soon gave up on mint18.2 xfce 64bit

[jerryferry123]

I've been using mint xfce on laptops & notebooks for some time now. Currently have win7 & mint 17.3 32bit xfce on my Msi U180, and after installing a bigger drive thought I'd try 18.2 xfce 64bit. Bit stupid of me, but I'd assumed that the atom cpu was 32 bit, as the original windows 7 was a 32bit edition. Anyway I wanted to go 64bit to enable use of google chrome.

The 18.2 xfxe installed ok, everything working but the deal breaker was, some of the configuration windows were taller than the screen requiring alt-drag to see the ok or apply buttons. What I can't understand is why these windows need to be of fixed size and so tall. This was never an issue with 17.3.

Being in a bit of a hurry I tried Xubuntu 16.04 64bit and were no problems installation or with window sizing. I'm using links to the 17.3 partition to share data, only issue was needing to create a .Trash folder with suitable permissions to enable 'move to rubbish bin'.

[xenopeek]

With only 600 pixels display height, that can happen. May depend on the theme and font size and such.

[jerryferry123]

Yes, pity about the limited display. In spite of that with with the extra ram (now 2 gig) and the a suitable district it's been a great portable machine. It was also a very cheap second hand purchase.

I feel a little sad that I've had to abandon mint in favour of xubuntu. Perhaps I'm in a minority with a 600 pixel screen height. I've used any other notebooks so wouldn't know if this kind of display is common.

[richyrich]

This was never an issue with 17.3.

And 17.3 has been polished to perfection. All of my machines are running Mint 17.x Xfce. I do not plan on ever upgrading/installing Mint 18.x . . Mint 19 will be out well before 17 reaches EOL.

[Faust]

..... And 17.3 has been polished to perfection. .......

Well said sir !

I was beginning to think it was just me who thought that way .
I have a rock-solid OS that does everything that I want , all of the time .

How many threads on here are related to Mint 18.x headaches ?

Too many to count !

[vladtepes]

I gather the atom was a 64bit chip but was sold as 64 and 32 bit with the later simply somehow 'reigned in' rather than physically different architecture ?

That said I think the best results with an Atom are with 32 bit ver 17.3 xfce

[Pjotr]

How many threads on here are related to Mint 18.x headaches ?

Too many to count !

That's not a good measure for quality.... Because 18.x is probably by far the most used Mint series by now. And because nearly all newbies will install 18.2, and newbies will always encounter problems they can't handle.

In my experience, Mint 18.2 is an excellent high-quality version which I highly recommend to everyone.

[karlchen]

Ok, ok, it is not Linux Mint 18.2 xfce 64-bit; it is only Linux Mint 18.1 xfce 32-bit,
which is running without hassle on my Acer Aspire One D260 netbook with
+ Atom processor (single core, hyperthreading)
+ graphical resolution 1024x600
+ 990 MB memory
+ Broadcom wifi working
Not the most powerful netbook around, but good enough to visit the Linux Mint forum.
No reason to give up running Linux Mint on it, before one day in the future the netbook will give up.

Code: Select all

karl@paulchen ~ $ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: paulchen Kernel: 4.4.0-96-generic i686 bits: 32 gcc: 5.4.0 Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 (Gtk 2.24.28)
           Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Acer product: AOD260 v: V1.08_Vodafone serial: N/A
           Mobo: Acer model: AOD260 v: V1.08_Vodafone serial: N/A BIOS: Acer v: V1.08_Vodafone date: 06/29/2010
Battery    BAT0: charge: 23.8 Wh 100.0% condition: 23.8/48.8 Wh (49%) model: SANYO AL10B31 status: Full
CPU:       Single core Intel Atom N450 (-HT-) arch: Bonnell rev.10 cache: 512 KB
           flags: (lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3) bmips: 3325
           clock speeds: max: 1666 MHz 1: 1666 MHz 2: 1666 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Intel Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: intel (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1024x600@60.03hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Pineview M x86/MMX/SSE2 version: 1.4 Mesa 17.0.7 Direct Render: Yes
Audio:     Card Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.4.0-96-generic
Network:   Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR8132 Fast Ethernet driver: atl1c v: 1.0.1.1-NAPI port: 5000 bus-ID: 01:00.0
           IF: enp1s0 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Broadcom BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter driver: wl bus-ID: 02:00.0
           IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 250.1GB (6.0% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: TOSHIBA_MK2565GS size: 250.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 70G used: 13G (19%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda6
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.15GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 56.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 179 Uptime: 1:01 Memory: 495.5/989.3MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
           Client: Shell (bash 4.3.481) inxi: 2.3.37 
karl@paulchen ~ $ 

[Faust]

How many threads on here are related to Mint 18.x headaches ?

Too many to count !

That's not a good measure for quality.... Because 18.x is probably by far the most used Mint series by now. And because nearly all newbies will install 18.2, and newbies will always encounter problems they can't handle.

In my experience, Mint 18.2 is an excellent high-quality version which I highly recommend to everyone.

That is fair comment .
I was thinking more of those users who had been perfectly happy with 17.3 then for whatever reason , moved to 18.x
.... and wished that they hadn't !

My comment was more in support of what was said by a previous poster ( @richyrich ) and not intended as slur against 18.x

Different strokes for different folks

BTW - I have had 18.2 installed in Virtualbox for some time , and I can't fault it
.... but neither can I find a good reason to switch from 17.3 as my main OS

[karlchen]

Is this not the same game with every new Linux Mint (LTS) release?
People start complaining that the new release introduced more bugs than they had ever seen in the previous release.
People start stating that there had never been so many problem reports about the previous release as there are now about the current release.
At the time being, it is still Linux Mint 18 bashing time.
In 2018 it will be Linux Mint 19 bashing time.

[Pjotr]

Is this not the same game with every new Linux Mint (LTS) release?
People start complaining that the new release introduced more bugs than they had ever seen in the previous release.
People start stating that there had never been so many problem reports about the previous release as there are now about the current release.
At the time being, it is still Linux Mint 18 bashing time.
In 2018 it will be Linux Mint 19 bashing time.

So true....

[bob466]

It seems to me...the most people doing the complaining are running Laptops with small HDDs...hardly any Ram and Dual-Boot...maybe a Virtual Machine chucked in as well of cause it's easy to blame Mint.

[Citizen229]

As a netbook owner (gateway LT21), I can tell you mint can work miracles. But a low spec PC with XFCE added to it to free up resources, is the standard trying to polish a turd. The window issue is present on my netbook as well. But lets face reality. Low resolution screens are not mainstream. So that particular issue may never be a priority on being fixed.

[Hoser Rob]

Is this not the same game with every new Linux Mint (LTS) release?
People start complaining that the new release introduced more bugs than they had ever seen in the previous release.
People start stating that there had never been so many problem reports about the previous release as there are now about the current release.
At the time being, it is still Linux Mint 18 bashing time.
In 2018 it will be Linux Mint 19 bashing time.

So true....

Well, some of us don't install a new point release when it first gets released. Just like when they didn't install a new Windows release until the first service pack came out. EXACTLY the same principle. And with mint 18 there have been some big changes in the underlying Ubuntu base, esp. the switch to systemd, so that holds even more this time.

I installed mint 18.2 KDE on my laptop a couple of weeks ago, replacing 17.3 Xfce ... I used to use KDE 4 in kubuntu and mint KDE. No problems, in fact it works better on that machine (but YMMV). Nice to go back to KDE, KDE 5 is much better than 4 (though you don't want to be an early adopter with KDE major releases either), and it only uses about 320Mb after boot.