 Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me. |
Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Migrating to Linux Mint - my journey...
| Author | Message | ||||
Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9713 |
First off, let me just say that if you WANT to run W11, including all the baggage that comes with it, that is fine. Each to their own.  This is MY journey.  The attempt by MS to FORCE everyone to use a MS account with W11, and various other things that they have been also quietly forcing on their users for a while now, has made me say "Enough is enough!". The entire "You must replace your working PC with a whole new one for W11 support" thing is a MAJOR turn-off for me - and it would seem rather a lot of other people also. W10 support has officially ended - fine. But that does not mean I HAVE to move to W11, and I won't, and I haven't. I have moved - officially - to LMDE6. (Linux Mint Debian Edition) I am still using my existing W10 hardware, and it is working flawlessly. I chose LMDE over the standard(Ubuntu) Mint distro, as I don't want or CARE about newly added features, I just want my PC to run. I am not interested in updating every few weeks for a new feature, just give me the STABLE and let ME decide if I want to upgrade. So, installed LMDE6, and there WERE no drivers to install. It picked up EVERYTHING, including the correct video, audio, USB, Network(both WiFi AND Ethernet)....and even the PRINTER - all WITHOUT having to download a single driver. Everything just worked. Amazing. I even have GFXterm, MMEDIT, ST-CUBE programmer, Etcher, HandBrake video transcoder and various other things all working, with VERY little effort. I have yet to setup the PICAXE programmer, as it wants other things, but the PICAXE website were very helpful telling me exactly what I had to do BEFORE I tried to install the Linux version of their editor. Things were working SO WELL, I removed a 16GB RAM stick(it had 32GB for W10), and even with HEAPS of websites running in tabs, and about 10-odd apps all running at the same time, RAM consumption is about 8GB of 16GB total, and about 4MB of the swap file. Astounding.....  Sure, I still have some little quirks to work out, but this was SO EASY to get running, vs Windoze, where you have to install a plethora of drivers for various hardware. Yes, I am ranting a bit - sorry about that.  EDIT: Here is my desktop in LMDE6 - so far... Sorry it's fuzzy - dual screens and I am still learning how to use Gwenview.  Edited 2025-10-18 16:42 by Grogster Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5146 |
Your having better luck than me. It wont work on my dual screen setup, refuses to install the NVidia drivers without coming up with a " error 10 ". I'm using Mint 22.2 with Cinnamon. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
||||
Mixtel90 Guru  Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8222 |
By default Linux will handle its own displays, you shouldn't need to add different drivers. It's like that with a lot of hardware, especially graphics. GPU manufacturers won't disclose how their systems work so it all has to be reverse-engineered by the linux community. You'll generally find that the default drivers will provide a display but may not do some of the clever things that a monitor is capable of. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
| SunBakedWA Newbie  Joined: 22/12/2023 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6 |
I have had curry with the NVidia drivers and Mint too. Just put 22.2 Cinnamon on my 5 year old desktop PC which was factory installed with win10 and an NVidia graphics card. The open driver for the card did two screens but was a bit jittery on video playback. The closed binary blob driver only 'half' installed and gave an error message complaining about missing files. After looking around the general opinion was as the video card was 5 years old NVidia couldn't be bothered to update their driver for the latter kernel releases. By pure luck I had just pulled a similar age AMD card out of another machine that is doing server work (also running Mint), so I put that in my desktop and used APT to removed the NVidia driver package and both screens worked fine. In fact is like a new machine, much more snappy and way faster boot times. With this upgrade we are now a windows free household. BTW the desktop was 'entitled' to a free win 11 'upgrade'. That was a Yeh, Nah. Everything here has been Sun Baked in WA |
||||
| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9713 |
There is the famous clip of Linus talking about how difficult nVidia were as a company to work with. That clip ended with Linus flipping nVidia off and saying "F-you!" to the camera. I'm not sure I would want to try Linux on anything nVidia based, cos they simply don't seem to care about anything other then the Windows market. On my little MSI NUC thing, it is Intel HD graphics, and Mint picked that up easy, and both monitors work perfectly. It would seem to be a thing specific to nVidia, so the golden rule would seem to be "Don't attempt a Linux install, on any machine with an nVidia GPU." It would seem it is simply not worth the brain-strain. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
| tgerbic Regular Member  Joined: 25/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 82 |
Just an observation about my experience with nVidia and their graphics cards on Linux. I only use nVidia graphics cards (mostly Gforce) on my workstations/desktops and they work just fine with nVidia proprietary drivers (also use the CUDA drivers). I am using nVidea drivers on both intel and AMD systems. I am writing this on a Fedora 42 AMD system with a Gforce (GTX) card. The display is Plasma 6.4.5 / Wayland on a 43" 4K monitor. X11 runs fine as well. I also don't have problems with Gnome or XFCE. Other than a small, short duration, problem after an upgrade a year or so ago on one system, my workstations have been running fine with nVidia drivers for at least 10 years. I have only used dual displays a couple of times and they work. I prefer a single really big screen at 4K as that gives me enough screen real estate for what I do. I can get the same four screens you have spread across two monitors on just one desktop. I also have four virtual desktops enabled that I can instantly scroll between, or show as a cube I can spin to the one I want, should I ever need more real estate. I have not needed it but I know I can enable more than 12 desktops I can scroll between. Not sure if you can do virtual desktops on LM but you should look into it. Great to hear your LMDE6 system is working for you. I hope you will get to the point where Microsoft Windows is just a memory. BTW, have you tried LibreOffice as a replacement for Microsoft Office? |
||||
| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9713 |
To be fair to nVidia, that video of Linus talking about having problems dealing with them, is an older video now, so perhaps nVidia have now come to the party more then before. Based on your post, it would seem they have. Yes, I used LibreOffice on my W10 machine, and it came pre-installed on LMDE, so everything just worked out of the box there too, for all my "Word" docs, spreadsheets and drawing files etc.  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9713 |
One thing I have discovered, is that TEXT files can be treated as an executable. Is this Linux's version of batch files in Windoze? Every time I open a text file, I get asked if I want to run it, or just display it. I ALWAYS will ONLY EVER want to open a text file for reading - is there any way to tell Linux that by default, treat text files as text only and never try to run them? There probably is a way - Linux seems to basically let you do anything, it's just a matter of knowing the commands!  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 577 |
Glad to hear that it is all working for you Grogster. I have used different versions of Linux now for over 25 years. I love it that you don't have to bother with getting drivers for any hardware. Also that with Libre Office ( what used to be Open Office) you can save files in any format that you want . The only thing that I have never been able to do is open MS Access database files. Microsoft seem to have tangled that up too much for any other program to work with . Pete |
||||
| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9713 |
Tonight, I tried copying multipule files from several different devices. I was pleasantly surprised to find, that Linux seems to QUEUE copying, rather then with Windows, which tries to do it all at once. Once ONE copy was complete, Linux then moved on to the next copy process. The queued process was basically just....well....QUEUED. That is a nice feature I always wished Windoze had, cos if you try to copy several things to several different places at the same time, Windoze WOULD try to do it....and get itself totally bogged down. I would normally MANUALLY pause Windoze copy processes one by one, but Linux does that automatically. Very nice indeed!  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
Marcel27 Senior Member  Joined: 13/08/2024 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 101 |
Grogster, I'm using LMDE6 since January this year (2025). I have the same experience and I love LMDE6. I use wine for Windows based programs. Marcel |
||||
| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8222 |
I've heard, although it may be untrue, that MS Access has had so many patches and changes that it's hardly even compatible between releases of Office. ;) In the past I've used low-end Gforce cards on Linux ok. Their own drivers worked and were better than the native Linux ones. The problem came when you wanted something more upmarket. Nvidia sell GPUs and their biggest market is Windows boxes so they definitely concentrate on that. Linux is still a tiny market as, although there is a lot of Linux about, most of it hasn't got juicy graphics cards attached. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5146 |
Just a update on the NVidia driver issue. Yes Linux comes with its own driver, but its a bit flaky and doesn't support twin monitors. A bit of googling and I can see a lot of people having issues with the NVidia driver since updating to Mint. I reinstalled mint from scratch, this time version 22.1. It all worked, installed the drivers just fine, and I now have twin monitors working just fine. Seams Windows isn't the only platform that breaks stuff when you update. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
||||
| tgerbic Regular Member Joined: 25/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 82 |
My desktop defaults to opening txt files as docs. I don't have Mint so don't know the tools available on your desktop. Which desktop are you using? I have a setup/configuration tool in Plasma that allows me to associate extensions to certain applications. So txt files automatically open in a text editor of my choice. I would assume you have a settings tool in your desktop apps. All desktop managers I have seen have one. While you are there, you can set other extensions to open the apps of your choice. PDFs open this and MP3s open that. Also the permissions on the files allow you to turn off the execute flag and linux will not allow a file to be executed. Normally text files you want executed end in ".sh" indicating they are shell scripts. Shell scripts, if you are not familiar, are text files with a list of command lines and macros that you can setup to do something, like Windows .bat files. Perhaps you want an automatic backup to occur on some different directories. You can make a set of rsync commands to do the work and save as a shell script file. If you want to get fancy, you can use the "cron" function to run the script at 2am each night. Linux can do copies serially or in parallel, depending on what you want to do. You can have copies done in the "file manager" windowed app while you do "dds", "cps" or "rsyncs" from the command line. Way more options to do things in Linux than Windows. Edited 2025-10-19 17:29 by tgerbic |
||||
| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9713 |
Well quite. Nothing is PERFECT, I guess. But having said that, I am in love with what Mint is and represents at this point. ......compared to what W11 represents at this point.... Agreed. But I get the feeling, that given a little time, that WILL change. People are deciding they have had enough of the MS stance, and I don't just mean users. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9713 |
OK, I've worked out how to crop images in Gwenview....   Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
| pwillard Guru Joined: 07/06/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 321 |
I may need to look into LMDE, as my performance with 22.2 Cinnamon on a decent laptop from 2010 is a tad slow. There may be no hope for this laptop at this point. Maybe LMDE would work better... or I just go back to an older MINT release. I'm not really a fan of MATE or XFCE at this point though. |
||||
| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8222 |
I rather like Mate. XFCE can be a bit sparse for me, although I like what MX Linux do with it. LMDE is a different beast, of course, being Debian rather than Ubuntu based. If the slowness is caused by the desktop then running LMDE may not make much difference. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
| pwillard Guru Joined: 07/06/2022 Location: United StatesPosts: 321 |
Yeah, I was thinking that. Maybe I will use MATE on this old laptop. |
||||
 Print this page |
 |
The Back Shed's forum code is written, and hosted, in Australia. | © JAQ Software 2025 |
