Linux Mint 19.3 'Tricia' What are your First Impressions?

[Moem]

There is the problem with high-resolution monitors: GIMP 2.8 can't do this, the original icons are only visible with a magnifying glass. That means, you tinker with the delivered version or you get the AppImage of version 2.10 where the problem is solved...

??
I am using 2.8 GIMP, and the icon on the Panel looks okay to me.

That's not what we are talking about. It's about the tool icons inside the program itself.

[absque fenestris]

??
I am using 2.8 GIMP, and the icon on the Panel looks okay to me.
I am using a 17" HiDef laptop and initially, all the icons were too small for 78 y/o eyes to view them.

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Machine:   Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: TUF Gaming FX705GM_FX705GM v: 1.0 serial: <root required> 
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: FX705GM v: 1.0 serial: <root required> UEFI: American Megatrends v: FX705GM.301 
           date: 09/21/2018 

But, the folks here on this forum helped me fix that.

But, I do NOT use any of the Side Panel extensions in GIMP,
I use it for cropping and scaling, and changing image formats.
That I can do with only the center GIMP app.

17" HiDef does not say anything specific. You have to measure the width of your monitor in inches and then see what inxi -G outputs. Then you divide the indicated number of pixels by the measured width and have the resolution in dpi per inch. Öhhm - ppi (pixel per inch) of course...

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ms@ms:~$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Device-1: VMware SVGA II Adapter driver: vmwgfx v: 2.15.0.0 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: vmware unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa 
           resolution: 3000x1790~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: SVGA3D; build v: 2.1 Mesa 19.0.8 

As the screen has 3000 pixels and a measured width of 11.5 inch > 3000 : 11.5 = 260.8696 - if the Mint Calculator is correct.

[Minux1]

It took all of 1 minute to set the "root password".
The world didn't end.

[rene]

As to Drawing; yah, who did in fact ask for that thing? I see here that there's version issues as well as to specifics, but generally... it would seem too basic for "graphics people" and for me as decidedly not any such person the one or two times a year that I fact need to something graphical, GIMP's effect menu generally makes what I need to do possible. Are there really enough 12-year old girls drawing pictures of pony's on their Linux Mint desktop systems to warrant replacing GIMP? Because that seems to be about the audience for Drawing as far I can myself judge...

[absque fenestris]

As to Drawing; yah, who did in fact ask for that thing? I see here that there's version issues as well as to specifics, but generally... it would seem too basic for "graphics people" and for me as decidedly not any such person the one or two times a year that I fact need to something graphical, GIMP's effect menu generally makes what I need to do possible. Are there really enough 12-year old girls drawing pictures of pony's on their Linux Mint desktop systems to warrant replacing GIMP? Because that seems to be about the audience for Drawing as far I can myself judge...

That way it would fit in well with Kylin or deepin. Somehow reduced...

[rene]

It's probably "ponies", by the way....

[Pjotr]

It might be a good idea to ship Gimp again by default, but this time by default in Single Window Mode.

[absque fenestris]

The Lorem ipsum applet is also one of those things. I was so happy that I can finally learn the Lorem ipsum by heart...

[Portreve]

There is the problem with high-resolution monitors: GIMP 2.8 can't do this, the original icons are only visible with a magnifying glass. That means, you tinker with the delivered version or you get the AppImage of version 2.10 where the problem is solved...

Yeah, I have the Flatpak, it's also 2.10. It's the first version of Gimp that feels usable to me, rather than obscure and intimidating.

I couldn't agree with you more about 2.10 feeling like it's finally come of age. Mind you, they still have a ways to go to make it anything like a more professional product, but if they don't care and the userbase doesn't care, then I guess that's really never going to happen except by proxy through other people tweaking the UI and distributing the modified files so the rest of us non-programmer-types can share the results.

Now, as far as functionality, I think it's great, and I'm really glad GIMP exists. Adobe needs competition, and it darned sure isn't coming from any other corner of the universe.

[Halbarad]

I just tried 19.3 Cinnamon alongside Mate (in dual boot). Mate seemed to me more responsive and just a bit less customizable than Cinnamon, so I have gone for it. I just don't like the new Mate icon for the Network Manager but I can live with it...

[absque fenestris]

I just tried 19.3 Cinnamon alongside Mate (in dual boot). Mate seemed to me more responsive and just a bit less customizable than Cinnamon, so I have gone for it. I just don't like the new Mate icon for the Network Manager but I can live with it...

For all the sympathy I have for MATE, the one closest to my heart as an old GNOME 2 user: They just missed development! There are in God's name crazy 14" monitors on the market that have a resolution of 260 ppi.
I'll repeat myself and I'll keep repeating myself until one of those crappy things like a user interface just works.

[absque fenestris]

To spice up the soup:
By far the easiest and fastest operating system to install was

Debian KDE with Plasma 5.

Nicely done intro, the user interface was adjusted by just a few clicks and my monitor à la Apple was halfway color corrected. Also economical with the memory.

The second best:

deepin

- my device may be shipped with it in the future anyway...


About installation of GNU/Linux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dlGDNoliH0 or this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfQJZ76WR0U - my preference in installation times...

[handsomegenius]

I'm not sure if I'm just imagining it.. but Cinammon seems a bit faster than on 19.2!

Pretty cool.. often you expect newer software to want more resources.

Unfortunately the media player won't play my .mkv files now. I am wondering if it's something to do with codecs, or with a change to the player.

[Pjotr]

Unfortunately the media player won't play my .mkv files now. I am wondering if it's something to do with codecs, or with a change to the player.

Just install VLC and be done with it.

[absque fenestris]

Mint Cinnamon and its idiosyncrasies: I tried the Desktop theme CBlack combined with the Mint-X-Dark Icons today evening, and I'm almost shocked. In a positive sense. The whole appearance makes Windows 10 difficult to compete with Mint - and that in the Virtualbox. The font representation in Mint is less thinned, very pleasant to read. Especially Firefox had a blur until yesterday, which is now completely gone.
WOW ... !

https://framapic.org/JPkQpDngV5ZC/xEqD5SGhJyuf.png

[handsomegenius]

Unfortunately the media player won't play my .mkv files now. I am wondering if it's something to do with codecs, or with a change to the player.

Just install VLC and be done with it.

Already done my dude

I still thought I should mention the niggle with the media player though.

[AZgl1500]

Mint Cinnamon and its idiosyncrasies: I tried the Desktop theme CBlack combined with the Mint-X-Dark Icons today evening, and I'm almost shocked. In a positive sense. The whole appearance makes Windows 10 difficult to compete with Mint - and that in the Virtualbox. The font representation in Mint is less thinned, very pleasant to read. Especially Firefox had a blur until yesterday, which is now completely gone.
WOW ... !

https://framapic.org/JPkQpDngV5ZC/xEqD5SGhJyuf.png

this laptop I am using is a super duper cat's meow piece of hardware, Win10 of course.
the OEM SSD is setup as RAID, so Linux would not install on it.

found a 2nd drive tray inside of it, and plopped in a new SSD there, and wallah! 19.3 Cinnamon.

I am so much more comfortable with 19.3 Cinnamon than Win10....
I set the laptop up to just boot direct into 19.3 w/o asking me for any instructions.

and yes, the screen display is beautiful, and consistent all the time.

[absque fenestris]

this laptop I am using is a super duper cat's meow piece of hardware, Win10 of course.
the OEM SSD is setup as RAID, so Linux would not install on it.

found a 2nd drive tray inside of it, and plopped in a new SSD there, and wallah! 19.3 Cinnamon.

I am so much more comfortable with 19.3 Cinnamon than Win10....
I set the laptop up to just boot direct into 19.3 w/o asking me for any instructions.

and yes, the screen display is beautiful, and consistent all the time.

Hi AZgl1500

could you share your settings? My settings are as follows below:

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ms@ms:~$ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: ms Kernel: 5.0.0-37-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 7.4.0 
           Desktop: Cinnamon 4.4.5 Distro: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia base: Ubuntu 18.04 bionic 
Machine:   Type: Virtualbox System: innotek product: VirtualBox v: 1.2 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Oracle model: VirtualBox v: 1.2 serial: <filter> BIOS: innotek v: VirtualBox 
           date: 12/01/2006 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 50.0 Wh condition: 50.0/50.0 Wh (100%) model: innotek 1 
           status: Full 
CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-8550U bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Kaby Lake 
           rev: A L2 cache: 8192 KiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 bogomips: 15936 
           Speed: 1992 MHz min/max: N/A Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1992 2: 1992 3: 1992 4: 1992 
Graphics:  Device-1: VMware SVGA II Adapter driver: vmwgfx v: 2.15.0.0 bus ID: 00:02.0 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: vmware unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa 
           resolution: 3000x1790~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: SVGA3D; build v: 2.1 Mesa 19.0.8 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 82801AA AC97 Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_intel8x0 v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:05.0 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.0.0-37-generic 
Network:   Device-1: Intel 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet driver: e1000 v: 7.3.21-k8-NAPI port: d020 
           bus ID: 00:03.0 
           IF: enp0s3 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Intel 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI type: network bridge driver: piix4_smbus 
           v: N/A port: d200 bus ID: 00:07.0 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 42.98 GiB used: 18.23 GiB (42.4%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: VirtualBox model: VBOX HARDDISK size: 42.98 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 42.05 GiB used: 18.23 GiB (43.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 
Sensors:   Message: No sensors data was found. Is sensors configured? 
Info:      Processes: 202 Uptime: 7h 45m Memory: 4.83 GiB used: 1.57 GiB (32.4%) Init: systemd 
           runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 7.4.0 Shell: bash v: 4.4.20 inxi: 3.0.32 

[absque fenestris]

this one is somewhat nebulous - what do the settings mean?

[absque fenestris]

and the Lorem Ipsum is also there. Unfortunately not the whole epic - could this be supplemented? Then I finally learn it by heart.