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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Making the move to Linux Mint
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5146 |
My main workhorse is a Wind10 PC, well over 10 years old. Originally a Windows 7 machine, did the upgrade several years ago to Win10, never had a OS reinstall. Hardware wise, its fine, and runs more than fast enough for my works and some gaming. Its not Win11 compatible. Yes there are work arounds, so I could install Win11 if I wanted to, but after reading about the gotcha's with Win11, I'm not so sure I want to. One reason I've stuck with this PC is I use Dreamweaver CS3, all day every day. I bought CS3, its a legit copy, but Adobe have shut down the registration/activation servers, so I cant reinstall it. I have however recently acquired a copy of CS5. Its different from CS3, but still usable, unlike the current Dreamweaver versions which need a monthly licence payment. CS5 uses a different activation process than CS3, and I can install it on a new PC. I also use Paint Shop Pro 7, a few CAD programs, some BASIC IDE's, Arduino IDE, Libra Office, Thunderbird for email, Notepad++, Steam for games, Minecraft, etc. I set up a test copy of Linux Mint on a spare PC, and managed to get all these applications running, some under Wine. This includes CS5. So, going out today to grab a second SSD for my main work station. I'll install Linux Mint on it, all my software, and use the PC's bios screen to switch back to Windows 10 when I need to. Lets see how this goes. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| Andy-g0poy Regular Member  Joined: 07/03/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 81 |
You should be able to set the grub bootloader to offer you a menu to select your preferred OS to boot from. In your case tell it to boot into windows by default, or select mint from the menu. You usually get a 10 second window where you can select the os required before it boots the default you have selected. Saves faffing about with the bios. Andy |
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| pwillard Guru  Joined: 07/06/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 321 |
Many of those will run in MINT under WINE. |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5146 |
OK a progress update. Also, I see Grogster is going through the same deal, migrating to Linux Mint, see his thread. OK, installed a new 512Gig SSD, downloaded Linux Mint 22.2, put it on a bootable USB, and installed it on the PC. First thing to do was get it working on both monitors. I run a NVidia GeoForce 660 Ti card with dual monitors connected, I need to extra desktop space. The default Linux NVidia driver doesn't support two monitors, so needed to install the correct drivers. This didn't work, the install program never completed, always exited with a error, no matter how I tried, app or terminal. Some late night research and it seams I'm not the only one, looks like there is a issue with Mint 22.2 and NVidia drivers. The solution, install Mint 22.1 instead. Did that, fixed it, and I now have both monitors working. Next I installed a few daily driver apps. Wine to run Windows stuff, then Notepad++, Paint Shop Pro 7, BitWarden. Mapped a couple network drives to my office server and cloud server. Easy. Next it was Dreamweavers CS5's turn. This is a bit more complicated, as I need to make sure Dreamweaver cant contact the now non existant activation servers, so edited the hosts file, then installed CS5. CS5 is up and running, but finding it a little sluggish compared to running on Windows. I'll do some research and see if this is a Wine configuration issue, hope so, it would be a deal breaker is I cant use CS5 as I expect to. Its my main tool of the trade, as it were. To switch between Windows and Linux, I've gone into Bios and changed the setting that displays a boot options menu on startup for 5 seconds. I hit F11, then select the dive to boot from, and it goes from there. If I dont do anything, it boots to the Linux SSD Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| tgerbic Regular Member Joined: 25/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 82 |
Just my opinion but when you get time, move the OS launching to grub and set the timing to 10 or more seconds. This will give you some time to think about which to load if you are a bit busy. You can also just hit a down arrow and grub will stop and wait for you to pick something and hit enter. There is the regular WINE support package that is generally found in most linux OS repositories. Then there is the better supported version found in the WINE-HQ repositories. I would go for the WINE-HQ install for better support. WINE has the ability to select the Windows version support that runs with the app launched. In some cases it helps to pick a lower version of Windows to get better support or better performance. Also you might need to update or install "code". This picks up updates to the Visual Studio Code. Install from the Microsoft site or use a flatpack. I pick it up from the Microsoft site. The standard nVidia driver is called Nouveau and is for basic support but is open source. It works and is the fallback should something happen with the proprietary drivers. Problem is that the nVidia, with Cuda, drivers are way faster. Nouveau drivers on a modest machine cannot keep up with OBS or other video editors, for example. Just switching to the nVidia proprietary driver will speed it up a bit. Running the Cuda drivers will give a real speed boost. It is like night and day. If graphics performance is a problem with Dreamweaver, switching to Cuda drivers might help. Just some things to think about. |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5146 |
OK another nights testing, not looking good for Linux Mint so far. Its just sluggish. Played around with a bunch of settings for Dreamweaver / wine, none are making any difference. I might try the Cuda drivers tgerbic, see if that makes any difference, but I suspect the issue is just trying to run a high end windows program like Adobe Dreamweaver in wine is going to be disappointing. But its not just Dreamweaver, other things are erratic, or stop responding. Bitwarden, the Linux version, sometimes gets stuck too, wont open. I've just switched back to my ancient old Windows install and its so snappy compared to Mint. I'll give it a few more goes over the week. Maybe the Cinnamon desktop is a little resource heavy, maybe there's a better distro I could be testing. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8222 |
You could try my other current favorite - MX Linux. It's Debian Stable-based (hardly cutting edge!) and uses a customised XFCE desktop by default. There is the option of KDE Plasma if you want something posher. I'm not usually a fan of XFCE but I think they've handled it well. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| dddns Guru Joined: 20/09/2024 Location: GermanyPosts: 640 |
Hello Gizmo, there is a XFCE and a Mate version from Mint But I can't share your first impressions. Mint is for me the best tuned and best working distro at all. I'm using it now for 10 years and with the Ubuntu base it's the best (industry) supported system. The XFCE version of Mint looks almost identical compared to cinnamon but is twice as fast. I'm loving cinnamon and it runs so nice and gives me all I need in tray.  Best wishes and don't give up on Linux :) Edited 2025-10-20 03:21 by dddns |
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Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9713 |
I've played about with WINE before in the past, and found it to be unstable when used with my CAD software. I WAS able to get my CAD software running in WINE, but then for no reason and with no error message, it would just freeze up. This was a non-recoverable error, and you had to force the WINE process to end. Not exactly acceptable for ANY type of CAD software - it has to be stable, or you could loose HOURS of work - even WITH regular manual or automatic backups. I haven't setup my CAD yet, but when I do, I plan to run it inside a VM rather then something like WINE. I have done this before in years gone by, and the CAD was rock-solid inside the VM. So for your Windoze software, consider a VM setup instead of WINE, cos I never really had much luck with WINE myself, but then, my CAD software was a bit more of a special-case, so.... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5146 |
OK, tried a different distro. Zorin 18 is new, and looks neat. Installed it over the Mint install, and it fired up fast and seamed very responsive. Next update the NVidia driver. It crashed. Bit of research, looks like as both Mint 22.2 and Zorin 18 are based on the same Unbuntu, they just dont support older NVidia cards. So much for using Linux for older computers, nonsense! Both Mint22.2 and Zorin 18 users are claiming their distro can be a perfect option for Windows 10 users with old hardware that wont update to Windows 11, but both of these distros dont support old hardware either. If I need to buy new hardware, then may as well go Windows 11. Time to cut losses, back to Windows. It just works. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9713 |
I'm sorry Linux did not work out for you.  PERSONALLY, I still think your problems are the nVidia graphics. nVidia graphics - old OR new - are not well supported, mainly cos nVidia won't(or wouldn't) come to the party. Reverse-engineered drivers are bound to be buggy. My setup uses Intel HD graphics, and it runs smoothly and fast as a rocket. I don't think that is an ENTIRELY fair statement. As I mentioned in my other thread, when I setup LMDE6 on my old W10 machine, it picked up EVERYTHING as part of the install. Graphics, sound, USB, system drivers and things like detecting the correct CPU, keyboard and mouse, and even my printer. I did not need to install ANY drivers for this, it just worked 100% right out of the box. Before I made the move, I had already setup around ten people's computers with Mint when their old Windoze install died or required a re-install to fix. With those machines also, everything was detected during setup, and no additional drivers were required, and everything ran smoothly. NONE of those had nVidia graphics though, I have to state that. I used to use Puppy Linux for all my servers for YEARS, and it also detected and setup all the hardware on any machine I loaded it into - it all just worked, and this was much older hardware with the likes of Intel Atom CPU's in them. It would setup and run fine. Very stable also. I hear and feel your frustration though - Linux simply isn't for everyone, but I also wouldn't mind betting, that if you tried it on a machine that IS NOT nVidia-graphics based, you'd probably find things would work beautifully.  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8222 |
I just found this, which is interesting but not encouraging. From Here . Edited 2025-10-20 17:12 by Mixtel90 Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| dddns Guru Joined: 20/09/2024 Location: GermanyPosts: 640 |
Nvidia cards usually run out of the box but with the open source Xorg driver. If they would not, cinnamon and all other 3d accelerated window manager would not work correct. That might be the problem for a slow desktop cause it needs to run in compatibility mode. If you really want the the Nvidia control center you need the closed source drivers from Nvidia. They have always been closed source and that's the problem. They decide to take out support for older cards in their drivers. In Mint and all distros I know there is a "Driver Manager" in your system settings menu. Let it search and see if it detects your card and downloads the appropriate bundled closed source driver for your distro. |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5146 |
I stand by it, because the previous versions of Mint and Zorin DID support my NVidia card. A decision was made to drop support for these cards, to old. But this old card is still fast enough to play new games, is supported in Windows 10, and even supported in Windows 11. The fact that Linux seams to wants to drop support for old hardware flies in the face of what they claim. On the linux forums I've see numerous people in the same boat, and the general advise is to go back to a previous version of the distro, like I did with Min 22.1. Anywho, this PC is my workhorse, I need it to run my day to day software and if that means sticking with Windows, then so be it, for now. On the plus side, I did use the new 512G SSD I bought for this project. I was running a 256G SSD and it only had about 40 Gig free. So this afternoon I used clonezilla and cloned to the new 512, did some partition manipulation, and now have twice the space on my C drive.  Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5146 |
Yeah did all that. The Driver Manager does find the NVidia driver, but it wont install. Same if you do it manually though the terminal. I dont need the NVidia control panel, but I do need both monitors working. The out of the box Mint/Unbuntu/Zorin NVidia driver works great, on one monitor, but cant drive both unfortunately. I am comforted by the fact there are a lot of people with the same problem as I was having, trying to get both monitors working on Mint 22.2 on a NVidia card. The general advise given is to roll back to a previous verion of Mint/Zorin. Edited 2025-10-20 17:29 by Gizmo The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| dddns Guru Joined: 20/09/2024 Location: GermanyPosts: 640 |
Hmm.. easiest would be is to use a second card. Does your mainboard has onboard graphics? Dual screen runs as well in mixed environments |
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| dddns Guru Joined: 20/09/2024 Location: GermanyPosts: 640 |
I'm running dual screen on an 10years old i5 with onboard Intel, one on DVI other on HDMI. So it works with lowest specs simply fantastic and super fast. In first place I would see Intel then AMD and last is Nvidia from Linux support and user perspective |
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| tgerbic Regular Member Joined: 25/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 82 |
I will have to wait till tomorrow to look at this but I use xrandr as the config tool for monitors. The graphical front end is Arandr. Arandr is platform independent so would work on any desktop. Arandr allows point and click for multiple displays including screen resolution selection and rotation. If not there: sudo apt-get install arandr Might be worth a try and hopefully better than trying to figure this out through config files and command lines. |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4097 |
I wonder if that applies to Windows as well. I think Gizmo is a bit unlucky but closed source can be like that :( I've acquired laptops, printers and a scanner for peanuts (*) when orphaned by Windows :) (*) very cheap John Edited 2025-10-20 18:51 by JohnS |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5146 |
This is a pic of the problem. Same model as mine, but mine has more dust. Its nearly as big as the mainboard. They are still popular, seen a few on ebay for sale.  Is heavy. I had issues once where it would sag over time, I was using a tower case. I would start to get random lockups. Switched to a desktop case, problem fixed. No doubt using the onboard video or a new card would fix the issues, but I like games and new cards start at over $400. I'll keep an eye on the forums, this NVidia 470 driver and dual monitors seams a common problem with Mint 22.2 and Zorin 18. Be nice to have another go if it gets sorted. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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