Installation problem LM 13 LTS, 32 bit Mate

[lmbob]

I have been trying to install LM 13 LTS, 32 bit Mate this past week end and it keeps hanging with a black screen and lines and lines of messages. Then the cursor hangs on bottom left of screen. Initially the Linux Mint title shows up before the system hangs. I tried downloading numerous times, both with bit torrent and with mirror sites. The MD5sums all check out OK before I try to install. I gave up on LM 13 and instead downloaded LM 14 and the install went perfectly with no problems. Is there some bug in LM 13?

[karlchen]

Hello, lmbob.

No software will ever be absolutely bug-free. This applies to Linux Mint 14 as well as to Linux Mint 13.
Potential reasons why the setup of Linux Mint 14 worked on your machine, whereas the setup of Linux Mint did not, include:

• Linux Mint 14 brings along a newer Linux kernel, v3.5.0, whereas Linux Mint 13 still uses the Linux kernel v3.2.0. The newer kernel will have better support for particular hardware components than the older kernel.
• The initial release of Linux Mint 13, dated May 2012, was affected by a number of problems, which were mentioned in the Mint 13 release notes, section "Known issues".
  Additionally, the Linux Mint 13 installation version was affected by any problem which also affected the Ubuntu version 12.04 on which Linux Mint 13 is based: Ubuntu 12.04 Release Notes, section "Known issues".
  In the course of time, most of the mentioned problems were solved by software updates.
  Yet, the downloadable Linux Mint 13 installation ISOs still represent the initial release state of May 2012.
• Quite a few users of Linux Mint 13 experienced severe problems caused by the ubiquity-linuxmint-slideshow which is run during the installation and which could bring the whole installation to a halt.

Hope this answers your question.

About the current state of Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon desktop / Linux Mint 13 xfce desktop, based on my own experience:
By now Linux Mint 13 runs on my systems in a very stable way. The only programme which likes to hang every once in a while or to crash silently is Remmina, a remote desktop client. All the other little problems which I experienced during the first 2 to 3 months have disappeared quite a while ago.

Kind regards,
Karl

[lmbob]

Thank you for your reply. Just for the record, I had Ubuntu 12.04 installed on my computer prior to the attempted install of Linux Mint 13 - there were no problems at all with the installation. I also read all the release notes before installation and could not find anything that would apply to the hardware on my desktop computer. I am now running Linux Mint 14 and will continue with it since there have been no problems so far.
Thanks,
Bob

[karlchen]

Hi, Bob.

For the files:
The Ubuntu folks published Ubuntu 12.04.1 one fine day, i.e. Ubuntu 12.04 Service Pack 1. SP1 fixed most or all of the issues which had affected the initial 12.04 release. So if you installed Ubuntu from the 12.04.1 installation ISO, you were very likely to succeed.
The Linux Mint 13 download ISOs have not been updated since they were first published.
Only the Linux Mint 14 download ISOs have been replaced by Linux Mint 14.1 download ISOs.

Cheers,
Karl