Posted on 12/11/2019 3:05:26 PM PST by CatOwner
Any help here is probably a good idea.
“Skip Feren and go with Linux Mint 19.1”
Myself and a couple others here just went through this with a lot of work. Mint cinnamon version 18.3 is the best of them all so far. 19.x is having some issues with hardware.
Seriously, Please save yourself a LOT of problems and go straight to Mint cinnamon 18.3 then upgrade the kernel with the update manager. It WILL be the most stable and most like Win 7. Mint is the best but the 19.x and above is having hardware and freezing issues.
Myself and a couple others have been through all this before and it cost us a lot of time and trouble with the others. In fact I just gave the newest Ubuntu a shot and it doesn’t work with some hardware either. The Ubuntu support forum is busy busy with complaints and problems. The mint board is very very slow, and what complaints are there are about version 19.2
I have shared the correct most stable easiest to use version once before to the OP. To disregard is going to cause them a lot of extra work and trouble and will leave a bad impression of linux. :)
I like the MX series, on number 19 now.
What you want is an XFCE desktop environment, and you can get that with lots of different linux distros.
Enjoy.
Mint cinnamon is the best as you say, but the 19.2 is having issues. 18.3 and update the kernel is the way to go.
I am using that now.
.
And I have that KVM switch to alternate with my W7 box.
For a user coming from Win 7 the mint cinnamon gnome desktop is the most comfortable in feel and features right off the bat. And the bundled software application packages are fantastic for replacing win 7 packages.
If you want it to look like Windows 7 you can still get a free Windows 10 upgrade. Go to the Microsoft website, search for download windows 10. Start the install and tell it you want to upgrade an existing system. You then download it and launch it. It’s free if you are upgrading an existing windows installation (even Windows XP). If you want a clean install then you need to buy a license, otherwise it just works for free.
There is the 5 or 6 hours of cycling through every update from 2016 to now, but when it’s done it’s done and free and it self activates.
I’m pretty sure the idea is to get away from Microsoft Windows, especially Win 10... :)
After installing with your preferences go to the update manager in the bottom right and run an update three times. The first time will be an update for the update manager it’s self. the second will update all the packages, applications, and needed stuff for your particular machine. In the third update green check just the “kernel update”. Should be good to go.
https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=246
I agree; Linux Mint 18.3 is solid. So is 18.1. Best OS I’ve ever run. Win 7 was the best Windoze OS.
Just takes a minute to get used to how to load different programs using GUI through “Software Manager”. Easy peasy once done though. Using the terminal is even easy using a simple cut and paste. Don’t even have to know the computer language/code.
Interesting. My 19.2 computers are doing fine, but here's a list of problems that other people have had:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/bugs.html
I expect that updates will quickly fix most of those. I should say that for someone accustomed to having problems with Windows updates, Mint updates will come as a very pleasant surprise.
Yep, And windows 7 features like drag and drop, right click menus, etc. are all the same. I like using the synaptic package manager it also comes with. It goes and locates application downloads that are not even in the official repository for you if you have the correct name of the application. Isn’t that cool though how linux first checks to see if you are going to need any additional dependencies for an application and then adds these to the download as a packaged download? Cool stuff there... So many times Windows caused me to do two days of investigative research to find the correct additional dependencies when trying to figure out why a program I downloaded would not work. :)
I just loaded that to a VM yesterday. Not bad, although it choked on updates (like 128 of them!). A reboot and 2nd try and all is good.
The main complaint with 19.2 is with hardware like printers/scanners and some internal hardware depending on PC make, etc. Can’t even get it to “see” some of these. And I have personally had experiences with it freezing up on some machines. It is based on Ubuntu 18.04 and apparently it is having some of the same issues also from what I have been reading. I just loaded Ubuntu 18.04 myself to try it and had issues with it recognizing some of my hardware. Something is wrong when within one year they have gone from 19.0, 19.1, 19.2, and just now 19.3. :)
Got it.
:)
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