Should I Upgrade P4 Computer To Mint 17 Mate???

Ow That Hurts · Post by **Ow That Hurts** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:10 am

Hi everyone:

Wondering if I should upgrade my current installation of Mint 13 Mate to Mint 17 Mate.

My computer is kind of old...

P4, 2.6Ghz with Hyper Threading, 1 gig ram, 120 gig HD

Normally I would leave well enough alone. However, my partition for mint is almost running out of room (I have XP and Bodhi Linux on the drive as well).

So I thought, as long as I might have to repartition / install, I might as well see if it would be better to install Mint 17 instead.

Thanks in advance.

ClutchDisc · Post by **ClutchDisc** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:41 am

Download Mint 17 Mate and either run it off of a DVD or USB drive (USB drive will be faster) and give it a test drive off of the "live" system. Make sure everything works ok, and if it does, install Mint 17. Mint 17 is much better than 13 in my opinion.

Ow That Hurts · Post by **Ow That Hurts** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:48 am

Thanks for the tip.

Once I download it to a USB drive, do I have to do anything special to run it in live mode? (Do I need to burn the iso using a special program to the thumb drive).

Thanks in advance.

ClutchDisc · Post by **ClutchDisc** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:51 am

Install "Unetbootin" on your Mint 13 and run that.. it's pretty easy to use and will make the USB bootable. WARNING make sure you don't have anything on the USB drive as this will wipe the USB drive clean.

austin.texas · Post by **austin.texas** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 11:14 am

ClutchDisc wrote:Install "Unetbootin" on your Mint 13 and run that.. it's pretty easy to use and will make the USB bootable. WARNING make sure you don't have anything on the USB drive as this will wipe the USB drive clean.

I like the dd method explained by Clem, the lead developer of Mint
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/744

It would be helpful to know if your CPU is PAE or non-PAE
Enter the command:

Code: Select all

cat /proc/cpuinfo

See if "pae" is listed in the Flags section.

EXAMPLE:
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca

BlackVeils · Post by **BlackVeils** » Fri Sep 26, 2014 12:09 pm

if you use unetbootin from mint 13 to create mint 17 usb, you might have to get unetbootin from the website for an uptdated version, or it will fail to boot properly.
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

uncndl1 · Post by **uncndl1** » Sat Sep 27, 2014 10:02 am

Mint 13 has usb creator / image writer. You can dowliad 17 (XFCE) and burn to usb with that

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hugo Notte · Post by **Hugo Notte** » Sun Sep 28, 2014 5:43 am

I found on slower systems, Mint 17 to take up quite a bit of CPU time in idle. That is with Cinnamon, Mate, KDE & XFCE desktop. Give it a try and if in the live session the idle CPU load is higher than 10% try Netrunner. It's another Ubuntu based distro, which runs on my AMD E-450 netbook at around 8-10% CPU load, while all Mint 17 editions I have tried idle at 30-40%.

austin.texas · Post by **austin.texas** » Sun Sep 28, 2014 8:48 am

Hugo Notte wrote:I found on slower systems, Mint 17 to take up quite a bit of CPU time in idle. That is with Cinnamon, Mate, KDE & XFCE desktop. Give it a try and if in the live session the idle CPU load is higher than 10% try Netrunner. It's another Ubuntu based distro, which runs on my AMD E-450 netbook at around 8-10% CPU load, while all Mint 17 editions I have tried idle at 30-40%.

YMMV.
Netrunner is nice, but on my old Dell laptop, Netrunner 2014 used a lot more memory than Mint 17 xfce.

MartyMint · Post by **MartyMint** » Sun Sep 28, 2014 10:09 am

I would get a larger, newer hard drive.

120GB is "tiny" by today's standards.

wwfwng · Post by **wwfwng** » Sun Sep 28, 2014 12:38 pm

My advice is not to do it. I have an old laptop. Mint 13 runs fine and Mint 15 ran slow.

austin.texas · Post by **austin.texas** » Sun Sep 28, 2014 1:00 pm

wwfwng wrote:My advice is not to do it. I have an old laptop. Mint 13 runs fine and Mint 15 ran slow.

Agree.
That jogged my memory. My old Dell worked better with Mint 13 than with Mint 17.

Spearmint2 · Post by **Spearmint2** » Sun Sep 28, 2014 1:19 pm

Mint 16 ran leaner than Mint 17, for me. Too bad it wasn't the LTS release.

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