"Deja-new!" ... almost ... I still need some help!

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Me too, and I started a new thread to get some help with booting.

A little background refreshment ...

The first time I installed Mint a couple of weeks ago, I goofed by not selecting GRUB inside EasyBCD and things soon got messed up. So, here is what I have done and where I am at the moment:

Mint is now freshly installed in two primary partitions (2 & 3) on my second drive. The first is formatted ext4 and is set as "Active" for the MINT OS, and the second is also a primary partition set aside as Mint's SWAP partition.

During the install, and for some reason unknown to me, Mint did not see my first drive at all. But, it did see my second drive's four partitions and was able to install itself in its assigned location.

During that installation, and just like I had done during my first installation a couple of weeks ago, I unchecked "Boot Loader" in "Advanced" (at Step 7, I think) just before the formatting began, and I did that to keep anything and everything from messing with my existing multi-boot loaders already chained ...

Ah. I just saw my error! I needed to put that boot loader on the Mint partition.

Back in a few ...

Okay, I think I got everything right this time. I told the installer's formatter to use GRUB to mark the Mint partition, then I used EasyBCD to add Mint to my existing boot options ... and all seems to be well!

One of the neat things I like about Mint already is being able to add or remove stuff and move right along without having to reboot. If I can figure out how to do so, I think I am going to make Mint and Opera my default OS and browser.

Many thanks to everyone who helped!

So, how can I modify the panel at the bottom of my Mint screen? I need it to be bigger so I can see things on it.

And for Opera users: How can I make the display font remain set at 120%?

Is your mint using gnome, kde or xfce? I forget.

You should be able to right click the panel bar and select properties, therein will be something about the panel size.

Now is probably a good time to introduce you to themes. Hop over to http://www.gnome-look.org and find the window manager of your choice. the GTKs (Gnome Tool Kit) are for gnome for instance. You can browse the thousands of themes and pick out something you like.

A simple theme is a good basis for writing your own too. Once they are installed you will find the files at /home/lee/.themes which is a hidden directory. The files are all text files and can be messed with. Since its all GPL licenced, you are free to create your own variations and share them.

There is an application with a slightly misleading name that can be useful for testing themes. its called "the widget factory" (Its for gnome). What it does is let you preview themes. Its very handy to use if you are rolling your own theme from scratch, as you dont have to apply to test, messing up your computer.

You can also install all the window managers that you find. Each can be selected on the log in screen. But be cautioned: they will also install their favoured applications and your application menu can get a little cluttered.

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/xfce Psychocats is a great site when you start out.

Also have you considered running win98 and the like in virtual box? Anything up to but not including xp (at least not games) should run aces in virtual box. This will simplify your partition madness and you will have them accessible without a reboot. I find that even some xp era games work in it.

Right click on it. You should see something in the context menu along the lines of "properties" or "customize" or something like that. From there you can choose how many pixels you want the panel to be.

Good thing there's no snake there or I'd have been bitten! I had seen that properties box before, but your mention of pixels is what made the difference this time, and I thank you!



I think it might be Gnome since I see that word from time to time. My disk says POSTed Build 2-24-2010, and I saw "Version 3.63" somewhere during installation.

Everything is working, but I can only type about one character per two seconds right now. Do I need a defrag or something?

Ah, but after posting and coming back to edit, the keyboard buffer is not backing up now. Maybe Mint just needs a little time to settle in on this machine ...

I will get back to you on the other things you have mentioned.

The default Mint is GNOME, yes, but they have a pretty heavily customized version.

Not sure why your keyboard buffer would be doing that. Maybe something is stealing focus from the browser.

By the way, themes will not disrupt the arrangement of mint. It will only flavor the buttons,colors and scroll bars.

Understood, and I am heading off to take a look in just a moment.

I am only guessing at the keyboard buffer being backed up a while ago, but the things going on reminded me of my Commodore days: 8 bit @ 2mHz! Anyway, I could type a few characters ... then I had to sit back and wait for them to appear ... great practice for a little more patience! One thing that was odd, though: Moving the cursor and clicking on a different spot to edit or whatever brought the remainder of the buffer content along rather than just adding the click as next-in-line. But, maybe whoever wrote that routine had some reason for making it act that way.

Okay, I need some help here:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_disp ... 4_1.0-5336

My cursor is off the screen on one side, and my trying to do something about that resulted in a message telling me I should run something in my xconfiguration file ... but I have no idea what or where that is. Nevertheless, I tried, and somewhere along the way I got a message saying I have no nVidia driver to run anyway. So, I think the above is what I want, but I do not know what to do with it!

Help.

How did you find that page? That driver is for IA64 (ie Itanium) and it was released back in 2004!

I just did a search for "nVidia Linux Support" and ended up there. But, I have since found something different at a Linux site somewhere ... and I think it might have installed when I clicked on it, but I have not yet had time to try to figure out how to actually make use of it (if I even got it). I have spent most of today trying to get XP to go where I want it to go and to remain there and to do what I want it to do after it does ... but no matter how careful I try to be, it never installs the same way twice!

The usual technique to get your drivers for nvidia is to click system, administration, hardware drivers. From there you can select which to install, if your card is detected.

When I go there, the page is empty and it says there are no proprietary drivers in use on this system, then clicking on help brings a message saying something about an invalid "hardware jockey" page that cannot br loaded. I might try reading some more in the manual, but I will likely just have to wait until I have some time to just sit and look and learn my way around in the Linux menus.

is the following thread of any help:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/315555

Yes, it definitely seems to be addressing my question, and another link there leads to more info about installing nVidia drivers. I have a GeForce FX5500, and now it looks like I have some studying to do!