"Updated" Senpai Respin MX-Cinnamon 23.6 for x32 and x64-AHS-LMK, with Cinnamon 6.4.8 of Mint LMDE

[Tony45]

at paul1149
Being stuck at 93% I had 4 or 5 times already with MXlinux-cinnamon ( I think cinnamon-usergreen)
In my case it was that I partitioned the installation partition with GParted , then rebooted and installed
I can NOT remember < exactly > what I did that time, but...maybe it was like this: Install....systen hangs....reboot...install it again....now it works
But guaranteed, it had to do with partitioning just before install ( which is my standard use for 20 years ).
Wish you good luck

[paul1149]

Ok, I found the desktop switcher at the bottom of the login of my previous install on this machine, and I got to Cinnamon through there. It's actually working quite spectacularly, in terms of performance on this older machine. I think this is my new go-to for when I don't want the overhead of the KDE system.

[Senpai]

Ok, I've got some kind of partition problem going on.
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Senpai, thanks for this. I started outfitting an older Dell AIO for a boy I know, and I found mx-xfce too plain, and mx-kde a bit too heavy for the machine's and the boy's capabilities. So I tried Mint-cinnamon, and thought it struck a very nice balance between the two. But I missed some of the features and power of mx!

That's when I found this thread. I'm in the process of installing, and met a few problems.

• There was no way to enter root user credentials, they were grayed out.
• Grub was not installable on the ESP partition, so I opted for MBR.
• The installation is stuck at 93% and has gone nowhere for 20m now.

I'm installing on a 98gb ext4 partition, with an 8gb swap partition (~ size as the RAM).
Is there something that jumps out at you that I need to be doing? Thanks.

Hi:
Can you send an image of the partitions created, 93% is usually when the system stays waiting for the user to put all his data,(name, password, etc), just before installing the Grub Was everything well filled in?

Best regards

[paul1149]

I think the lack of root log in credentials was probably due to me not seeing the checkbox to activate the root user. I didn't realize it was optional.

Here's a shot of the disk layout. The target was Part. #8. After the initial problem the next time I let the disk check do its thing, which it did with no problems.




When it hung at 93%, I think I tried it three times, I had already entered all user data. The only button that was live was Close.

But IAC I'm up and running now, off an earlier kde install that I've converted. I find Cinnamon doesn't have all the refinement and fine-tuning of kde, but it's not bad at all, and it is noticeably faster on older hardware.

Thanks.

[paul1149]

at paul1149
Being stuck at 93% I had 4 or 5 times already with MXlinux-cinnamon ( I think cinnamon-usergreen)
In my case it was that I partitioned the installation partition with GParted , then rebooted and installed
I can NOT remember < exactly > what I did that time, but...maybe it was like this: Install....systen hangs....reboot...install it again....now it works
But guaranteed, it had to do with partitioning just before install ( which is my standard use for 20 years ).
Wish you good luck

Tony, sorry, I missed your post last time through. Yes, the scenario was that I discovered that the installer did not have a built-in partitioning segue out to gparted or kparted, so I let the installer be and opened gparted on my own and did the partition work. It involved moving and resizing some existing partitions, so it took some time. That done, I went back to the installer, but found it did not reflect the changes. So I closed and reopened it. When I hit the 93% wall I rebooted and this time let the disk checker run. With its blessing I then tried again, again to no avail. That's the best I can recall how it happened.

At that point I ran boot repair, because I had moved the original mx/kde install I wanted to get back to. But the machine wouldn't boot nonetheless. So I booted to mx23 usb again, ran boot repair from there, and that fixed the problem. I then installed the Cinnamon desktop to it, thinking I probably would end up wiping the entire drive anyway. But upon logging out I noticed for the first time - I don't know if it was always there or whether my Cinnamon install caused it - that I now had a convenient desktop switcher on the log in page. This was a very convenient way to test various desktops and see which ones agreed with the hardware! Cinnamon took the prize, and I'm delighted to have made the discovery. So much so, that I probably will upgrade to an SSD and keep this puppy around. It also will be my go-to solution for older hardware.

[Senpai]

I think the lack of root log in credentials was probably due to me not seeing the checkbox to activate the root user. I didn't realize it was optional.

Here's a shot of the disk layout. The target was Part. #8. After the initial problem the next time I let the disk check do its thing, which it did with no problems.




When it hung at 93%, I think I tried it three times, I had already entered all user data. The only button that was live was Close.

But IAC I'm up and running now, off an earlier kde install that I've converted. I find Cinnamon doesn't have all the refinement and fine-tuning of kde, but it's not bad at all, and it is noticeably faster on older hardware.

Thanks.

Hi @paul1149
From what you say, 1º, the UEFI partition is somewhat small and it is possible that when starting the LiveUSB you did not choose the UEFI boot, but you chose “Legacy” and that's why you could not install the Grub on the EFI/“ESP” partition.
2º, probably when you moved/resized the partitions, the file system was not well recovered and that is why the installation did not finish well.
3º, If you had installed Cinnamon in a new and formatted partition it would not keep KDE, I think that the 2nd time you installed Cinnamon in the same partition that you had KDE without formatting and that's why you get in LinghtDM the two options, being in Cinnamon. you can check it by looking in the hidden folders of your /home/.config if there are KDE folders or in /etc, you were lucky not to delete everything ;-).
Doesn't Grub at startup show you two different MX installations?

Best regards

[paul1149]

(I'm definitely not getting email notifications here. Glad I checked back again.)

Hi Senpai,

I can't be sure, but I thought I created a new partition #8 for the Cinnamon install after I resized and moved the previous one (the original MX23/kde install). But IAC the disk check gave it an ok?

The 2nd Cinnamon install was not an OS install, it was the desktop package on top of the existing KDE install. I think that explains the many kde elements I have there under ~/.config.

At boot up Grub shows only two entries, both for MX23, "wildflower" I think it's called, at least that's the background. One is the standard entry, the other is Advanced Options, which is selected in order to fire the systemd option.

[Senpai]

(I'm definitely not getting email notifications here. Glad I checked back again.)

Hi Senpai,

I can't be sure, but I thought I created a new partition #8 for the Cinnamon install after I resized and moved the previous one (the original MX23/kde install). But IAC the disk check gave it an ok?

The 2nd Cinnamon install was not an OS install, it was the desktop package on top of the existing KDE install. I think that explains the many kde elements I have there under ~/.config.

At boot up Grub shows only two entries, both for MX23, "wildflower" I think it's called, at least that's the background. One is the standard entry, the other is Advanced Options, which is selected in order to fire the systemd option.

Ok, so you don't have Cinnamon 6.4.8 which is the version of my respin, you will have the Debian version which is 5.6.1, right?

Best regards

[paul1149]

Ok, so you don't have Cinnamon 6.4.8 which is the version of my respin, you will have the Debian version which is 5.6.1, right?

Best regards

I'm looking at 5.6.8 here. Kernel is 6.1.0-13. MX23.5 (and it's Libretto, not Wildflower as I had thought).

(and I am getting notifications here now, it was an overactive spam filter here).

Thanks.

[DeepDayze]

Hey Senpai, I installed your respin to my trusty old guinea pig which is an HP 8460p laptop...oldie but still going strong for a 15 year old machine! It installed flawlessly and I liked the dark theme and the wallpaper. Think I am gonna use this on my big Ryzen 7 mega-machine.