Been quite surprised at the lack of updates so far. I'd imagined tons of them pouring down daily, but it turns out that's not how Manjaro works. They do a fortnightly run of updates, rather than a daily stream. I dunno what I think about that. I suppose it's a good thing.

If there's nothing else I've learned it's that the old idea of "stable" and "unstable" needs to be challenged now. I think really that devs don't release software that isn't working. Who brings out an update designed to kill your PC? When it comes out, it's ready for use, or that's how it should be anyway. The old Ubuntu/Debian idea of holding back things until they are confident in them...I dunno it seems old fashioned now in the wake of Arch and Manjaro. Hopefully the whole Snap packages thing will change this in the future.

But then, all that said, I'm closer now to going back to Mint. I think this is because I feel more at home with how to use it, I like the community more, I like Mint's ethos more. They are just so good with their users, and you can tell the difference in the OS. I feel so much more at home with it. So despite my ramblings, I'll be going back anyway!

Could someone help with a small problem? Ubuntu derived OS like my current favourite Mint 17.3 cinnamon never provide an option to not install and configure grub, which is OK usually, but I triple boot and on one partition I recently installed Mint 18 beta. Should I simply re-install (and update) grub on my main partition?

Half of the inconvenience is because I like to configure grub with 'grub-customiser' which has to run on the OS on which grub was installed and that's a ppa iirc.

Any tips?

Most Ubuntu based distros, including Mint, allow you to install grub to any partition, rather than just the root partition of the main drive.
Some ( Arch based and others) distros don't have that option, but with them you can usually choose not to install grub at all.

If I have more than one linux on a computer I choose one to install the grub to the main drive, and the other one I install it's grub to it's own partition. (or not install grub, if there is that option)
For example if I have Ubuntu on sda1 and Mint on sda3, and I want Ubuntu to control grub, I install the Ubuntu grub to sda, and the Mint grub to sda3.
That way you only have to worry about updating and customizing the Ubuntu grub, and the Mint grub wouldn't be seen.

Once, when I made the mistake of installing the grubs of two linuxes to the root partition, I found that they alternated depending on which one was updated last, which was a bit confusing.

You can change the location of grub after installation, but if you've only just installed Mint 18 beta, then I'd be inclined to install it again, putting the grub in it's own partition.

^^ Many thanks for that. I always (did, I wont any more) install grub to the whole drive like sda rather than sda1, so after installing the beta I was having to remember to down arrow to the Mint 17.3 entry every time, but grub-customiser showed 17.3 at the top, reflecting the old original grub. I didn't try just saving it, but found the courage to re-install grub and configure it like:

Rebooted and all's well again. I'll definitely use your tip and the next Linux on sda2 will get its grub on its own partition.

Still going great guns with Manjaro. I installed the latest Mint beta as well to see how it's coming along. The flat Mint-Y themes are very lovely indeed. They should move to that as default. But I did find outdated packages very frustrating which surprised me. Mint is already a bit late out (which I'm fine with tbh), but the Ubuntu base means some very dated programs that aren't going to see a refresh until October at the earliest, or two years away if you're an LTS user. After Manjaro, I'm finding this a little unbearable. I don't have to add PPA's to keep up to date, it's all there.

It really poses a very compelling argument as a modern desktop Linux.

Yes, that's the beauty of Arch based distros - the Arch User Repository (AUR). Seems to have just about every Linux program going.
Plus the rolling release model means you're always up to date.

I tried Manjaro for a while (the KDE version), but have now moved on to Antergos Gnome as my Arch based distro of choice.
It's not perfect, the installer 'Cnchi' (nae idea how to pronounce it? ) can be a bit buggy. But I like it.

I wouldn't use a rolling release distro on a computer I was only going to boot into occasionally though, as if you don't update every couple of weeks or so you can sometimes run into problems with things being out of date.

I think Manjaro stays slightly behind the pure Arch curve, to make sure updates are more stable. Whereas Antergos is right on the bleeding edge, which can occasionally cause problems with updates; not very often though.

Yes I'm still wrapping my head around how this works. Thanks for the post. It seems like you say, Manjaro is rather more conservative than most and (thankfully) has a stable repo rather than pushing everything through.

I really wanted to try Antergos, but the installer...it's terrible! It is so buggy and messy. It wouldn't even perform the basic tasks for me. I ended up with various results. Once I'd got it installed but the bootloader didn't work. Then I got the bootloader on but it couldn't find the OS. I don't like installers where I'm worried about what I'm clicking and what's going to happen next. It should always be very clear to the user. By contrast I love the Calamares installer that Manjaro (and others) use. I'd never heard of it before, but a high quality standard installer that any distro can use makes a lot of sense, and it really works perfectly.

Well, didn't expect this to happen. Decided, with a bit of free time, to do a tour of Manjaro's other offerings. I love Cinnamon, but in truth it's a bit buggy at the moment as the Mint team are still finishing it off. So with nothing "mission critical" to bother with, I downloaded Gnome and KDE Manjaro.

The Gnome edition is absolutely stellar. If you don't like the desktop, it could be worth another look on Manjaro. It's so well thought out and put together, like someone who really loves Gnome made it. I spent quite some time playing with it, but decided to try KDE next.

KDE is Manjaro's main desktop next to their XFCE offering. Now I love Plasma 5, but on the various distros I've tried it on it's just come across as unfinished. Like it teases you with awesomeness then pulls out the rug from under your feet. But wow, here on Manjaro, it is truly amazing. So well put together and complete. It feels like the most complete KDE offering I've ever used. So well integrated and thought out, so polished...nothing has messed up or glitched, everything is working as it should be. And it's blindingly fast.

So I'm now using as my main OS. It's been on the last couple of days, and I'm waiting for the sucker punch, but it hasn't happened so far. Fingers crossed (again)!

I can tell you're all there, waiting for me to post up various KDE bugs. You know it's gonna happen, right? Actually it's been a very impressive experience...


...but I'd be lying if I said there were no bugs! Nothing massive, but for some reason strange apps are auto-launching at start, and I haven't even added them to startup. Dolphin is one, just starts up for nothing when I boot in. I dunno.

Anyway, distro-hopper crusher Linux Mint returns today with it's new release: Linux Mint 18 "Sarah". Cinnamon edition here, MATE edition here. Will I be installing this though?

It's extremely highly likely yes!

Ought to have remembered my KDE-Fu here. In my defence it's been some time since I've used as a main desktop. System Settings/Startup and Shutdown/Desktop Session/On Login/Start with an empty session. Looks harder than it is to be fair.

Why oh why is it now 2016, and no matter what distro you use the boot-up Plymouth screen is a bag of shit? It's been like this since 2009, and we said it was crap back then, and it's gotten worse, not better over the years. You get a moment of nice bootup, then a flash while the monitor goes out of range, then some ugly text, then a nice login window. The info for Plymouth states "it is an eye candy boot up application". When has there ever been any eye candy from this program? Two seconds does not constitute eye candy at boot when the rest is crap. It might be nice for the hardcore programmers and enthusiasts to see the text, but I like the option of choosing a sexy boot up, and Plymouth has never provided this in any form.

As one of the first things any new user will experience of Linux, it's a terrible ambassador. People assume something is wrong, and then it's even worse when Linux users try to tell them it's either A) supposed to be like that or B) it's better with the text. Neither is the right approach. It needs fixing as a matter of urgency imho, but hey we're six years down the line and it never saw any improvement.

You might be interested to know that the latest Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon and Mate editions are now available. https://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/linuxmint.com/stable/18/

Heh, look up two posts.

It's because my posts are too long. Sorry guys!

Good news: BT suggesting that customers try out Ubuntu: Don’t want to pay for Windows 10? Try Ubuntu - the free operating system

Perhaps not so good news: Canonical 32-bit PC Support Being Dropped for Ubuntu

Back to good news again: Giving Linux and LibreOffice a Try for Your Home Office

https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/ubuntu-...akkety-alpha1/

Also When are Distros/Mozilla going to sort out the issue of the Dark theme and Firefox.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70315

it was reported back in 2001
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_activity.cgi?id=70315

I Like the Dark theme but can't use it

it seems it applies across all Linux distros.

Hopefully somebody out there does a lot of Distro Hopping and has tested this and can advise how bad it is .... cough cough Kal_El

temp fix is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a7rgRsO6q4

Wrong person to ask, I don't care for the dark themes! Something always borks up.

It's much better than it used to be imho, and Mint especially seem to be putting a lot of work into their themes. But yes, you will come up against the odd dialogue box with white text on a white background. It's nowhere near as bad as say, 5 or 6 years ago with Gtk2.

I Think they should be sorting out issues like themes etc. After all it's 2016.
Even something as popular Gnome3 has Major issues with the people who maintain the extension. They take a age to catch up with new releases.

I agree. It's a bugbear, like my Plymouth moan earlier on. I can't believe after all this time these are still issues. Gnome will always be a problem though as it updates and changes fundamental things all the time. This is why we ended up with desktops like Cinnamon - the Gnome devs are focused only on Gnome 3 and not what the community might want it to be able to do. So if you don't match everything the way they want it, expect to struggle.

So, from Manjaro to Linux Mint 18.

I hate to be boring, but I had to do it. At the end of the day, I don't see my PC as a hobbyist system anymore. It's a toy, that's for sure, but I need it to be stable. Manjaro is an excellent OS, and they clearly put a huuuge amount of work in. But the general consensus is, as a rolling release OS, it's gonna break sooner or later. Yes I'm happy to fix things, heaven knows I've had trouble with using PPA's for graphics drivers etc on Ubuntu/Mint. But I'm not gonna be happy if a kernel update takes the lot down.

So far, very nice release indeed. No massive overhaul to anything, bit I love spotting the little changes they continue to make to Cinnamon.

^^^ Absolutely this. When Vista (now sacked) misbehaved for me, guess what operating system stood in its place and was perfectly stable?

Been running Mint 18 for a couple of days now, and sure enough it's a keeper. No doubt I'll be using this for the next two years at least. Have issued fair warning to the missus - I have a couple of days off work coming up, my dear you will be coming home to a new OS on your laptop shortly and I hope this is OK. I think she'll love it.

I've got quite a stumbling block to get over before I can change from Mint 17 to 18. It's the same for any ubuntu since about 15.10 I think.

I dual boot Windows 7, just for my one all time favourite racing game/sim and I use a SteelSeries SRW-S1 wheel. Can't imagine using anything else. If I boot Mint 18 with the wheel plugged in - I can't move the mouse pointer horizontally 'cause the wheel is configured as a mouse! Bloody evdev or something and I can't get my head around it.

I tried using recent kernels on 17 with no problem. Have tried asking for help (ages ago. Not on Mint forum as it's upstream), but none received. Will sort it soon, but 17.3 will do me until then.

I drift in and out of things I like doing. Sometimes I learn a lot by trying to answer easier technical questions on Mint Forum. Haven't been there for quite a while (since they had a major 'crack'), but 'Old Ruler' is me lol.

A couple of 'tutorials' are mine.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols @ ZDNet rather likes LM 18

"​Linux Mint 18: The best desktop -- period"

http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-m...esktop-period/

I blame myself for not testing the Mint 18 beta I installed, but first thing I installed on Mint 18 release didn't work. I use the 'onboard' virtual keyboard a lot, but nothing came up when I ran it. Tried starting it from in a terminal window and it reported "...ValueError: Namespace AppIndicator3 not available", so I installed AppIndicator3 and it ran, but uses defaults settings more suitable for a tablet than a desktop.

All's well now though. Quite a shock to find something that doesn't work immediately in Mint. Probably 'upstream' to blame though and for the couple of seconds showing a log in prompt on shutdown. I presume everyone is seeing that?

I've decided to give Mint 18 Cinnamon on an old PC. I'm quite impressed so far. It was a bit odd that my wifi card was detected when I booted from the Live DVD, but then it wasn't installed when I did the installation on the hard disk. It was easily fixed though.

A quick question; if Linux Mint claims to be the 4th most popular operating system, what are the other 3? I'm guessing Windows and MacOS...

...and the other one probably refers to Ubuntu which can be found pre-installed on a number of laptops and PCs (but you have to look for them).

Uberstudent regards the big 4 OSes as Windows, OS X, Ubuntu and Linux Mint.