Boring Mint??

[MurphCID]

Very nice article on Mint: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/lin ... tools.html

[kenetics]

Very nice article on Mint: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/lin ... tools.html

Very good, especially coming from Dedoimedo, who can be very critical of any small flaws he comes upon.

[ud6]

I used to love messing with linux (at the time, ubuntu) and spending a day speeding up the boot speed by 0.64 seconds before crashing the system and reinstalling it. I could have gone one of two ways: archlinux or mint direction.

Basically I had to get busy with work, so I focussed on a system that was quick to install everything I needed, not buggy and I could customise to my aesthetic requirements with a few button presses... cos I had proper things to do!

Mint (mate) means I am confident to do fresh install 19.0 instead of my 18.3 knowing I'd have the system I want with all the software I want within an hour, and have little problem with drivers and codecs... but still have time to do tweaks like format my usbs to f2fs for speed. Mint gives ease and power.

[MurphCID]

I used to love messing with linux (at the time, ubuntu) and spending a day speeding up the boot speed by 0.64 seconds before crashing the system and reinstalling it. I could have gone one of two ways: archlinux or mint direction.

Basically I had to get busy with work, so I focussed on a system that was quick to install everything I needed, not buggy and I could customise to my aesthetic requirements with a few button presses... cos I had proper things to do!

Mint (mate) means I am confident to do fresh install 19.0 instead of my 18.3 knowing I'd have the system I want with all the software I want within an hour, and have little problem with drivers and codecs... but still have time to do tweaks like format my usbs to f2fs for speed. Mint gives ease and power.

I too have had work really press on me, so I don't have time anymore. I wish I did, but I do not. I just want something that works the first time so I don't have to jack with it to make it work right.

[rickNS]

I encountered a very rare problem with Mint and was advised via a pop-up to download and add a PPA which wasn't installed. Problem solved!

I've never seen a "pop-up" advising me do any such thing. If I did you could be sure I wouldn't

[Spearmint2]

I encountered a very rare problem with Mint and was advised via a pop-up to download and add a PPA which wasn't installed. Problem solved!

I've never seen a "pop-up" advising me do any such thing. If I did you could be sure I wouldn't

maybe the one about needing cowpatty when running wifite under Mint.

[Hoser Rob]

I've had plenty of interesting times with Linux, I want it to be more boring.

[Arch_Enemy]

I've had plenty of interesting times with Linux, I want it to be more boring.

Indeed...over the years I've had my share of "excitement", for sure!

[151tom]

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[carum carvi]

Maybe LinuxMint programmers could install a fake blue screen error message for people who get bored with the predictably safety of LinuxMint. During install one could offer the option of a spiced up version of LinuxMint that scares the hell out of you with random blue screen error messages that have no ground whatsoever.

I can still remember so clearly how scared I got in the days of windows when I had messed up my windows pc and I saw that blue screen. Didnt sleep all night in order to fight my pc from being destructed. That certainly wasnt boring.
With a friend who had an apple computer I once saw a picture of a burning bomb as a warning message that something had gone wrong. That was back in the eighties though. Those were the days, that computers really did give me headaches. But it wasnt boring...

[151tom]

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[MurphCID]

I'm old boring is good.

Me too. Boring is excellent, especially when I just want things to work.

[Moem]

Mod note:
The discussion on spying by Canonical / Mint has been moved here.

[vishgaur]

You are absolutely right. It is boring.
No fancy things to install.
No fancy games to play. Yes, playonlinux is there, virtualbox helps too but it is damn too slow and laggy at times.

Overall, pretty boring.
But what does a laptop needs to do?

LibreOffice does all my documentation work. Photoxx and GUI image editor does the rest for me.
Apart from that, chromium/firefox enable me to do everything that I need to do online.

So? All work is being done.
Still boring? Yes. Why? Just because it has a minimal UI and also there are no new and shiny softwares for Linux available on web.

Here, the problem begins. I used to install so many new and shiny softwares on windows that I never used to use.
I used to download songs from piracy websites those generally used to send softwares instead of song files.

Thanks a lot to AVAST Antivirus that I ran my MS Windows with no viruses at all. I mean it, not a single malware, worm, bloatware, timebomb etc. AVAST is surely the best. And I'm talking about free version only.
But before the discovery of AVAST I always ended up with loads of worms on my MS Windows XP, 7. 8, 8.1, 10. Even with paid protection of NORTON and McAffee etc.

Not being boring would take a price, your privacy, and would also give you something in return, unwanted programs and worms and viruses, so I prefer it boring.
Boring means lesser time on waste programs and softwares. Boring means more productivity. Did you know that studies were the most boring part throughout our lives and it is still boring for sure. But what gives you returns at the end? YouTube? Gaming? Chatting? Video calls to hot girls? No, it is your studies that you generally tag as boring and it acts as the base to provide you all those fancy things later in your life.

It is quite boring to read too. But what I typed has a deeper meaning than this thread itself.

[Condorman]

I love the idea that people find it boring. It's hilarious. My daughter has been trying to use her Windows 10 laptop recently for various things like completing homework and applying for jobs. The amount of swearing that goes on when it just won't do what she wants it to! A bit of "boring" in these situations is exactly what you need.

I'm late to the party with this release, and only just installed it yesterday. What a treat it is. I haven't had a single hiccup at all. Absolutely fantastic. All set up very quickly with no hitches, and it's going to be my main OS for at least the next two years until the next LTS I imagine. Hats off to the developers - it's 2018 and still nothing comes close to Mint for stability and usability for the home PC user (or any user really). I can confidently hand this around my family for their use without fear of comebacks.

If this is boring, more boring please!

[Arch_Enemy]

I love the idea that people find it boring. It's hilarious. My daughter has been trying to use her Windows 10 laptop recently for various things like completing homework and applying for jobs. The amount of swearing that goes on when it just won't do what she wants it to! A bit of "boring" in these situations is exactly what you need.

I'm late to the party with this release, and only just installed it yesterday. What a treat it is. I haven't had a single hiccup at all. Absolutely fantastic. All set up very quickly with no hitches, and it's going to be my main OS for at least the next two years until the next LTS I imagine. Hats off to the developers - it's 2018 and still nothing comes close to Mint for stability and usability for the home PC user (or any user really). I can confidently hand this around my family for their use without fear of comebacks.

If this is boring, more boring please!

Unfortunately, the Great Unwashed do not always have the skill required to make some things work. Multimedia, for example, can cause real headaches (especially if you don't READ the error messages and say, "Oh! I need to install <name here> codec!") and have to have automatic app search to install something for them. Other things as well ("WHY won't it open this .docx file?!?!?!")

It's getting better, but it still requires a modicum of computer and OS knowledge sometimes to get things to work as they should. Mint is by far better than others, but still isn't quite ready for all users.

[BG405]

The amount of swearing that goes on when it just won't do what she wants it to!

This reminds me of my time with Windows. A swear box really should have accompanied the computer at all times, like the one I had at work with the prices for the common swear words on it (anyone seen "Hot Fuzz"? ) & I was well known for turning the air blue at the pub when trying to get something done. Really should have carried a bleeper with me.

The swear box paid for all the drinks from the vending machine at work, though .. and I drank a LOT of coffee.

It's getting better, but it still requires a modicum of computer and OS knowledge sometimes to get things to work as they should. Mint is by far better than others, but still isn't quite ready for all users.

That is true, but it is sometimes the case also when installing Windows, which has usually been done for them.

As for being ready for all users, I don't think any OS really can be .. there are always going to be people who can't or don't get on with them. In my case, with Windows, it's the latter.

[deanr72]

I just recently had to install windows 7 on a PC. The most ridiculous thing about the whole experience was having to download all the drivers on Mint and transfer them across to the windows OS via pendrive. It was also the same with an installation of 8.1.

What kind of system is created whereby you need to connect to the Internet to install drivers in order to connect to Internet?

Surely this is a prime example of user-unfriendliness and the need to be relatively tech savvy. And this is Windows 7 - still the most commonly used OS in the world!

[BG405]

What kind of system is created whereby you need to connect to the Internet to install drivers in order to connect to Internet?

Exactly.

A couple of years ago, when attempting to do a fresh installation of Windows 7 on a rellie's laptop which had the "FBI virus" I found that networking did not work so, on my Linux machine, found the driver to get ethernet working but there was no sign of a WiFi card driver. Toshiba evidently forgot that one, as did Microsoft (IIRC it's a fairly common WiFi card). Worked OOTB with Linux Mint.

Note these issues can and do occur with Linux too, have no idea of the relative proportionality with respect to Windows.

[MurphCID]

What kind of system is created whereby you need to connect to the Internet to install drivers in order to connect to Internet?

Exactly.

A couple of years ago, when attempting to do a fresh installation of Windows 7 on a rellie's laptop which had the "FBI virus" I found that networking did not work so, on my Linux machine, found the driver to get ethernet working but there was no sign of a WiFi card driver. Toshiba evidently forgot that one, as did Microsoft (IIRC it's a fairly common WiFi card). Worked OOTB with Linux Mint.

Note these issues can and do occur with Linux too, have no idea of the relative proportionality with respect to Windows.

Now that begs the question, as to the Wifi card, since I have had the opposite with the Wifi card refusing to work under any Linux since there were no drivers. Intel cards work right away, Broadcom, not so much in my experience. Not sure about Killer Wifi cards.