Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" RC released!

[vincent]

Unfortunately, Google already knows a lot about what we do. It's everywhere...I mean, look at Google search, it's webcrawlers, Google Adsense, Google Analytics...it's really hard to get out of Google's grasps. Google's services are often embedded in a variety of places, so don't expect to extract yourself out of Google's sphere of influence anytime soon. -_-

Well, on the bright side, at least they've made a pretty capable browser.

[MintyFree]

Unfortunately, Google already knows a lot about what we do. It's everywhere...I mean, look at Google search, it's webcrawlers, Google Adsense, Google Analytics...it's really hard to get out of Google's grasps. Google's services are often embedded in a variety of places, so don't expect to extract yourself out of Google's sphere of influence anytime soon. -_-

Well, on the bright side, at least they've made a pretty capable browser.

It's not hard to escape their grasp, just not worth the effort. You get a special version of firefox and four certain addons then you're invisible to the FBI, CIA, Google, ect...

But like I said, it's too much hassle.

[runbei]

Great to know the latest LM and Virtualbox versions work together - so far. That's a big issue for me. I've used Mint full-time for two years but was gravely discommoded when VB never worked well under Mint 8.

Hm, wouldn't the Mint developers have more fun if they switched Mint to a Debian base - they wouldn't have to spend so much time fixing Ubuntu issues. OTOH, maybe Ubuntu with its resources does do a lot of the heavy lifting. Still, I'd love a distro that worked reliably with VB, release-in, release-out.

[vger7]

Great to know the latest LM and Virtualbox versions work together - so far. That's a big issue for me. I've used Mint full-time for two years but was gravely discommoded when VB never worked well under Mint 8.

Hm, wouldn't the Mint developers have more fun if they switched Mint to a Debian base - they wouldn't have to spend so much time fixing Ubuntu issues. OTOH, maybe Ubuntu with its resources does do a lot of the heavy lifting. Still, I'd love a distro that worked reliably with VB, release-in, release-out.

Sorry to hear it. I've run Karmic, Lucid, Lubuntu, Pclinux, and Mint 8 in VB. All had some issues getting running except Mint.
Guest Additions, full screen, seamless--- all good.
Make sure you get the latest version of VB before giving it another go.

I'll give Mint 9 a shot when the LXDE version is released.

[Timmi]

Funny thing... installed Mint9 i386 and when it boots, the login screen gives my firstname lastname instead of username, in the login screen! :-/ I've seen that in a couple other distros before but can't remember where.

Oh, btw... beware of Lubuntu and Xubuntu! What they call final stable beta really doesn't work well!
Compared to Mint they are quite shaky! (of course you only find out once they are installed, all your preferences are configured and you actually start using it after you are time-invested in it).

[vincent]

Yeah, the login manager shows the full name you typed in during the installation process, not your actual username, something that has been inherited from Ubuntu and was also present in Mint 8. Changing that is easy...mintMenu > Control Centre > Users and Groups; click on your name, select Properties, and then you'll be able to change your name in a window that pops up.

[Timmi]

Great to know the latest LM and Virtualbox versions work together - so far. That's a big issue for me. I've used Mint full-time for two years but was gravely discommoded when VB never worked well under Mint 8.

Something must have went (or been done) wrong... I've run virtualbox under Mint8, and some stuff in VB that I didn't expect to work, like a softphone for windows and autocad, and worked like a charm. Maybe it is your "borrowed" copy of XP that is the problem under VB? Anyways, just wanted to say, I've been running stuff I really didn't expect to work, and they did first try. But this is a Mint9 thread isn't it? So what are your comments on VB in Mint9?

Hm, wouldn't the Mint developers have more fun if they switched Mint to a Debian base - they wouldn't have to spend so much time fixing Ubuntu issues. OTOH, maybe Ubuntu with its resources does do a lot of the heavy lifting. Still, I'd love a distro that worked reliably with VB, release-in, release-out.

Because then it would not be Mint, silly!!! There are PLENTY of Debian based distros out there - hundreds in fact! (about a hundred on distrowatch alone). Why another me-too? Mint is a completed Ubuntu (because at Canonical they can't finish the job). If you absolutely want something built up from Debian but that isn't Ubuntu, then it's not Mint you want in the first place. Maybe you want Knoppix, for example... or why don't you try to convince one of those other distros development teams to implement Mintinstall and other Mint enhancements into their distro - after all, the work on all that is designed to be made available to other distros, and not just to put atop Ubuntu.

As for me... I've been trying out distros for the past months so much, that now that some are coming to final release, I don't know what to do with my time anymore... and I'm going back to MINT and getting a life!

[vincent]

Just wanted to chip in concerning VirtualBox...to be honest, I don't like running entire OS'es in a VM, especially one that's still in testing as there seems to be a greater risk of finding bugs in a virtualized OS as opposed to having that OS run by itself natively. I find it simpler just to allocate a 20 GB partition on my HDD for test distros, where I install any distro I want when I feel like distro-hopping (I inevitably come back to Mint though ). The one thing that has to be taken care of using this method is to ensure that when you install any new distros, you don't overwrite your MBR with the distro's own bootloader...safer to have Mint's Grub in control of the MBR than a distro you installed just for kicks.

Oh, and for a stable Debian-based distro, I would recommend MEPIS.

[Timmi]

It's not hard to escape their grasp, just not worth the effort. You get a special version of firefox and four certain addons then you're invisible to the FBI, CIA, Google, ect...

"I want it! I want it!" (sung to the tune of that song, whatever it is)

Now that's what we want... just to feel more "outlaw-ish" in our hum-drum existences.

I am now gleefully walking away, pondering this, while I have flashbacks from "My Name is Nobody"...

edit: thanks kmb42vt - yes, the Magic Bus! (I once had a computer with a magic bus in it...)

[Timmi]

Yeah, the login manager shows the full name you typed in during the installation process, not your actual username, something that has been inherited from Ubuntu and was also present in Mint 8. Changing that is easy...mintMenu > Control Centre > Users and Groups; click on your name, select Properties, and then you'll be able to change your name in a window that pops up.

What is the logic? Is there a security reason behind that? Just curious. Aw and what the heck, since I'm asking a question anyways, can you tell me if telling gparted to mount the main partition at "\" was correct? I read that logging in as root isn't good - but this isn't logging as root, is it? Thanks. (it's embarrassing to ask but may be useful to other noobs trying Linux with Mint9 for the first time).

[Timmi]

Just wanted to chip in concerning VirtualBox...to be honest, I don't like running entire OS'es in a VM, especially one that's still in testing as there seems to be a greater risk of finding bugs in a virtualized OS as opposed to having that OS run by itself natively. I find it simpler just to allocate a 20 GB partition on my HDD for test distros, where I install any distro I want when I feel like distro-hopping (I inevitably come back to Mint though ). The one thing that has to be taken care of using this method is to ensure that when you install any new distros, you don't overwrite your MBR with the distro's own bootloader...safer to have Mint's Grub in control of the MBR than a distro you installed just for kicks.

Lets just clarify something... in your original post on this you were wording it as if you install, say, Mint9 as your main distro, and run VB in Mint9 (or whatever your main distro is). And NOT the other way around, having something, another distro, or windows, running a VB session to test Mint9. Right? Or are we all confused?

Oh, and for a stable Debian-based distro, I would recommend MEPIS.

Yes, and Anti-X too. But I found that there was perfectible hardware support for features on my laptop... don't remember which ones now - maybe it was WPA at some point, the Fn keys to control brightness at another, and then a couple other things... it was among the many I tried while attempting to fight off my impatience for Mint9 to be released.

Speaking of which... Mint9 now intercepts Fn + F6 and Fn + F7 to either highlight the browser's URL box or enable Caret browsing (which I really couldn't care less for and others are probably on that with me too)... and it has started to do this at some point in Mint8... -at some point, in Mint8, they dropped support and debugging for some apps and features - they dropped Skype from the install, the FnF6 FnF7 no longer worked if you installed it later, than sooner, in the release cycle, as well as a couple other handicapping actions while Mint8 was current. This is not only annoying, but should be against best practices and procedure.

Problem is, some of these handicaps were carried over into Mint 9. No FN key support. I don't know what they did along the way in working with Skype, but at least under Mint9x64 Skype input mic sound was unusable... and I had it working perfectly in Mint7 and 8 (in th eforums we had found a perfectly acceptable workaround in Skype, in it's settings, to make it work just fine with Mint). Now I uninstalled Mint9x64 and replaced it with Mint9i386 and will report back soon if they fixed the Skype thing. In the meantime, when Toshiba owners sit in the livingroom at night, in front of the TV with our trusty Mint9 to keep us company, we can no longer dim the screen brightness, and it's glaring in our faces more than the tele!

[markcynt]

Whenever I try to boot another distribution from the grub menu installed by Mint, I get "kernel panic" !

Maybe the solution to boot PCLinux with Mint applies.

The problem is due to the difference in partition numbering between GRUB and GRUB2.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... os#p267479

[ayonkhan]

I'm using Isadora - Gnome RC (i386) since it's release & I've encountered some kind of issues. Which are:

• Very often the panel doesn't load when I boot.
• Some applications' icons of the system tray don't match with the panel.
• Nautilus context menu contains "Open as administrator" when I select an item. But it doesn't contain "Open as root". I think these two options are built for different purposes. So the "Open as root" option should be added.
• gnome-disk-utility package is also not given by default. For that reason it's not possible to format any removable media with right click on it. So this should be added too.
• It will be better if these packages, alien, gnome-games, gshutdown, gparted, inkscape, ntfs-config, ogmrip, scim-m17n, skype & soundconverter should given by default in the DVD release.
• Every time I shut down my computer I'm getting some kind of text & today I've noticed that the “Suspend” option isn't in the Quit menu.

[Timmi]

1) Software manager will not allow to submit ratings... oh wait... Mint wants us to now have 3, count 'em, THREE, distinct logins for the various Mint forums? OK fine, I did it.

2) But just so you know: this tool is SLOW. so slow in fact, it seems to take up so much resources to load, on a core2duo, that one gets the impression that all apps have frozen on screen (gee, I only had firefox, pidgin, nautilus, and Mintmenu open and I have 2GB of RAM) while you wait for it to load. Seems a little bloated...

3) it looks very pretty... but when you don't quite know what category a certain application may fall under, just use search, right? Sure! But if you enter "disk", and can't find gparted, is it because you are using the wrong keyword or because you need to use the other installer in Mint (synaptic)? Well, that's easy to figure out - just to look in it's category under the pretty icon and scroll through the list to see if it's there... oh wait! will that be under Accessories? System Tools? Other? System Packages? Heck if I know - I'm a noob!
adit: Here is an even better example: "startup disk creator" - same potential categories... it can't even find a Mint-specific tool in the search, whether you use startup disk creator usb or ANY one of those keywords in a search.

Anyways, here is my "noob review" of this app: "very pretty". and I give it 5 pretty stars in the looks department.

[kmb42vt]

[quote="Timmi"]"I want it! I want it!" (sung to the tune of that song, whatever it is)

"Magic Bus" by The Who?

[Timmi]

In the name of innovating at all costs, of dazzling the audience, it looks like unetbootin has makeup put on and was rendered useless for trying other distros.

So, if we pretended this tool was much better than Unetbootin and that unetbootin didn't exist,
in order to try/test another distro, we now would have to reformat our partition, wiping out Mint,
instead of just burning the test ISO to a usb stick.

But wait, there IS another, almost identical but more versatile too than this one: unetbootin.

As a noob, my question is this: why oh why allocate precious human resources and programing time to create a handicapped version of a tool already in the repositories?

We come to Mint because it "just works" so we don't have to mess with Ubuntu to put icing on the cake in their place.

But with the new installer, new usb tool, we wonder, have you allocated resources to show "innovative changes" at all costs? Because there is no innovation here - while other areas in the distro clearly still need fixing.

And with such a wonderful distro, you shouldn't risk messing it up by neglecting other areas in the name of pretty illusions.

[kmb42vt]

Okay, what happened to the "Disk Manager" and the "Format" option in the right-click context menu for a portable drive? Anyone know if it's been removed on purpose and if so, aren't we getting a bit over protective about the "user experience"? Not being able to format a removable drive in LM9 is rather foolish.

Don't get me wrong, Linux Mint is my OS of choice and I realize things need to be slimmed down due to the size restrictions of a CD but leaving out the above mentioned applet and feature? Going a bit too far don't you think?

[eiver]

After buring the RC in windows/nero (damn you brasero), I think I will really like this release. I love the new software manager. I love the new wallpaper. I love tons of small, yet significant tweaks in other Mint apps and other settings. The RC has a lot of issues of course, but once they are gone I expect this release will be the greatest yet.

[MintyFree]

It's not hard to escape their grasp, just not worth the effort. You get a special version of firefox and four certain addons then you're invisible to the FBI, CIA, Google, ect...

"I want it! I want it!" (sung to the tune of that song, whatever it is)

Now that's what we want... just to feel more "outlaw-ish" in our hum-drum existences.

I am now gleefully walking away, pondering this, while I have flashbacks from "My Name is Nobody"...

edit: thanks kmb42vt - yes, the Magic Bus! (I once had a computer with a magic bus in it...)

There's this special version of firefox that has TOR built-in along with a ton of other 'security features' plus you add addons like NoScript, AdBlock and one that blocks cookies and you're good. I used to use it myself (Don't ask why) but since I had a huge SOCK5 proxy chain along with Tor I couldn't get anywhere fast enough.

[SiKing]

I am having problems with the visual feedback you get when you change volume up/down.

On my laptop I have special keys for volume control, and when you press them this layover used to pop up on the screen showing you the current volume level. Under LM9 I do not get this. The audible volume level does change, but the visual feedback is missing. Also, if I change the volume say all the way down, and check that little volume applet (is that what they are called) in the notification area that does not change either.

Same happens for brightness levels.

Is this a feature or a bug?