Linux Mint Q

Well, tonight I've been going on a Tour De Linux
So, I popped in my linux CD a few minutes ago & everything worked fine....until it got to the desktop where it just sat there. The taskbar(no buttons) was showing & the Linux Mint Background. I could still move the mouse & all though.

So, I turned it off.
Was this me being impatient or is this a problem?

 

So there was no menu at the bottom left corner either?

 

Nope.
As I said, I could have been impatient(but, the CD drive stopped spinning?)

 

Did you verify the MD5 checksum before burning?

 

No, how do I do that?

 

OK, first download this great little freeware Windows app called Hash. You can get it here.

http://keir.net/download/hash.zip

Use it to open the Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna Main ISO. It will give you the MD5 checksom figure. Now match this figure against the one here.

http://linuxmint.com/mirrors.php?id=15

IF they match, then you know your ISO is good, if they don't match, then you know the ISO is corrupted, and you'll need to re-download the file and check it.

 

Thanks, I already use BurnCDCC.

 

Wrong program, my mistake, I've edited my previous post to correct it.

 

Ooops,
It appears I deleted the original iso.
I think I'm gonna try other distros anyway.
Any recomendations?

 

PCLinuxOS

Kubuntu

Zenwalk

Kanotix

Absolute

Fedora

Make sure and verify the checksum from now on before you burn.

 

Hmmm, I prefer Gnome or XFCE any good ones there(easy; good wireless support)?
I'll give PCLinux a try.

 

Those are most of the one's that I've tried or have really interested me at all, so that's my personal pool of distros, that for the most part should be n00b friendly.

 

Well, A good plus of PClinux is that Wireless works out of the box.

 

That's good to hear.

 

I've done a lot of research.

 

That you have, and learned a lot while at it no doubt.

 

I had Mint live CD problems three times because of a flaky download....I burned with Nero in Vista....got the download right, and it really was a breeze. I wasn't checking my MD5sums

 

You should try Mint again...it's really one of the easiest Gnome-based distributions.

 

Ok,
I'm going to be trying lots of distros.
I've decided to try these:
Ubuntu
Kubuntu
Xubuntu
Mint
OpenSuse
PCLinuxOS
MEPIS
& any more I find

 

Note that you don't have to download Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu ISOs...just download Ubuntu and then you'll be able to download the package to add KDE for example.

 

Well, I have to restart the mint live CD like 5 times before actually getting to a working live desktop. Downloading through torrent is also safer

 

^^Thats what I did.

 

Also at Thomas, I found that the Mint live CD had some problems hanging when it tries to load the desktop but just keep restarting and running the CD until it decides to load it. (I had checked the md5sum codes and they were the same making me believe this is a bug).

 

Well, it works now, the live CD is temperamental

 

Same thing here thomas....but once installed, it's solid as a rock.

 

Install it while it works

 

I've heard a lot of great things about Fedora Core 8. It was released recently.

 

This is an interesting topic, I think. The same thing happened whenever I tried to use linux mint on my dad's laptop (an HP DX6650 or something like that...don't keep up with HP names)...and I could never convince it to load correctly. Sabayon and pclinuxos (other distros that I just happened to have CDs for) loaded correctly.

The interesting thing is that I know the CD isn't to fault...because my linux mint CD works flawlessly on my old laptop (compaq presario v4000t) and new laptop (dell vostro 1400)...it seems something in the particular models of laptop doesn't agree with mint.

 

Just a couple of cents to throw in. I had a similar problem to the OP's when I installed Mint on my desktop, where it incorrectly set my resolution (it's an old 17", so max is really 1024x768), and it had it up near 1720x1200 or some such (I wish I had a monitor capable of that).

So it finished loading mint, and all I had was a cursor. I was confused a bit, and I pushed my mouse to the side so I could look up info on my other computer (They share the same mouse pad, I'm out of real estate on my desk!), so I get firefox open on my Mac box, then all of a sudden my menu panel is visible. My mouse was scrolling over to it, and linux pretended that I really did have a nice super sexy 22" monitor, and all that was in view was what my 17" would allow.

So if it happens again, just try moving the mouse to the lower left corner and seeing if it'll move your screen to the right spot.

On a similar note, if you happen to have any 17" or larger LCD monitors you're throwing away... I'll take it