installation with EFI = Mint for the win

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ElectroLund

installation with EFI = Mint for the win

Post by ElectroLund »

Not a question, just a success story...

I've been a "is the the grass greener over there" sort of computer user forever now.
  • I remember my very first install of Windows 95, I got myself into trouble tweaking its interface right away.
  • Then years later, I got fed up with Windows and played with the BeOS (anyone remember that little jewel?!) but that software didn't last.
  • Then I switched hard to OS X and burned through a PowerMac, a Mac Mini, an iMac.
  • Finally got tired of those price points and came back to the land of Windows (although I've been in the professional world with Windows the whole time) and landed on Windows 8. Pure, utter abomination. I wanted to like it. I was impressed at first with MS' attempting something new.
  • Quickly upgraded to Win10. Aaaaand, I'd grown to loathe it perhaps even more. I hated the multiple personality disorder going on in their UI choices. My god, the insanity of it. And I was shocked at how terribly slow my laptop had become. It took (I kid you not) 4-6 minutes from a cold boot before that machine was truly usable.
So I began in earnest to look at Linux. It had been so long since I did any disk partitioning and looked at a BIOS screen. This whole EFI business proved more than I'd bargained for. After many false starts with other distros (elementary, solus, deepin) and getting nothing bootable, I tried Mint.

WOW, was I glad I did. It just worked, as the Mac folks like to say. It resurrected my dead EFI partition like a champ. It's unbelievably fast. Boot times are less than 1 minute. Waking from sleep/hibernation are less than 2 blinks. It's. just. gorgeous. Which is quite a compliment from an old Mac guy like me.

And I love that it allows tons of UI customizations. I think I'm finally home!
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deepakdeshp
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Re: installation with EFI = Mint for the win

Post by deepakdeshp »

Congratulations for finding and using Mint.
OS is one thing and the applications is another.
I hope you found all the applications you need in Mint.
If I have helped you solve a problem, please add [SOLVED] to your first post title, it helps other users looking for help.
Regards,
Deepak

Mint 21.1 Cinnamon 64 bit with AMD A6 / 8GB
Mint 21.1 Cinnamon AMD Ryzen3500U/8gb
ElectroLund

Re: installation with EFI = Mint for the win

Post by ElectroLund »

Yeah, so far I have. Lucky for me, my application usage has dramatically changed over the years. I've made an effort to no longer rely heavily on OS-centric apps.

That said, I have actually fell in love with a lot of the utilities that Mint uses. The file manager is fantastic. The System Settings arrangement is great. The main Menu is just, wow. I find that for me, I don't even need a dedicated quick launcher anymore, since the menu is so dang fast.

I'm using a lot of web apps for all the usual stuff (gmail, calendar, notes, music, storage/backup, messaging) so that's inherently portable now.

What's left is figuring out software development and toolchain from the Linux perspective. This last piece of the puzzle has been surprisingly difficult, but I'm determined.
deepakdeshp
Level 20
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Posts: 12334
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:00 am

Re: installation with EFI = Mint for the win

Post by deepakdeshp »

ElectroLund wrote:
What's left is figuring out software development and toolchain from the Linux perspective. This last piece of the puzzle has been surprisingly difficult, but I'm determined.
If you could be more specific , there can be an interesting discussion here.
If I have helped you solve a problem, please add [SOLVED] to your first post title, it helps other users looking for help.
Regards,
Deepak

Mint 21.1 Cinnamon 64 bit with AMD A6 / 8GB
Mint 21.1 Cinnamon AMD Ryzen3500U/8gb
ElectroLund

Re: installation with EFI = Mint for the win

Post by ElectroLund »

deepakdeshp wrote:If you could be more specific , there can be an interesting discussion here.
Sure. I got started in computing rather late and as such was always a bit unfamiliar with CLI. I use it when I have to, but prefer not. On Linux, I feel this makes me disadvantaged. No big deal, I can learn.

As regards software, I'm seeing how it's a different mindset. Not all applications have debian install packages. It's not very clear to me yet where to manually place files for installation.

Take for instance my Eclipse experience. I was eager to delve into that world. It's been a long time since I've used a solid IDE and been happy with it. I made the mistake of installing the version from the Software Center (what's it called? I forget). That version turned out to be several versions old, which explained why I couldn't find certain menus and dependencies in order to install certain 3rd party plugins (Arduino, Sloeber, etc.) I have this issue resolved now by simply manually installing the newest. I would have personally preferred to add those repos into my Software updater so that I get the updates, but oh well.

USB & serial driver issues have been another. I'm a hardware dev guy, so being in control of the devices that instantiate on the bus is key. In Linux, there's very little visibility of plug/unplug events, which I find so surprising. I feel that I'm blind when connecting virtual serial ports. I've looked at hwinfo but it just doesn't seem to work for me. There are some daunting terminal scripts that I guess I'll just have to learn. In the windows world, there's the trusty Device Manager that doesn't slow me down for this sort of thing. Then I can get back to writing code.
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