• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

Adventures in Linux Mint 20.3

Judge

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
Yay! Looks like I just solved my last mystery on my Linux Mint 20.3 "glitchlist". Figured out how to make all these innocuous ACPI bios error comments invisible while booting into Mint. Just needed to add in the "Grub" command line "loglevel=0" as shown below:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash loglevel=0"

https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-hide-ACPI-errors-in-the-boot?share=1

My first challenge in installing Linux Mint was to figure out how to get sound out of my speakers. I had no problem with sound from my headphones, but when it came to the speakers I got nada. Turned out that I needed to download "Alsa Tools" that had a particular little program called "HDA Jack Retask". Where I simply had to access "Parser Hints" and change the "yes" parameter of "jack-detect" to "no". Voila! I got sound from my speakers.

The one other sound problem I had was maddening. Kept getting a periodic "popping" sound whenever I accessed something that played a sound file. This one was a bit more complex to fix, but like everything else there was an answer, somewhere within forums on Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Just had to add some lines of text in two files pertaining to Intel High Definition Audio and the popping ceased.

Properly installing things like "Wine 7.0" wasn't that hard either. Simply found a great website giving precise instructions in how to install Wine, so I could run certain 32-bit Windows applications within Linux.

https://computingforgeeks.com/how-to-install-wine-on-ubuntu-linux/

Even found a link that showed how to use the "Terminal" to remove a bunch of unwanted international fonts: Easy Linux Tips Project: How to Clean Linux Mint Safely

And my issues with Linux and how it renders fonts? LOL...don't ask me, but apparently in an update something changed them, making them render much better within either browser I use. Works for me!

What's the point of sharing this? Not to intimidate anyone. Just to let them know that in the event of a few minor problems, you just need to google your way through Linux Mint/Ubuntu forums and the answer is usually there somewhere. Lots of experienced users willing to share what they know. It just takes a little time and patience to wade through such problems, especially perhaps if you have an older computer like I do. But hey...it all runs better- and faster than Windows 10. Though it wouldn't surprise me if others with newer hardware may not run into such issues.

Some of you just might find it's worth the effort to get away from Microsoft. And it won't cost you a penny in most cases.
 
Last edited:
But hey...it all runs better- and faster than Windows 10.

That only says so much though.

A dead frog that's been duct-taped to a brick and is lying in sludge runs faster and better than Windows 10.

I have no idea where I was going with this, I'm not quite awake yet.
 
That only says so much though.

A dead frog that's been duct-taped to a brick and is lying in sludge runs faster and better than Windows 10.

I have no idea where I was going with this, I'm not quite awake yet.

Says a lot from my perspective. Both my Windows 7 and Windows 10 have run quite well.

I think the last BSOD I ever had was on Windows XP. My gripe is that I shouldn't have to replace my perfectly running hardware just to accommodate a version of Windows that looks different but doesn't run any better.

Also keep in mind that with Linux you aren't overloading the system with bloatware right out the gate, or sandbagging it all running an anti-virus program in resident memory. All that stuff is routine for Windows, but not for distros of Linux. Linux is lean and mean in comparison.
 
Last edited:
Last time I checked, 20.3 was in beta release, but they've likely upgraded it to full release by now. I use 20.2 and every time I boot up I get a weird error message saying "do_IRQ no irq handler for vector". Doesn't seem to impact the running of the OS any though. With a homebuilt system it's understandable that you'd have a few issues. I use a 10 year old HP 635 laptop and don't seem to have any problems.
 
Last time I checked, 20.3 was in beta release, but they've likely upgraded it to full release by now. I use 20.2 and every time I boot up I get a weird error message saying "do_IRQ no irq handler for vector". Doesn't seem to impact the running of the OS any though. With a homebuilt system it's understandable that you'd have a few issues. I use a 10 year old HP 635 laptop and don't seem to have any problems.

Version 20.3 is a full release and has been for a while. A few more bells and whistles, though you can easily upgrade from 20.2. Though in my own case, the errors I have mentioned all happened with the 20.2 version.

Linux Mint's forum has a bit to say on that error. Seems it might be related to a network driver having to do with Ethernet capabilities. But it's probably irrelevant if you use wireless exclusively. I use Ethernet almost exclusively and have not encountered this particular boot error.

do_IRQ: 0.55 No irq handler for vector - Linux Mint Forums

The only issue I ever had with a network adapter was having to upgrade the hardware so installing Windows 10 would work. But I've had no such issues with Linux so far. Otherwise if this really is the case with your system you could add that one particular line to your grub file:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash loglevel=0"

Doing so bypasses the onscreen appearance of such boot/bios errors. Makes the bootup nice and clean, as long as you know the error is truly innocuous. Black screens all the way to the "LM" boot logo.

Seems Linux can be pretty pedantic when it comes to reporting/logging errors that truly count, and also those which are of no consequence. Occasionally leaving people like us potentially on "wild goose chases" . Kind of like my ACPI boot bug errors showing up. More a comment of my outdated bios and a clash with Nvidia drivers than anything else. If I use the "Nouveau" open-source video driver the boot/bios "bug" error hardly shows up at all. But the error remains irrelevant once the OS is up and running. At least that's the consensus of the Linux Mint community. Sure glad I can always refer to their forum.
 
Last edited:
Saw a good presentation on a basic reason to switch to Linux from Mac or Windows. So many high-quality open-source apps...with no strings attached that are often quite comparable to Windows apps. Take a look and see what Nick at "The Linux Experiment" is saying:


And note how pretty the dark mode can be in Linux distros....:cool:
 
Briefly installed another SSD this time with Linux Pop! OS Cosmic. Just to take a look. Apparently this is referred to as "Distro Hopping". With so many varieties of Linux to try out for free, why not? But here's the kicker. I've taken an intense look at Zorin OS16, Pop! OS 22.04, and Linux Mint 20.3.

And so far I just keep gravitating back to Linux Mint. It renders fonts and icons so much better. And the desktop is similar to Windows, yet far more customizable. I really love that! Also having access to some 60,000 kinds of freeware doesn't hurt.

Yesterday I reinstalled Mint on a 1TB drive. Getting much closer to cutting all ties with Microsoft, short of building an exclusive gaming desktop computer. Though in the meantime, I have migrated all the guts of my old computer into a newer case, and still plan to buy a more robust video card for Linux and Windows 10 as long as it remains where I can still use removable SSDs. If I can satisfactorily game on Linux I may just kiss Microsoft goodbye permanently.

At least now I can reformat my old 256GB SSD and look for another Linux distro to load on it. Who knows? Eventually I may find something better than Linux Mint.

Or not. :cool:
 
Last edited:
A visual of why I like Linux Mint 20.3 so much. My desktop. Virtually every element on the desktop is customizable in one form or another. Something that presently cannot be said about Windows 11.

LM Desktop.jpg
 
Linux Mint provided an alternate menu applet called "Cinnamenu". Got the look of a Windows 11 menu system, but clearly better looking and far more customizable. Of course both the menu system like all the panel icons can be positioned to the left, center or to the right or even the top if you like. Love customizing this graphic user interface.

Linux Mint Scrnsht.jpg
 
Last edited:
Went "distro hopping" again. Wanted to try out Kubuntu KDE Plasma. Oh man, that wasn't pretty. I expected another Ubuntu-like distro would be relatively friendly to my computer, but it wasn't. Very elegant aesthetically speaking, but there were some basic things I couldn't get to work. I couldn't even figure out a simple way to have root privileges to alter individual system files so I could fix my sound problems. Not could two different video disk programs to work. JUst not worth the hassle. Again, I gravitate right back to Linux Mint 20.3 after trying three other distros so far. But then this computer at nearly ten years of age/technology may be on the edge of working properly with some distros. Oh well.
 
Went back and spent half a day with Pop! OS 20.04 "Cosmic". One of the more popular Linux distros apart from Zorin OS16 and Mint 20.3. I got most everything except SMPlayer (DVD video app) to work. It seemed a bit cumbersome compared to Mint except that many probably like it's Mac-style interface. Though it's tile function is supposed to be the best of any consumer-level OS. Still, I just didn't find it nearly as intuitive as Linux Mint. I must be missing something given all the YouTube geeks who can't say enough about Pop! OS 20.04. But that's the beauty of Linux- for better or worse, lots of choices.

I also tried Manjaro KDE, an Arch-based Linux product. Oh my. Somewhere between a nightmare and a disaster. :eek::oops::eek:

So confusing and I got little to work properly. My system may have simply been too old for that particular distro. Though as it wasn't an "Ubuntu" based product, it gave me broader perspective about my ancient Realtek ALC887 audio drivers, and how all the Linux distros seem to have problems with it. Though nearly all of them were easy enough to fix having found the answers online. I'm guessing that people with more up-to-date computers don't have such issues. Still I'm grateful that there are a few distros out there willing to cater to those with much older systems that still run great.

So for me, Linux Mint 20.3 is still "on the top of the pyramid". :cool:
 
Last edited:

New Threads

Top Bottom