Unofficial LMDE KDE Live DVD: UP4 / 201208

[arjay]

@arjay

Your problem with the usb keyboard sounds familiar to me , i also have a asus m/b (sabertooth 990fx).
Also sometimes it will not fire up ( it responds on nothing at all) , i then reset the pc and than boots normal up.
It is not only related to LMDE KDE , it is happen also with another mint distro (not sure witch it was)

Maybe its a asus problem ?

My keyboard and mouse are from razer , .....usb....of curse

Yeah, not sure what to make of it. I was expecting that there might be problems with the OS itself, or with some applications within the OS but not something that fundamentally affected things at the BIOS level. Unfortunately, I installed UP5 on my production machine in a second partition to Mepis 11, thinking that I could always remove it if I wanted, or if it had problems. But, in effect, it affects my Mepis install as well, since I can only just get into BIOS setup if I have very nimble fingers. In the next few days when i can get a good few hours, I'll try what I posted above - reinstalling Grub2 from UP5 and if necessary Grub from the Mepis Live DVD (Mepis 11 still uses Grub Legacy, which maybe why I never had this problem before - though i am sure i also tried Mint 13 here which I am sure did use Grub2). I'll post my results - maybe Friday.

Don't forget that UP5 is running faultlessly on one of my test PCs so i am confident I'll get it sorted with this M/B or whatever the problem is.

[fchurca]

Want!
I had already convinced half my office to use Linux Mint back when Isadora came out, and we're still running it. With the Gnome3 messup we've been considering moving to KDE, and I set up a box at home with LMDE+KDE before this build came. This build will come in handy I'll push this over at my office when UP5 comes out!

Maybe I can get another convert from OpenSUSE, but he's kind of a YaST fan, and yast4debian is (AFAIK) not ready, to say the least...

[Schoelje]

Thank you fchurca and welcome to the Mint forum (especially because your first post is in this thread).

I'm very curious how the unofficial LMDE KDE will hold in a professional environment.
Could you tell us what it is used for or in other words: what is it you're looking for in a OS?
What's the setup (number of systems; servers, desktops, network, etc.)?

With your feedback I can improve LMDE KDE.

[Evil-K]

Personally, what I'd want it for would be to have it replace PCLinuxOS as my general "go to" distro. For me, that was the best of the rolling releases for it was quite stable, and I liked the fact that I'd never have to reinstall the OS every couple of years.

I gave LMDE KDE a test run yesterday with a LiveUSB and tested out a few things that I found problematic in previous snapshots of LMDE. For example, after I'd play Armagetron, the screen resolution would go screwy on LMDE Cinnamon/Mate. It didn't do that on your edition, so props to you for that! Other things I noticed:

1. A KDE distro that idles at 200 MB?! I love it .
2. After installing the additional codecs ("ugly" and "really bad") and putting in the needed workaround for VLC, music and videos played without a hitch. Flash had no problems either. Speaking of multimedia, I always wondered why Mint would ship with three video media players. I'm glad that you just picked VLC and left it at that.
3. Snappy, snappy, snappy. And in a KDE release at that.

Right now, I'm running Mint 13 KDE edition and have it set up how I want it, which is the only reason why I haven't pulled the trigger and installed LMDE KDE. Also, the fact that I have a 250 GB hard drive and a ton of music has prevented me from setting up a testing partition just for it. I think I might pull the trigger once the UP5 snapshot is released, though, because I'm really impressed.

Some issues, neither of which are deal-breakers:
(my computer is a Dell Latitude D620 laptop with 3 GB of RAM, for the curious, and I test-drove the 32-bit edition)
1. I, too, had that issue where I'd go to change the wallpaper and it wouldn't change right away. For example, if I change the wallpaper and click "Apply", it wouldn't change until I closed or minimized the Desktop Settings. Furthermore, if I change the wallpaper and click "OK", it wouldn't change until I right-clicked the desktop. It's an annoying bug, but nothing I can't cope with.
2. It didn't recognize both cores on my processor (it's an Intel Core 2 dual core). Nothing that can't be dealt with afterwards by installing a new kernel, but it'd be nice to have all my computer's cores recognized by default.

I haven't run into any of the others described in this thread, like the themes being screwy and GTK applications not looking right. That MIGHT be an issue with the version of KDE it's running, though, and not the distro itself. KDE 4.7 was buggy in places, which was a problem with Mint 12 KDE until I upgraded to KDE 4.8.

Some suggestions:
1. Ugly and really bad codecs installed by default.
2. Kernel that recognizes both cores installed by default for the 32-bit edition.
3. Wine and PlayOnLinux installed by default.
4. GIMP 4.8 installed by default.
(those last two are more personal)
Aaaaaaaaaand that's all I can think of for now. In the event I decide to install, I'll probably have more suggestions. As it stands, this is an extremely solid re-spin! Amazing job! This NEEDS to be made an official Linux Mint release.

[zerozero]

[...]
Some suggestions:
1. Ugly and really bad codecs installed by default.
2. Kernel that recognizes both cores installed by default for the 32-bit edition.
3. Wine and PlayOnLinux installed by default.
4. GIMP 4.8 installed by default.
[...]

let me try answer 2. 3. and 4.
2. lmde uses a 486 kernel in the 32bit editions to guarantee comparability with older processors (non-PAE capable)

To guarantee compatibility with non-PAE processors, the 32-bit versions of Linux Mint Debian come with a 486 kernel by default. This kernel does not support SMP, and as a consequence is only able to detect one core and one CPU. If your CPU has multiple cores, or if you have more than one CPU, simply install the 686-PAE kernel and reboot your computer.

3. and 4. that software was not available in testing at the time, is now and will be made available in lmde (and lmde-kde ) with UP5.

[Evil-K]

I know, those were only suggestions that were really no big deal in the grand scheme of things, and easily taken care of after the installation, as if to say "Gosh, wouldn't it be nice if....".

[Schoelje]

@Evil-K
Thank you for your feedback.
Could you also please change your avatar. It's possible that I'm the only one, but looking at people getting hurt for me is quite offending.

[Evil-K]

Sorry about that. My original avatar was from one of my favorite movies, Audition.

Changed it over.

[Evil-K]

I decided to pull the trigger and install LMDE KDE. Just thought I'd share some issues I've run into, with resolutions as applicable:

1. Had trouble with Synaptic at first. It would freeze up after selecting a package to install for some bizarre reason, causing me to force it to close. I was able to get past this by starting Synaptic, closing out the "First time user" alert window, then closing Synaptic. After that, it seemed to run fine.

2. The mint-search-addon package wouldn't update via the Update Manager. I got past that by uninstalling it, then reinstalling it via Synaptic, which automatically gave me the latest version.

3. Cannot set up Google as my primary search engine on Firefox instead of DuckDuckGo. This seems to be primarily an issue with Firefox, but it's still an issue. So far, haven't been able to get past that.

[Adelante]

Delete built-in bookmarks. Go to Help>Troubleshooting on Firefox. Top right, hit reset. You should be okay. I have to set Google English from where I am, so I do it whenever I set up a browser. DuckDuckGo and Yahoo are Linux Mint defaults right now, but they expect to be adding Google, I read.

3. Cannot set up Google as my primary search engine on Firefox instead of DuckDuckGo. This seems to be primarily an issue with Firefox, but it's still an issue. So far, haven't been able to get past that.

[Evil-K]

Was able to find 'Google Linux' under Firefox's 'Search Tools' on like the fourth page.

[Schoelje]

For the upcoming UP5 I'm considering pre-installing some extra packages.
I know by doing so, I would stray from the Mint path but on the other hand we now have the opportunity to create something new.

If you have valid arguments not to add more packages (other then not being entirely Mint-ish), I'd like to hear them as well.

Now, let me here your votes on these:

1. Inkscape
2. Kid3
3. Soundkonverter
4. Audacity
5. Winff
6. Dia
7. Freemind
8. Wine and Playonlinux
9. Digikam and kipi-plugins
10. Marble
11. Rekonq

Just give each of them a 0-10 rating (where 0 is "why?" and 10 is "breathing gets a 9"

[slashw]

Inkscape---1
Kid3----1
Soundkonverter---8
Audacity----1
Winiff----1
Dia----1
Freemind---1
Wine and PlayOnlinux----10
Digikam and kipi-plugins----9
Marble----6
Reconq----1 (Did not now what it was ......... long live the internet). I presume that reconq and rekonq are the same ?

[Schoelje]

That was a type - edited.

[tdockery97]

Inkscape----1
Kid3----1
Soundkonverter----1
Audacity----2
Winff----1
Dia----1
Freemind----1
Wine and Playonlinux----10
Digikam and kipi-plugins----5
Marble----1
Rekonq----5

[zerozero]

Inkscape - 4
Kid3 - 2
Soundkonverter - 4
Audacity - 4
Winff - 1
Dia - 1
Freemind - 1
Wine and Playonlinux - 5
Digikam and kipi-plugins - 10
Marble -6
Rekonq - 8

pushing the edges a bit i would add that calligra already has a stable release

[Schoelje]

Calligra...very nice, but I'm afraid that most users prefer what they know: libreoffice.
Or am I wrong?

[zerozero]

yeahh probably calligra belongs to the "most outrageous ideas" category (but it's nice)

[Fandangio]

Inkscape----1
Kid3----1
Soundkonverter----1
Audacity----3
Winff----1
Dia----5
Freemind----1
Wine and Playonlinux----7
Digikam and kipi-plugins----10
Marble----3
Rekonq----3

Any chance of the following;
Blender?
Kdenlive?

I had a little rant about the omission of KIPI plugins in Mint 13 KDE (http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 9&t=109912). For such a small package with great functionality there was no reason to leave this out. New users trying Mint 13 KDE have a distro with handicapped programs (Digicam and Gwenview mainly) and they may not have the knowledge that this exists and therfore think KDE is poor. I appreciate the great work done by Clem and the team but Mint 13 KDE still feels like it's done out of obligation rather than by the usual Mint standards.

Additionally I think the call on Plymouth is the correct one. Again, for new users confirmation that the OS is loading is comforting.

I'm really looking forward to the next version of LMDE KDE. One question are you looking to use the full capacity of DVD?

[BostonPeng]

• Inkscape - 3
• Kid3 - 10
• Soundkonverter - 7
• Audacity - 7
• Winff - 3 (I'd actually suggest using KDE's Kompare, which would get a 8 from me)
• Dia - 2
• Freemind - 2
• Wine and Playonlinux - W8 P7
• Digikam and kipi-plugins - 2 (Quenview can handle image import easily, and Digikam can be installed if the user wants it)
• Marble - 4
• Rekonq - 3

WRITE IN VOTES:

• Amarok - 9
• KInfocenter - 9 (This may be included already, but if it isn't I strongly recommend it)

I'd also add Muon but I can't even see it installable for LMDE, which is too bad.