just dumped windows for Linux mint, any tips or advice..

no linux pro's in the house?

The mouse wheel thing is pissing me off.
need faster scroll, cant flick finger fast enough..
lol

[link to community.linuxmint.com]

and google it

I've got mint for my media box

- Spellcheck - integrated into open office or whatever the program you use, some programs need a 3rd party dictionary app to be installed, that stuff usually happens automatically (that is to say they get selected as 'recommended' or 'required' in the package install tool or app installer)

- Scroll speed.. that's usually in some control file in /etc/, google can help you

- Drivers - it will probably install "open source" drivers by default, there's an app for proprietary hardware that will recommend the manufacturer's driver, which is not open source so they have to do it separately like that

- Tweaks, disable stuff running in the background that you don't need (server daemons for example), and you might want to install an sshd so you can remotely ssh into your box to do things

Until you get really good with linux I recommend you make a full backup of your system. Get it configured and running the way you like it and back it up. A guru can pull their system out of the fire but a novice can easily mess it up. The best option then is a re-install. A back up will restore it to the state you were happy with. This advice applies to OSX as well.

Get used to using the terminal commands, and familiarize yourself with basic coding and scripts.

[link to forums.linuxmint.com]

Best place to start learning about Linux Mint is at www.linuxmint.com -- click on services and then tutorials. There are a good set of tutorials that can be found there.

Another good site that I use on a regular basis is www.linux.com -- can give you better understanding of the OS in general.

There should be a control panel which allows you to change various settings such as mouse, display, printer etc. Where this is at depends on which desktop you are running with Mint -- i.e, KDE, Gnome, etc

Linux is very good at automatically installing the correct drivers for your system's sound system. I have not run into a sound card or motherboard with embedded sound that Linux could not handle in all my years of using the OS.

Video drivers are also the same way in terms of basic display capabilities. The caveat comes if you are using a ATI or NVIDA video card and you want advanced video eyecandy similar to Windows Aero. The aforemented require proprietary drivers and can be tricky to install -- particularly in the case with ATI. Which, if you do have a ATI or NVIDIA card -- stick with the opensource drivers for now until you learn more about MINT. You can easily hose up your system with proprietary display drivers -- and I've been there too many times enough to tell you that it's not fun when that happens:). If, however, you have a Intel based display card -- those tend to work out of the box in terms of basic/advanced display options.

In terms of system speed -- one program that I recomend installing is called preload. It works similar to Windows 7 or 8 (I guess) prefetch -- in that it can significantly increase the speed of launching of regularly used programs. Again, wait till you have more understanding of the OS before installing.

Hope this helps.

Last Edited by kingbirdfivezero on 02/10/2013 02:18 PM

thanks everyone for your help. It looks like i got some reading to do. I cant believe it took me this long to try linux. Its not much diffrent then windows so far,

that terminal thing scares me.. lol
got spell check running..
still cant figure out the mouse. I am trying what they say to do but it doesnt seem to be making any diffrence.

thanks again.

this

find the system setting tab, then look under "mouse"

let me recommend trying out lubuntu, just download the live disk and boot it up to "try it out". Very low resource and windows like.

that looks like its going to take some higher education and maybe a book or two..

Switching OS's is no easy task. Window's powershell is basically the same as terminal. You've got a lot of reading to do to.

Terminal Command Reference
[link to www.cfa.harvard.edu (secure)]

Edit: Also you don't need any books. They are helpful, but all of this info is free and available online.

Last Edited by Xerces on 02/10/2013 02:59 PM

I think that you will probably have less trouble with viruses as well.

I have used Linux for several years and like it.

Also try [link to oreilly.com] -- this has a listing of all Linux terminal commands and what they do. BTW, the Linux terminal has a great help system built into it -- the command to access is man and whatever command you need help on. For example if you needed to know what the command dir does you would key in man dir at the terminal window.

As you become more familiar with Linux -- you will find that the terminal is a powerful tool which can aid you in the use of the OS. As well, it can be said that the Windows Powershell is arguably more capable than the Linux terminal -- but it still is at a disadvantage because most Windows users are not aware that Powershell exists. I know "professional" IT people who have worked with Windows for years and still are not aware of Powershell.

I also agree that you don't really need the books because of the Internet. I do have some books from early on in my experience with Linux -- but I havent really bought a book in 4 or 5 years. I would only recomend buying a book if you were attempting to get certified in something for say like career purposes -- even with the aforementioned, there are a lot of free resources out there.

Now you must buy a pre 2000 Jeep Wrangler to complete your transformation.