Linux Mint Experiences?

[NarimaanV]

Hi,
        So I'm planning on building my first custom PC as a dual-boot Windows 10/Linux Mint computer (separate thread about the specs here in case anyone's curious), and I'd appreciate hearing people's experiences with Mint. This will be my first time using a Linux distro on a computer as a primary operating system. I got introduced to Linux via Debian the Raspberry Pi and have played around with Ubuntu and Mint using VMware on my Mac and am pretty happy with Mint so far. But as a result, I've also never really had to deal with drivers. One of my main "worries" going into using Mint is relying on the built-in drivers that come with the kernel (except for things like graphics card drivers). How well do the built in drivers for things like chipset and such work? Has anyone ever noticed issues with features on motherboards not working with the built-in drivers like hot-swappable SATA drives? Or issues with accessories like memory card readers or optical drives? I'm going to be using an ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero Alpha mobo if that matters. Thanks in advance for any input!

[Burusutazu]

Mint might not boot at all because it needs kernel 4.3+ for Skylake and Mint 17.3 comes with 3.19. 

As for the drives... well im not an expert on this but I do know you can eject sata drives just like a USB flash drive on Ubuntu so Mint probably has a similar function.

 

Edit: If you are still interested in Linux I would try a Ubuntu 15.10 derivative. It has kernel 4.2, but from what I understand canonical made changes so that it would support Skylake.

You could also try to update the kernel without a gui, but I have no knowledge on how to do this.

[RMarks95]

I have mint loaded onto my laptop after changing it from Ubuntu and have loved my experience so far, the UI is great and user friendly, I didn't have any issues installing it and have not run into any issues since installing it, however I only use it for web browsing and Google docs so haven't really tried stressing it.

[NarimaanV]

3 minutes ago, Burusutazu said:

Mint might not boot at all because it needs kernel 4.3+ for Skylake and Mint 17.3 comes with 3.19. 

As for the drives... well im not an expert on this but I do know you can eject sata drives just like a USB flash drive on Ubuntu so Mint probably has a similar function.

Very interesting indeed! Thank you for pointing that out as I never even considered the fact that Skylake is so new that Linux might not be completely caught up. I will definitely look into that more. Worst case scenario, Mint 18 is rumored to come out around May or June 2016, assuming it would come with the latest kernel like Ubuntu 16.04 will, I can just leave the partition empty until then and work from Windows.

[NarimaanV]

8 minutes ago, RJMproductions said:

I have mint loaded onto my laptop after changing it from Ubuntu and have loved my experience so far, the UI is great and user friendly, I didn't have any issues installing it and have not run into any issues since installing it, however I only use it for web browsing and Google docs so haven't really tried stressing it.

That goes along with my experiences as well! Hopefully also is as smooth an experience on a custom desktop as well :D

[RMarks95]

1 minute ago, NarimaanV said:

That goes along with my experiences as well! Hopefully also is as smooth an experience on a custom desktop as well :D

I was going to try when I build my new system the other week but forgot a just loaded win 10, but wish I did just to see if there was any problems.

[NarimaanV]

9 minutes ago, RJMproductions said:

I was going to try when I build my new system the other week but forgot a just loaded win 10, but wish I did just to see if there was any problems.

Well if you do end up ever going the dual-boot route or try Mint on it's own in your system do let us know how things go for you ;)

[Sauron]

18 minutes ago, NarimaanV said:

Very interesting indeed! Thank you for pointing that out as I never even considered the fact that Skylake is so new that Linux might not be completely caught up. I will definitely look into that more. Worst case scenario, Mint 18 is rumored to come out around May or June 2016, assuming it would come with the latest kernel like Ubuntu 16.04 will, I can just leave the partition empty until then and work from Windows.

You may want to take a look at fedora while you wait, it generally has newer software.

[NarimaanV]

12 minutes ago, Sauron said:

You may want to take a look at fedora while you wait, it generally has newer software.

I will indeed look at Fedora as well, thank you for the suggestion.

[Burusutazu]

21 minutes ago, Sauron said:

You may want to take a look at fedora while you wait, it generally has newer software.

 

8 minutes ago, NarimaanV said:

I will indeed look at Fedora as well, thank you for the suggestion.

I would take a look at Korora (23), it's gorgeous and even has a choice for the Cinnamon desktop. It uses Fedora as a base.

[NarimaanV]

14 minutes ago, Burusutazu said:

I would take a look at Korora (23), it's gorgeous and even has a choice for the Cinnamon desktop. It uses Fedora as a base.

You're right, it does look pretty nice. Might give it a try on VMware to see how it feels.

[bauer8cs]

I personally love Mint. It's super user-friendly. I actually have a Virtual machine set up on my computer as my fiance's pc. She loves it cause it's super close to windows and dies everything she needs. It's very simple, while still having the flexibility and power that linux offers.

[Azgoth 2]

So, I didn't know about the Skylake needing kernel 4 thing until it was mentioned here.  That would be a bit problematic, I would imagine.  Though as some people have said, other distros like newer Ubuntu versions or Fedora use kernel version 4, so that should work fine.

 

As for general problems: you shouldn't have many (Skylake thing aside).  Your build has an NVidia GPU, and NVidia is generally quite good with their Linux support (much better then AMD, though AMD is getting better).  Some people apparently have issues getting the open source NVidia drivers to go away when they start using the first-party ones, but I don't know how common that issue is.  I don't know about things like SATA hotswapping or various motherboard features, though.

 

I've been using Mint full time for a few months now--granted, on a slightly older laptop--and i haven't run into any issues aside from an unfortunate graphics card drive situation.  My card is an old AMD one that requires the legacy Catalyst driver, but that driver requires a much older version of the kernel than Mint has used for a while, so that sorta sucks.  Ah well.

[NarimaanV]

14 minutes ago, Azgoth 2 said:

As for general problems: you shouldn't have many (Skylake thing aside).  Your build has an NVidia GPU, and NVidia is generally quite good with their Linux support (much better then AMD, though AMD is getting better). 

I've also heard that! The main reason I ended up going with the green team is that I wanted to use it with Linux.

[SubTract]

Honestly I don't think you'll have any issues.
Even though mint is on an older kernel it doesn't mean your machine won't work with a newer chip, Perhaps some of the features of skylake won't function. But the chip should work fine. 
As for "Drivers", Basically if the kernel takes care of it and you're not having any performance issues. Don't worry about it. 
Linux doesn't rely on a chipset so much in the same way that NT does. Linux normally lets the kernel manage components individually. Windows on the other hand doesn't manage the hardware. It relies on companies that produce the hardware, to have drivers that deal with the hardware part on its behalf. Some of them may require chipset drivers or functionality, Some of them may interface with the component directly. Windows like to treat the chipset as a device. Linux likes to think of it as a path to the device.

They are 2 different approaches that both work, I can't say that one is better. I will say that I feel the Linux approach is simpler.

As for your hot-swap example. If your UEFI is set up to enable hot-swapping, Then both Windows and Linux are going to be able to poll that interface for a change in state.
Generally power-save features of drives will be disabled when hot-swap is enabled.

My personal experience with a full featured linux distro is that everything just works. Certain Wifi cards are a pretty big exception, Old GPU's with new kernels are another.
Lighter distros that don't come with everything installed and configured require much more work to set certain things up. Non tech savvy people trying to use an advanced linux distro are generally the root of most of the fears that people have. As long as you select a distro that meets your needs and doesn't exceed your technical knowhow (or want to learn) you will be fine.

[NarimaanV]

6 minutes ago, SubTract said:

Honestly I don't think you'll have any issues.
Even though mint is on an older kernel it doesn't mean your machine won't work with a newer chip, Perhaps some of the features of skylake won't function. But the chip should work fine. 
As for "Drivers", Basically if the kernel takes care of it and you're not having any performance issues. Don't worry about it. 
Linux doesn't rely on a chipset so much in the same way that NT does. Linux normally lets the kernel manage components individually. Windows on the other hand doesn't manage the hardware. It relies on companies that produce the hardware, to have drivers that deal with the hardware part on its behalf. Some of them may require chipset drivers or functionality, Some of them may interface with the component directly. Windows like to treat the chipset as a device. Linux likes to think of it as a path to the device.

They are 2 different approaches that both work, I can't say that one is better. I will say that I feel the Linux approach is simpler.

As for your hot-swap example. If your UEFI is set up to enable hot-swapping, Then both Windows and Linux are going to be able to poll that interface for a change in state.
Generally power-save features of drives will be disabled when hot-swap is enabled.

My personal experience with a full featured linux distro is that everything just works. Certain Wifi cards are a pretty big exception, Old GPU's with new kernels are another.
Lighter distros that don't come with everything installed and configured require much more work to set certain things up. Non tech savvy people trying to use an advanced linux distro are generally the root of most of the fears that people have. As long as you select a distro that meets your needs and doesn't exceed your technical knowhow (or want to learn) you will be fine.

Thank you very much for that explanation, I found it very interesting and educational, and it did put some of my fears to rest. One question though, and I know this can be very subjective and you might not be able to provide a definitive answer which is fine: You mentioned some wifi cards not playing nice with Linux. Have you ever exerpienced or heard of more/less issues with built in wifi adapters build into the motherboard vs something like a USB or PCIe based solution?

[SubTract]

3 minutes ago, NarimaanV said:

Thank you very much for that explanation, I found it very interesting and educational, and it did put some of my fears to rest. One question though, and I know this can be very subjective and you might not be able to provide a definitive answer which is fine: You mentioned some wifi cards not playing nice with Linux. Have you ever exerpienced or heard of more/less issues with built in wifi adapters build into the motherboard vs something like a USB or PCIe based solution?

Honestly. It's been a while since I've encountered an issue with it myself.
It does seem to still be a pretty big issue. Ubuntu even has a page dedicated to helping people find a wifi device that will work with Linux.
It seems to depend on the chip on the device itself. Some work, some don't. 

So to answer your question, No. I don't believe more devices work/don't work depending on how they're connected.

[grayperview]

It was good once i fixed the AMD driver issues....basically i was running crossfired 7970's, on first boot after installing mint, The entire GUI apart from the task bar was corrupted, i had to crash the system a few times to force it to boot into a generic display driver mode (probably the wrong term), 

This worked fine, and i was able to installed AMD drivers that worked fine....I installed steam, tried a few games and it worked pretty great.

I could never figure out how to get it to see my raid array though, that was a bug bear as a lot of my stuff is on that array.

But in general Mint 17 cinnamon was a nice experience, once i had sorted the AMD drivers. 

[NarimaanV]

9 hours ago, SubTract said:

Honestly. It's been a while since I've encountered an issue with it myself.
It does seem to still be a pretty big issue. Ubuntu even has a page dedicated to helping people find a wifi device that will work with Linux.
It seems to depend on the chip on the device itself. Some work, some don't. 

So to answer your question, No. I don't believe more devices work/don't work depending on how they're connected.

Interesting, I had no idea this was such an issue with Linux. Well the Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero Alpha mobo I'm planning on using has a built in wifi card, so either it works or I'll just have a compatible USB wifi dongle plugged in for when I use Linux. Thank you for informing me of this.

[NarimaanV]

48 minutes ago, super_skank said:

It was good once i fixed the AMD driver issues....basically i was running crossfired 7970's, on first boot after installing mint, The entire GUI apart from the task bar was corrupted, i had to crash the system a few times to force it to boot into a generic display driver mode (probably the wrong term), 

This worked fine, and i was able to installed AMD drivers that worked fine....I installed steam, tried a few games and it worked pretty great.

I could never figure out how to get it to see my raid array though, that was a bug bear as a lot of my stuff is on that array.

But in general Mint 17 cinnamon was a nice experience, once i had sorted the AMD drivers. 

Hmm well I'm planning on sticking to a single SSD for storage and single GPU so hopefully I don't run into the same problems. But sounds like you still enjoyed using Mint. Thanks for that.

[IreMinMon]

Posting this from Linux Mint laptop, you should be fine with drivers. You should check with the motherboard vendor for the sexy features, but things like hot-swappable SATA drives should, if anywhere, work on Linux, since most of the servers are linux based.

I didn't quite like Linux Mint at first. My advice for the newcomer would be - when you're doing the first fresh install - don't install everything. The reason I today still don't like Linux Mint too much is that it comes pretty bloated. Avoid unnecessary software, all you really need to start is the kernel and package manager. And yeah, use the graphical software manager / driver manager / update manager. They are actually pretty cool. Update manager has been causing me some issues lately, but driver manager works great. Got myself installed the nvidia driver with the driver manager, now it allows me to completely turn off the GPU =).

As I said, try with minimalist approach in the beginning, so you can build the OS that you would actually like. I installed everything they were offering and it isn't as cool. Firefox comes with about 36 pre-installed plugins (really, wtf Mint??!). There are 2 media players (VLC and Amarok, you don't want Amarok) for some reason. Some of this crap comes quite difficult to uninstall, but everything  you don't install during the OS install can be later found on the repositories, and is as simple to install as to click "install". Seriously, graphical interface is pretty much google store - like..

[NarimaanV]

5 hours ago, IreMinMon said:

Posting this from Linux Mint laptop, you should be fine with drivers. You should check with the motherboard vendor for the sexy features, but things like hot-swappable SATA drives should, if anywhere, work on Linux, since most of the servers are linux based.

I didn't quite like Linux Mint at first. My advice for the newcomer would be - when you're doing the first fresh install - don't install everything. The reason I today still don't like Linux Mint too much is that it comes pretty bloated. Avoid unnecessary software, all you really need to start is the kernel and package manager. And yeah, use the graphical software manager / driver manager / update manager. They are actually pretty cool. Update manager has been causing me some issues lately, but driver manager works great. Got myself installed the nvidia driver with the driver manager, now it allows me to completely turn off the GPU =).

As I said, try with minimalist approach in the beginning, so you can build the OS that you would actually like. I installed everything they were offering and it isn't as cool. Firefox comes with about 36 pre-installed plugins (really, wtf Mint??!). There are 2 media players (VLC and Amarok, you don't want Amarok) for some reason. Some of this crap comes quite difficult to uninstall, but everything  you don't install during the OS install can be later found on the repositories, and is as simple to install as to click "install". Seriously, graphical interface is pretty much google store - like..

Very good point, I'l definitely heed that advice when I do the fresh install. From the testing I've done through VMware, I'd agree the software managers are pretty straightforward. And yeah, one sad truth I'm coming to realize is that a bunch of the "bells and whistles" of my hardware in mind won't work as nicely with Linux as it does on Windows, which is kind of a bummer

[IreMinMon]

1 hour ago, NarimaanV said:

Very good point, I'l definitely heed that advice when I do the fresh install. From the testing I've done through VMware, I'd agree the software managers are pretty straightforward. And yeah, one sad truth I'm coming to realize is that a bunch of the "bells and whistles" of my hardware in mind won't work as nicely with Linux as it does on Windows, which is kind of a bummer

May I ask what specific "bells and whistles" is that?

[NarimaanV]

6 minutes ago, IreMinMon said:

May I ask what specific "bells and whistles" is that?

Few things:

1. Corsair Link for my PSU (though after a quick google search, there might be an open-source version of it for Linux so not definitive for that one).
2. Kind of a 50-50 chance my MOBO's onboard AC wifi supporting MU-MIMO won't work since Linux is finicky about wifi adapters apparently
3. CAM software for the Kraken. I've heard it's not anything great to begin with but it's the main way to control things like the temperature curve and LED color (also might be a possible workaround for that but I have to test it in real life to see).

[RustyZombie]

I recently built my first computer, and I chose Mint as my OS.  I like it better than Windows 7 that I was using on the laptop that my first build replaced.  I found it easy to use with no prior experience with Linux, and it works for my needs (general use, music, and movies).  My only complaint so far, versus Windows, is that if a program isn't in the software repository, it is more complicated to install.  But if you're smart enough to install an OS, you're smart enough to figure it out.   I have heard other people complain about programs not working due to missing dependancies, but I haven't experienced that yet.

 

I had absolutely no trouble with drivers after I installed the OS.  But I did go with an older Haswell CPU, and I don't have a dedicated graphics card.

 

I do agree with a previous poster that there is a number of programs preinstalled that you'll likely never use.  What I did is I uninstall unwanted programs through the software repository.  It'll tell you what packages will be removed upon installation, and I'll note the packages that look like they might not be unique to that program.  I think it won't uninstall a package something else is dependent (so perhaps install what you want before you clear stuff out), but this way I can go back and just reinstall that package(s) should there be a dependency issue.

 

Also, Linux's approach to programs was, and still often is, different to Windows.  I've found a number of programs that have no GUI that you either have to use the command line to use, or you go to the file and choose that program to run it.  But should you want a GUI for those programs, there are often front-end programs that will provide a GUI.