Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

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milamber

Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by milamber »

Hi,

I was happy with mint since Helena. There were some unpleasant things like the very slow, memory eating, sometimes crashing Nemo and asking for my SimCard ID everytime system returns from suspend - nothing severe.

But after Update with 17.2 things get really ugly (Problems on 3 machines: desktop PC at home, desktop PC at work and Laptop):
Screen Freezes occasionally for 1-2 minutes for unknown reasons
Nemo often hangs endless (at least for more than 5 mins)
return from Screensaver take 1 minute or more
System freezes requiring a hard reset.

All systems appear not to be reliable any more.
I did not have these problems with 17 or 17.1 - hardware unchanged.

Sorry, I have no good hint for You, which piece of software is the problem (except Nemo seems to have problems with failing smb-connections.)

I am not happy saying good bye to mint, but it looks like I have to. :cry: :cry: :cry:

Thanks for Your efforts anyway
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Cosmo.
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Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by Cosmo. »

milamber wrote:I was happy with mint since Helena. There were some unpleasant things ... - nothing severe.

...

I did not have these problems with 17 or 17.1 - hardware unchanged.

...

I am not happy saying good bye to mint, but it looks like I have to.
If I take what I quoted from your post I do not understand why. LM 17 and LM 17.1 are still there and get support until the same date as 17.2, so what?

I agree, that there are some issues with 17.2 Cinnamon (I cannot judge about other desktop environments), which are discussed in several threads and wait urgently for a correction update. Until that date 17.1 will continue to run here happily on my production system.
milamber

Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by milamber »

Cosmo. wrote: LM 17 and LM 17.1 are still there and get support until the same date as 17.2, so what?
Thanks for answering. Yes, I think 17.1 is the best solution.

Does anybody know a safe way to downgrade from 17.2 to 17.1 or does I require reinstallation?
Cosmo.
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Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by Cosmo. »

Downgrading is always problematic (with nearly any software). Best situation would be, if you would have made a backup before upgrading.

Yes, a new installation is necessary.

So do a backup of your home now. You might try to keep your home - if it is on a separate partition - during installation (unselect to format it). Otherwise you can try to copy the backed up home after installation to the installation. I would guess :!: , that it will work. After copying log out at once and back in.
Kenn

Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by Kenn »

Greetings All,

I've been using Mint since version 13. I was running 17 since it was released then updated to 17.1 shortly after it came out in hopes of clearing up a few minor annoyances such as fonts on desktop icons going to black when they should be white. Then I updated to 17.2 via a clean wipe/install and began experiencing a host of problems so bizarre I felt like a total noob even trying to explain it. Some specifics:

- Performance lags
- Erratic USB access
- NIC would enable/disable on it's own repeatedly
- NIC status would report up when it was really down and visa-versa
- Screen artifacts
- Erratic web browsing
- Recovering from 'suspend' meant doing a reboot.


Things I did like:

- Improved sound control panel
- Learned about Window Selector and Window List applets


Brief specs of my modest hardware:

- ASUS mainboard with AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
- 4 GB DDR2
- ATI Radeon HD 6450 1GB
- SSD system drive
- SATA data drive


There seems to be more desktop visual FX enabled by default on 17.2, something which I'm not a fan of. On a hunch, I disabled windows compositing and all compiz options then later completely removed compiz altogether. That cleared up the display issues but the others remained and I couldn't consistently replicate them. I was beginning to wonder if it was hardware or maybe even malware. I hit the search engines and forums to no avail, everyone seems to be loving it.

Several days ago I wiped & reinstalled Version 17.0 and so far everything has been fine and snappy performance has been restored. Reinstalls are a easy because I use a separate drive just for data. They do advise NOT upgrading unless there's a specific problem you hope to clear up and now I completely get that. The latest does not always equal the greatest when it's a machine you depend on. In the future, I'll try new versions on a spare box.

I could try to troubleshoot 17.2 but I'm good with 17 for now and I still feel Mint is my OS of choice. I've converted a few people from XP to Mint and all appreciate the efforts of the Mint makers. We're very happy to have a very usable alternative to Windows or Ubuntu. I can only try to imagine the issues trying to make so many packages function correctly on so many varieties of hardware, my hat is off to you.

Milamber, thanks for posting this, I really do appreciate knowing my issues were not unique. I'd suggest maybe not giving up on these guys yet.


Take Care,


--Kenn
milamber

Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by milamber »

Hi all,

first I want to say, that despite of I my complaints I think linux mint in general is great work.
Also there are many nice things in 17.2, i.e. the theme selection.
But overall quality of 17.2 is not as expected. I my opinion Linux Mint 17.2 should be called beta version, release candidate or something like that.

@Cosmo.,
Cosmo. wrote:Downgrading is always problematic (with nearly any software). Best situation would be, if you would have made a backup before upgrading.

Yes, a new installation is necessary.
Thanks for giving advice. I suspected that reinstallation is needed.
I use separate home partitions and moving them to anotther linux version that worked for me in the past (only for some applicatione I needed to erase config data)
Unfortunately I have no system backup - shame on me.

@Kenn
Thanks for feedback. So I am not alone :D
I first use new versions in a virtual machines, but I did not mention problems there.

Now I checked distrowatch for what is avail and currently thinking about:
1.
reinstall 17.0 as You did
2.
reinstall 17.1 - that version was not too bad
3.
switching to SolydX - I did that before, at the times where LMDE was not supported (waiting for Update Pack x). I liked SolydX, only it is not based on Ubuntu, which is required for work.
4.
maybe looking at elementary os.

1. or 3. are my favourites at the moment.
I think I look at the current state of SolydX first...
Cosmo.
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Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by Cosmo. »

milamber wrote:Unfortunately I have no system backup
A system backup is mostly not needed at all, a backup of home is fine.
dave61430
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Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by dave61430 »

I have a Dell Optiplex 780 used that I purchased from Micro Center after my previous machine died. I had installed 17.2 on that, but didn't run it much prior to it's demise. On current machine dual boot with Windows 7 Professional, I've seen a one time freeze on wakeup, but a number of times Google Chrome has frozen, necessitating a re-boot. Just got a Chrome update release,so will see. None of the problems others are having. My hardware is pretty standard, whatever Dell uses.
Dave B
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Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by Dave B »

Hi milamber,

Since it sounds like you will be doing a fresh install of 17.1, why not try a fresh install of 17.2 first, to check if problems encountered have been caused by an upgrade issue or driver install glitch?

Or test Mint 17.2 live on USB for an hour and see if you experience the same issues?

Either way, hope the fresh install goes well and fixes all your problems.
David
milamber

Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by milamber »

David Black wrote: Since it sounds like you will be doing a fresh install of 17.1, why not try a fresh install of 17.2 first, to check if problems encountered have been caused by an upgrade issue or driver install glitch?
Hi David,
first I thought doing a fresh 17.2 install is useless.
I had the idea of:

Code: Select all

(17.1 + upgrade) == (17.2 install + software)
But somehow I got curious and tried it. I did a fresh install of 17.2 on my laptop, copied only used parts of my old home dir into it. To my surprise it seems to work better (at least for the first day.) I will watch it the next days and look if it remains in good condition.
Maybe I have to rename the topic then to "Linux Mint 17.2 Upgrade is dangerous"

Greetings
milamber
Dave B
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Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by Dave B »

Hey that's good to hear! Hopefully your fresh installation will keep working well.

Not sure a subject line change is necessary, sometimes things go a bit pear shaped. :)
Ikke

Re: Linux Mint 17.2 not stable

Post by Ikke »

I will also do a reinstall of an earlier version.

Both nemo and nautilus were very slow, displaying almost empty folders (=fresh install) after several minutes. This morning, I got an error I could not fix (no solution found here, on DDG and Google), I could not log in an got this error:

mdm[1791]: GLib-CRITICAL: g_key_file: assertion key_file != NULL fail

I like Mint more than Ubuntu and Kubuntu, but this is a nasty experience. I'm glad there not much to back up :mrgreen:
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