linuxgeek: Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Mint with Mate Up and Running

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Mint with Mate Up and Running

Hi Roy,

You wrote:

... support is for nine months and No you can stay at the LTS, Qiana, if that is okay with you.

Of course what I have is Petra which, AFAIK,
going to be "replaced" by Qiana as the
"current" version next month and then
pass beyond the supported category three
months later. Since Petra is one of the six-
month versions, I'm not sure what will take
place if I keep it beyond the "limit" as I
understand it.

Given any absence of needed features, I
might stay with Qiana.

In addition, Clem has said that the core of the next three releases until the next LTS will not likely change. That may mean a simpler upgrade from one to the next. We do not know exactly what he means by that. Is Mint becoming like a rolling release? Time will tell.

I agree we don't know--not knowing what
is meant by an announcement is, also, my
take on MS' "extension" of the security bit
until next year.

I am glad that you settled on Mint and that you are happy. I am curious on your choice of Mate, though, since you come from a Mac background.

I do have a MacBook Pro but it's a pretty
recent thing; I have a lot more experience
using Windows versions. I started thinking
in terms of Mint (and Mate) because that
was the direction an earlier refugee from
Windows XP took; he felt Mate offered the
easiest learning curve when coming from
the Windows environment. So far Mate is
easy to get along with, seeming to be a
sort of a hybrid between Windows, doing
its own thing, and a few things from the
Apple OS.

I wrote:

I am finding out more about WiFi connections
as I go along--LOL. ( getting slow response
from the Apple Store WiFi so I'll now have to
change from my netbook to my MacBook Pro
to see whether it's them or my setup!) No ?s
on this yet as it may just be a problem at
Apple.

I'm still not too sure--my Apple doesn't
show momentary drops in the internet
connection, as far as I can tell; so, until
I get an off-line error trying to use the
Apple Store's WiFi, I can't compare their
computer with the netbook on Linux.

Apple is absolutely unwilling to discuss
any WiFi problems unless they occur on
Apple hardware. I talked to the manager
and, when I kept getting nice answers
that didn't tell me anything, I asked him
whether he would be more forthcoming
if I found these problems using an Apple
machine and he said Yes. So it's Apple
policy to stiff someone using another
kind of hardware on their system who
finds a problem.

My most important angle right now is, as I
understand a downloaded .iso can be MD5
checked right in Linux, I first need to know
how to make sure I have the necessary
software installed.