Running Linux Mint on my desktop, I've so far been forced to run an ethernet cable across the office because there is no built in wi-fi. Besides the ugliness of the blue cable across the room, it's also becoming a tripping hazard, so I'd had enough.

A while back I purchased a TP Link TL-WN823N, an inexpensive wi-fi usb adapter. Plugging it in to the desktop, it's immediately detected and wi-fi is available. It connects to the wi-fi network and runs well. However, after a short time the connection drops out and it tries to reconnect, but this takes a minute or two. I check all the obvious potential issues (the router is on, wi-fi is still running, no major interference from other networks, etc.) but everything seems fine. Eventually it reconnects and everything is back to normal - until it happens again a short time later.

Once it eventually reconnects again, I do some googling and find the chipset that my adapter uses is the Realtek RTL8192CU and that there are issues with it and Linux Mint. Thankfully, the Easy Linux Tips Project website has a great guide to fixing the problem. After following the instructions on the site and rebooting, my wi-fi now works perfectly and hasn't dropped out once.

I started up the Dell this morning and the Linux Mint logo came up like normal, but then it just stayed there, not progressing to the login window - not a great start to the day. Maybe it's because it's Friday the 13th?? I envisaged spending the whole day on solving this - or worse: spending the whole day reinstalling Mint and going through the entire setup process again. I was glad that I'd at least taken notes on certain aspects of the setup and bookmarked the sites I'd used for setup tips.

I tried rebooting and various options in Grub, but it didn't work. It was getting stuck after the Samba was loading, but that didn't look like the problem. Earlier in the log it showed:

Starting MDM Display Manager [fail]

A couple of other things said they'd failed also, but I figured I'd check this out first. I jumped on the Macbook (one of the benefits of having more than one computer) and googled it and came across http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=178979 on the Linux Mint forums which was almost identical to my problem.

After booting to a command prompt as root from Grub, I entered:


Then I exited the prompt and it continued to boot, but the resolution was way off. After rebooting again it was back to working correctly with the correct resolution.

I'm not sure how long it took to solve, but I think I was up and running in under an hour and everything was working perfectly again - maybe Friday the 13th means nothing after all.

Once again, the Linux Mint forums showed themselves to be a great resource - they've helped me out a lot so far.

I've used Netbeans for quite a few years now, and whilst I've tried a few different IDE's, I keep on coming back to Netbeans. One of the reasons I like it is because it's cross-platform. I used it a few years ago on Linux, then on the Macbook and now that I've developing on Linux again, it was one of the first applications I installed.

The installation was easy enough and it all works well. It's a bit memory hungry, but buying more RAM has seen that become almost a non-issue. The main frustration I had with it now was it's appearance. I played with the settings and got it looking better, however I was still annoyed with the appearance of the fonts. I tried different fonts, but none of them looked that good.

Googling for an answer, I found one on stackoverflow.com - another great resource which has solved more of my development queries than possibly any other site. Following one of the answers in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17510099/ugly-fonts-in-java-applications-on-ubuntu I entered:


Restarting Netbeans, it looks a lot better and much more like the other Mint applications.

The Dell development box is going well, and I'm actually surprised how well it has been performing so far. Considering it's quite a few years old, with just an Intel Core 2 Duo, it's doing a lot better than I thought it would. However, there's one area where it's struggling - memory. When I've got a few applications open or even several tabs open in Chrome (I regularly have 12+ open) then a lot of the time it slows to a crawl, since it's using a lot of virtual memory.

I decided to boost it's RAM (it only has 4GB) so I searched and found it needs DDR3 PC12800. Buying 8GB was going to be better value than 4GB and I thought it would definitely be enough then, so I ordered from a local supplier, umart.com.au in West Ryde. They're probably one of the cheapest computer parts retailers in Sydney from my experience - 8GB was only $96.

I picked up the RAM and came home and installed it, keeping the original 4GB in there also so I've got 12GB in total. The Dell now works a lot better, barely getting close to maxing out the memory and avoiding using virtual memory at all now.

I love Linux, but sometimes I hate Linux. But most of the time I love it.

I've been using Linux for years now. In the early days I tried Fedora and I liked it, but I was never a big fan. I eventually jumped on the Ubuntu bandwagon, but it never felt quite polished enough. I wanted to love it - there was certainly a lot I loved about it - but it also frustrated me too. I wanted to stick with it though and when I found Linux Mint, it seemed like I could have my cake and eat it too.

I've been using Mint for quite a few years now and have installed a few different versions on various PC's. I have been developing on a Macbook Pro for a couple of years but wanted to go back to using a desktop when I'm at my desk, and keep the laptop for when I'm out of the office.

I bought a second-hand Dell Optiplex 780 a few years ago. The intention was to use it as an HTPC, but it never really worked as well as I wanted it to. It was too big and because I wanted the HTPC running 24x7 (so I wouldn't have to wait for it to boot-up - I know, I'm too impatient sometimes) I didn't like it using all that power when it wasn't being used. I've since bought a Gigabyte Brix for my HTPC, but that's another story.

With the Dell not being used, I decided I would see what it would be like for my desktop development PC. It had an old version of Ubuntu on it, but I decided I would scrap that. Mint has recently released a LTS (long term support) edition (17.1), so I thought I would try that.

Installation was fairly straightforward, except for my video card. I had an ASUS EAH5450. Drivers were an issue for it, I couldn't get anything to work, despite spending considerable time trying different solutions suggested on the Linux Mint forums and elsewhere. In the end I removed the video card and used the onboard video. Whilst it's nothing amazing, considering this was going to be a development machine (no games or movies) I didn't care. Also, the onboard video went up to 1920x1080 which is all I needed for my monitor.