Many a user here on the forum can be found having trouble with installing programs on Linux Mint, because recommended packages are not automatically installed. Ubuntu on the other hand automatically installs recommended packages. Using a guide or tutorial for Ubuntu will thus not give you the desired outcome. Sometimes it may be just that some add-ons for the program aren't installed, limiting functionality but leaving the program otherwise working. However, I've helped quite a lot of people both here and on IRC that were left with completely non-functioning programs because recommended packages weren't installed.
If you don't mind using a few extra megabytes when installing a program (both in download and in hard disk usage) you can change the default behavior back to how Ubuntu handles this--automatically installing recommended packages when installing a program, giving you the best experience with the program with all its add-ons installed.
To change it back you just need to remove the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00recommends and /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99synaptic, or comment out the two configuration lines found in those files. To delete the files run this command from a terminal:
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sudo rm -v /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00recommends /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99synaptic
Or you can follow Laurent85's post
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 0#p1135161 to change the setting using Synaptic.
Alternatively, when installing a program you can instruct to install the recommended packages just for this install. To install a program that way run this command on the terminal, replacing "program" with the (lowercase) name of the program you want to install:
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sudo apt-get install --install-recommends program
Again, this is the default on Ubuntu and to my mind when you have a hard disk of hundreds of gigabytes and a fast Internet connection it really doesn't make sense to
not install the recommended packages that give your program more functionality. One day you'll find yourself here back on the forum with a non-function just installed program, with me telling you to install the recommended packages to fix it