[SOLVED] Have you ever had your Mint crash? Or: Is Debian more stable?

[Luke Johnson]

Windows user here. I was trying out Ulyssa from USB. I liked it a lot and planned for it to be my first Linux install, but one time it sort of crashed. Everything froze up and then for a while the screen was black and some statements, which probably were error statements, flowed over it, without slowing down.

Might be because it wasn't installed or something. I think Firefox may have caused it. Still, it's a bit worrying. On the other hand, I read that pure Debian is rock solid and stuff. Doesn't crash once in years of up time and updates mess nothing up.

Should I perhaps bite the bullet and jump straight to the "intermediate" level, ie. to Debian?
I used Win7 for years and I can remember applications getting stuck, but never the system crashing. I don't want to downgrade from that.

[absque fenestris]

Windows 7 has to be amazingly good. Just funny that the company didn't stick with it ...
Your description of the pure Debian also slips a bit into the fabulous and Mint is not that bad either - at least I haven't seen any crashes in my installations.
If you are a little suspicious of the Ubuntu-based Mint, try the directly Debian-based Mint LMDE - then you would have stable Debian with the typical Mint Cinnamon appearance.

However: There is no 100% guarantee against crashes anywhere - not even with Windows 7.

[SMG]

I liked it a lot and planned for it to be my first Linux install, but one time it sort of crashed. Everything froze up and then for a while the screen was black and some statements, which probably were error statements, flowed over it, without slowing down.

Welcome to the forum, Luke. I've never had my Mint crash.

Boot again to that live session of Mint, open a terminal, run inxi -Fxxxrz
Click </> from the mini toolbar above the textbox where you type your reply and then place your cursor between the code markers and paste the results of the command between the code markers [code]Results[/code]. This will let us know how Mint sees your hardware. It's possible you are using a version of Mint that is not the best fit for your computer's hardware.

I used Win7 for years and I can remember applications getting stuck, but never the system crashing. I don't want to downgrade from that.

You probably used Win7 on a computer that was optimized to run Win7. If you take a Win7 computer and then try to run Win10 on it, you will probably have a different experience.

[Luke Johnson]

Thanks for the welcome. Here is the inxi report. I did feel a bit concerned about sharing this stuff, so I added the -z command. I hope you don't mind and that you can still use the report.

I noticed some problems appear when I try to mount my external hdd. But when I restart, it mounts fine.

While Mint boots from the USB, a notification flashes on the black screen, saying something failed to unpack because of a decoding problem.

Code: Select all

Machine:
Type: Desktop System: Gigabyte product: N/A v: N/A serial: <filter>
Mobo: Gigabyte model: B150M-D2V-CF v: x.x serial: <filter>
UEFI: American Megatrends v: F1 date: 11/02/2015
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 1.17 TiB used: 603.71 GiB (50.6%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB
speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: 2B6Q scheme: MBR
ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Seagate model: M3 Portable
size: 931.51 GiB serial: <filter> rev: 0708 scheme: MBR
ID-3: /dev/sdc type: USB vendor: Kingston model: DataTraveler 3.0
size: 28.82 GiB serial: <filter> scheme: MBR 

[Pjotr]

Debian is not more stable than regular Linux Mint. Only less user-friendly.

Furthermore, I can't remember the last time Mint crashed on one of my machines. Must have been years ago (if ever). It runs as stable as a ship's diesel engine on my rigs.

[SMG]

Thanks for the welcome. Here is the inxi report. I did feel a bit concerned about sharing this stuff, so I added the -z command. I hope you don't mind and that you can still use the report.

I gave you directions which had z on them at the end (inxi -Fxxxrz), so yes, the information is useful.

While Mint boots from the USB, a notification flashes on the black screen, saying something failed to unpack because of a decoding problem.

That is probably this known bug [SOLVED] initramfs unpacking failed: Decoding failed.

The specs on your system should have no problem running LM20.1. I will mention there are updates to Cinnamon that came out not long after LM20.1 was released. Some people found when they ran the updates that problems they were previously having cleared. I do not recall those updates requiring a reboot (which means you could test them in the live session), but I could be wrong.

ISOs are frozen in time at the time they were originally created, so we recommend you run updates after you install. However, some updates require a reboot which can not be done on a live session, so you can not test all the updates without installing Mint.

The one item I will point out is your computer is showing it is running UEFI, but the hard drive attached is MBR. Usually, one runs their drives GPT when the computer is UEFI. However, it will depend on the settings available in your BIOS/UEFI and which setting you are using.

Machine:
Type: Desktop System: Gigabyte product: N/A v: N/A serial: <filter>
Mobo: Gigabyte model: B150M-D2V-CF v: x.x serial: <filter>
UEFI: American Megatrends v: F1 date: 11/02/2015
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 1.17 TiB used: 603.71 GiB (50.6%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB
speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: 2B6Q scheme: MBR
ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Seagate model: M3 Portable
size: 931.51 GiB serial: <filter> rev: 0708 scheme: MBR
ID-3: /dev/sdc type: USB vendor: Kingston model: DataTraveler 3.0
size: 28.82 GiB serial: <filter> scheme: MBR

[Luke Johnson]

Thanks, everybody.
@SMG: Sorry I doubted your directions. I only found the -z formulation of the filter, so I wanted to bu sure and added it.

[ThaCrip]

Like already mentioned which is the generally accepted answer...

-Mint regular (Mint v19.x to Mint v20.x etc) (Ubuntu based) = most people should use this.
-Mint LMDE (Debian based) = while it's not a bad choice, it's less common user friendly. basically, like the devs have said, this is basically a fallback option in case the Mint team has to leave Ubuntu for whatever reason.

bottom line... stick to the Ubuntu version unless you want to gamble.

one last thing... Debian seems to play it a bit safer to in terms of software/kernels as it runs a bit older stuff than Ubuntu based Mint does. for example LMDE4 I think is using a 4.19 kernel where as Mint v20.x is using 5.4 (but 5.8 can be used). for measure, Mint v19.0-19.2 uses v4.15 kernel. but can be updated to 5.4 the last I knew.

p.s. but as far as the general topic of Mint crashing... technically no (assuming we are referring only to issues that appear to be Linux fault). but since I am not totally aware of the official process to exit out of a game crashing in Wine, sometimes I had to use reset button to reset my PC (I imagine there is more of a proper way using the keyboard but I don't know the process). but I seem to have found at least one way out of that by leaving terminal open with 'wineserver -k' typed in as this way I can generally alt+tab over to that and just press enter key and it kills all Wine stuff and then I am back at desktop and continue to use the computer as expected. with that said... one time I did have Mint freeze but I know it was not Mint's fault since I know it was due to me undervolting my CPU a bit too far as -0.130v is the most I can lower CPU voltage and have a stable system on Mint as if I try -0.140v, while it boots and might work for a little while, eventually (within roughly a couple of days) it seems to hardlock with the image on the screen appearing to be totally frozen and I have to power off and back on. also, come to think of it... I did have it sort of act up once but it was also not Mint's fault in that I had a cheap $8 controller card (ASM1061 chip (I think it shows up as ASM1060 on Linux though if I recall correctly)) that while it worked for roughly some odd months the system started to semi-freeze etc which I knew was likely the controller card since one I used to have years ago (different chipset) acted the same way on this same motherboard when it started to go bad etc (like if computer is powered off and you install it, it will probably appear to be okay for a while but inevitably it will act up again probably not all that long after using it, maybe days or something to that effect (but thankfully, both of those controller cards that did act up like that, I never had any data corruption). but I had a backup (Marvell 9215 chip which is probably a bit better) and so far that's totally fine on my system as I been using it roughly for months now (maybe a year or so) and I have had system uptime of roughly 30-60 days and system is still stable. plus, as a bonus with that Marvell 9215 card you can connect optical drives to it if you want unlike the ASM1061 which don't like optical drives but works fine with HDD's etc as that appears to be normal given that particular chip in general. plus, I got four additional SATA ports with that Marvell 9215 chip where as the cheap $8 ASM1061 was only two SATA ports. I got that Marvell 9215 controller card used for about half price (I think it was $12.50) and normally it was $25 or so new. with all of that said... I still got the $8 ASM1061 controller card as in the future when I build another computer I might try using it in there (assuming it will still work on motherboards into the future) just to see if fairs any better with a different motherboard. I got a older desktop but it does not have the small PCI-E port one needs to install it, so I can't test it on there as my main PC is the only motherboard I have that the ASM1061 etc will plug into.

[missmoondog]

can't say as i've ever had mint crash but the newest firefox, version 89, has been locking up tighter than a drum since being updated to that version on some video's i've been watching.

[Aztaroth]

Hello,
LMDE4 crashed twice :
- with VLC video output not properly set (definitively solved),
- not a real crash but a bad wake-up after a battery failure. Reinstalling it while keeping my home partition solved the problems. Working now to upgrade the component between the chair and the keyboard to check the battery level when a video in full screen is running.