Installing Linux Mint 12

I’ve been running Linux Mint 12 for the past three months (since December). I wasn’t really happy with Unity, and Mint was getting nice reviews so… I decided to jump in and tried it myself.

Being based on Ubuntu, it was nice to see that it felt faster in my machine than Ubuntu 11.10.

I went with the gnome 3 route, but since then I change to openbox. Yes, openbox.

I’m leaving the openbox part to another post, so here’s the Mint installation part.

Installing

• Backup your data!
• Download Linux Mint. In my case was the 64bit DVD version (linuxmint-12-gnome-dvd-64bit.iso).
• Check the hash of the downloaded file (see the download site for the correct hash):

1548f0ac303fea840ef138e5669880a74  linuxmint-12-gnome-dvd-64bit.iso

• Create a CD or a bootable USB stick. I used the “Startup Disk Creator” in Ubuntu. Other alternatives here.
• Reboot into your CD or bootable USB stick.
• Install!

Installing Mint is as straightforward as Ubuntu, so there’s nothing much to say.

I had trouble running the live environment. It kept giving me an error:

1vesamenu.c32: not a COM32R image
2 boot:

I just typed live in the prompt and that was it. See here for more information.

If you have your /home partition separated from your / partition, be sure to select the mount point, but leave the format option unchecked.

I kept my home partition and being based on Ubuntu, all my settings worked fine in Mint.

Post install - Google Chrome

I installed Google Chrome beta.

• Download
• Install

1sudo dpkg -i Downloads/google-chrome-beta_current_amd64.deb

• Had the following error

1google-chrome-beta depends on libnss3-1d (>= 3.12.3); however:
2 Package libnss3-1d is not installed.
3 google-chrome-beta depends on libcurl3; however:
4 Package libcurl3 is not installed.

• Fixing the problem and finishing the installation

1sudo apt-get -f install

Post install - extra software

• NVIDIA Drivers (Settings > Additional Drivers)
• SSH and FTP

1sudo apt-get install sshfs openssh-server gftp

• Multimedia (codecs, banshee, vlc and gaupol)

 1sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
 2sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
 3
 4sudo apt-add-repository ppa:banshee-team/ppa
 5sudo apt-get update
 6sudo apt-get install banshee
 7sudo apt-get install banshee-extension-lyrics
 8
 9sudo add-apt-repository ppa:n-muench/vlc
10sudo apt-get update
11sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse vlc-plugin-notify
12sudo apt-get install gaupol

• Java

1sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre

• Printing (I have a HP Photosmart B110)

1sudo apt-get install hplip-gui

• gperted with ntfs support

1sudo apt-get install gparted
2sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

• Dropbox, with fix for gnome 3

1dropbox stop
2rm -r ~/.dropbox-dist
3sudo apt-get install nautilus-dropbox
4dropbox start -i
5sudo ln /usr/lib/nautilus/extensions-2.0/*dropbox* /usr/lib/nautilus/extensions-3.0/
6killall nautilus

• Compiz

1sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

• lightdm tweaking
• GCStar

1sudo apt-get install gcstar

• Portuguese aspell

1sudo apt-get install aspell-pt-pt

• RAR support

1sudo apt-get install rar unrar

• Ubuntu Software Center

1sudo apt-get install software-center

• XChat

1sudo apt-get install xchat xchat-indicator

• Window buttons Ubuntu-like

1sudo apt-get install gconf-editor
2gconftool-2 -s -t string /desktop/gnome/shell/windows/button_layout "close,maximize,minimize:"