That's it... I'm going back to Gloria.

[ho0ver]

Hi folks,

after an endless string of problems with Linux Mint Helena / Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic on my thinkpad t41, I'm going back to Gloria. I realize that it's not particularly Mint's fault as I suffer the same problems on Karmic, but still I do not understand why a setup that was working more or less flawlessly (even wifi worked on the internal ipw2100 chip!) turned into something so b0rked like Ubuntu 9.10 karmic / Mint Helena.

My pet peeves:

- 3d acceleration has to be disabled to see OSD notifications, wich turns Stellarium into a slide show (Issue with the new radeon drivers, I believe)

- wireless won't work at all if some form of authentication is required (tried numerous "solutions" like downgrading ndiswrapper, compiling from source and so on).

How long will Gloria be supported?

All the best & sorry for the rant,

hoover

[viking777]

Your rant is an acceptable one my friend because you are right.

You are right also in saying that it is not the fault of the Mint team, not by a long way. As I type this, in the background I am downloading Debian Lenny because I am so sick of the 2.6.31 kernel and all its "improvements" that have just made my computing life more difficult. My own gripes are not exactly the same as yours (although wireless is) but if you think wireless is worse then you should try mobile broadband! Boy does it suck on this kernel, and yet on 2.6.26 it works almost perfectly.

You say you don't understand why this happens - well the reason is simple. Mint is based on Ubuntu and Ubuntu is based on Debian Testing, but with far less constraints than Debian themselves use (that information comes directly from Ubuntu's own website). Hence this is a testing distro, not a stable one, and attempts to make it stable by restricting the kind of updates that users apply (which seems to be the Mint teams solution) will never work because the basics of the distro are not stable to begin with. The same applies to Ubuntu obviously.

How I would love to see a Mint distro based on Debian stable for those recently weaned from Windows along with those who do not wish to be used as testers. Add to that another Mint distro based on Debian Sid for those who love the 'cutting edge' and Mint would be peerless - I would run both types.

Perhaps two different 'Mints' would be too much for the Mint team to manage, I could understand if that were the case, but I would still love to see it.

[GrayWizardLinux]

I love Mint and have not done Helena for possible issues which do not exits in the older versions. I TOO hate the Ubuntu connection. When they fry stuff it affects Mint. Do not know much about Debian as such other than it is the underlying structure of ubuntu and Mint;but I sure wish we could just end the Ubuntu connection. Personally, I sincerely believe that Ubuntu is a bunch of crap and the thing about my grandmother running it - No way in hell. I can't get it to work and without the codecs and knowing how to add all of them and tweak them - what would my mother let alone my grandmother do. Ubuntu is and never was all that is was hyped up to be. And reality shows it is going downhill rather fast. They break more than they fix.

[Stealing_Lillies]

lol... good stuff wizard, good stuff. hehehehehe....

[GrayWizardLinux]

[hemimaniac]

LMAO

GrayWizardLinux, you are soooooo right, and as explained in my intro in Open Chat, my experience with ubuntu when things "kinda worked" was lass then friendly, and from what I've seen from there forums there is a rise of confusion, anger, rage and general confusion. Even some "veterans" of Ubuntu are asking confused!

LMAO

[Superewza]

I've had my share of problems with Helena that i didn't in Gloria... i might follow suit actually, as i don't think i've noticed that much of an improvement. That said it seems to be playing nicely at the minute (somehow did a 'sudo apt-get upgrade' itself and borked my kernel but other than that).

[Fred]

I would have to agree up to a point with the above observations. Actually, I think Ubuntu's sloppy release attitude is responsible for Mint even existing. If Ubuntu was what it should be there wouldn't be much of a need for Mint in the first place. This is the silver lining in this situation.

Having said that, I said long ago that it is bound to be getting harder and harder for Mint to release a good distro. There is only so much that Clem can do with the pile of bugs that Ubuntu seems to be releasing more and more. Ubuntu has a good and popular infrastructure to draw from but I suspect that at some point Clem will have to make some changes to meet his quality goals. After all, the quality of Mint as seen by new users is Mint's strong suit. If that is sacrificed there won't be much point in Mint.

I am looking forward to a Debian based Mint. I just wish I had the time to do one myself for Mint. I just don't have the time for it now, so I can't complain about it not happening fast enough.

@Superewza: Sir, you shouldn't expect not to have breakage in Mint when you do an "apt-get upgrade" especially when there is a kernel change involved. That is why Clem has gone to some lengths to classify updates in levels.

Fred

[msuggs]

You say you don't understand why this happens - well the reason is simple. Mint is based on Ubuntu and Ubuntu is based on Debian Testing, but with far less constraints than Debian themselves use (that information comes directly from Ubuntu's own website).

I think its a little worse than that. Ubuntu traditionally is based off Debian Unstable. The exception being Lucid which will use predominantly Debian Testing to create a relatively stable LTS release.

[Fred]

omns,

The problem isn't sid, it is Ubuntu. Actually, if you pull sid at the right time it is pretty solid. It's only when major changes come along that you get in trouble. I have been running sid for over a year and it is solid 90% of the time. A little management and fewer hacks on the part of Ubuntu could yield a decent distro.

Fred

[ho0ver]

Hi folks,

thanks for toughts and your level-headed and well-worded replies. I'm typing this on my t41 running Gloria again, and it's been smooth sailing so far (the only thing I had to change from the default setup was what happens when I close the lid ).

Don't get me wrong, down in the cellar there's my 24/7 router / fileserver / desktop / tivo machine humming along on Ubuntu 9.10 nicely without any problems, but on this laptop specifically 9.10 / helena has been a nightmare.

I've been a professional Unix / network admin for nearly 20 years, so I know a little bit about setting up boxes and stuff, but again while it may be the fault of the kernel that's in use for 9.10, I nearly fainted when I read about the "renice wpa_supplicant to make wireless work on older hardware" solution that was offered in the Ubuntu forums.

I might go on to a rant about a how "untested" 9.10 feels, but then again I guess we only have ourselves to blame for not getting back to the dev team when the first RC's hit the download servers.

Meanwhile I've found out gloria will be supported until October this year which is good enough for me, maybe we have Julia (?) to play around this by then. Kudos to the Mint team (and yes, my mom which is already a grandmother of five ) runs Mint (7, mind you) on her desktop machine without any problems, and she's not a rocket scientist by any stretch of the imagination) for their good work & continuing support.


All the best,

Hoover

[viking777]

As I mentioned a few posts above, I was in the process of downloading Debian Stable (Lenny). Well I now have this fully installed. My purpose in using it is to replace my long running 'stable' distro - PcLinuxOS. Unfortunately the version of PcLos that I have been using is no longer receiving updates and although I could switch to a newer version just by updating my apt sources, this would entail my using KDE4 - and that is not acceptable to me. So I have to find an alternative and I thought that Lenny might fit the bill. I have never installed Debian Stable before, only looked at it briefly from a live cd, where it looked Ok, but I must say that having it installed now you realise just how far in the past Lenny lives! In some ways this is good, for instance I have no truck with grub 2 (and the main reason for my keeping a 'stable' distro is to run grub from - I chainload every other distro from there), I also have a kernel that recognises and removes the 'storage' component of all three of my mobile broadband modems without any help from any other program, and I can connect to wireless networks without constantly being bombarded with password requests, but on the other hand the version of network manager it uses is so old it doesn't even recognise the existence of mobile broadband! so I am back to connecting with wvdial - which works - but is archaic. Iceweasel (firefox) is version 3.0.6, it has an old version of gnome-screenshot that does not allow you to capture specified areas and it has a keyboard shortcuts app that does not allow you to create new shortcuts, only to modify existing ones. So far I haven't found a Nautilus Actions dialog either.

So would I recommend it? Probably not, at least not as a standalone distro, but for my purposes it will probably work. It has the benefit of a slow release cycle (2 years now) and I understand that they sometimes stretch that into 3 years as far as security updates go, and by that time maybe grub 2, wireless networks and mobile broadband switching will have been improved somewhat.

[GrayWizardLinux]

Fred my friend, How is it going? Yes I do agree, that mint evolved from a weak Ubuntu. But as ou stated, there is only so much Clem can do when it keeps dropping in Quality - Ubuntu that is. A major decision will soon have to be made. Basically i need something that really works. I lack time for everything and getting older and sicker and daily. So my effort to LEARN linux just ins't there. Porr attitude - No! Just barely have time to use my laptops for real use let alone to learn linux. 15 years ago would have been a different time for me. I just installed Gray Wizard Vineyard last year and making wine for health reasons, and struggling to keep Biz going this year... well you know where i am going.

Mint is literally the finest ditro out there! No bullshit! Just a huge compliment to Clem et. al..

[Lumenary]

Howdy...



I find it strange that so many people are having issues with Helena, when I haven't had a single show-stopping problem with it. My only real complaints are the fact that tools to effectively theme and customise GDM2 haven't arrived (although they are under development), and that the drivers for my laptop's Broadcom WiFi interface weren't included on the installation media (I needed to use a cabled Ethernet connection so I could download/install the WiFi drivers).


However, given that the GDM2 situation probably affects just about every major disto out there using Upstart and X11-based startup components, and that Broadcom's licensing often precludes inclusion of its drivers on distro installation media, there's not a whole lot that distro packagers can do to get around these issues at the moment.


For me, Helena has been stable, responsive, and reasonably robust. I am eagerly looking forward to Isadora, but will probably hold back on Julia (just a guess as to what the "Jxxxx" codename will be) until Clem and Crew make a decision regarding GNOME 3/Gnome Shell. If Mint does end up going with GNOME 3/Gnome Shell, I'll probably migrate to the Mint XFCE Community Edition (presuming a "Jxxxx" version becomes available) or switch to Xubuntu and add all of Mint's themes/modules myself.



Best Regards,

Lumenary
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