Yeah, that's certainly a good idea since the thread has indeed reached a rather specific level. After all, the original question of which laptops can be recommended based on the requirements I'd provided has been answered. On that note, a big thank you to everyone who's contributed!RobertService wrote: ⤴Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:10 pm Perhaps it's time to be very specific, and open a new topic, on a new forum, said topic to be something like, "Any problems with ThinkPads and Mint?". After all, your original question would possibly be, more appropriately, a candidate for the Newbie Questions and the Hardware Support forums. The sub-title of this forum is "Questions about the project and distribution..., and might tend to be overlooked by those wishing to give opinions on hardware.
You can find the new, more specific thread here.
Yeah, in case Mate doesn't work the way I'd like it to, Xfce would certainly be an option. I've used Mint with Xfce in the past and it's lovely. However, I just prefer Mate a little over Xfce, just personal preference. And as for your recommendation of 17.3: Yeah, I have developed a feeling over the past few months of using 18.3 and experiencing a couple of bugs that 17.3 and the previous releases are be more stable since they didn't cause any problems at all back in the days. I started out with 17.1 Rebecca and never had any problems. However, I must add that I only used Mint in VirtualBox at that time. I had 18 installed on a 11.6'' Acer laptop, no problems. My current 11.6'' Acer laptop with touchscreen has 18.3 Mate on it and - like I've already mentioned - Mate seems to have problems displaying certain windows and the taskbar properly. I don't wanna go into too great detail here, just sharing your thoughts on 17.3 being a great and stable distribution.RobertService wrote: ⤴Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:10 pm The Mint organization states that Mint reliability, highest to lowest, follows this path: Xfce ► Mate ► Cinnamon.
Mint 17.3 Xfce appears to be the most reliable Mint distribution, and was acclaimed to be the very best of all Linux distributions, going into 2017. For a complete newbie, a Linux Mint installation takes a grand total of one hour; in your case, it should take 15-20 minutes. So the suggestion is this--
To get the statistically best indication of the success of your choice of hardware, start by installing Mint 17.3 Xfce first, and use this installation as your base-line; then go from there (strong caution: you may decide that 17.3 is such an outstanding distribution that you don't need to "mess with a good thing"!). One benefit: you'll be starting out with one of the best Mint version ever, and Linux Mint 19 is not that far away. Then you can switch to the newest version, if you think "newest" is what you must have...or something else; it appears that MX-17.1 Linux is an elegant, powerful, lean distribution which is garnering a lot of attention because of its grace and speed.
Yes, I will certainly do that. That's about the least I can give back for the help I've received here.RobertService wrote: ⤴Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:10 pm Please, ultimately, report back; it is obvious that you have a wealth of critical skills in this area, and we would all benefit from knowing what the end of your journey is, and most importantly, how you got there.
Job done! I've downloaded 17.3 Xfce and 17.3 Mate and still have 18.3 Mate on the disk. I'm currently downloading a few older distributions as well, just in case I experience problems at some point and need to switch through different releases to see if any of them doesn't cause any problems.RobertService wrote: ⤴Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:10 pm (P.S.: not to be overlooked--if there's the slightest possibility you're going to take my "starting off" suggestion, download any and all versions of Mint 17.3 NOW, as they won't be easily available once Mint 19 arrives. Verbum sat sap...)
Thanks guys!
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