Posted on 12/11/2019 3:05:26 PM PST by CatOwner
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.
Gnome, really? It has been a long time since I was on 7, but I thought xfce was a closer match. Thanks for the clarification. :)
Zorin was always the goto for windows 7 feel, and I see they offer both gnome and xfce....
Been thinking of you today. Saw this thread and realized it was the perfect opportunity to catch you up on the Linux Mint 19.1 install you and I did on my HP laptop.
As you know, it's been freezing up on videos. For that reason, I've hardly been using it at all, but today I let it boot up, and the first thing I saw was a bunch of available updates. I installed all the updates, and whaddya know. It hasn't frozen up on me all day (yippee!).
I hope I didn't just jinx it by talking about it, but if it does freeze, I'll let you know right away.
Thank you so much for all of your help.
CatOwner, Linux Mint looks and behaves so much like Windows 7 you'll hardly notice the difference.
Lol, yep, they based the cinnamon desktop capabilities on gnome from what I understand. The graphics look just about the same as xfce but it has more additional features. Xfce is a bit lighter if your resources are on the shy side though.
I’ll second the suggestions of Mint or MX Linux. I’d also toss KDE Neon into the mix. I have personally used all 3, and have 2 of them on systems now.
Well what do you know about that my friend! Good, right on! Always my privilege Sir... :)
I was going to catch up with you also because that has been bugging me. If it saw that you needed updating then it probably ran a check to fix it’s self as linux does.
Please use the heck out of it and let me know if you have any more problems! I need to know for my knowledge base. :)
Check this out, remember your customization curiosity? Go to menu/system settings/themes/”add/remove”, then refresh your cache in the “add/remove window. It will load you a bunch of optional graphic skin/theme packages you can download and switch out as you like to change your desktop look. There are some pretty cool ones in there you might like. :)
Good to hear from you! Thank you for the great news Sir!
I like Mint 17.3 better than 19... Haven’t tried any of the 18s. Tried many linux distributions before Mint and didn’t like the steep learning curve. Mint was a good bridge from Windows 7 to linux... IMHO anyway.
“I like Mint 17.3 better than 19... Haven’t tried any of the 18s. Tried many linux distributions before Mint and didn’t like the steep learning curve. Mint was a good bridge from Windows 7 to linux... IMHO anyway.”
Then you would like the 18.3. It is also very stable and all GUI never needing the command line unless you are doing something much more complicated like setting up your own VPN server, but it has some cool additional features. I would compare it to the Windows 7 of linux and mint.
With microsoft, win 7 was where they should have just stopped, it was about as good and stable as they were going to get. Things started to go downhill after that. This is about where 18.3 is in the mint and linux world right now. :)
I’ll have to give 18.3 a try.... I’m thinking of getting a new SSD anyway. Agree on Win 7 being the best. I have a laptop and a tablet with 8.1 and I hate them.
BFL
I have installed Zorin on a few older machines and everyone has been thrilled with it so far.
What about hardware drivers?
My Alienware is snitty.
That’s why I cannot “downgrade” to 7 Ultimate.
:(
Might want to go grab the 18.3 file download while you can and save it. I noticed some of the mirror sites are starting to 404 on the 18.3 download. :)
Thanks! Had just finished doing that ten minutes before I saw your suggestion. No problem on the Univ. of Oklahoma mirror.
That's where I download it from myself yesterday evening.
I can't speak for 19.2 (downloaded but not installed), but 18.3 had a large number of updates waiting once installed. For someone fairly new to Linux, this made me a bit uneasy about going with 18.3. As it is, I installed the default selected options (levels 1 & 2), but other than the level 4 kernal update that I installed, I still see quite a few level 3 and 4 updates sitting there.
I just went to look for that as I'd not heard of it before and was interested. Looks like one has to pay to download it? I cannot find a free link...
Lol, yep. I explained why in my PM this morning, but to share again with Legend... 18.3 is like 3 years old, so in the meantime the ISO, packages, and applications have been updated all along since the distro was boxed as a download package. It now has a lot to catch up on to be up to current date the first time you update it after installing.
After the first time it will only be the very few occasional updates. But that first one is huge to truly bring it 3 years up to date. They can’t really update all the archived mirror downloads out there, it would be impractical, so it has to catch up on all that after it is installed. :)
You can go into “edit/update policy” in the update manager and set it to “just keep my computer safe” and it will then only give you the critical updates. :)
I am fairly sure the U-OK mirror is clean, I have my first original download from the “linux freedom” mirror and it is clean and stable. But unfortunately they have dropped the 18.3 download.
Yeah.. The checksum and authentication are good.
It actually sounds decent, looks like it is basically based on mint cinnamon with a few additional packages and some pre-configured custom graphics desktop options. That is the cool thing about cinnamon too. It has an interface to go use the “cinnamon spices” repository. And you can make it look exactly like Win XP, Win 7, Win 10, Or MAC like Zorin. Bet any of these custom cinnamon spices would work on Zorin also! But I had never heard of this, I will have to give it an extensive test run for awhile to see how it flies! Thanks!
https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/themes
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