System76 Linux computer

I recently bought a Linux desktop computer ("Leopard Extreme") from System76. It has a six-core Intel Core I7 CPU, 64 GB memory, and an Intel SSD. I have to replace the Ubuntu system, which came pre-installed, with Mint to make it fully functional. 

I really like this machine, and it certainly has made my data analysis work easier and more pleasurable. 

Do not use GTK 3 theme wit Mate desktop

I am not sure why, but using GTK 3 theme with Mate desktop significantly slows it down.

mintBox

Looks very nice, but I have not figured out what it can do to help with my current computing tasks.

Mint Debian

After about eight months, my Mint Debian has been broken beyond reparation. So I decided to wipe it out and do a fresh installation. This time I am not pointing directly to the Debian repository but to the Mint repository.

I like Mint Debian better than Mint main edition. I have come to the conclusion that as long as I am not directly pointing to the Debian repository (or at least not taking every single update everyday), the installation should be stable enough as my main workstation OS.

Disk partition guide for Mint Debian

This post explains how to partition hard disk for Mint Debian.

Cinnamon really works

Mint Linux's Cinnamon works rather well on my old laptop. It takes a bit longer to boot up to the desktop than Xfce, but once you get there, the user experience is rather good. In addition, it is very easy to use themes contributed by others (just put them into ~./theme folder).

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a promising project aiming to deliver a more usable Linux desktop environment.

Mint 12 is out

I will give it a try. The next release should be stable enough as my main workstations OS.

Linux Mint pulls ahead of Ubuntu

This should not be a surprise, especially since I myself have made the transition from Ubuntu to Mint Debian.

Linux Mint pulls ahead of Ubuntu

This should not be a surprise, especially since I myself have made the transition from Ubuntu to Mint Debian.

MGSE

Looks like the folks at Mint are planning some seriously different from Unity and Gnome3 Shell.

Mint-coated Debian is great

I really like my Mint-coated Debian system (running xfce). For experimentation, one can simply enable the Debian testing software repository; for production use on my primary workstation, it may be a good idea to use the Mint software repository because the Mint folks promised to ensure that the update pack they issued won't break the system.

Sakura

On my Mint Xfce box, the xfce terminal started and responded more slowly than gnome terminal. This is quite strange and I have been using the gnome terminal instead. Today I found sakura, another gtk-based terminal emulator and really like it.

Installing the Scythe library

I manged to installed the Scythe statistical library on my Mint system. The authors commented out the line "#include " in the "matrix.h" file, which causes trouble during compiling, but that was easy to fix: just remove the comment mark. 


This article is very good in helping people to get started with the library. 

Mint Debian vs. Mint Ubuntu

Comparing software selection between the Debian-based and Ubuntu-based Mint distros is interesting. On the one hand, the Debian-based distro has the up-to-date packages for Emacs, SBCL, GCC, etc., but outdated version for Firefox, Thunderbird, etc., while the Ubuntu-based distro has updated Firefox, Thunderbird but outdated Emacs, SBCL, etc.

Mint Debian Upgrade

My Mint Debian installation seemed to have survived the first serious upgrade. The only visible problem I can see is that the configuration for Xfce window manager stopped responding. I can live with the default one but it will be nice to get it back.

Get rid of unwanted items from the Xfce application menu

If removing an application leaves a zombie item in the Xfce application menu, the easiest way is to go to the /usr/share/application folder and delete the item there.

-------- Edited on Dec. 11, 2014 ------------

Here is a better solution.

Browser problem on Mint Debian

Neither Chrome nor Opera works flawlessly on the new Mint Debian: sometimes they crashed, sometimes they took a long time to load, and sometimes they stopped responding. This is not a show stopper, but it is a weird problem.

Armadillo in Linux Mint Debian (Xfce)

It took me a while to figure out that I need to specify "g++ -Wall -o "%e" "%f"  -larmadillo -lblas" instead of "g++ -Wall -o "%e" "%f" -larmadillo" to compile the example program provided by the armadillo tar ball under Mint Linux Debian edition.

New Mint Linux Debian is finally here

Looks very promising.

Here is a helpful post about Mint XFCE.