Half a loaf is better than a whole pan
I mentioned during the week that I was playing around with Linux.
I confess that the more I play with it, the more I like it. However I did have one major problem with it.
As I said, I am using Linux Mint as my personal flavour. Their download site gives a few versions. For various reasons, I happen to like KDE as my interface, though I know the Geeks will frown on this as Gnome is their apparent choice. That left me with two options – 32 bit or 64 bit. The machine I am mounting it on is a 64 bit machine, so naturally that was the one I downloaded.
This apparently was my mistake.
It installed very easily and without any problems. In no time, I was up and running, porting across my bookmarks into Firefox and generally customising everything. It was on the second day that I began to notice problems.
The first problem was that I couldn’t get sound to work in Firefox. The system sound was fine, and I was able to play sound files without a hitch, but when it came to running videos within Firefox, it just didn’t work. I played around with Firefox’s Extensions, but I kept coming up against a blank wall.
The second problem arose when I tried to install Adobe Air. Again, there was no way it was going to work for me. It was the same problem as with the Firefox Extensions – they all complained about the architecture.
In a fit of annoyance, I removed Mint and downloaded the 32 bit version. As before, this installed perfectly and this time I was able to customise the setup much quicker as this time I knew what I was doing.
This time however, videos played perfectly in Firefox, and Adobe Air installed without a hitch.
So my advice to anyone wishing to try out Mint – use the 32 bit version.
It saves a lot of headaches.
There was a thread recently on the ILUG mailing list (Irish Linux Users’ Group) about 32 vs 64 bit installations.
I don’t think there was any real concensus, but my own opinion is that 32 bit tends to have better hardware compatibility, and 64 bit tends to be very slightly faster.
I prefer the hardware compatibility, myself.
As for the gnome/kde thing – yes, I use Gnome myself, because KDE 4 is cack (in my humble opinion). I was a huge fan of 3.5.6, then they threw that whole system away and rebuilt it with gimmicks.
For the distribution, I always recommend Fedora, with the DangerMouse project installed to take care of little irritants like missing MP3 codecs, Flash, Air, and other proprietary techs.
I have a few copies of Mint here, but never got around to using it. I tend to stick with what I know (RedHat, Centos, and Fedora – all one happy family)
There isn’t much point in having an ultra fast system if it doesn’t work! Frankly, I haven’t noticed any difference in performance after the switch.
Many years ago I played around with Red Hat but my favourite at the time was Mandrake, which I see has morphed into Mandriva, for some reason. Leastwise, I have forgotten everything I ever learned about Linux so I now class myself as a complete beginner.
they renamed to Mandriva because of trademark infringement – “Mandrake” was too close to “Mandrake The Magician”. It didn’t help that their logo at the time was a top hat and wand.
they’ve been recently forked again, because most of the developers left and took the code with them to create Mageia. The fun and games of being Open Source!
Glad the 32 bit version of Mint is working for you. Just curious here but does the 32 bit version of Linux Mint (9) see all your memory or just 3 GBs? The reason I ask is that Ubuntu Lucid (32 bit), which LM9 is based upon, is supposed to detect when memory is over 3 GBs and load up the PAE version of the Linux Kernel which can map more than 3 GBs of memory when using a 32 bit OS.
All the above gobbledygook basically means is that when you bring up the system monitor, does it show all your installed memory?
An excellent point, Kirk. I meant top check that but in the hassle of reinstalling everything, of course I forgot.
I checked, and it was seeing only 3Gb so there seems to be a bit of a problem. I installed the linux-generic-pae module and now it is seeing the full 4Gb.
Thanks for the heads-up! 🙂