Comments on: What makes a bad OS truely bad?

By: likefood

likefood — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:59:49 +0000

I tried Mint on both the garage server and my lappy. Mint KNOWS that my Audigy external sound card is plugged in, but refuses to use it (regardless of ALSA, OSS, or Pulse).

I guess I’m going to keep using Windows for my audio ripping needs.

By: likefood

likefood — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:14:10 +0000

And, with that, folks, he has departed for the land of Rediculously Picky. Be sure to write, kay? But be sure to use plain text because likely nothing else will satisfy you…

By: rudepeople

rudepeople — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:42:09 +0000

I believe you missed the point…

Mint failed on that point because of their internal politics. I am very aware I can bypass their search thingy by installing a browser from an external repo/direct install. Heck! The first thing I did was install opera FROM the opera website—an interesting thing happened there too! when I performed the install from the opera site, gdebi (the debian package installer) popped up and “warned” me that the package had an OLDER version in the mint repo and that “installing from an outside source is unsafe” …yeah, Mint developers, I see what you did there… Nice try.—anyhoo, I realize that sidestepping their political nonsense is possible. However that is precisely the point; it’s like buying a really nice house, walking in, and discovering the Realtors’ Mastiff has left a giant turd in the middle of the living room. Sure I can step around it, and sure I can clean it up. But I shouldn’t have to when I don’t own the frikin’ dog!

By: likefood

likefood — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:52:06 +0000

I can help you with unforgivable point number 3… install Chromium (not Chrome, the package is called chromium-browser). It uses a generic google search engine (in the omni-bar that you just get used to), and Mint can’t change it. And the Chromium developers are constantly applying updates, so you get that warm, fuzzy, they-haven’t-shelved-it-yet feeling. Use it and love it. It’s further along than Google’s Chrome (you can apply themed skins if you want, which isn’t available for Chrome yet). Or you can choose use the system-themed border or not. And if you modify the launcher command appropriately, you can enjoy web pages with Flash (instead of being required to use Firefart for Flash). Yes, Chromium (and Chrome) look cartoony at first, but you get used to it. The browser isn’t encumbered by tool bars that take up precious screen real estate (ehem, IE and Firefart, ehem). Oh, and Chromium/Chrome has built-in spell checking for text boxes (with wavy red underlines), which is a life saver when filling out forms to send to your state representatives (just because you live in a hick state, it doesn’t mean you should have to sound like one to your legislators). Oh, and incognito mode for trackless browsing. Oh, and that whole each-tab-is-a-separate-process thing that makes it so that one tab doesn’t lock up the whole browser (ehem, IE, ehem). But I digress (I’m biased).

By the way, Mint sucks when it comes to trying to rip video off of a DV camera using a firewire port. XP does it without hesitation (because MovieMaker comes with XP), but Mint refuses to cooperate. Minus one point for Mint again. And I still haven’t been able to figure out how to get an audio stream running on my server (using VLC… it supposedly can do it).

But I chose Mint for my server because Windows Pick-your-version actually tends to ATTRACT viruses and malware.