LiveLinuxUSB installer and Mint 14 xfce 'Nadia'

[utu]

.
LiLi, LiveLinuxUSB installer does a nice job of preparing a Mint xfce LiveUSB
--directly from down-loaded iso in Windows7 to LiveUSB with persistence.
Down-side of LiLi is not knowing if a chosen iso will be persistence-capable,
--and just exactly which apps will be included. Not a problem here with Mint.

Mint xfce good points:
Almost all hardware is recognized and drivers provided.
Beautiful desktop background art choices.
Touchpad can be disabled via gui.
Desktop time displayed in local time with no hardware clock utc hassle.
32-bit 'DVD' iso is only 893 Mb, so compares favorably with CD-size Knoppix

Mint xfce mixed blessings:
Firefox & LibreOffice are included; Skype, Chromium, Compiz & games are not.
Gedit is there, but hard to find at bottom of Accessories menu.
Broadcom b43 is available if one has an alternate wifi connection.
Mint is a little larger, takes longer to load, but has more apps than Knoppix.

Mint xfce difficulties encountered:
HDD partitions & secondary USBs don't mount automatically;
--the trick is sudo mkdir /media/mint; sudo chown mint:mint /media/mint.
xfce panel's added icon choices seem more restrictive than lxpanel's;
--this,too, may be just a learning difficulty.

This is a very attractive LiveUSB.

[utu]

.
Initial Comments and Impressions on Mint14/Cinnamon 32-bit LiveUSB
Another variant of Ubuntu 12.10 as is the xfce version.
Not as compact and takes much longer to boot than Knoppix 7, but has many nice features.
Boots from Fat32; uses squashfs for read-only compact source.

Good points:
Late issues of LibreOffice and Firefox with flash are included in 879 Mb iso.
Nice art for backgrounds; very presentable default theme & icon choices.
Keyboard & video seems stable & responsive.
Network Mgr working well; Synaptic PM & apt-get working ok.
LiveUSB with persistence works ok.
Very professional over-all in appearance & content.
All hardware except wifi recognized & taken care-of.

A few short-comings or peculiarities:
Long boot-up times.
Extraneous, un-attractive screen patterns during start-up & shut-down.
Nano file mgr bottom status line obscures part of bottom file listing.

A few minor nuisances, easy to correct:
1. Internal wifi not initially provided-for (b43 requires proprietary firmware): fix...
use external NetGear usb wifi which uses an 'open' driver;
sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter; sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer;
unplug NetGear & reboot; Network Mgr does the rest.

2. Removeable media, other than the LiveUSB not initially mounted nor mountable: fix...
sudo mkdir /media/mint; sudo chown mint:mint /media/mint.

3a. Desktop time not initially correct & its panel applet gui does not use nor keep tz choices: fix...
Main menu>System Tools-System Settings>System-Date & Time;
however, this gui does not control nor keep desktop format choices, fix...
3b. For 12 hr, am/pm format: use %l:%M%P on the panel applet gui.

4. 'Install Linux Mint' desktop icon is hard to get rid-of: fix...
since it is buried in the read-only squashfs file,
/etc/rc.local < rm /home/mint/Desktop/ubiquity* takes care of this each boot time.

5. Inadvertent laptop touchpad gestures corrupt my typing: fix...
to disable touchpad, add /etc/X11/Xsession.d/65synaptics-disable < synclient TouchpadOff=1,
root:root ownership, chmod 644 (rw-r--r--).

[Blacksimon]

Hi Utu,
many magazines have recently highlighted the maturity of Mint.
I tried it too, and I remain of the view that this distro seems "oversized" to my current needs. Same thing for Ubuntu or Suse.
Also the many nice features not mitigate the problems encountered in some situations.
Perhaps the two years that I used to "tame" Knoppix, have marked me.

Regards

[utu]

Greetings, Blacksimon.

I feel much the same as you, I like a 'light' (and fast) distribution.
Knoppix, especially in LiveUSB aspects suits me very well, and I can
find no real competition in another distribution.

Regards.