Comments on Mint 11 LXDE LiveUSB

**utu** · 11-14-2011, 03:41 AM

.
Comments on Mint 11 LXDE LiveUSB made from 692 Mb CD iso relative to a few
similar lightweight LiveUSB alternatives.

I first set up Mint 11 Gnome, but soon decided that distro was top-heavy
on gui 'conveniences'. Actually, I'm looking to find a lightweight distribution
preferably LXDE that gets around a hitch I find in Knoppix 6.7's lxpanel.

I used a Pendrive program to locate & download the Mint iso and to format and
install a LiveUSB with persistence on on 4 Gb SanDisk. Fast & painless.
The BAD news is that during start-up there is a dis-orienting time of about
a minute that there's nothing going on but a black screen:
no warning, no progress report, just a black screen.
The GOOD news is that if wifi is installed, you are on-line in 50 seconds or so;
just not much entertainment during the blackout period.

Mint didn't have any trouble getting my video & display parameters set right.

I had the usual wifi hassle with Ubuntu & its clones if one has a Broadcom
wifi. One needs a politically correct EXternal wifi to download the driver
for a Broadcom INternal wifi. With Mint, there remains the usual long process
to prepare the necessary kernel material to use the INternal wifi.
The Mint process is as smooth as the Ubuntu process gets, and it required
no help from me other than patience. Neither Knoppix nor PCLinuxOS have this
noxious hangup; they just go ahead and install the politically incorrect
driver effortlessly, in no time, and with no fanfare.

While typing this, I had to stop and first modify /etc/X11/Xsession.d to add a
one-line program 98x11-synaptic-disable to disable the touchpad.
I use a wireless mouse by choice and try to ignore the touchpad on my laptop.
I have this problem with all distributions.

Arranging icons on Mint's lxpanel was an awkward learning process,
but its possible to make it work out ok.
Mint's lxpanel editing features seem a little different than I'm used to
with Knoppix or PCLinuxOS, but perhaps I've just forgotten how.

I emptied out /usr/bin/mint-fortune to turn off Mint's cutesy graffiti that
accompanies lxterminal. We were not amused, we've never been amused.

Setting the desktop time format is for me, a new hassle with every distribution;
Mint is no exception. I like LOCAL time, all European distributions seem to
prefer UTC. The closer to Greenwich, the more this seems to be so.
My time is 4 or 5 zones later than Big Ben's. What worked for Knoppix
doesn't work here. Time starts out ok as EST, but gets shifted to UTC
at the first ntpdate update, which is at about 1-2 minutes after getting
on-line.

I learned something about visudo. Better get your name on the sudoers
list before you do much working as sudo. One could get into a Catch22 if
one weren't careful. One certainly could.

Mint's Software Manager misfunctions whenever one puts two characters in its
search box. The same things happens with Mint 11 Gnome. I don't know what
this feature would provide or if I would even need it. Mint's Synaptics works
just fine, anyway.

LibreOffice is not part of the initial Mint install, but by adding the backport
repo to Synaptic it is available. Moreover, using just calc & writer,
the footprint of these seems less than the usual all-up LibreOffice.

File Mgr is PCManFM 0.9.9; editor is Gedit 2.30.4; kernel is 2.6.38-8 generic;
browser is Firefox 5.0, Mint-branded, with flash. Flash & audio needed no
tweaks to run right out of the box.
mc not installed initially but available in Synaptic.

A mixture of themes including gnome, lxde, libreoffice & firefox.
Peculiarly, gedit sports both some old-fashioned flat 2-d, monochrome icons and
up-to-the-minute, new-fangled disappearing scroll thingies. The editor itself
may be a better editor than leafpad, as a compensation, if that's needed.