Linux Mint

Linux Mint is a free operating system using the Linux kernel, but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux. At Organic Design we install Linux Mint on our workstations and have been using it since early 2014. We changed to Linux Mint mainly due to the fact that they're very up to date with their choice of Linux kernel version which allowed me to use my touch-screen on my Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro (XE700T1C) and fixed a long-standing bug on Beth's Lenovo Ideapad S10-3 which prevented it from resuming from standby, but we've found it to be a very nice distro and will continue using it as our choice of OS for our workstation machines.

Why's the mouse so fast!

The desktop applet doesn't allow you to slow the most speed down enough for some models of mice. I found a good solution here which I've copied below.

First find the name of your mouse device with xinput -list which will produce something like this (I've highlighted my mouse):

⎡ Virtual core pointer                id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer      id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ GASIA USB KB V11                id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Logitech Optical USB Mouse      id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom ISDv4 EC Pen stylus       id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Atmel Atmel maXTouch Digitizer  id=13   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Wacom ISDv4 EC Pen eraser       id=17   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard               id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard     id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                    id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                       id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                    id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ GASIA USB KB V11                id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ WebCam SC-50AFL11C54N           id=14   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ WebCam SC-20HDM12347N           id=15   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard    id=16   [slave  keyboard (3)]

You can then adjust the speed using the name from the list as follows (the higher the number, the slower it goes):

xinput -set-prop "Logitech Optical USB Mouse" "Device Accel Constant Deceleration" 5

USB 3G modem stopped working after moving to Mint

This same modem used to work fine on Ubuntu, but for some reason it would not show any response on Mint even though internally it uses the same version of Ubuntu. This seems to be a very common problem, especially for Huawei 12d1:1446 devices.

eject /dev/sr0

usb_modeswitch -v 12d1 -p 1446 -J

Brightness stopped working after installing Mint 18

After I installed Mint 18.1 the brightness keys stopped working - none of the applets or command-line brightness tools such as xbacklight worked either.

I found an old post here by Ryo Cook from 2013 which is still relevant now. Edit your /etc/default/grub file and add the following acpi parameters to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT setting as follows:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor"

Then run sudo update-grub and restart the system, all backlight tools should then be working again!

Notes

• The suspend/resume events on 18.1 are in /lib/systemd/system-sleep/ with param equal to pre and post

See also

• Install a new desktop - our procedure for what to install and configure on a local workstation after the bare OS is installed
• New upgrade tool