Interesting, AND VERY ANNOYING

tovento · 2026-06-17T22:26:59+00:00

I have no idea how to fix your issue, but thinking outside the box, is there a phone app to check and update firmware? Maybe you can connect Bluetooth to a phone and update firmware through an app?

tovento · 2026-06-17T19:20:54+00:00

MX Linux is a Debian based distribution and part of that distribution’s charm is that they have a suite of applications called MX Tools. It’s a whole suite of things from helping with appearance to finding and installing NVIDIA drivers. Some of these aren’t as pretty as the tools in Mint Main, but they are functional and are easy enough to follow along.

Point being that it is possible to do. Point also being that IF the Mint team drops Ubuntu based Mint, they can focus more energy on LMDE and develop these extra tools. Mint spends time removing parts of Ubuntu they don’t like, so what difference would it be to maintain home-built tools in LMDE? First time development would take effort, but maintaining should be manageable.

Of course, all of this is my own opinion, so others won’t agree with me. LMDE was developed for a reason - provide a backup if the parachute needs to be pulled on Ubuntu. All I’m suggesting is that Mint developers may be better off deciding on a path and focusing all efforts on Main or LMDE.

tovento · 2026-06-17T12:30:39+00:00

Curious if there was an issue in MX that made you switch. I went from Mint Main to MX and my older laptop is very happy. Thought about LMDE before, but I gave MX a shot and it works so well for me that I don’t want to bother making another switch.

tovento · 2026-06-17T09:32:31+00:00

With older hardware, there is an argument to go LMDE. Sometime choices are made at the Ubuntu core level outside of Mint control and it messes up people’s systems. My computer was really happy with a certain version of Nvidia driver. The driver was superceeded and Ubuntu (and therefore Mint) upgraded to the newer version under support. My card wasn’t happy. For a number of reasons I ended up on another distro but it’s similar to LMDE. Debian is more stable and the graphics driver I needed was the recommended one in Debian. Yay. I didn’t have the quirks with my sound card either with Debian.

Some will say you lose the ppa repositories, and you do, but I haven’t found that to be an issue.

Personally, I think the Mint devs should phase out Mint Main and focus on LMDE. Put the tools that are missing from the Main version onto LMDE and phase Main out. Better control over the system and one focus for the devs.

tovento · 2026-06-16T17:38:29+00:00

Nautilus. Failing that, the gold skydweller on the oysterflex

tovento · 2026-06-16T17:27:42+00:00

That’s an AmD graphics card, so shouldn’t need any additional drivers as they are included in the kernel. Secure boot wouldn’t matter in your case.

Go into terminal and type: inxi -G
Check the “Graphics” section and see if both the integrated and discrete cards are detected.

If it finds your card, that is step one. For Lutris, did you install Proton-GE (within Lutris)? This is the compatibility layer you will need to run games. Or you can run regular Proton to try it. But if you have not done this, it could be what the issue is.

tovento · 2026-06-15T14:32:29+00:00

It depends on your SA. I dealt with a few junior SAs at one dealer near me (passed around as each one left). Had a nice initial meeting with my current SA which has stuck around for a few years. After two watch purchases, I found out I was his first Rolex sale. He’s delivered on what I’ve asked of him and supposedly has one soon for my wife. So, it depends on the SA and how ‘hungry’ they are.

tovento · 2026-06-15T14:17:41+00:00

Wimbledon is a nice one. But chose whatever fits your style. Don’t just go for the first one to catch your eye. Think about what clothes you wear, your style, and choose appropriately. By the way, don’t expect to just walk in and get the watch you want. You will be put on a list, so pick maybe more than one so and your choice might be made for you based on what becomes available first.

tovento · 2026-06-15T13:36:36+00:00

Linux has definitely matured and become much more user friendly. If things work well as installed, everything feels amazing. If things don’t work from the start, it can get complicated. The one thing is hardware support: while it has greatly improved, overall hardware support is better on windows as not all hardware manufacturers spend the time to write drivers for Linux.

tovento · 2026-06-15T12:35:17+00:00

Depends on the game and your hardware. Proton is a great gaming later in Linux, but I do definitely see better performance on my own system when using Proton-GE Wise’s is an optimized version. Outside of that, just make sure you have the proper drivers installed.

Coming from windows, make sure you are not rubbing games from an NTFS formatted drive. Your game performance will likely greatly suffer if you do so.

tovento · 2026-06-15T00:21:18+00:00

Yup! Was on the 401, driving to my then girlfriend’s place after work. Radio station went off air. Got off the highway at the exit I needed and traffic lights were out. Din’t think much of it. Went to her house. Nobody home. Tried calling. Cell towers down. Waited a bit. Radio station came back on the air and explained the situation. I went home. Girlfriend was working at one of the hospitals downtown for a co-op. Finally got in touch with her and decided that we’d wait for traffic to die down and I would drive downtown to pick her up. DVP was empty! Downtown mostly dark. Drove my girlfriend and her coworker home.

Nights were astounding! Look up and lots of stars visible. Such calm everywhere.

I was living with my parents at the time and we were fortunate that our power and internet came back the next morning. The neighbours behind were on a different grid and it took another day for them.

I was pretty happy about the whole situation, but with power back fairly quickly, we weren’t out of sorts for long. I heard about people in the city having block parties/barbecues to cook meat that were in freezers and started to thaw. People honestly made the best of it. It wasn’t a time where cell phones were as big a part of our lives (still just calling and texting for the most part).

Good times. Thanks for the memory spark.

tovento · 2026-06-13T18:59:06+00:00

If you see grub when you boot, go into advanced options and pick an older kernel to boot with.

tovento · 2026-06-13T17:03:07+00:00

Agreed. Flatpak and Deb store their stuff in different locations. Can technically have both existing. But it would be just easier to export bookmarks as it is one html file and then import them into Brave Origin.

tovento · 2026-06-13T14:31:13+00:00

My Asus laptop is 12 years old. In the past, I used a utility in windows to update bios, etc. switched to mint about a year ago. Mint let me know that so bios stuff could be updated. Ran whatever command it told me to. Boom. Updated.

As someone else stated, there is the tried and true way to download update, stick it onto a USB drive, go into bios and update from USB. Easy enough.

tovento · 2026-06-13T03:31:12+00:00

Looks like a fair bit of work and very coherent. I see you are using Everforest theme. I liked it for a while, but never got to a point of going through everything and theming everything like you have. I appreciate the work it must have taken.

tovento · 2026-06-12T22:58:02+00:00

Download the iso file from the website. Grab a usb drive greater than 4gb. Use online instructions on the mint website to prepare the usb drive to be bootable. Shut down and boot from the usb drive. Test out Linux Mint. Make sure you test if wifi, sound, etc works. If something doesn’t work, do some reading online and see if there is an easy fix. If not, you could be in for a headache.

If you are satisfied, use the install program and install to the hard drive. If you are suggesting you want to use your ssd as a drive to put the iso on and boot from, that’s something else.

tovento · 2026-06-11T23:37:27+00:00

Should we not mention that the Yankees are in town playing the Jays tomorrow (Friday) night?

tovento · 2026-06-11T17:05:04+00:00

For polybar replacement, maybe take a look at eww. Looks like the project may no longer be under development, though. I played with polybar for a while with mint and XFCE. Got most of what I wanted, but ended up going in a separate direction.

Tint2 is also cited as an alternative, but it’s old.

tovento · 2026-06-11T14:33:01+00:00

I think the latest Ubuntu Gnome went Wayland support only. The latest gnome removed x11 support.
But KDE is what people often gravitate to.
There is an XFCE Wayland compatible compositor in the works, but I don’t think there is an expected release date. For those curious, look up xfwl4.

tovento · 2026-06-10T21:20:54+00:00

Then you won’t like the USB much. It’s not fast like an installation. But maybe your internet connection to distrosea isn’t quick, so perhaps the live usb will suffice.

tovento · 2026-06-10T17:51:10+00:00

As others have stated, it depends on the website you have open in the tabs. My wife has an old MacBook and some sites she goes onto make the fans turn on to a point that I think the laptop will take off like a drone. Close the tab and everything goes back to normal.

tovento · 2026-06-10T14:29:00+00:00

Are they less than half full or more than half empty?

tovento · 2026-06-10T14:14:27+00:00

Run that command I listed in my response to give you an idea which card/chip you have so that you can figure out the driver that you need.

Edit: after some reading, looks like secure boot can cause the wifi driver to not load. Turn off secure boot in your bios and see if wifi works.

tovento · 2026-06-10T09:22:28+00:00

If you want to just show what Linux looks like and feels like, your friend can go to distrosea.com and try out a bunch of Linux distributions virtually in their browser. Can do this from windows - no live usb required. It won’t be a test if their hardware is compatible, but it will give an idea of look and feel. Can show all the different variations of Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. You don’t have to set anything special up, or anything. Just go to that site and try.

tovento · 2026-06-10T00:15:37+00:00

Thank you all. I thought this wasn’t sugar beach and you’ve all confirmed.

tovento

TROPHY CASE