Footprints and "Features"

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PussyCat

Footprints and "Features"

Post by PussyCat »

The last couple of days, I've been using ClipGrab to down load some (Guitar riffs!) videos and all went well until latterly. When I checked the Download folder, noticed that the last couple hadn't been saved. Concerned, it occurred to me that space might be a problem and indeed it was so moved them to one of my data partitions which was the intended ultimate destination anyway (formatted ntfs so available to both Win and Linux). After releasing the space all was ok to proceed (and yes, I know that the target partition could be targeted directly for these downloads but for particular reasons prefer not to).

However, what really concerned me was that neither the system nor clipgrab gave any warnings, thus the files just disappeared down a black hole?

Further investigation using Gparted - which was surprised to discover is not included by default - revealed that Mint 13 (used for several years so far) has a footprint of ~8GB, Mint 17.3 (installed because, until found PinGuy, Mint 18 couldn't be remastered) has so far a footprint of ~6GB whilst this Mint 18.3 has a footprint of ~13GB with less software than Mint 13 at this time! Why? Yet the remaster is roughly the same size as at 2.4GB.

Whilst searching for the missing downloads found my self irritated by Thunar which when scrolling through also insisted on scrolling right thus hiding the beginning of the file names?

As a final gripe, at the start of a session, sometimes either the panel doesn't show or Compiz doesn't start (or at least the window decorations). If either has failed, logging out/in restores them. This behaviour may have been since the last update on 24 Feb.

To a degree none of this matters as I will upgrade to Mint 19, when available, to avoid further upgrades for 5 years...!

[PS Progression to date Mint 8 (and some acquaintance with earlier releases), Mint 13 xfce (no intervening versions seemed worth the upgrade) but now forced by withdrawal of repos to try Mint 18.1, then Mint 17.3 now Mint 18.3 (all xfce) and probably Mint 19 ...soon]
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Hoser Rob
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Re: Footprints and "Features"

Post by Hoser Rob »

I've never had that issue with Clipgrab but have in 17.3 Xfce with Transmission. That program gave me a warning that it didn't have enough space to set aside the space for the file, which is how I prefer to have it set up, and you should have gotten a similar message from Clipgrap IMO.

You should post some meaningful system details for the other issues, copy/paste this to the terminal and copy/paste the text output here:

inxi -Fxz

AFAIK the reason gparted isn't included by default anymore is that it was felt that it's too hard for beginners. This is a beginner oriented distro and I think they were right. The Mint Disks utility is much easier and enough for most. If you know enough to use gparted you're certainly capable of installing it.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong - H. L. Mencken
PussyCat

Re: Footprints and "Features"

Post by PussyCat »

Thanks for the reply.

The OP was posted in chat because it was more observation than thorough technical question (which would have suggested the use of a more appropriate forum). However, inxi is not very revealing - mostly the spec of the environment - but does indicate that the 1TB hdd is only 4.6% used whereas it is nearer 55%!

What I'm most concerned about at this time is the apparent footprint of 13GB of M18.3 xfce compared to the 6GB of M13 xfce which has had much more added (including 3 or 4 DE - just because I could!).
Hoser Rob
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Re: Footprints and "Features"

Post by Hoser Rob »

PussyCat wrote: Sun Apr 08, 2018 3:39 pm...What I'm most concerned about at this time is the apparent footprint of 13GB of M18.3 xfce compared to the 6GB of M13 xfce which has had much more added (including 3 or 4 DE - just because I could!).
Well, Xfce chenged. I don't think it's Mint in this case. I use 18.2 KDE on my main laptop (was 17.3 KDE) and 17.3 Xfce on my 1Gb netbook.

I've not made comparisons of the disk space of different DE relleases. But when Xfce 4.12 came out (with 17.3 I think) it had become bloated and quite noticeably slower. And had they fixed the bugs that have been there for YEARS? Of course not, but that's the open source software world for you. New features are fun to encode but to fix bugs, well, that's boring and it works a lot better if you pay people to do it.

In fact I no longer recommend Xfce as a lightweight DE. It takes almost as much RAM as my KDE does ...
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong - H. L. Mencken
PussyCat

Re: Footprints and "Features"

Post by PussyCat »

Thanks for the further response Rob. My recent focus has been on the needs and frustrations of Spring gardening in the UK!

I understand your comment about it being more fun writing new features (+ more bugs) than debugging old ones - even if the new feature utilises old buggy modules with the consequent snowball effect. Although, in the days when I did a lot of coding, I (sometimes) quite enjoyed the satisfaction of tracking down the issue. However, the old adage that the worst person to test a program is the programmer, is still valid.

Anyway, back to this issue. I also use MX-16 which has xfce 14.2 and has a similar footprint to Mint13 at ~8Gb (but with less software installed). However, my MX is hybrid as it uses kwin (from kde4) as the WM but not the DE so has minimal impact on the footprint. Usually xfce + compiz combine well - as in Mint - but couldn't get the decorations to function well.

So still have the anomaly of an oversized footprint yet the remaster iso is no larger. Perhaps I'll try installing it somewhere else to see what it looks like though may not be worth it if starting again when Mint 19 is released!
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