How to transfer files from Android phone to Linux Mint Cinnamon 17.3 via Bluetooth

I'm trying out Linux Mint Cinnamon 17.3 on my old laptop. One thing I noticed is that Mint uses Bluz4 rather than Bluez5 in Debian Squeeze (I suppose because Mint is based on a LTS vesion of Ubuntu and is therefore fairly conservative in packages like this providing basic functionality).

As a result, file transfer from an Android phone works in Mint whereas it doesn't in Debian Jessie with Gnome. At least, it doesn't on my newer laptop. It did on my old laptop when I had Jessie installed, but not consistently.

However, I couldn't enable Mint to receive files until I installed

gnome-user-share

I'd been searching for quite a while before I found this information. Maybe there's a guide I missed, but if you're searching for how to receive files in Mint via Bluetooth, that's what you need.

RTFRN

I've just installed Linux Mint XFCE on an old AcerPower M-8 for somebody who wanted to try Mint.

First attempts resulted in screen lock ups.

I guess I should have Read The Flippin'  Release Notes.

If you are unable to boot Linux Mint with an NVIDIA card, or if you are experiencing constant freezes and system lock ups, please append "nomodeset" to your boot arguments. At the boot menu of the live DVD/USB, press Tab to edit the boot arguments and add "nomodeset" at the end of the line.

Release Notes for Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon

Actually, you have to add "space" "nomodeset" to the end of the line:

-- nomodeset

I missed out the space and thought it had worked because the install seemed to work. But, after a couple of hours, right near the end, the screen froze again.

Having corrected that piece of stupidity, the install completed. Very. Slowly.

Yes, the install process takes a long time on this computer. Pick up a copy of War and Peace to read in the meantime.

I have to say, Mint looks very good- better than a default XFCE install on Debian.

But the computer runs out of memory very quickly and grinds to a halt with more than one application running, or a background process like update open. (Default update period was set to 30 minutes- which meant the computer ground to a halt every 30 minutes.)

A bit surprising as I have an old laptop with a similar amount of memory (512MB) and a slower processor that runs several applications in Debian XFCE without struggling.

Mint (based on Ubuntu) seems to be heavier than Debian. The laptop was running Ubuntu until 2009, when it ground to a halt after an upgrade. It ran Debian OK, even with 256MB memory which it had at the time.

I have just ordered 512MB of (hopefully) compatible used memory from Ebay for the ridiculous price of £1.69, so with any luck, that will make the computer more usable.

If you are installing mint on an old computer, check out Ebay for a memory upgrade if you don't have the 1GB required for a "comfortable" experience as mentioned in the system requirements.

Pick up a (long) good book to read while it's installing, and enjoy a very good looking and easy-to-use Linux distribution at the end.

Linux Mint Debian

I came across a review of Linux Mint Debian Edition recently and decided to try it out. The review is quite comprehensive as to how Mint installs, what it looks like, and the software it comes with, so I'm just going to add a few points of my own.

Linux Mint Debian Edition is based on "tested snapshots of Debian Testing", so you get more recent software than Debian Stable, but with a more stable system than Testing. Debian Testing has been frozen for months as the bugs are knocked outgoing towards the new stable version, and even before that it had been pretty stable for many months. No surprise that Debian Mint is also very stable. I don't know what it will be like when Testing is unfrozen and a cascade of new updates arrives. It would have been more interesting to test it then. Maybe I'll try it again in a couple of months when Testing really is ahead of Stable.

The Desktop I tried was Cinnamon, which is Gnome 3 molded into the shape of Gnome 2, or a classic Windows desktop paradigm. Debian Testing may be going to become Stable in a few days, but Cinnamon still inherits a bug I've seen for a year or so using Gnome 3 in Debian Testing. A blue artifact appears in the top left corner of windows, probably a bug in my graphics card with whatever Gnome 3 and Cinnamon use for compositing.

Cinnamon is going to be perfect for anybody coming from Windows XP, or Gnome 2, and who wants to stick with the same desktop paradigm. It looks good and works smoothly as installed.

However, it does adopt the drawbacks of the old desktop paradigm: redundant icons with duplicated functionality and inefficiency in a cluttered window switching mechanism.

The panel has a launcher for Firefox. OK, convenient, but when you launch Firefox, you see the same Firefox icon in the window button next to it. Clicking the launcher button again launches a new Firefox Window.

Windows 7 has shown that there's a much more efficient way to use program icons in the panel: as a launcher and window button.

Open a lot of applications and the window buttons in the panel soon become small and unreadable- just like in Windows XP or Gnome 2. There doesn't even seem to be a way to group windows.

Gnome 3 came about to take advantage of modern graphics cards, whereas the old Windows XP paradigm, which actually dates back to Windows 95, dates from a time when computers didn't have this graphics performance. Windows 95 couldn't show you thumbnail images of open windows when you hovered over an application icon, but Windows 7 can. Gnome 3 can do it with a hot corner or Alt Tab, so why can't Cinnamon do it? Cinnamon enforces the non-use of functionality that is available in Gnome 3, retaining a drawback that dates from seventeen years ago and a time of very limited computer hardware capability.

C'mon Cinnamon, get with the 21st century! Let's have a modern window switching mechanism.