Linux Mint

Linux Mint 15 – Complete Failure

Posted by Jason O'Connell on July 22, 2013
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I’ve struggled with some shit in my day but I have officially thrown in the hat when it comes to installing Linux Mint 15. First off, it won’t boot. Not just on my physical desktop, but even as a virtual system. I wasted so much of my time trying to track down the issues. First I thought UNetbootin was to blame, so I switched apps that write .iso’s to USB. Still no go. I finally discovered the issue on my desktop. I have a Intel i3 Ivy Bridge CPU with Intel HD graphics. The loader was using some invalid mode my monitor couldn’t support so after the boot my screen went and stayed blank until I found a trick. i915.modeline=0. That’s great you can install Linux Mint, hurray, but guess what. The damn thing still won’t boot and using i915.modeline=0 in GRUB won’t fix it. Screw it I give up trying to make it work right as dual-boot, so I’ll run it in a virtual machine. WRONG. The damn thing STILL WON’T BOOT.

Put the brakes on. This is a distro targeted at end users. Those end users have desktop systems, laptops, lots of different hardware to support right? So whats the issue here Linux Mint? Is my hardware really that unique? Every other distro boots and runs great, but it so happens the top ranked distro on distrowatch is more hassle than its worth on my hardware – or virtualized hardware for that matter.

I’m back to the drawing board. Since I primarily use CentOS or Debian (now I know why..), I’m going to use one of them as my desktop. Its been a long time since I’ve fired up Debian so I’m thinking I’ll be investing more time in that relationship, so stay tuned.

Replacing Windows with Linux Mint – Is it time to make the switch?

Posted by Jason O'Connell on July 21, 2013
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For many years now distrowatch has been my go-to for keeping up to date with Linux distributions. Each time I visit I find a new distribution that has different goals. For example, some distros try to include only software that is free, or only released under a certain license type. Others aim for minimalism, only including enough software to boot and provide a shell. You can also drill down and figure out exactly what version of a software package comes pre-installed. One other neat thing distrowatch does is keep a ‘Hit Page Ranking’ for all distributions. This essentially gives you an idea of a distro’s popularity among the community.

Dominating that Hit Page Ranking for a long time now is a distro called ‘Linux Mint‘. I usually stick to what I know best – RHEL, CentOS, and Debian. But the goals of Linux Mint are much different than what someone wanting to deploy an enterprise class server would want. Linux Mint is aimed providing the best desktop experience, one that can replace a Windows based system. It aims to be comfortable, easy to use, and ‘just work’ as you come to expect with Windows based systems. All of the multimedia codecs you might spend extra time installing on other Linux based distributions are already there with Linux Mint.

So just how useable is it?

I’ve been a Linux sysadmin for over 13 years and have worked in IT for over 18 and I have a confession to make. I use a Windows based desktop and always have. Why you ask? Becuase when I need to open that Word doc or edit an Excel spreadsheet, I know that Windows is going to work (well, 90% of the time..). When I need to experiment with a new piece of software I know that the way I download / install / and run it is going to work exactly the same way for me as it is a co-worker. In otherwords, I don’t have time to play games fiddling with missing packages, dependencies, or permissions. I have a job to do supporting Unix and Linux servers in an enterprise that require 99.99% uptime and as ironic as it sounds I do that with Windows.

I decided that really no longer fits with my philosophy. Microsoft is evil, proprietary, and failing. Linux is taking over everything including the Android smartphone market. I own, use, and love my Linux based Chromebook. Its time to eat my own dog food and replace Windows on my desktop for good.

If the goals of Linux Mint are to be a true desktop replacement then I should have no trouble switching to it from a Windows based system. I’m going to take the challenge and spend a full month using only Linux Mint. Just to be safe I’m going to leave Windows installed on my dual-boot system, but it won’t be the default. I’ll be providing updates as I go – things that an everyday Windows user would try to do and how those tasks can be accomplished in Mint, alternative software choices for Linux, and general impressions and observations – from a Linux sysadmin standpoint.

Are you an ex Windows user? What is your desktop distribution and why? When did you make the switch? Leave your comments and stay tuned for updates on my experiment.