Goodbye Sam, hello Samantha

[lovingboth]

As you may have noticed from the moans, I have been having problems with Firefox crashing for several versions now. As the same binaries work vastly better on the netbook, I've come to the conclusion that it's something to do with the OS, in this case Linux Mint.

What to do? The netbook has Xubuntu, but when I try adding an Xubuntu partition to the drive, and have it to use the exist /home partition*, it will boot fine, login fine in text mode, but not into the GUI. Even when I install the MATE desktop that I've been using in Linux Mint.

A look around Distrowatch comes up with a couple of possibilities, but the one that makes most sense is Mint Debian, which is based on Debian directly rather than via Ubuntu. It will make some problems (the PPAs that have the latest versions of some things for Ubuntu and derivatives typically don't work with Debian) but it gives a very nice combination of the advantages of Debian Testing and of Mint's more relaxed attitude to some issues of moral purity. (You get Firefox rather than being rebranded as Iceweasel because of not agreeing with Mozilla's limitations on what you can do with the Firefox logos, for example.)

We'll see if it works in terms of ending the crashes...

* Obviously /home - where all your data and personal config files are - is on its own partition, because that makes upgrading or changing the OS sooooo much easier.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

I'm in a similarly sticky spot with my main browser. I've loved using OmniWeb pretty much since it debuted, back around the birth of the web - but, as it's now firmly a hobby project of the developers, given it's impossible to make money off a browser, it's suffering in stability, to the point of crashing a couple times a day. Yet, I still don't want to move away, as I love its graphical tabs in a scrollable drawer, its workspaces that can automatically maintain state, and per-site preferences, all without any use of plugins.

Hey ho. At least there's no shortage of options. ^_^