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):
548f0ac303fea840ef138e5669880a74 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:
vesamenu.c32: not a COM32R image
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
sudo dpkg -i Downloads/google-chrome-beta_current_amd64.deb
- Had the following error
google-chrome-beta depends on libnss3-1d (>= 3.12.3); however:
Package libnss3-1d is not installed.
google-chrome-beta depends on libcurl3; however:
Package libcurl3 is not installed.
- Fixing the problem and finishing the installation
sudo apt-get -f install
Post install - extra software
- NVIDIA Drivers (Settings > Additional Drivers)
- SSH and FTP
sudo apt-get install sshfs openssh-server gftp
- Multimedia (codecs, banshee, vlc and gaupol)
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:banshee-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install banshee
sudo apt-get install banshee-extension-lyrics
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:n-muench/vlc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse vlc-plugin-notify
sudo apt-get install gaupol
- Java
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre
- Printing (I have a HP Photosmart B110)
sudo apt-get install hplip-gui
- gperted with ntfs support
sudo apt-get install gparted
sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g
- Dropbox, with fix for gnome 3
dropbox stop
rm -r ~/.dropbox-dist
sudo apt-get install nautilus-dropbox
dropbox start -i
sudo ln /usr/lib/nautilus/extensions-2.0/*dropbox* /usr/lib/nautilus/extensions-3.0/
killall nautilus
- Compiz
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
- lightdm tweaking
- GCStar
sudo apt-get install gcstar
- Portuguese aspell
sudo apt-get install aspell-pt-pt
- RAR support
sudo apt-get install rar unrar
- Ubuntu Software Center
sudo apt-get install software-center
- XChat
sudo apt-get install xchat xchat-indicator
- Window buttons Ubuntu-like
sudo apt-get install gconf-editor
gconftool-2 -s -t string /desktop/gnome/shell/windows/button_layout "close,maximize,minimize:"