Linux Mint has, for many, been the Linux
distro of choice ever since it graced our screens all those years ago. It's
well packaged, clean, has a revamped theme and is by far one of the friendliest
Linux distros going.
Now on version 13 (named Maya), Linux Mint
has again pushed the boundaries and given the community a stable, fast and
choice-laden operating system. With Linux Mint 13, you have the choice of
downloading either a MATE desktop version, or a Cinnamon desktop version (there
are others, but we'll stick with the core versions for now). Why the choice?
Well, for those of you who don't know, when Gnome 3 came out, it grated
somewhat with the Linux community - in other words, they hated it. The same is
also said for Ubuntu's desktop of choice, Unity. So the Mint team, being clever
folks who actually listen to the community they serve, decided that a new
approach was needed, hence these two fine desktop environments.
Linux
Mint 13
Anyway, we think that a couple of pages of
tips, tricks and tweaks are in order for this great OS. And here they are.
Desktop picker
If you opted to download the Cinnamon
desktop, and you're now wondering what the MATE version is like but you don't
want to download another version of Mint, then do the following to add MATE to
the desktop session at login:
Cinnamon
onto your MATE version of Linux Mint
o
Open up a terminal.
o
Type in ‘sudo apt-get install mint-metamate’ and
press Enter.
o
Enter your root password.
o
The relevant packages will now download and
install (you may have to type ‘Y’ to accept the packages).
o
When everything is installed, exit the terminal,
log out and change the session to MATE via the middle button on the login
screen.
To install Cinnamon onto your MATE version
of Linux Mint, do the following:
o
Open up a terminal
o
Type in 'sudo apt-get install cinnamon' and
press Enter.
o
Enter your password.
o
Allow the packages to install.
o
Log out and do the same as the above method, but
obviously choose Cinnamon instead.
MATE Dictionary
An
error found in Linux Mint MATE but easily solved
If you're using MATE, and you've tried to
open the Dictionary (found in Menu > Office > Dictionary), you'll receive
an error saying ‘unable to create the data dictionary
/home/username/.mate2/mate-dictionary no such file or directory’. This is a
really easy error to fix:
o
Open up a terminal.
o
Type in mkdir .mate2 and press Enter.
o
Close the terminal and restart the dictionary.
Also, the dictionary will only work online,
but it can easily be made to work offline too.
o
Open up a terminal.
o
Type in 'sudo apt-get install dictd dict-gcide'
and press Enter.
o
Type 'Y' to accept the packages.
o
Once the packages are installed, open up the
dictionary again and go to 'Edit', then 'Preferences'.
o
Click on the 'Add' button.
o
In the Add Dictionary Source window, enter a
description - 'Offline Dictionary', for example.
o
Change the Hostname from 'dict.org' to
'127.0.0.1'
o
Click on the 'Add' button to include the new
entry in the list, then click 'Close'.
The 'dictionary' is now running exclusively
on your PC.
Close the terminal without closing the program
Although this tip is a more generic Linux
tip, it's still handy to know. When you execute a program from within the
terminal, the program's GUI will launch but the terminal is still in the
background, outputting anything to do with the executed program. If you want to
close the terminal, you'll end up terminating the executed program as well. A
way around this to the following:
o
On the terminal you want to close, press Ctrl+Z.
o
Type in 'disown -h %1' and press Enter.
o
Type in 'bg 1' and press Enter.
o You are now able to close that terminal down without killing the
active program.
Customising the panel
In Cinnamon, the Panel (the bar at the
bottom of the screen) looks very nice indeed. However, it's not to everyone's
taste. That being the case, you can tweak it, remove icons, move the icons and
generally muck about until it breaks.
To do this, simply click on the little up
arrow, in the bottom right of the Panel, and click on the Panel Edit Mode, to
switch it to the On position. You'll now notice that the Panel has added some
separator lines to the Pane. This means you can add program icons to any of
these sections, or you can move the existing ones around, or you can just get
rid of them altogether, if you so wish.
Oops, I've just broke the panel
It's more than likely to happen when you
fiddle around with it. Let's face it: if every Linux user had a pound for the
amount of times we've broken something, money would be in short supply.
Never mind, all you need to do is click the
little up arrow again, click on the 'Troubleshoot' label, then 'Restore all
settings to default' to get everything back to the way It was originally
designed.
Using archey
Archey
can be configured to be your default terminal buddy very easily
Although not exclusive to Linux Mint,
Archey is a cool little applet that displays the system Info in a terminal,
along with an ASCII image of the ditro's logo. It's really rather good, and
although it isn't necessary. It looks quite nice. To install Archey, do the
following:
o
Open up a terminal.
o
Type in 'sudo apt-get Install Isb-release scrot'
and press Enter.
o
Type in your password.
o
Open up a web browser, visit bit.ly/KQfb60, and
allow the Mint package manager to install the package.
o
Type into the terminal 'Archey' to view.
If you want Archey to appear every time you
open up a terminal, do the following:
o
Open up a terminal.
o
Type in 'nano ~/.bashrc', where username is your
Mint username, and press Enter.
o
In the new file, simply type 'archey', then
press Ctrl+X, then Y, then hit Enter a couple of times to save the file and
exit back to the terminal.
Finally, if you're finding the terminal a
little cramped with the ASCII logo and the system info, then do the following
to change the default size:
o
Open up a terminal.
o
Click on 'Edit', then 'Profile Preferences'.
o
Tick the box 'Use custom default terminal size'
and change it from 80 x 24 to something like 90 x 30.
The next time you open up a terminal, it
should be larger and thus able to cope with the Archey info.
Change of theme
Although Cinnamon looks pretty good out of
the box, there are a few other themes you can apply that come with Linux Mint.
To browse through these themes, click on the Menu Icon, and up the left-hand
side of the menu you'll see a list of favourite applications. Look for the one
that has a couple of cogs as the Image - it's the Cinnamon Settings Manager.
Click on it, then click on the Themes icon.
In here you'll find a few select themes,
each looking as tasty as the last, but if you want more, then click on the 'Get
new themes' link at the bottom of the window.
The
dictionary can be configured to work offline
Linux Mint 13 is great, and there's so much
you can do with it that we simply don't have enough space to put it all here.
So why not have a browse over to bit.ly/Lt3yAT, and download the latest version
of whichever desktop environment you fancy.
Updates
Although the Mint updater is a great
utility, it can sometimes miss an important update or upgrade. In this case
it's good practice to do the following:
o
Open up a terminal.
o
Type In 'sudo apt-get update' and press Enter.
o
After the update has done its business, to check
for any upgraded packages, type in 'sudo apt-get upgrade' and press Enter.
You can also combine both these commands
together with a double && in between them, but the second command will
only work provided the first doesn't show any errors.
