Mint 18

Discussion in 'GNU/Linux' started by Wild Trapper, Sep 1, 2016.


  1. Wild Trapper

    Wild Trapper Pirate Biker

    About 2 weeks ago we had a bad storm here. Lightening took out our cordless phone base, 3 garage door openers and something in my motherboard on my main desktop. It also blew the telephone company's modem up inside.

    Fixing the modem was the phone company's job. The rest was up to me.

    The phones we bought in town.

    I ordered the controller cards for the garage door openers from Amazon, they should have came in two days. took five, took me about an hour to replace them.

    The computer was another story. First I bought a new one from Micro Center. It had win 10 on it. Didn't make me very happy when I couldn't seem to get Mint 17 or 18 to load in it for testing. 17 wouldn't boot, 18 gave an error. I took it back, bought a motherboard and processor along with a wireless card for the old computer. Got that all installed and working with the old HDD - however, some things didn't work, like sound out anywhere - went over all the cables etc., to see what was causing this. Even emailed a friend to see if he could tell me anything. Nada. His guess was that Linux didn't support some drivers in sound cards. Was not even using a sound card other than the MB, worked with the old MB.

    The new motherboard took DDR4 ram, the old one took DDR3 ram, so I had to get that also, failed to mention that above. Well the other night, I got to wondering if the problem with no sound and another issue with the front USB ports might have something to do with the OS in the new hardware. So I loaded Mint 18 in for testing, sound worked, so I upgraded to Mint 18 even though I was happy with 17 and would have like to keep it, I wiped it as sound didn't work with it using the new hardware.

    Anyone else have similar issues with windows 10 or the new hardware?

    Looks like I'll be either buying or building a strictly Linux box next time I need a computer. Did find a few sources for Linux computers online. One such computer is almost the exact same build as mine turned out to be, except the one I found has a 450W PS whereas mine has a 350W.
     
  2. Altoidfishfins

    Altoidfishfins Monkey+++ Site Supporter+

    Don't have too much input other than to say that I just upgraded to Mint 18 last week and have no issues on my desktop. But the MBoard is only about a year old and so it's a fairly recent design. Linux Mint just seems to get better with each new version, unlike AHEM, OTHER operating systems, one in particular which shall remain nameless. Not familiar with Apple so can't make a judgment there.

    IN the past I've preferred Linux/nameless dual boot, but when I tried to install nameless 10, it consistently caused problems with the dual boot issue, so now Mint is the only opsys I use. Nameless 7 wasn't too bad. But it will eventually run out of support as Microbarf pushes it's latest products, which in my non-expert opinion are junk.

    I have 2 older, slower computers that will not run Mint 18 without frequent crashes - too unstable. Mint 17.3 works just fine. These are some second hand mini-desktops that I purchased locally for a song with the Intel Atom processor. The graphics suck. Get what you pay for but they're just toys anyway.
     
    sec_monkey, Brokor and Wild Trapper like this.
  3. Wild Trapper

    Wild Trapper Pirate Biker

    My Dell laptop came with win 7. I installed as a duel boot mint 17.(1?), I think, didn't want to mess up a good thing by attempting to upgrade it to a newer version as it is working fine the way it is and I rarely use it more than a couple times a week. I'll boot in windows only to make a powerpoint occasionally. I never use windows to go online unless it is for some freeware software. Actually have an older win xp netbook with duel boot to Mint 17 as well, but it is 32 bit and while it works for air travel, I hate air travel so, that gets ignored in favor of the Dell which is newer, faster, and 64 bit.

    Mint 18 didn't seem like much of a change from 17 for me except for Firefox changes that and VLC when you maximize a video, it doesn't make it bigger. Might be a setting to do that, but kind of annoying when you try to max a video and it just shows up as a small centered thing, not enlarged at all.
     
  4. Brokor

    Brokor Live Free or Cry Moderator Site Supporter+++ Founding Member

    If you run a GeForce video card, install the Nvidia Suite from the software manager utility in Mint. I've found it to be the best way to handle any issues with upgrades. I am not sure if it's VLC in this case.
     
    Wild Trapper likes this.
  5. Wild Trapper

    Wild Trapper Pirate Biker

    I have only the MBoard and the wireless card installed, no sound card or video card. So, I may have to look into the setting in VLC, but the Mint video player, that comes packaged with the install, does go full screen when maxed, so I'll probably just switch to that. Have not yet checked to see if it handles the subs (.srt) files or not as I just about have to wear headphones to hear anyway. Hearing impaired.

    This is like only the second day using the upgrade to Mint 18, so, many new things yet to be discovered.
     
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  6. Brokor

    Brokor Live Free or Cry Moderator Site Supporter+++ Founding Member

    Makes sense to me. I was thinking while I typed, "I bet he has an on-board and no GPU card"... Some players work great with a GPU, and VLC is one of them, perhaps the best of all time. Good luck!
     
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