Linux Mint 12 LXDE released!

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 12 LXDE.


Linux Mint 12 LXDE

New features at a glance:

For a complete overview and to see screenshots of the new features, visit: “What’s new in Linux Mint 12 LXDE“.

Release notes:

  • Moonlight
  • Upstream issues

To get more information about these issues and their solution, read the “Release notes”.

System requirements:

  • x86 processor
  • 256 MB RAM
  • 5 GB of disk space
  • Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution
  • CD/DVD drive or USB port

Upgrade instructions:

  • To upgrade from a previous version of Linux Mint follow these instructions.
  • To upgrade from Linux Mint 12 LXDE RC, simply apply any level 1 and 2 updates (if any) available in the Update Manager.

Download:

Md5 sum: 2b54938b8e2f14a5fbca8abc6da86f6a

Torrents: http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-12-lxde-cd-32bit.iso.torrent

HTTP Mirrors:

Enjoy!

We look forward to receiving your feedback. Thank you for using Linux Mint and have a lot of fun with this new release!

163 comments

  1. I have been useing 10 running off a flash drive for the last week so I might try this looks good! 🙂

  2. Congratulations!

    Downloaded from Heanet, iirc, at roughly 0900 UTC. Nice, fast connection “across the pond” to the USA. (Ordinarily, I would use an USA mirror, though.)

    Currently running Lisa LXDE as a live CD. So far, seems fine.

    You included LXRandR; thanks! Tried the Auto setting, and got 1280×1024 at 75 Hz, just what I wanted.

    Minor item is that fitting the default desktop image (1280×1024) squeezes the Mint logo sidewise; would have been better to crop sides than squeeze. (I might try that.) Good thing there is no circle as part of the logo!

    Nice to have Dropbox as a menu item. I can use it.

    The LXDE Web site says there are 64-bit versions for Debian, Lubuntu 11.10, and openSUSE 11.4. There’s also a Fedora Spin[off], iirc word length not specified.

    Verizon FiOS (Fiber to my living-room wall) gives me 25 Mb/s symmetrical, affordably; took about 3 min. to download the .iso.
    I love it! Will probably set up a BitTorrent session to propagate it.

    As they say in NY City,
    Enjoy!
    [nb] (Eastern Mass., USA)
    going back to sleep

  3. I understand that one of the big uses, as indeed I have used it in an older laptop, is to keep older hardware running. But. No 64 bit version?

    Really?

  4. Got curious about Mint LXDE and have just spent about 2 hours trying to boot Mint 11 LXDE from my SD-Card on my eeepc 901 (always ending up with “Can not mount /dev/loop0”). Now I’m realizing that maybe I would have better waited for the final Mint 12 release… Downloading now and keeping my fingers crossed that the new hybrid iso will do better.
    Anyway – congrats for another release and 1000 thx for Linux Mint!

  5. Thank you Mint team! I’m sure this is a great release! I’m loving LXDE so much so far! Now I’m on Fedora 16 LXDE and I was about to migrate to Lubuntu. Luckily I saw this release announcement today! So I think Mint 12 LXDE would be a better choice…

    Is the theme well integrated with both GTK2 and GTK3? Because I read that Lubuntu Ozone theme is working on that integration very well, and on Fedora that integration is perfect.

    Anyway, THANK YOU! You’re the best!
    Maybe it will be interesting to look at LMDE LXDE? 😉

  6. Congrats for this LXDE release for Linux Mint.
    Does this also supports autologin at the startup for this OS ?

  7. O dear…. same issue with the hybrid iso as mentioned in entry 6. After welcome screen and “enter” it shows
    “(initramfs) mount: monunting /dev/loop0 on // filesystem.squashfs failed: Invalid argument
    Can not mount /dev/loop0 (cdrom/casper/filesystem.squashfs) on // filesystem.squashfs”
    I have already tried some workarounds presented in several forums.
    It surely has something to do with the eeepc 901 hardware

  8. Does Mint is having the same issues with the JAVA licenses as Ubuntu?

    I’m looking forward Mint 13, and I hope that appart the explendid job that is been done with Cinnamon, we also get a functioning Java. This year is probably my last with Ubuntu.

  9. Glad to see that my favorite flavor of Mint hasn’t been abandoned. Mint 11 LXDE has been the fastest, most functional distro I’ve ever used, and I’m looking forward to trying this update.

  10. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one annoyed by those who frequently ask “What about the Z version of Mint?”. Please tell me what is preventing anyone from downloading their favorite SW package (even one like XFCE, Fluxbox, E17), installing it and using it?

    What am I missing here?

    By the way, from reports I have heard, a 32-bit version of an OS will run on many 64-bit processors.

  11. “Imhoteps Says: Kamon, Kendall! What `bout Flux edition of Mint?”

    Here here! I second that! I think a Mint version of that would be absolutely great!

  12. Congrats to the team!

    I really like the LXDE desktop – about the only thing I’d change is to fix how you change the time. Right now, you have to look up a bunch of odd codes and edit the line for the clock’s display. Not very user-friendly, but not the fault of Linux Mint. If the LXDE developers could do something to make it easier it would be awesome.

  13. When the next LTS version. Ubuntu and Kubuntu they has 12.04 LTS for 5 years. Will Mint the same than Kubuntu?

    Regards from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

  14. Congratulations! Wonderful release. For my work I need an accurate time stamp. Can someone post how to change the time? Thanks.

  15. Great job. Finally a first class replacement for gnome (my heretofore favorite — Mint of course!) This version of LXDE allows me to single click (a real plus for those of us with wrist issues) and by adding alacarte, I can control the menu. That’s as good as it gets! And it runs Quicken which I absolutely have to have for my volunteer bookkeeping job.

    Thanks so much. Gnome is headed in the wrong direction. This is the solution.

  16. Peter (18) – the man page for “date” is here:

    http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?date

    All the codes you need are listed under the “FORMAT controls the output…” line. When you bring up the clock applet, there should be a line where you can change it from %R to the type of display you prefer. You need to enter the “:” between hour and minute.

  17. ran it live on ubuntu for just a short time then installed it immediately. its great thankyou . so clean and easy great work

  18. Re a recent post: What the British Parliament says is “Hear! Hear!”, as in “Listen! Well said!”. (OK to delete this message.)

  19. Peter (18): As TomG says you can use the command date for it. You too can use the ntp ( network time protocol ) client to keep always synchronyzed.

    jodother (6): This error can occur if you don’t have the required amount of space. If is not the case I can’t help you. 🙂

    Congratulations to the Mint team. 🙂

  20. Thanks Mint – Trying to bring a 2001 PC (256 MB Ram/ 10GB HDD/ Celeron 800 Mhz running at 533)! People can’t seem to remain standing seeing this. Will post back about the success soon.

    No other high-rated distro was fitting into this system.

    Cheers for sustainable living!

  21. I’d like to know what people think of Mint 12 LXDE vs Lubuntu 11.10. I’ve tried Lubuntu and it was close to how polished Mint 11 and earlier were but I’m wondering if since this is just a side project for Mint if Lubuntu might be the more polished of the two.

  22. New Lubuntu 12.04 is gonna be released in about next month, and you guys just released a version based on Lubuntu 11.10. Isn’t it too late for that. Might as well just wait for next month NEW Lubuntu release instead of using this one. Just my 2cent.

  23. TomG(19)-
    Thanks for the unixhelp link. I would like to know if there is any way to CHANGE the time in LXDE. Clock is always 6 hours ahead of actual time. I don’t install but run from USB. Was easy to change time in Gnome. Otherwise, LM12 LXDE is my favorite distro. Thanks.

  24. Hello friend of mint, and sometimes I have to use linux mint for me is the best, my computer is a dell 3000 demencion pentiun 4 to run in linux mint Perfeto to vercio genome 2 and 10 with the vercio 11 and 12 not work because I have no 2d acceleration, but that does not matter because I love the vercion lxde, my only problem is that I can use to have video call on skype or cheese in gnome 2 gave me this problem but with bia comandaos console that published in the blob of linux mint and state what solucionando.pero now I want to use the lxde do not know how to fix this problem I run the skype video call. If you can help them Minte linux friends would be very agradesidos, congratulations on the good work.

  25. @Peter

    sudo date -s “%H:%M” -%R

    inside the quotations can have whatever time format you’re looking to enter…check the man file

  26. Nice one!

    I’ve been waiting for something recent & lightweight to test on my netbook. Been running LMDE with LXDE on top on it until now but that combination has a few glitches that I am to much of a noob to solve…

    @Devs:
    – Good Job!

  27. I’m currently using Linux Mint LXDE on my asus eeepc 900, and so far, so good!!! i’m not getting any screen garble like i had when i use the GNOME version…

  28. I’m running this now on a Toshiba Satellite A100. The Task Manager is taking 32% of my CPU! I’ve run Lubuntu on this machine, and it only takes a tiny fraction of that. Odd? or expected??? It’s not nice to see!

  29. I have installed Mint 12 LXDE onto a USB stick, and so far … Mmmm, VERY impressed. Faster and more configurable than mainstream Mint 12, but so far I have no concerns or complaints at all. Well done Clem and team. I think THIS version should be the main version!!

  30. Sooooooo much better than the Gnome version! Thanks! Only issue is the 210 updates after you install…..IMO, those should have been integrated in the iso.

  31. @ Neil (currently post 43)

    I think you miss Peters problem. He want’s to change the time itself – not the format in which it’s displayed.

    Imagine that you feel you ended up in the wrong timesone and want to set time back one hour – how do yo do that?

    In Gnome you can adjust time itself – if you want the time to run 5 minutes ahead of what it really is you can do it by right-clicking on the clock in the bottom corner of the screen and choose “preferences” – “time settings” and then change it.

    I don’t have the answer to the question itself, but I do have noticed that this is not as easy in LXDE.

  32. Sorry if I am asking a dumb question, I recently (last week) bought a new (to me) computer and installed Mint 12. I thought that this computer would be fast enough that I would enjoy Minty Gnome3. It is fast enough and Minty G3 (much better than bland G3) is great but I still prefer my LXDE install. Can I upgrade to Mint LXDE without reinstalling or should I just bite the bullet and do it?

  33. My Eeepc 901 refused to boot from the image i downloaded yesterday. Same problem as some earlier posters.
    I solved it by running isohybrid (on a computer running Debian Squeeze after installing the syslinux package) on the image like this
    isohybrid linuxmint-12-lxde-cd-32bit.iso
    then I copied it to my usbstick using dd.
    After doing that my eeepc booted from the USB stick!
    Using diff between the a copy of the downloaded iso and the iso I ran isohybrid on showed they were not identical.
    Maybe someone forgot to run isohybrid on the iso before uploading it?

  34. Anyone else having problems with installation? After pressing “start linux mint” when booting from the CD, the screen goes black for a while, and after a while i get a “mint@mint ~ $” prompt… I have also tried “Check integrity of install CD” ant it went just fine. Please help! I want to get this computer up & running asap.

  35. A couple of gripes. No easy way to network, and the set monitor-resolution doesn’t work.

    Looks nice though.

  36. 1. For those who keep asking about a 64 bit version, Mint 12 LXDE has always been 32 bit only. I don’t know if the devs intend that to change in the near future, but the 32 bit version is very fast, will run on 64 bit processors and I’m having trouble seeing much of anything to be gained by a 64 bit version. The 32 bit version should be more responsive than a desktop with a Gnome, KDE or even XFCE desktop in 64 bit version. On a 64 bit capable machine it’s hard to imagine a noticeable difference in performance between this version and a 64 bit version.

    2. For those asking for a Fluxbox version of Mint-have you considered adding the Windows Manager yourself? I know it’s less than perfect, but things at Mint have been slowed lately by the drive to create a version of Gnome 3 which is agreeable for those users who liked Gnome 2 but not Gnome 3 Shell. The Mint XFCE version has gone the way of the dodobird except in LMDE which itself LMDE had no update packs for several months (and considering the number of updates coming in Wheezy lately that’s a very, very long time and likely to create a huge download for update pack 4, probably too large to be feasible for my home connection.) With delays in existing projects there might be better times in the future to hope for new projects out of the busy Mint developers.

    3. I understand how much work the changes in Gnome have brought to the Mint devs. Unfortunately, this LXDE version, coming a month and a half before the next version of Lubuntu, might cause quite a few to ignore Mint 12 LXDE and wait for the next Lubuntu.

  37. @tyhee88
    “On a 64 bit capable machine it’s hard to imagine a noticeable difference in performance between this version and a 64 bit version.”

    On my thinkpad w520 with 32gb ram there is a huge difference 🙂 because 32 bit linux can’t use my ram (only 25% of it).

  38. tyhee88 – As it happens, I was considering a few projects that would require me to stop swapping distros for a few weeks. What should get released but a new edition of my favorite!
    Returning to 32-bit is not too hard for me personally, since I only have 4 GB of RAM at the moment. I have added Fluxbox, Window Maker, and a few other lightweight window managers to the LXDE edition and plan to leave all GNOME3 and KDE files off the machine until the end of April. One of my “projects” is exactly to discover just how much fun a person can still have without any KDE and GNOME applications 🙂

    Once again, my thanks and appreciation of all the hard work that goes into each Linux Mint edition. Clem and the team always make sure you get a quality release. No whining from this quarter !

  39. To LuxPro…using duckduckgo.com, try searching on “lightweight linux distro”. If you want something really small, check out SliTaz – only about 30-40MB for the whole distro. Good Luck.

  40. I installed it in my primitive computer and it works perfectly! Thank you to LM team and keep up the good work!

  41. Great distro for my old laptop Pentium M 1.6GHz and 512MB Ram Dell Latitude D600. I’m having fun with Firefox 10. I use mainly Playonlinux, KeepassX and Unison too.

  42. While it is true that the 32 bit version will run on a 64 bit processor. I think the concerns are the limit on memory addressing. Just seems like a waste when 99% of all new computers out there come with more that 4 gigs of ram these days. Even though I am a Mint user and Lover of all the variants. I will not be using this one due to that limitation.

  43. @ larry, you can use a pae kernel, i use it on a 6gb ram machine and about 5.85gb of ram gets detecyed and is useble to the system

  44. Peter (41): Maybe your problem with the time is due to Mint setting your computer’s internal clock to UTC. Open a terminal and run this:

    cat /etc/default/rcS | grep UTC

    If the output is “UTC=yes”, that would be the problem, I guess.

    Just edit the file (say, gksu gedit /etc/default/rcS), change “UTC=yes” to “UTC=no”, save the file and reboot. Worked for me.

  45. The Information about 3GB Diskspace, is TOTAL BULLSHIT!

    I have an eee pc with 4gb ssd, it boots and works very well when booted with an usb-DVD-drive 😀 SO everything is perfect, I THOUGHT! Until the Installier tells me that 4.4 GB Hard disk space are required, without any possibility to force the installation!!!

  46. In recent days, have been using Katya GNOME (living with bugs, such as no numeric keypad (openSUSE 11.1 did that, too)). For the most part Katya is delightful, stable as a granite optical bench on vibration isolators (nick for holography, afaik). I also have an auto-partitioned Lisa LXDE in GRUB as the default (dual boot). Forgot when I booted the machine.

    There’s the Lisa LXDE splash screen (I think that’s what it’s called), squashed sidewise (x axis estimated at maybe 90%). Took screenshots, if you want to see them. Not too bad, just looks silly. I should be able to find the image and crop it, instead of squashing it.

    How ever, (added space intentional), noce again, I see the damnable ~1-cm-wide black border surrounding the unblanked part of the raster. I don’t want to overdrive my old, but lovely DEC VCR-21WA Mother Of All Curb Finds (thanks to BZ and CH!) — increasing scan size drives the scan circuits harder. So, I go down to the lower left menu, and see Accessories -> Resolution Switcher. Left-click, menu goes away, and — nothing. Alt-F2, resapplet, Run, nothing.

    Software Manager — wait as the gimbals rotate while it does what must be a really-efficient update. Uninstall … Done.

    I think at this stage, I called up Synaptic to do a complete uninstall.

    Synaptic crashed gracefully — it simply hung eternally. Details:
    (Please: WHY gray on black? My 76-year-old eyes don’t like intentional low contrast, although I can read it. Text x-height is about 2 mm; fortunately I can still read tiny text. (Screen is probably running fake-underscanned 1600 x 1200.)

    OK, details:
    Last successfully-started operation was
    “Purging configuration files for resapplet”

    —and it hung, eternally.

    No problem quitting Synaptic. Changing mode from -vvvto -vv here…
    Decided to try reinstalling [resapplet].
    Asked for details. Nose about 18 cm from screen.
    It gave usual messages, cleared, then did processed three triggers OK.
    (Have details.)
    Last line:
    Setting up resapplet (0.0.7 {etc})

    Eternal hang.
    Quit Synaptic.
    Asked for complete uninstall. Success! Yay?
    Asked Syn. for an install.
    Details — Success! Yay=true.
    Menu -> Accesssories -> Resolution switcher

    Nothing.

    Sorry folks, this is a show stopper. I see that openSUSE has a 64-bit LXDE. (The LXDE site lists a few more.) I might try that.

    =====

    This machine is apparently what some large retail companies order in quantity with their house brand — it’s called “OEM”. In this case, the Original Equipment Manufacturer is called eMachines when they sell it under their own name.

    Speaking philosophically, it’s a great pity that Katya almost runs beautifully. In past years, openSUSE 11.1 “corroded” progressively; early on, the numeric keypad failed; then, other “peripheral functions” (software) failed. The kernel, however, was as stable as a granite…

    Cost-engineering has its price, and that is that such machines as this are thoroughly debugged only for the current version of Windows; this was a refurb (front panels falling off?) originally loaded with XP Media Center Edition.

    If the shipping cost isn’t wildly prohibitive (freight, by sea?), I would contribute this machine to Mint if I get a newer machine. The latter would mean I’d have to scrimp, save, and minimize food costs, etc.

    Idea would be that, if what I suspect is really the case, that Mint just might be able to make its alpha builds work completely on this machine, assuming that it really is somewhat representative of cheaper machines. Whether that is worth the extra effort is something I honestly don’t know.

    Tiger Direct has a dual-core Athlon HP 505B refurb. that looks awfully tempting. It just might run Lisa KDE! (I love Gwenview and Krusader,)

    I will probably try a backup, test restore, and clean install of Katya GNOME, then use it until an irresistible refurb or overstock or such comes by. I’d allocate space on the HD for test installations.

    Finally put my FiOS 25Mb/s-capped upload connection to good use; set up a BitTorrent to seed Lisa LXDE, and uploaded 21+ GiB (GB?) while I slept. South Korean data rates mean that I can download a CD ,iso quickly, so I can easily try various distros; blank CDs are inexpensive, and I can pass then on at the MIT Flea Market. (Apparently, can’t boot from an USB stick.)

    Concise specs, etc., here:
    Minitower, probably. Athlon 64 @ 2.2 GHz, 1 GiB RAM, about 890 MiB avail, Rest is for nVidia GeForce 6100 on motherboard (MSI 7207?). Currently using a hot-running 500 GB PATA HD.
    nVidia Northbridge, I think.
    Again, it almost boots from an USB stick; need to look into a BIOS upgrade. (BIOS date is 2006!) RAM updates are painfully costly, (Referring to past posts): Trying to run a Lisa KDE live CD was simply pathetic; 1 GiB shared RAM was a sick joke. Was like trying to install AOL with 2 MiB of RAM on a 386 from a free floppy just to see what would happen. Slow motion, perhaps slower than 1% of normal.

    Btw, I’m happily amazed to see Lisa LXDE running on what I think is an Asus notebook (eeePC?) as well as a machine significantly older than mine.

    Please holler if my messages are too long. Time to study WordPress and start my own blog.

    Apologies for leftover typos…

    Kaer kvedja,
    [nb]
    who does not speak or know Icelandic, but recognizes it instantly as text.

  47. -v mode (!) Postlude:
    Typos: nick -> nice; noce -> once; “pass them on”

    Would be so nice to have a Preview function; however, otherwise, this is a nice blog design. (Justin Winslow? White on light green contrast is pretty bad…) Woops, -vv again.

    Again, I probably could get hex dumps if they would help. Give me hex memory addresses. Another possibility is getting MD5s of specific files (thinking of CD/DVD media-check file lists) and sending them to you.

    Forgot to say that I also tried Alt-F2 <- resapplet one last time. Nothing.

    Most interesting: Linus wrote git, and despises CVS. See Wikipedia about git (version control system).

    This and previous long msg. were sent from Lisa LXDE.

    Best,
    [nb]

  48. cmrt: You are right. Mint has set my computer’s internal clock to UTC. There does not seem to be any way to set it to CDT. Reboot won’t help because I am running from USB with no persistence (most secure-no cookies or malware ever!). Guess I will have to mentally subtract 6 hrs. from clock reading. Otherwise, everything works in LM12 LXDE, which is now my favorite Linux distro.

  49. Found: Free, unencumbered download of what looks like a really- excellent command-line text:

    IIrc, the whole PDF is around 2 MB.

    It’s a PDF of 500+ pages; Amazon has printed and bound versions, ~$23 US, iirc. They provide the ToC (Table of Contents) and enough text to see the author’s style, which I truly like.

    Have a look!
    [nb]
    who uploaded over 28 GiB (correction) of Lisa LXDE via BT; more than one way to help!

  50. Ηι,can someone help me?
    I have an Acer netbook with intel gma500 graphic card and i can’t boot Mint 12 LXDE with Gui from livecd.
    There is open only a Terminal.
    I tryied it on RC and now on official release and i have the same problem.
    With Mint 11 LXDE there was not this problem,i instaled it and after i instaled the pulsbo drivers without problem,and everething was ok.

    Is there is any link with a solution that you can give me?
    Thank you very much and sorry for bad English 🙁

  51. It’s too bad there’s no 64 Bit version, which matters since I have 8GB of RAM. I’ll just use Lubuntu and add the Mint Packages to that.

  52. Nice one runs great on my old P4.

    I don’t understand why everbody wants a 64bit version.
    LXDE is more suitable for olders PC’s that are mostly 32bit.
    B-sides 64bit is only bit fast IRL.

  53. Peter (61):
    Have you tried reconfiguring the timezone package?

    Try this in terminal:
    sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
    Now choose your location (a big city using the CDT will do)

    This is the way I change the system to the correct time when I boot from USB (using plain Linux Mint though, not this edition). No reboot required.

    Also note that the time might be corrected further as you connect to the internet – this happens automatically for me, I guess it has something to do with ntp and daylight saving time.

  54. @ Larry Morris and all other users of 64-bit computers:

    You can install the PAE kernel (linux-pae in the repository) to use all your RAM if you have 4GB or more.

  55. @pauleberber: My apologies. The ubiquity installer indeed requires more than the size of the of the filesystem and doesn’t let you proceed with the installation. We decided not to change this upstream in the stable release and forgot to update the minimum requirements… it’s done now, sorry about this.

    @All: There is no 64-bit planned for this edition. However you can run 32-bit on your system and get all your memory recognized using a PAE kernel. The reason we don’t support 64-bit here is simply due to resources and focus on other developments. Each release takes a lot of time. It’s not a simple matter of adding a few packages and another DE, a lot of testing and troubleshooting is involved with each and every release and so we need to be selective and sometimes restrict the scope of our work to ensure we’re always happy with the quality.

  56. WOOW! What a wonderful release! nice graphic and fantabolous look. The problem which is so annoying is software manager! it just flashes out in within very limited socondsss. If there is a way of fixing this problem.

  57. Thanks a lot. A very nice release. I have replaced linux mint 11 lxde with this release. This is very fast on my dell inspiron dual core (1GB RAM, 120 GB).
    I have one problem though. During boot up the screen stays completely black. There was nothing appeared until the login screen not even the mint logo. Is this a problem? Please let me know how to change this.
    Thanks
    Nellai

  58. The distribution is really nice and very fast in my old laptop.
    I have two minor issues. 1. The panel theme (appearance system theme or any selection) changes to the default settings everytime I turn on the laptop. 2. The screen looks empty only dark background during the boot in process until I come to the log in screen I dont see anything on the screen. Not sure where to ask this.
    Thanks

  59. Can you please make a 64-bit version?. Linux Mint will be complete, i think, with a LXDE X64 version. PLEASE MAKE A X64_86 LXDE VERSION.

  60. George (91):
    It is kind of you to apologize for your English. However, I had no trouble at all understanding you.

    Regards,
    [nb]
    amateur internationalist

  61. b66: It works! Reconfiguring the timezone package to Central Time did it. No reboot required. Now my clock displays local time. Thanks so much for your suggestion!

  62. @Clem:

    Merci beaucoup for your update on what’s going on. Acknowledging a mistake is very honorable, and explaining that you have limited resources is really important. It’s quite refreshing here in the USA where we have a near-epidemic of retarded emotional development (by choice, not because of any pathological micro-organism).

    I heartily agree with the compliments that are happily sprinkled throughout these blogs, and have come to realize full-well that my machine is (in technical detail) an “outlier” that was optimized strictly for Windows.

    I think it’s a credit to Clem and crew that Katya works as well as it does for me. (Haven’t tried mint 10, btw.)
    It’s smart to build upon Ubuntu (until they get derailed and crash with weird UI’s).

    I’m done with struggling to make everything work. Win 7 looks progressively more attractive, although it, even now, /seems/ to be built on a foundation that cannot really be made secure.

    As well, I’m startled to see what machines various people here are trying to install Lisa LXDE into. I would not think of trying such a thing; I guess it’s a great credit to Linux and Mint that there is some degree of success!

    Fwiw, Parted Magic seems to be almost a distribution in its own right.
    It’s a small download, and fits nicely onto a small (8 cm) CD. There are now three versions, x86_64, “vanilla” (32-bit, very likely), and one compiled with a 486 kernel. Whether all its partitioning tools create aligned partitions, I’m not sure, but likely.

    =+=+=+=

    I have been “living with” Katya GNOME, which works well and stably except for the numeric keypad; I can’t enter numbers, and the rest of the keys (if they do anything at all) do unexpected things. I realized with some degree of horror that the keypad might be using nVidia proprietary code (not just graphics?), because all sorts of things are taken care of by nVidia. Specifically, is the code for the keypad proprietary?

    SOLVED: I didn’t bother telling this blog about a detailed and annoying graphics problem — bookmarking in Firefox. I like deep tree-structured directories; I’ll sometimes go 8 levels deep from [/].
    When I want to bookmark a site, I’ll navigate to the best spot, or create a new branch (leaf?)(folder). However, the dropdown graphics
    put a transparent dark grey over what should be the active area, making it very difficult if not impossible to show the deeper parts of the bookmark dir. structure. I simply put the bookmark into Unsorted bookmarks, and (amazingly) redistributed them, using “Show all bookmarks”. I actually kept the unsorted collection quite small and easy to distribute.(!)

    I finally went back to nVidia driver 173, after suffering from this minor mess, and the problem seems solved — Happiness Has Returned.
    (I was using the second one on the list of three.)

    If I can get the numeric keypad to work, then I’ll use Katya for the next few months, maybe a year, or until there’s no longer support for security updates.

    I should ask these questions in a forum, not here, though; right?

    Would be glad to have help in selecting which one, if it’s not totally obvious.

    Best regards,
    [nb]

  63. Concerning minimal hardware requirements:

    Just had a short chat with a very savvy friend who says that Linux distros apparently cite the minimum hardware required to operate the Linux OS /alone/. That means, it will boot and provide a usable GUI. However, that is seriously misleading and very unfair!

    Most people boot an OS to run applications, after all, and if they want to run an app. fancier than a basic text editor (Leafpad, for instance), or a (rare) text-mode-only Web browser, they might be out of luck.

    Imho, this appears to be true, and Linux most definitely does /not/ develop friends/advocates by citing unrealistically-small hardware requirements.

    Challenge: What minimal hardware is needed to run resource-consuming applications (perhaps all of Libre Office?) in Lisa KDE acceptably?

    Imho, trying to run Lisa KDE with 1 GB of RAM (shared with video) is a sick joke, as I have said before. Maybe I am wrong. I don’t use such terms casually, btw.

    It might help to develop an application benchmark, perhaps a word-processing or spreadsheet (or GIMP?) running with a standard data file. Main aim would not be to find out how fast it would run, but whether it would a) run at all, and b) run acceptably fast.

    My cheapo machine would not even boot to a usable desktop with Lisa KDE, fairly sure! (Athlon 64, 2.2 GHz, ~890 MB of RAM (rest of 1 GB is for video), nVidia 6100 on motherboard, BIOS dated 2006).

    I have been an amateur recorder (block flute) player for about 50 years, and was rather good a while back (country dance, mostly English). Amateur recorder playing attracts social misfits. They are not bad people, though. Seems to me that an influential minority in Linux is also a collection of social misfits who can do more harm than recorder players. Linus is no social misfit; try watching some YouTube interviews. Btw, recorders are serious instruments. If you have doubts, try to hear the Flanders Recorder Quartet.

    However, those Linux types who hate users and reply “RTFM” to requests for help surely do not help the greater cause. These types have so little self-respect that they desperately hug arcane Linux knowledge to themselves (and assuredly don’t want to share it), so they can try to feel superior.

    As well, it seems to me that Mint is mostly, if not totally free of such types; PCLinuxOS, if anything, even more so. (PCLOS has no 64-bit distro of any sort, although their small group is working on it.) Mint offers far more variety!

    I do want Linux to succeed, but, perhaps, by being something of a pest, I might nevertheless help.

    Emperors should wear clothes.

    Best regards,
    [nb]
    Planning to save for a serious machine
    Planning to run Lisa KDE dual-booted with Win 7
    and maybe PCLOS

  64. Quick one: Beware of Fedora Core: If you have an OS already installed that you want to keep, planning to dual (or multi-) boot, Fedora could wipe out everything else. (It happened to me, iirc Fedora Core 14 or 15). A full [dd]-command backup of everything before installing would be wise. (Terabytes are affordable, these days! Last I saw, Hitachi has a 4 TB drive, still pricey.)

    HTH,
    [nb]
    who has not read incoming e-mail for at least a month

  65. Some of us want a 64bit version, like me :-), because we have 4+GB RAM and like to have a lightweight desktop so we can use our processing power else where.

    I run a lot of virtual machines for development and having a lightweight desktop is awesome. Just because you have newer hardware doesn’t mean you want to waste on the resources on the OS.

  66. Off-topic, apologies.

    Nicabod, here are some KDE memory usage data:

    System:
    – Linux Mint 12 Lisa KDE 64-bit
    – triple core 2.1 GHz
    – 2 gig mem
    – NVidia driver version 280.13
    – GPU: GeForce 8200
    – screen res: 1600×1200

    14 apps/files opened:
    – terminal
    – dolphin (file manager)
    – kate (text editor)
    – ocular (doc viewer) with 643k jpg
    – libreoffice calc (spreadsheet) with 68k file (a small file)
    – libreoffice writer with 5 small files (total 14 pages, 206k)
    – libreoffice draw with 503k png
    – libreoffice math (no file opened)
    – libreoffice impress (presentation) with 2 files (total 2,486k)

    This included mounting another partition as most of the opened files were there.

    Then ran in terminal:
    $ free -m
    total used free shared buffers cached
    Mem: 1943 1845 98 0 79 732
    -/+ buffers/cache: 1032 910
    Swap: 3497 0 3497

    So it used almost all of the memory, but the system worked fine:
    no slowdowns, no problems switching from one app/file to the next.

    Then I closed everything but kate and the term and ran:
    $ free -m
    total used free shared buffers cached
    Mem: 1943 1533 410 0 74 715
    -/+ buffers/cache: 742 1201
    Swap: 3497 0 3497

    Hmm…

    Then I rebooted and ran only a terminal:
    $ free -m
    total used free shared buffers cached
    Mem: 1943 962 981 0 45 369
    -/+ buffers/cache: 547 1396
    Swap: 3497 0 3497

    I guess that second gig of mem is really useful/necessary.
    (I’m sure the multi-core lends a hand too.)

    Hope this helps.

  67. Hi all,

    can’t find any help that works elsewhere so far, so I try it here, fingers crossed.

    This is my last try with Linux Mint 12. I really, really want to make it work, but so far, it plain doesn’t at all.

    I still have hope and time to tinker for a couple more days or so before I have go move on. Here goes:

    The laptop in question:

    NEC Versa E680
    Pentium M 1.4 GHz
    736 MB RAM
    Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller, 64MB
    Current resolution 1024×768
    Sound card: Realtek AC97 Audio
    Wireless adapter: Intel PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI
    currently XP Pro SP3

    I’m what I would call an advanced Windows user and also have a few years worth of developing computer vision applications and GUI’s under my belt, but I am a Linux greenhorn.

    I’m sick of many things about Windows, and would be pleased if there was a better alternative. I did quite a lot of research online before I chose Mint as my introduction to Linux, based on the fact that it promises a relatively simple installation process without manually adding endless bits and pieces. I even waited a few weeks for Mint LXDE, because I very much like the leanness and speed of it.

    I have been very excited when Mint LXDE finally was released, and did my very best to make it work in the laptop I need it for. So far, I have not had a lot success; not any, in fact. I can not only not install it; I can not even get the live CD to the point where it even shows the desktop. It simply displays a mint@mint terminal, and that’s that.

    Note that the very same CD works perfectly well on a different (desktop) computer, so there is nothing wrong with it, but I don’t need Linux on that machine. Also note that that desktop computer has lower RAM than the laptop on which it is not working, so RAM doesn’t seem to be the problem.

    I have asked for help here:

    http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=175&t=96898&p=554041#p554041

    The suggestion to hit the tab button while on the initial Grub screen at boot and add “resolution=1024×768” (my laptop’s resolution, yours may be different, of course) to the commands already pre-configured seemed promising, but did nothing for me.

    Desperate semi-random guess by me: Could it have anything to do with the dual monitor settings of the laptop? I am using dual monitors on XP.

    While the thread shows that I’m not the only one with the exact same problem, there is relatively little response to our help request in the thread, despite the request being made during RC, before the stable release. What does this mean? No one knows how to solve this? No one who knows is reading the thread in the LXDE support forum? No one cares?

    I am very surprised and puzzled. After everything I read about Mint, I honestly did not expect to get stuck so early on, before even installing it, and then find such little information on what to do to solve the problem. This may sound harsh, but a release that doesn’t get the live cd to show the desktop I wouldn’t exactly call “stable”, that’s a little misleading.

    Reading through the mint forums a bit more, it seems there are quite a few people who have hardware issues. Is Mint – due to limited resources – simply developed (and, maybe to an extent, tested) to work with the most common hardware combinations, consciously accepting that the other 20% will or at least may just not work? I could understand such a decision, but it would be fair to state that publically if it’s the case.

    On the other hand, I doubt my laptop is such a rare combination of hardware, since it’s off the shelf and no hardware has ever been changed since it left the shop.

    That’s all philosophy, of course. I need this laptop to work as a tool to be productive with, and I was hoping Mint could do that for me. I’m very happy to learn, but I can not spend days and days trying to make this work, especially with such little information about the problem being available.

    If I have to give up on Mint, it does not mean that Mint is bad; it just means that Mint is not (yet) what I am looking for, and I may have to try another distro that will install properly, or even stick with Windows for the time being, as much as it would hurt. A Windows that runs is better than a superior Linux that won’t install.

    So: If anyone out there has any ideas how to fix this, please, please speak up! I and the other people with the “no desktop, only terminal” problem will wholeheartedly thank you for any help.

    Cheers,

    Matt

  68. @jesse5567:

    Jesse, thanks kindly, for posting details.

    I haven’t used [free] much, but should. Haven’t learned to interpret those numbers, but it’s easy enough to find out what they mean in a minute or two. (Maybe in another five years or so there will be just one way to find out more about a command, and nothing will be lost by unifying.) I have been using System Monitor 2.28.2, or similar version[s], but it gives very little detail (at least, as I normally use it.)

    In my machine, once RAM becomes nearly full and Swap contains roughly half a GB, things really slow down.

    You said,
    “I guess that second gig of mem is really useful/necessary.
    (I’m sure the multi-core lends a hand too.)

    Hope this helps.”

    Completely agreed; it does help. I have had the feeling that an extra GB would make considerable difference.

    These days, it seems that even 8 GB is nothing rare or special in an up-to-date machine, hardly worth mentioning, although I would guess that many new machines typically have less.

    Appreciated!

    [nicabod] (=nb)
    Fwiw: 16 MB of RAM for the HP Vectra 386/16N cost just a little over $5,000 when that machine was new.

  69. Just wondering: How about Mint having [more] volunteer alpha testers? They would have to be emotionally mature and otherwise trustworthy if, as a group, they were to be manageable, I’d say. Perhaps full-time or “most-time” Minters have all they can handle, right now.

    One fairly-well-known software company has had volunteer alpha testers for probably 12 or 15 years; they are invited, and have NDAs to keep things shipshape. (NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement, a legal document.) They are not a FOSS company, though; source code is proprietary/secret.

    Clem has his hands full, right now, I’d guess. No hurry.

    Best regards,
    [nb]

  70. Again I want to mention that linux mint lxde is very good as I have full installed it on my old laptop. It is very fast.
    I have some minor problems which needs attention. Please let me know how to rectify this.
    1. The panel setting becomes default whenever I turn on the computer. I have selected system theme as the appearance but it comes as solid color whenever I turn this on.
    2. For some reason the sound always gets muted whenever i turn on the laptop.
    I did fresh and full install of linux mint lxde 12.
    Thanks
    Nellai

  71. @lugligino
    Thank you very much my friend,problem solved 🙂
    I folow the instructions from the link that you give me
    http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=86974
    from the user mcasassa (I thank him two very much).
    I just add this the configuration option :”vga=0x315 at the boot line before the “–” and i was able to boot then with 800×600 screen resolution.
    After that i installed Mint 12 LXDE without problem and then i install poulsbo drivers from this ppa–>ppa:gma500/psb-gfx.
    With smplayer now M

  72. The formatting of the command got messed up. It means out of a total of

    1943 meg ram (~2 gig),

    1845 meg was used with all the apps open.

    Then 1533 meg was shown as used with most of the apps closed. (I’m not sure why this number is so high.)

    After reboot only 962 meg of the 1943 was used. This shows approximate base usage.

    No swap was used though plenty was available.

  73. @lugligino
    Thank you very much my friend,problem solved 🙂
    I folow the instructions from the link that you give me
    http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=86974
    from the user mcasassa (I thanks him two very much).
    I just add this configuration option :”vga=0x315 at the boot line before the “–” and i was able to boot then with 800×600 screen resolution.
    After that i installed Mint 12 LXDE without problem and then i install poulsbo drivers from this ppa–>ppa:gma500/psb-gfx.
    With smplayer i have video support and now Mint 12 LXDE works very fine.
    ====================================================
    @Nicholas Bodley(101)
    Thank you !!!
    I think that all the community of Mint is very kindly and the users are very friendly.
    they are always give help to users that they ask for it.

  74. As a refugee from Gnome I welcome LXDE. I have used Gnome since Daryana but I had problems with Mint 11 and it is now too messy for me. I tried KDE but found it too slow (on my rig) and too bloated. LXDE loads quickly, it is easy to add only the software I use and has a nice clean easy to use interface.

  75. On ‘Lenovo S10-2’ under Linux Mint 12 LXDE could not be installed a propriatary WiFi driver. On the same netbook under Linux Mint 12 (Gnome edition) there were no problems with WiFi.

  76. Matt@112

    I’m not an LXDE fan really, but that shouldn’t be relevant here. I like to review all the newest posts from Mint. At any rate, I am sorry you are having such a hard time. You most certainly made a completely sensible choice by starting with Mint. I will also say that laptops can be funny. Also, it has nothing to do with your dual monitor setup on XP. Settings within another operating system are not recognized during the initial boot. They are completely unique to that operating system.

    Have you tried an older release of Mint, perhaps as old as Mint 9? I don’t want to stimulate any false hopes, because ideally, the newest operating systems lend the greatest hardware support. But your laptop might be within a critical generation that might make all the difference. In other words, as Linux moves forward, it strives to support a large portion of the newest hardware, while still working just fine on slightly dated hardware. There comes a time when an older machine has difficulty with Linux for lack of hardware support. It’s been deemed as obsolete to an extent. But another situation is this: Dell computers of a certain generation had certain Intel chips in some models that did not play well with the Linux Kernel that was compiled in Linux Mint 9. I can’t tell you why, but it was ugly. Completely unstable. There may have been a fix for it, but I hadn’t the time to fuss with it. But Linux Mint 10, being compiled with the slightly later kernel worked just fine. Again, I beg you not to ask why, as I simply have no answer. I ran into that debacle with some Dell Optiplex 170’s we have here at work.

    I don’t know how much research you have done, but the more exploring you do, the more you will find some people have stuck with older versions of Mint anyway, myself included. I still run Mint 9 at home, and it’s solid as a rock. For an older version, some people prefer 10. This is not to say there are many of those people, rather there are some, and it may become evident to you as you continue to research it.

    As you may have recognized by now, Mint and many other Linux distros are in a bit of a transition phase right now, what with the stunt that the Gnome developers pulled with Gnome Shell. To compound the issue a little further, there is some controversy in relation to some of the latest Linux kernels, and how efficient they use hardware, especially in laptops. I personally have chosen to wait it out. My machine works virtually flawless, and I have no need for the latest and greatest OS. I will also assure you that the community does care, but perhaps a bit speechless as to your situation. I know for myself, I don’t have a good answer for you other than trying out some older versions. That is not exactly a time saving process, but it might work.

    By the looks of your hardware, I will say that it has got some age on it, although you have a decent amount of memory. This is where I say an older version may just work. And let me assure you that these older versions are perfectly capable of providing you the tools for working, and they perform VERY well, especially if they boot correctly. Also, Mint 9 is in LTS phase and is still supported until 2013, which is more than we can say for all but the newest Mint. Perhaps that should tell you something. Let us know what happens if you would, and best wishes.

  77. Nice release – will grab it soon.

    Just wondering, what is the technical reason for no 64 bit version?

    Also, you have a Google+ presence. Why don’t you use it? You’ve not posted anything since last November? It can’t take more than 30 seconds if you’re just going to post links to the updates you provide here.

  78. @devs
    @nunol

    Hi,

    Referring to nunol’s comment on the Lisa LXDE RC post regarding screen scaling…

    I was trying to make it work on my Eeepc too and it didn’t work also. I checked around and found these links:

    http://www.x.org/archive/X11R7.5/doc/man/man1/xrandr.1.html
    http://man.he.net/man1/xrandr

    It seems that xrandr version 1.3 and 1.1 have the scale function, but version 1.2 doesn’t have it. I’m trying to get the 1.3 or 1.1 version to find out.

    All in all though, it’s a good release and friendly too. It really helps people adjust when I try to shift them from Windows.

    Thanks!!!

  79. I just installed Linux Mint 12 LXDE and I can’t manage to create symlinks with the GUI. Does anybody knows about this ?

  80. Matt@112
    I want to echo PB@121 comments. Mint 9, even the Gnome, lxde, or fluxbox should work on those specs. I know, ’cause I have what appear to be identical specs on an asus laptop. The dreaded 855gm chipset is largely to blame. I ran with compatibility mode at the GRUB screen to make the GUI run, but it means the battery cannot be read. I could not run lm 10, 11 at all.
    That said. I am happy as a pig in slop that lm 12 lxde works as-is off USB. My hard drive totally died, so it has been a personal challenge to get something to work.
    One othe option of last resort was that I got the new puppy Linux 5.3.1 slacko to work off USB. HOWEVER, the video was dubious with the 855gm. I got strange artifacts all over the screen from time to time. Like I said, I’m pleased with lm12 lxde.
    A timer can be used if compatibility is needed. Be prepared for the battery saying 200 hours of time. It really has no idea. Compatibility mode works because of the generic VESA driver.
    Are you sure you downloaded the final version, and not the RC?

  81. Good golly.

    I just started to read PB’s reply to Matt, and that made me go back to read Matt’s grief with an NEC laptop. NECs are not oddball junk, by any means. I also understand Matt’s disappointment with lack of effective help with his problems. A while back, I described “kernel death”, a state worse than kernel panic, in which even the Alt+SysRq letter-key commands were ignored.
    [DO NOT experiment with those commands, btw, on a system that you expect to use. They are for developers and a “last-ditch” use by techies.] Even reporting such a catastrophic failure (while running Mint, almost certain) brought no replies. (I’m not complaining.)

    Interesting that openSUSE (11.1) had a similar failure of keypad numeric input. Just possible that numeric keypad code is located in a place where it is easily corrupted by a rogue application. Having it fail again is discouraging.

    I’ll second Matt’s advice to try earlier distros. (distributions).
    It was helpful to be reminded of LTS.

    Mint seems to have been so well created that older versions are still significantly usable. I just might go back to 9 or 10, myself — although, if I get my numeric keypad working, I’ll stick with Katya (11). I do love its stability.

    I do plan to reinstall Katya after a careful backup.

    Query: Is there an app. (there seems to be) that saves a detailed configuration of the OS as installed, before the user starts to configure it beyond basics such as keymap (and maybe language)?

    I’d like to install, as one of the first apps., a monitor that does detailed hashes (MD5 should do) of all essential parts of the installation that should not/must not change, unless updates are done.

    Had I done so when I installed Katya, it would not surprise me to find numeric-keypad code has been corrupted, but fails gracefully.

    Another thing: For debugging, can somebody with some technical knowledge defeat the black boot screen? I have a hunch that it’s simply a solid-black opaque window that’s defined as to stay in front “on top” of anything else. I’m inagining editing one of the init scripts to comment out a line or a few that create the black screen.

    Yes, [dmesg] saves Good Stuff, but imho it’s even better to watch as things happen. I do, however, note high-res (microsecond?) time stamps for each new entry in some logs.

    At the same time, I understand Mint’s reasons for black-screen startup.

    Fwiw, my black screen has a few scan lines at the bottom that aren’t blanked, as if the blanking (at boot) were 1600 by 1197 or such.

    Med vennlig hilsen, (Mvh)
    [nb]
    who doesn’t know Norwegian (either kind), either.

  82. Answering my own query, somewhat:

    Called up Synaptic, Status=All; thinking of unwanted changes to software, fed [integrity] into the search box, and clicked on the Package title to alpha-sort found items. Was looking for something to include really early in a new install’n. to detect changes. Candidates seem to be [aide], which is Mintified (I assume! Big orange dot), and [Integrit], which is not Minty. Aide probably means learning regular expressions (Homework Not Yet Done), at least.

    [Integrit] is not Minty, but, to quote,

    “Integrit works by creating a database that is a snapshot of the most
    essential parts of the system. You put the database somewhere safe,
    and then later you can use it to make sure that no one has made any
    illicit modifications to your file system.”

    “Modifications” also just might be substandard code that writes outside its defined bounds.

    Back in 1960, the BMEWS DIP computer in Colo. Springs periodically (every quarter minute?) did a checksum on one big chunk of its executable code; next such check was on the next chunk.

    Minor note: in past months, when I [also] ran Katya, changing configurations that would survive rebooting became essentially impossible. Furthermore, I had an annoying (dead-key) keymap, and had to specify a non-dead-key keymap whenever I opened a new application, unless I expected to need dead keys. /Something/ is clobbering modules, drivers, or even the kernel (or config. files?). Harvard architecture has its advantages; that means strict read-only access to executables and fixed data.

    Also noted: [Eresi], which might be useful to developers (think ICE, but that’s not what it is).

    Considering Dvorak? Investigate Colemak.

    MfG,
    [nb]
    whose knowledge of German is woefully incomplete, and …
    who used a Z80 hardware ICE in the early 1980s (loved it!)

  83. We need a 64 bit version! 🙁

    It’s not about performance, it’s about technology. I can’t use my current tool chain to compile in 32 bits, and test my programs. I use Blender regularly for rendering and 32 bit OS limits are a constraint. Golang 1 is almost out and I want to develop in 64 bit. Anyway…

    Hope they decide to do 64 bit one day cause I love this distro.

  84. Of all the Linux Flavors, I lean towards Linux Mint LXDE the most for its ease of use and reliability out of the gate. I started out using Ubuntu, then Ubuntu went off the reservation in different directions so, I started looking for other alternatives and settled on Linux Mint which I’ve been using since version 8. THANK YOU for Linux Mint (just in case you get lost in the verbiage). Just upgraded to Linux Mint 12 LXDE from version 11. Thought I’d share my experience.

    First, I come from Windows and tech support (mostly PCs) so I was looking for something familiar. Just so’s you know where I’m coming from.

    Updated from a dual boot system: Win 64 and LM LXDE 11 on a Dell E5520 laptop.

    In upgrading from LM LXDE 11 to LM LXDE 12, followed the recommendation of backing up data and doing a clean install rather than attempting to upgrade the existing LXDE 11.

    So, I backed up all my data either to a USB (8 GB) and external drive.

    (EVERYTHING from the Home Folder)

    Having backed up my data, I then, created a text file of all my installed apps using the following command:

    sudo dpkg –get-selections > installed_apps_120313.txt (in the location of your choice)

    Next I checked using GParted to identify the Linux Partition (on
    my machine it sat right next to the Linux Swap Partition) and marked
    it as the install partition.

    After the install, I rebooted all the grub info was the same with the
    exception of it now saying LXDE 12 vs LXDE 11 and it started OK. So far no problems.

    Next, installed the latest Cinnamon, per:

    Webupd8:

    http://www.webupd8.org/2012/03/cinnamon-14-released-with-new-hot.html#more

    logged out and back in (with Cinnamon), via Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

    Selected Cinnamon from the Desktop Drop Down Menu (Login Screen)

    Cinnamon came right up.

    Next, install browsers and restore settings from backup.

    Reinstalled Google Chrome / Ran Chrome to create default folder (Just to be safe)

    Chrome – Copy /home/.config/Google-Chrome folder from backup to same location on new install

    Reinstalled Chromium / Ran Chromium to create default folder (Just to be safe)

    Chromium – Copy /home/.config/Chromium folder from backup to same location on new install

    Updated Firefox to latest version – sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install firefox Ran Firefox to create default folder (Just to be safe)

    Firefox – Copy /home/mozilla/firefox files & folders over from backup to same location on new install (this can get tricky if the profile folder name (Ex: 3h5i5kvn.default) changes on the new install. In that case, the “*.ini” files (extension.ini, etc) will need to change
    in order for firefox to find the associated addon files

    After that, I just reinstalled some of my favorite programs (some from debs in my Downloads folder)

    Once I was all done, everything just WORKED. So far happy as could be with the new version.

    Kudos to the team at Linux Mint for all the work.

    Took the lesser part of two days to complete this. One for the backups. One for the upgrade (with sleep and work in between).

    Thought I’d add this for anyone who’s maybe attempting it for the first time and to share my experience.

  85. Hi again,

    long story short, one chapter closed – but in a good way! Thanks to everyone who has thought about this, and especially many thanks to JohnYate in the forums who (as far as I can tell so far at least, it works for me) actually solved my problem in a way that was easy for me to do!

    Check out his post in my thread here if you want to know the details:

    http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=175&t=96898&sid=9a8792ac042cacad86c920092c500fa9&start=20

    So I can now move beyond this first unexpected hurdle, and dive into actually installing and using Mint 12 LXDE.

    Y A Y ! ! !

    I am really relieved that I don’t have to bin the idea of switching to Mint. From all I can tell from playing around with the live CD, I think I will find it was worth to work through these initial problems.

    Cheers,

    Matt

  86. PS: If it wouldn’t work now, am not sure if I’d rather try an older version of Mint, or wait for Mint 13…

    I am aware of the “transition phase” you mention, and while it is a tough time for developing teams, it also means that I have reason to be hopeful that future versions of Mint will be even better!

    I’m very thankful for the work and effort behind Mint, and wish Mint a bright future!

    Cheers,

    Matt

  87. Tried to install on an Acer Aspire One Netbook. Went OK until the window which asks you to take a picture appears. The bottom of this window is below the bottom of the screen and I could not resize or move the window. Please fix.

    I eventually got around the problem by pressing the Tab key followed by Enter.

    Also, there are other windows which are too large for a Netbook screen.

  88. This is great, and one or two glitches that I noticed with the RC have gone. Thanks team! I shall be using this as an alternative to Gnome from now on.

  89. hi there. can someone explaine to me, how to burn iso image of linux mint last version? i tried but with failed results. i also burn on usb and failed. when i start cd or usb in both case i have black screen with some text. i know it is error.

  90. Nice. Mint 12 Gnome 3 / Cinnamon and Mint 12 KDE were a bit sluggish on my older laptop. I’ve fallen back to Mint 11.

    Does anyone know if Mint 12 LXDE has the standard Mint sound preference menu (with input & output tabs), or just a standard up/down volume like on Lubuntu? I have USB headphones with a mic that wouldn’t work in LXDE under Lubuntu.

  91. A general comment about the unique Mint narrow vertical scroll [widget]:

    The color bar that shows what part of the file is being displayed is quite narrow. That’s nice, when one wants almost every x-axis pixel to show content.

    I was copy-editing some HTML, in which there was a consistent misspelling, “exchangable”. I set up Search [xchang] and Replace [xchange] in GEdit (Gedit) to substitute “exchangeable”, and kept replacing while just watching the main display. HTML source has lots of white space in places you might not expect. (That particular page layout wrapped non-obviously.)

    The scroll bar was too narrow to see with off-axis vision (especially with Eye-Ease [tm] green color, low contrast (I like it!)). When I saw “exchangeeeable”, I realized I’d wrapped a few times. Conventional “sliders” are wide enough to see, off-axis, or at least easier to notice.

    I might as well finish my comments about the design of the Mint scroller. I love the idea of minimizing effective width. The typical Mint green is close to the shade I remember of trademarked Eye-Ease
    pastel green paper of a few decades ago. It was for handwritten notes, and other uses which involve looking at paper for many hours a day; it’s less stressful on one’s vision. I remember it as letter-size ruled pads.

    I have configured window backgrounds to similar shades to make life easier, especially for extensive text editing, for what that’s worth.

    When I use the Mint scroller, it’s somewhat tricky to “attach” the mouse movement to the “handle”, especially if the scroll bar is at an edge that can be moved horizontally. Sometimes, I’ll resize instead of “attaching”.

    I haven’t experimented in detail, but it seems that there’s some “lost motion” (mechanical engineering term — “looseness”) between the “handle” and display movement; not sure. The position of the “handle” seems sometimes to be different from where a conventional slider would be; again, not sure.

    Nevertheless, I think it’s a nice piece of work, and some people must be delighted with the extra space it offers. (Anybody still trying to run 640 x 480? (800 x 600?))

    Many times, when I use it, I think of Edward Tufte, one of the world’s most-capable visual-display designers. He’s famous; wrote a classic book.

    Finally, it was rather-uncommonly kind and decent of Clem to provide a way to revert to traditional scroll bars.

    Thanks!
    [nb]
    who’s volunteer-copy-editing Web pages for
    Teenage Engineering, Stockholm; //amazing//
    OP-1 for music creation.

  92. Hi, Bill Ellison above writes that this version of Mint can be set up for single click to open items. I am new to Linux and trying to set up an old PC to be easy for my dad to use, and he is used to windows XP with web style single click to open internet etc (he can’t deal with double click, he ends up dragging icons etc).

    I cannot find a way to change to single click for the LXDE version of mint (have found instructions for Gnome). Please could someone assist as without this functionality I will need to find a different OS. Thank you!

  93. Very nice,
    Hope to help the team with 2 little problems
    On my Sony Vaio laptop, no buton to set brightness for
    lcd backlight, like in gnome edition.
    Updating opera in synaptic stoped, and after killing
    synaptic and restarting its crashing.
    All the best for the team !

  94. BEEN USING GNOME SHELL FOR 6 MONTHS NOW AND I CAN’T GET THROUGH IT. INSTALLED MATE AND CINNAMON ON FEDORA, AND MATE WINS.

    PLEASE TRY TO DECIDE FOR MATE AS DEFAULT INSTEAD OF CINNAMON. WHAT’S THE POINT OF GOING GNOME 3 LIBS?

  95. Running great on an AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor 3800+ with 1 GB RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE graphics card!

  96. SOLVED: Couldn’t enter numbers with NumLock ON
    Quick one: Enabling “mouse keys” (Mouse –> Accessibility) /disables/ numeric input. I would have expected “mouse keys” to function only with NumLock OFF; not so. (Had no need for “mouse keys”, btw.)

    Happiness chez moi!
    Best,
    [nb]
    who can now use Katya with no grief.

  97. Been trying out various forms of Mint on 2GHz 512MB machine – and struggling. Even LXDE has not performed well. But Lisa is great! After installing the additional nVidia drivers, I now get smaller clearer text and sharper graphics.

    With Samba pre-installed, I immediately found my other Windows computer, though I need to sort out access rights. Hopefully the reverse is also true, and I can share printers – at least until I get a network MFP.

    I’ve been trying to use Open Source cross-platform software as much as possible. I now hope to migrate most of my stuff from XP (which has served me pretty well) to LXDE.

    For those of us who want the features of the main version of Mint, but lower DE overheads, it would be great to have a meta package to load up the likes of LibreOffice, Banshee, and a few others, in the same way the main version has an “upgrade to DVD” meta-package

    One minor complaint – like others with older machines, my screen stays black for quite some time since my disk drives are pretty slow. I really appreciated the moving dots!

    Anyway, good work as always guys. Looking forward to a Minty future!

  98. @ Clem and @pauleberber:

    The installer limitation to 4.3GB can be removed by connecting a usb pen to the Eee. The disk size and pen size add up and the installer works. May work with a memory card but didn’t test that.

    As such the System requirements may go back to 3GB

  99. Mint 12 LXDE rocks! Mint 12 KDE doesn’t rock. LMKDE constantly freezes. Had hoped to use KDE for Razor-QT testing. c’est la. I’ll stick with Mint LXDE as a keeper for potential new primary OS and move on to the next test Linux distro.

  100. LinuxMint LXDE 12 solved all problems with LXDE 11 on old cheap Medion MIM2080 notebook (irqpoll and noacpitimer no longer needed).
    Great work!

  101. Loaded Mint 12 (Lisa) 64 bit ver. over the weekend on my Asus U56E laptop. No problems. Everything loaded and it is EXTREMELY fast.

  102. I am using Mint 12 KDE and am extremely happy with it. It runs on a Centrino due 2.2Ghz platform with 3GB RAM and is stable. It really performs well and I am just having fun with it.

    I also have Ubuntu 11.10 installed on an older laptop, a Pentium4M with just 1GB RAM but even that runs rather well.

    I had XP SP2 on the P4 as a dual-boot but decided not to enter through the hell of gates any longer. I also had Win7 Ultim8 on the newer laptop but got rid of it in no time, now using Mint as stated.

    It does help to have lots of RAM and I never had any system crashes except when I am running GoogleEarth together with many other apps. I think the culprit is my small hard drive that is about half full. It is a slower 5400rpm 147GB IDE that came with the Thinkpad.

    My only gripe is compatibility issues between LibreOffice and Excel as the latter sometimes doesn’t accept even basic formatting and formulas. It worked fine with me when I had a dual-boot with MS Office 2010 on the “Gatesville” side but my son does sneaky networking via a flsh stick and find troubles when opening up .xls or .xlsx files at his employer’s office.

  103. @Ultimate (136)
    Not yet; it will need work. Using Google Translate for that Web site, I see that it’s quite likely C.C. Maas sells DVDs of Mint, and plans to issue a Mint 13 DVD.

    HTH,
    [nb]

  104. (Clarification: C.C. Maas is not likely to do any development work; simply make DVDs available.) –nb

  105. Running LM12 LXDE from USB. It seems that Print to PDF only works intermittently and sometimes not at all. Since this is a crucial function for me, I guess I am going back to LM11 Gnome, which works perfectly all the time.

  106. It appears that I was in error (above) when I said that Print to PDF works intermittently. It does work, but VERY SLOWLY when dealing with large files. It actually took 16 MINUTES before my PDF appeared in Home folder (unlike LM11 which took a few seconds). So it appears that Print to PDF does work, but you may have to wait quite a while before PDF appears in Home folder (and I am running 8 gig RAM).

  107. wow. I’m very impressed so far and I’m a hardcore Ubuntu user. I think Mint just moved a few paces ahead with this one. And I love that you don’t have Unity shoved down your throat. Very smooth running system so far. the look and feel is so smooth and seamless.

  108. Translating AngelForget:

    A.F. was very complimentary. 🙂

    Google Translate gave a quite-bad translation; I was surprised.

    Better, but might still be inaccurate:

    Linux Mint LXDE is fantastic, very light, optimum for [a] netbook, and much better than Ubuntu.

    Please tell us if this is incorrect; I don’t know Italian well.

    Regards,
    [nb]

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