TITLE SHOULDA BEEN: Comparing Mint 12 with Oneiric 11.10 when trying to completely dump Unity.

[Stu]

On 02/10/2012 04:10 PM, Jim March wrote:
> Sigh.
>
> On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Jim March<1.jim.march at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> OK. So I hate Unity with a passion. Sorry. I'm not going to argue
>> about it, it just isn't my thing.
>>
>> I can deal with Gnome3 set to classic mode - while the menus are a bit
>> annoying plus there's that whole "hold ALT to modify the toolbar
>> stuff", there's some quite decent stability enhancements that make the
>> nuisance parts worth it.
>>
>> The question then is, do you want to go with Linux Mint 12 (which is
>> basically Ubuntu Oneiric tweaked to no-Unity plus restricted
>> codecs/players) or do you run "real Ubuntu Oneiric" and hand-tweak
>> Unity out yourself?
>>
>> Well the answer to me has come down to "tweak Oneiric".
>>
>> 1) Mint 12 just "felt unstable". Hybernate-to-disk didn't work (across
>> two machines) and other small glitches popped up here and there.
>> Nothing show-stopper but still, very obviously some unpolished bits.
>>
>> 2) The first time I installed Mint 12 (32bit) I got
>> whole-disk-encryption working via the scripts at:
>>
>> http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/344
>>
>> For reasons I don't understand at all, it stopped working. I tried it
>> in 32bit, failed, tried again in 64bit when I recently scored a more
>> potent machine (more memory for starters) and yet again, failure. This
>> forced me into the "encrypted home folder" plan which is quite
>> possibly where some of the glitches occurred - possibly including the
>> hibernation fail.
>>
>> A few days ago I backed up and reinstalled clean from an Oneiric 64bit
>> alternate install disk. I did the "anti-Unity" tweaks at:
>>
>> http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/things-to-tweak-after-installing-ubuntu.html
>>
>> ...to get "classic Gnome" running right, and they worked like a champ.
>> The only thing that went wrong was, on one of the reboots LightDM
>> failed completely and dumped me to a command prompt. But doing:
>>
>> sudo apt-get install gdm
>>
>> ...and picking the GDM startup manager fixed that. (The instructions
>> warn of problems with LightDM and sure enough, he's not kidding! I
>> ignored that and it bit me in the butt.)
>>
>> I now have fastest, most stable full-on setup I've ever run. It starts
>> up without Compiz but doing an ALT-F2 and "compiz --replace" gives me
>> the eye candy when I want it. Cool.
>>
>> Starting with real Ubuntu you need to do the usual tweaks (medibuntu,
>> load w32codecs or w64codecs, libdvdcss, flash player, extra gstreamer
>> stuff, etc. but that's not a big deal.
>>
>> Random thoughts:
>>
>> For my needs, the breakover point at which 64bit is a good idea is
>> 3gigs RAM. I need to run WinXP virtualized (VirtualBox for now but
>> since my latest lappy has hardware virt support in the CPU I'll switch
>> soon). 64bit code is bulkier so with 2gigs RAM and 768megs assigned to
>> the XP machine, RAM gets tight. With 32bit code, memory usage in more
>> efficient. At 3gigs of real RAM I can run 64bit and assign 1gig to the
>> XP VM with no problems.
>>
>> 64bit still has "glitches". For example, to get Adobe Flash going you
>> end up adding some 32bit libraries. Which is fine until you load
>> Google Chrome, at which point it wants the 64bit version of said
>> libraries. Ooops. This is solvable: the solution is to install the
>> google .deb file at the command line:
>>
>> sudo dpkg -i googlesupplieddebname.deb (after CDing into the dir with
>> the .deb file)
>>
>> ...and watch for what it fails on. Load synaptic if you haven't already:
>>
>> sudo apt-get install synaptic
>>
>> ...and use that to specifically load the 64bit versions of the
>> libraries it's choking on. (Leave the 32bit versions in there so flash
>> still works.)
>>
>> That said, the "64bit glitchies" are extremely minor and no trouble
>> for anybody slightly Linux-experienced to cope with. For total Linux
>> newbies OR those with 2gigs or less RAM I'm still recommending 32bit
>> and I suspect Precise won't change that.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
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I have to agree. I've been a Mint fan since ver.7, and 12 is something 
of a letdown. I'm sticking with Mint 11 on my main machine, and trying 
something new on my others.