Seeking some advice

[PiMinto]

Good day everyone,

About 2 months ago my XP machine crapped out and got stuck in a boot loop. This was the final nudge I needed, after considerable time of considering investigating linux (i.e. procrastinating). I checked out ubuntu, but the livecd wouldn't boot. I checked out Fedora 15, and quite liked it. Checked out knoppix, wasn't really impressed. However I had re-installed only XP on the machine while investigating linux options and was planning further investigation (I was not even aware of the Mint distro until about a week ago) when about 2 weeks ago my XP machine crapped out again, another format and install required as before, and I decided to commit to linux and went ahead with Fedora 16 (as that had come out in the interim).

I attempted to install as dual-boot, but unfortunately that hasn't worked out - Fedora works fine but XP refuses to load from grub2. At this point my options seem to be between a re-install of both XP and Fedora, or put XP on a virtual install within Fedora - and I'm leaning towards that.

That leaves me a 60gb partition free... I'd like to freshen it up, I think something minty would do nicely.

My question at this point is - would you (honestly) recommend Mint 12 over 11?

Thanks for your time (and expect to see me in the installation & boot forum soon )

[proxima_centauri]

Best way to figure out is what you like. Try both the Linux Mint 11 and Linux Mint 12 LiveCD out; or you can mimic an installation with Virtualbox.

[Katyanewb]

What proxima said. Very often the word "better" is subjective to an end user--less so to productivity users and developers.

I had some free logical partitions, so I dual installed Mint 12 after running Mint 11 for a while. Since then I've made a permanent switch to Mint 12. The Gnome 3 interface takes a bit of getting used to if you're comfortable with Gnome 2, but once you make the transition it's actually better (or I like it better).

On the technical side, Mint 11 had that stupid applet error where you'd get the system calling a display applet (such as the clock) before it was loaded. The problem wasn't solved before Mint 12 came out, and the only solution was to reboot. Mint 12 doesn't appear to have the same problem but does have an issue with dev/mapper/cryptswap1 being called before loading. That issue applies only if you encrypt your home folder and isn't fatal to my boot--it appears that the system just waits until the module is loaded. So you do get bugs with both Mint 11 and Mint 12. Your choice which set of bugs bothers you less.

[gn2]

I would suggest trying Mint 9, I'm a self confessed LTS fan.

[Michaeln]

As a a complete nubie and MS User for many years I took the plunge at Mint 11. I had a few issues and then tried 12. Went back to 11 almost straight away, and now it is excellent. I am not dissing 12, it is just that I am a complete novice and am trying to begin to understand the system.

Bottom line for me is try both and then decide. For me, for the moment, 11 is fine and I have a stable setup running just fine now.

regards,


Michael