Broken Distros (including Mint) What's going on?

[Jedinovice]

A story. First, to say that I have resolved my problems here. But...[Long story but many ditros and troubles to describe]

I must confess I have had some trouble recently with Mint KDE and beyond. Mint 13 has been rock solid. Ditto with 14. I found 15 kept grinding to a halt with clear memory leaks, even after updates. Mint 16 was a dream on my Turion test machine but I hit a major problem with my little Atom. I found that I was not able to update all the components I use on Kdenlive. This led to trouble in switching sources from machine to machine. So I tried to upgrade to Mint 16 KDE (let's not argue about GUI. KDE works for me, yea, even on a single core n455 Atom.)

64 bit would not install, period. I clicked on the install button and nothing happened. End. Yes, my Atom is a full 64 bit machine and was running Mint 13 64 bit edition for trial purposes.
32 bit installed – almost. But it then threw up an error when checking the hardware and bombed out leaving the machine in an unusable state.

Actually, after the troubles of 15 and 16 I was losing faith in Mint and KDE. I confess that I kinda felt KDE was not well loved in Mint and I decided to search for a KDEcentric edition of Linux. Yes, KDE does mean that much to me. Also, I download packages onto hard disk and install offline – I hate being dependent on internet servers for everything. Also, I can restore a machine to a known point quickly this way.

This is what I went through...

Sabayon - just would not boot. Two downloads, one direct and one torrent. DVD just spun in the drive and did nothing. This was confirmed on the Celeron machine.
Korora – Booted to a welcome screen. End. No login, no link, nothing. Again, confirmed on the Celeron so this was NOT hardware!
I tried Kubuntu. This booted and installed! Yay! Only I quickly felt I was using a mobile phone. No 'su' command? I have to 'sudo' everything? No synaptic? No Firefox, just a link to download it? As someone used to the level of control of Slackware Kubuntu felt like being locked in kindergarten! Hell I am used to the Commodore PET days of OPEN 8,8,15: PRINT#8,"I": CLOSE 8 to start using the floppy drive! Kubuntu was not for me.
In desperation I went back to Slackware and trying slapt-get. I was greeted with a partition error that I could not resolve with cfdisk. Yeesh!!!
Two days of agony this had taken...

I installed 'Ultimate Edition.' Very Mint like and had huge potential but... everything was white on back including Libreoffice! Now I am used to green screen boxes and started on a Commodore PET so I could have handled this. I also know I could have changed the screen colours but it was bit weird. I also found the Muon package installer odd and hard to download packages for offline install. (I have installed it in Mint for experimentation as it is used in a lot of distros.) So I put UE on the backup list and moved on.

I turned to Solydk. This installed fully with no troubles. Good. Very much like using Mint – indeed, it is an offshoot – and some subtle improvements. Only... Synaptic kept losing it's borders, mplayer just would not work – while it was flawless in Mint – and, finally... I could not install the latest rendering of Wine. Alas, I do everything on my machines from basic apps to video editing, media playing, the internet, Windows app running all the way to games. My laptops are my life. I have very antisocial hours at work so my R&R is very PC based. So I need everything on tap including Windows apps Version 1.4 is horribly out of date and 17 runs a vast load more Windows SW including games. [I plan to go steam and GOG but getting a usable credit card in Indonesia is a black art.] While in Mint I could override apps in the default repositories by uninstall, download updated packages and install via dpkg (I do that for Libreoffice a lot) Soldk absolutely REFUSED!!! If it was not Wine 1.4 Solydk would scream and force a re-install of 1.4.

Finally I dropped back to Mint 16 and used my backup plan. I installed Mint 16 MATE edition which worked a dream. I then downloaded all of KDE, all the apps and set as my default CLI. I was then able to update Libreoffice and Wine with ease. Mplayer also returned to full operation. This also confirmed the errors I had were de to KDE. Some slight interface glitches but all resolvable. Now I am running again.

So, my conclusions from all this? It seems a lot of Linus renderings are highly *unstable.* Imagine if I were a new starter in Linux and I hit all these problems? This is positively frightening. I mean, install DVD's that just do not run? Yes, I downloaded images multiple times from multiple sources. It was painful.

Next, I have to give Mint credit. It gets the balance right between protecting the user from error and making things easy (a la*buntu but not so noddy) and giving control (ala Slackware but not so much hard work.) It is smooth and easy to use and gets out of the way when I am I working. It is also excellent for multi-media. I also have to credit Slackware here. That distro handled anything I threw at it. Solydk fell down badly there. My loyalty to Mint was tested but I was burnt and returned to the fold.

Also, I know the Mint team protest when they are told that they do not despise KDE and that KDE handling is not their job, that it is handled by a separate team... but I still feel that KDE gets let down *somewhere.* Mint 15 KDE was nothing but trouble for me on any machine and 16, while fine, very nice actually. on my Turion, as I say would not install AT ALL on my Atom. I confirmed, in the end, KDE was my problem with the install.

I figure I am likely to stick with Linux MATE in the future and install KDE as an app. That way I can guarantee operation. I can also get 17 as soon as it comes out. But I am disturbed by it all. The office saw me going quite mad over it all. Not a good advert for Linux as a whole. I wonder what has gone on with distros recently?

Anyway, as a *positive* advert for Mint Linux, here is an example of my recreation video cuts. Stick to the end titles. Er, alert: Charming, non-violent Anime AMV. May cause vomitting for the romantically disinclined.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ9ibMTNX-Q

[Previous1]

Sometimes installing and using Linux seems very much hit-or-miss. This article points out some major issues:

http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is ... rrent.html

Some may call it FUD but as long as you look at the many many links provided and not the comment section you'll learn a thing or two.

[Jedinovice]

Interesting reading Previous1. Thanks for that.

What is odd is that prior to this mess Linux had been golden for me.

When I first got my Aspire One I tried Kubuntu, then Slackware, and then Mint 14 which I have stuck with. While I had trouble with Mint 15 I had ZERO install, config or running problems with these distros.

Even Mint 16 KDE was flawless on my Turion. Only when I tried it on the Atom – which, as I say – is as standard as you can get, did I hit trouble and then I hit distro hell!

I was aware of driver issues but not rampant instability problems or non-booting DVD's! Hmm, a wake up call. My Turion is in need of repair and there is no budget (dodgy power regulator.) But I will be using it as a test bed machine. I may well do more testing on different distros. I would try to see if I can make UE useable.

To Mint's credit, in the main, it HAS been reliable. Even now, now I have got the thing to install., KDE is running flawlessly in Mint 16. In some ways it is better than ever before.

I must investigate further when I have a test machine. BTW, I need the Aspire and Atom netbooks running stable since slow as the Atom can be, (and that is only when rendering or media converting) I need the battery life, especially when I am sub-contrated to an external school where there is a high likelihood of no power supply and/or faulty computer equipment.

But, I must also say that while the operation of Kubuntu was not for me, it seemed stable. I just did not like its minimal approach. Others do.

Slackware, while not for novices, was totally stable and great learning for me. A good place for me to start before I started doing real work. It handled anything I could install it. Dependencies where a nigtmare though. But I had Libreoffice 3.3.3 and 4.01 running on the same machine then. Hehehehe.

Mint has been incredibly robust in 13, 14 and 16. It was 15 that was a pain and 16 just did not install. Now I have 16 running on this netbook I have no problems.

In terms of one of the comments on the link that you cannot use Linux for multiple tasks... I do EVERYTHING under Linux, watching anime, office work, lesson prep. Graphics work, video editing, media playing (especially material for students,) file conversion and Linux KDE has, when I can get it to install has been flawless!

So, yeah, some FUD... But I thought Linux had advanced further than perhaps it had.
The overall quality of software in terms of features has improved dramatically, I have noticed, but yeah, maybe there is room for improvement.

Dunno. When Linux works for me it is near flawless and less trouble than Windows which I now loath. Heck, I lost faith in Windows with Vista (still hated 7) leave alone Hate. Yet, it took me four days to return to Mint and use a work around. How odd. When there is budget to fix the test machine, I will test more. I was a software tester for 15 years...

[skywolfblue]

Sometimes installing and using Linux seems very much hit-or-miss. This article points out some major issues:

http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is ... rrent.html

That's a rather well written article!

Linux has taken a lot of strides forward making things more supported lately, but it's still got a long way to go to eliminate the hit-or-miss factor that's such a problem.