[Tfug] TITLE SHOULDA BEEN: Comparing Mint 12 with Oneiric 11.10 when trying to completely dump Unity.

[Jim March]

Sigh.

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 4:06 PM, Jim March <1.jim.march at gmail.com> wrote:
> OK. So I hate Unity with a passion. Sorry. I'm not going to argue
> about it, it just isn't my thing.
>
> I can deal with Gnome3 set to classic mode - while the menus are a bit
> annoying plus there's that whole "hold ALT to modify the toolbar
> stuff", there's some quite decent stability enhancements that make the
> nuisance parts worth it.
>
> The question then is, do you want to go with Linux Mint 12 (which is
> basically Ubuntu Oneiric tweaked to no-Unity plus restricted
> codecs/players) or do you run "real Ubuntu Oneiric" and hand-tweak
> Unity out yourself?
>
> Well the answer to me has come down to "tweak Oneiric".
>
> 1) Mint 12 just "felt unstable". Hybernate-to-disk didn't work (across
> two machines) and other small glitches popped up here and there.
> Nothing show-stopper but still, very obviously some unpolished bits.
>
> 2) The first time I installed Mint 12 (32bit) I got
> whole-disk-encryption working via the scripts at:
>
> http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/344
>
> For reasons I don't understand at all, it stopped working. I tried it
> in 32bit, failed, tried again in 64bit when I recently scored a more
> potent machine (more memory for starters) and yet again, failure. This
> forced me into the "encrypted home folder" plan which is quite
> possibly where some of the glitches occurred - possibly including the
> hibernation fail.
>
> A few days ago I backed up and reinstalled clean from an Oneiric 64bit
> alternate install disk. I did the "anti-Unity" tweaks at:
>
> http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/things-to-tweak-after-installing-ubuntu.html
>
> ...to get "classic Gnome" running right, and they worked like a champ.
> The only thing that went wrong was, on one of the reboots LightDM
> failed completely and dumped me to a command prompt. But doing:
>
> sudo apt-get install gdm
>
> ...and picking the GDM startup manager fixed that. (The instructions
> warn of problems with LightDM and sure enough, he's not kidding! I
> ignored that and it bit me in the butt.)
>
> I now have fastest, most stable full-on setup I've ever run. It starts
> up without Compiz but doing an ALT-F2 and "compiz --replace" gives me
> the eye candy when I want it. Cool.
>
> Starting with real Ubuntu you need to do the usual tweaks (medibuntu,
> load w32codecs or w64codecs, libdvdcss, flash player, extra gstreamer
> stuff, etc. but that's not a big deal.
>
> Random thoughts:
>
> For my needs, the breakover point at which 64bit is a good idea is
> 3gigs RAM. I need to run WinXP virtualized (VirtualBox for now but
> since my latest lappy has hardware virt support in the CPU I'll switch
> soon). 64bit code is bulkier so with 2gigs RAM and 768megs assigned to
> the XP machine, RAM gets tight. With 32bit code, memory usage in more
> efficient. At 3gigs of real RAM I can run 64bit and assign 1gig to the
> XP VM with no problems.
>
> 64bit still has "glitches". For example, to get Adobe Flash going you
> end up adding some 32bit libraries. Which is fine until you load
> Google Chrome, at which point it wants the 64bit version of said
> libraries. Ooops. This is solvable: the solution is to install the
> google .deb file at the command line:
>
> sudo dpkg -i googlesupplieddebname.deb (after CDing into the dir with
> the .deb file)
>
> ...and watch for what it fails on. Load synaptic if you haven't already:
>
> sudo apt-get install synaptic
>
> ...and use that to specifically load the 64bit versions of the
> libraries it's choking on. (Leave the 32bit versions in there so flash
> still works.)
>
> That said, the "64bit glitchies" are extremely minor and no trouble
> for anybody slightly Linux-experienced to cope with. For total Linux
> newbies OR those with 2gigs or less RAM I'm still recommending 32bit
> and I suspect Precise won't change that.
>
> Jim
>
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