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Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

arstechnica.com

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Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#61

Post by sampo »

pan69 wrote: post #46
oakhaven wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about {x,k,l}ubuntu?

Since the Ubuntu/Unity/Gnome3 disaster happened I switched to XUbuntu and I have been extremely happy with it. Xfce with XUbuntu is very much like the olden days of Ubuntu/Gnome2. The only real issue with XUbuntu is the lack of window resize control. The window borders are a single pixel wide and it can be extremely frustrating to resize a window. The only way to reasonably get it done is by using the either one of t…

> to resize a window

Also alt + mouse right button works for resizing.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#62

Post by xorcist »

lingben wrote: post #53
xorcist wrote: post #50

Last time I looked on Mint there was no support for upgrading the system. It doesn't matter how easy installs are, I'm not going to tell my mother-in-law to reinstall twice per year. This review consists of someone who clicks through an installation and tell what it looks like. That's not very interesting. You only install once, and colors are configurable, if you care about those things. Supported hardware must work…

Not sure what you mean by 'support'. There is an extremely easy and stable upgrade process as well as guides, forum help, etc. However, it isn't necessary to upgrade frequently if you go on the LTS track. As for 'reinstalling twice per year' again, not sure where you're getting this from. Linux mint 17.3 is supported until April 2019. That's almost 3 and a half years before you need to upgrade. http://linux.wikia.com…

Whatever "support" means for an open source system, but is it recommended and is it well tested? The official documentation said "don't upgrade, do a clean install". That alone made me not consider it at the time.

Three and a half years of support is impressive for a community project and I wonder how they manage. However that matters little for a consumer operating system if you can only do n+1 upgrades anyway. What matters is that upgrades are automated and well tested.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#63

Post by drdaeman »

Not for many laptops as GTK doesn't handle non-integer scaling well, so it doesn't really support MidPPI-screens. It can work normally and work for HiPPI with x2 scaling, and that's it.

I'm unaware of any simple way to set larger widgets - I think GNOME had some knobs but in their quest to "simplify" UIs they were removed long time ago.

There are no theme-based workarounds in Mint (i.e. theme with larger widgets), either. Their theming team suggest if one's got a 13" FullHD screen they've just got to have small widgets (https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/issues/90)

Qt has somewhat better support for such displays, but I think the last Mint KDE release is 17.2.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#65

Post by scurvy »

sampo wrote: post #60
xorcist wrote: post #50

Last time I looked on Mint there was no support for upgrading the system. It doesn't matter how easy installs are, I'm not going to tell my mother-in-law to reinstall twice per year. This review consists of someone who clicks through an installation and tell what it looks like. That's not very interesting. You only install once, and colors are configurable, if you care about those things. Supported hardware must work…

> Last time I looked on Mint there was no support for upgrading the system. Some years ago, the recommended way to upgrade Mint was indeed to do a full reinstall [1]. For a couple past years, there has been a simpler way, involving a bit of command line acrobatics [2]. Still not good for your mother-in-law. Apparently [3] only in 2015 Mint finally started to have the "normal" way, where you just click on an upgrade b…

I've smoked a few installs doing the acrobatics, and I'd consider myself a pretty decent Linux admin. This stuff is very much still in the 1% nerd camp.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#66

Post by xorcist »

sampo wrote: post #60
xorcist wrote: post #50

Last time I looked on Mint there was no support for upgrading the system. It doesn't matter how easy installs are, I'm not going to tell my mother-in-law to reinstall twice per year. This review consists of someone who clicks through an installation and tell what it looks like. That's not very interesting. You only install once, and colors are configurable, if you care about those things. Supported hardware must work…

> Last time I looked on Mint there was no support for upgrading the system. Some years ago, the recommended way to upgrade Mint was indeed to do a full reinstall [1]. For a couple past years, there has been a simpler way, involving a bit of command line acrobatics [2]. Still not good for your mother-in-law. Apparently [3] only in 2015 Mint finally started to have the "normal" way, where you just click on an upgrade b…

Weird indeed!

> Level 4 and 5 updates are not recommended unless they bring solutions to issues you're facing

What's a level 4 update? And how do I know if it solves an issue I'm facing? I haven't got the faintest idea what they are talking about and I dare say I'm an experienced user otherwise. What could my in-laws possibly do with that information?

> Upgrade for a reason

> "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it".

So don't upgrade it is. Will then bugs continue to be fixed to my system? Will there be timely security fixes? As an end user, I only want things not to break.

> Should you decide to upgrade to 17.2's recommended kernel you can do so

So not only are you encouraged not to upgrade, but to mix kernel versions as well. Not helpful. Their users must run an awful lot of combinations.

I think I'll pass, again. But thanks for digging this up! It does indeed look like the project is moving forward, and looks a lot improved. There is still room for an easy-to-use Debian for end users, which Ubuntu managed to be for a number of years.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#67

Post by SFjulie1 »

I migrated from mint/ubuntu/debian insanity to FreeBSD for working and windows to play and share obediently my private data with criminals (government, marketing people, companies and VC included).

I stopped fixing stuff because it works, and since then I am happily bored again doing the minimum work expected from me without stress. Some stuff I don't have anymore (like weired chars in the console). But I never thought of it as a good idea in the first place I want ";" to be ";" not a greek question mark.

Bye bye linux(es). You are becoming an unusable bloatware.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#68

Post by tomjakubowski »

collyw wrote: post #51
twic wrote: post #36

I've been out of the desktop Linux world for a while. How does Arch compare to Mint? I rather like Arch's rolling release model, but Mint sounds like a seriously polished piece of work.

Mint also has a rolling release based on Debian. I looked at Arch but the install looked difficult, so I ended up on Manjaro. Arch based with an easy to use installer and package manager. Works great on the laptop I am currently typing on, but its a bit crashy on my Gigabyte brix (though Mint had problems on that box as well).

> Arch based with an easy to use installer and package manager.

What's different about Manjaro's package manager? Is it a porcelain for pacman?

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#69

Post by wtbob »

codezero wrote: post #41
wtbob wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True enough; I edited my comment to indicate that I mean all those features at once.

mostly unrelated – but I wouldn't have known/cared about POSIX compliance until I ran into it: On OS X, getopt is POSIX compliant. GNU utilities tend not to enforce POSIX in getopt, as a result you can do things like ls .txt -la On a POSIX complaint system, the optional arguments must come before any file arguments. This is super annoying to me, after having been using Linux for 15 years :) Personally, I've been supe…

> Personally, I've been super happy with OS X for all purposes except servers, but to each their own, and that's where Linux (and the BSDs) shine – giving you access under the hood, which is awesome, but some of us just want the car to drive itself, so to speak.

I can understand that, but I just can't live without a tiling window manager. Every time I have to use a UI with movable windows I feel old-fashioned and clumsy. If you think about, tiling is the interface folks are used to with their phones and tablets already.

There's good UI research potential in discovering the ideal ways to indicate how to split, move &c. windows in a tiling WM.

Re: Mint 17.3 may be the best Linux desktop distro yet

#70

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

atmosx wrote: post #57
VeilEm wrote: post #12

Reading this post I am reminded just how much more work it is to have a functional linux desktop that ends up running worse than a Mac or windows box. More for less. Less battery life, less games, less driver support. Old hardware. I've been running OS X for many years now but I think in the future I see myself going back to windows and using docker toolbox to get an easy to start and maintain linux development envir…

Tools? It took 2-3 hours of reading howtows, tweaking and experimenting before getting Win8 in a "workable" state on a computer without touchscreen. Its like Linux backwards: to make the system work have to go backwards, disable every single "new" feature! If you wanna automate something, good luck, with that... Are you going to launch a VM to run a ruby or py script??? Docker support came last to windows and many ni…

Last time I installed linux from scratch (ubuntu 13.10), which was about two years ago, it took me an entire day to figure out how to get a screen resolution that didn't immediately give me a headache, and the only way I fixed the issue of "trying to display a particular font crashes the entire x server" was to upgrade to 14.04.
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