new variant of Linux Mint.
I installed LMDE on my Dell Vostro 1520 laptop with 250GB hd & 4 gb ram
Used unetbootin to create a bootable USB thumb-drive.
Partitioner
Editing partitions is a little confusing, when clicking on Edit Partitions it opens gparted, so I formated the 2 existing partitons for reuse. Closed gparted and the installer still did not look correct. I then discovered that if you right click on the partition and set the mount point etc. After figuring this all out I continued only to have the installer freeze at about 75% with the message Mounting /dev/sda1/ on /target/ Canceled the installer and started over and all was well, might have had something to do with me using gparted the 1st run.
At 1st glance I don't think I would know the difference between LMDE & LM9 but upon further exploration I discovered that it did not handle font rendering as well as LM9. I have used Debian in the past and I believe that it's Debain not Mint causing the problem. I did change the default font from serif to FreeSerif and it did make a difference and looks better but still not great.
1st thing I do when installing any new distro is check for updated which I did using the mintUpdater. It told me there were 266 updates which I then installed. After they finished loading and installing I restarted, just in case, I like to restart when there are a lot of updates seems to eliminate problems down the road.
Now it's time to get my Broadcom 4812 working which is something I have to do with almost any distro that I have installed. I have a script that will download the proper modules and install them and it worked except for the last line which adds the command to load the driver upon booting. So I added it with sudo qedit and all was fine. The script is attached with comments for anyone that want to save time and automate the install.
When LMDE is booting you can see the lines as the different modules are loaded. This is fine with me, in LM9 this is hidden behind a splash screen.
Now it's time to install the extra programs that I want and use. Here a list of the ones that were available, followed by the ones that weren't
phatch
grsync
bluefish
gftp
dropbox
rubyripper
parcellite
gdebi - so .deb files could be installed, should be installed by default in my opinion.
Missing from the repostories
opera
picasa
downloaded and installed opera from the Opera site.
Found and connected to my network computer automatically.
I then went to Startup Application Preferences and unchecked the following as I don't use them.
Bluetooth
mintwelcome
Personal file sharing
Remote desktop
Visual Assistance
this is personal and has nothing to do with LMDE I do this to make the memory footprint smaller.
The only other issue I have come across so far and this is minor is with Thunderbird on the left column under the tab there is a bar that them sort of hides that top of the lettering on the column. If you click on the <> to change the view it disappears until you minimizes and the restore it,the bar returns. Doesn't seem to hurt the function it's just cosmetic.
I'm not sure if this is a debain issue or Opera, I tried to copy some text from Opera to Thunderbird and it would not copy. I was able to copy the same text from Firefox to Thunderbird. I actually think that it's an Opera issue, have had some other issues with it while running on other distros.
With all that said I really like what I am seeing. Being a Beta/RC1 LMDE is a very well done distro and I can only see it getting better with time and with a rolling release it will get better right before my vary eyes.
The code below is a script for installing the Broadcom 4812 drivers, tried to attach the script and it won't let me do it without a extension or with the .txt extension so I included it here. Copy and paste it into a text file, I named mine b43,be sure to make it excutable,put it in your home direcotry and run it from a terminal.
Code: Select all
#! /bin/bash
# Install the wifi drivers for Broadcom 4312 wifi
# Add contrib non-free to the app source list befor using - Note this may not
# be necessary on LMDE
############################################################################
## Update the list of available packages. Install the module-assistant and
## wireless-tools packages:
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install module-assistant wireless-tools
## Build and install a broadcom-sta-modules-* package for your system,
## using Module-Assistant:
sudo m-a a-i broadcom-sta
## Rebuild your initial ramdisk, to blacklist modules defined at
## /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf within initramfs:
sudo update-initramfs -u -k $(uname -r)
## Unload conflicting modules:
sudo modprobe -r b44 b43 b43legacy ssb
## Load the wl module:
sudo modprobe wl
## Verify your device has an available interface:
sudo iwconfig
## Configure your wireless interface as appropriate.
## At this point I don't think that the wl driver will load on startup so
sudo echo wl >> /etc/modules