It seems to me that beyond reliability what just about everyone is looking for in an OS is the ability to change the OS into something that resembles us. To be able to put things where we want them, Sized the way we like , colored the way that looks best to us. We want obedience to our personal needs and just occasionally to be able to follow our whims just to please ourselves. People of the Earth, Mint 18.3 is a desktop for the ages! LOL Of course it let's me down, It has to if another is to have the same freedom I crave. In a well founded effort to please as many as possible Mint 18.3 releases to us a built in freedom of choice. Where ever there is choice there are complications. Mint navigates those waters like a sea pirate! Basic Mint 18.3 is a very well rounded desktop.Yet It's integration could not be less ridged. Choice is. It seems like Mint always offers the user a wide verity of choices. Yet these choices are almost never forced upon us. If we don't know what a thing does, we can leave it as it is. Seek the help of others, or just take a first hand plunge into the unknown. But understanding our choices can be at times very taxing. "What If I change things and can't figure out how to get back to where I was". And like who hasn't done that!??. For this reason it is wise to go slow changing one unknown setting at a time. Checking out the result, which can at times elude us for weeks, even months. Over time we of course come to understand the options before us. Here's what was hard for me to grasp in relation to computers. I learned it undertaking an art form. "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast." I was slow to apply this axiom to my understanding of Mint. So I tell myself I was just being smooth when I completely trash yet another a perfectly good install.":O} I do a lot of backups. This can be helpful in the extreme! Let's go to Main Menu/Preferences/ System Settings. Take some time to look things over. You are looking at the seat of power when customizing Mint. Most all your grips and complaints can in one way or another find a solution here....it's your tool box look it over. Next let's go to "Extensions" The picture I put up shows around a third of options and settings offered here. Everything from Mouse to monitors. Remember that these are settings/options straight from Mint. The odds of anything found here harming your system are very slight to say the least. Also please do remember us. GOL is here to serve. Please allow us to be of use to you.":O}
Great post and tutorial Daniel! I never thought about posting some of the typical day-to-day issues with Linux. Mint has come to be my favorite distro and Cinnamon my favorite environment. I know where everything is and how to tweak or administrate what I need done. Since Mint 16 they have only changed a few things but mostly made improvements. I love how we can change the sizes of the fonts, panels, workspaces, icons on the fly. We even get a bunch of great screensavers and window options. You are right about fixing something you set. sometimes its hard to go back and undo it. My rule-of-thumb is to experiment and change it once, then change it back. Then decide if that is something I really need. If not, I never touch it again. I even made a list of programs and features I need for a fresh install of Mint.
Thank you Boo! Coming from the master of writing guides this means a lot to me. I'm either a purest or just simple minded, but All I need is mint. I get everything thing from Mint now. POL, Wine ,Banshee for Music and VLC player for movies, though I mostly use my play station for movies as I don't have blue-ray on my box. They don't give very good games, but then I'm spoiled and the games like all things Mint come FREE! LOL
