Tips and Tricks for Linux Mint after Installation [Mint 17 & 17.1 - Cinnamon Edition]
Updated 20. December 2014 - 5:58 by Jojo Yee
Introduction
Linux Mint is one of the top free operating systems widely used in the world and currently receives the highest hits at DistroWatch.
Even though it's an Ubuntu-based system, Linux Mint features only one panel at the bottom which looks closer to the taskbar in the traditional Windows system, and a well-organized start menu complete with a useful Search box. A select version also pre-installs some proprietary software such as necessary media codecs by default so that you play mp3, mp4 or most other media files with a player right away out of the box.
Linux Mint 17 Qiana is a long-term service (LTS) release which will receive security updates until 2019 and newer versions of Linux Mint will use this same package base until 2016, making it trivial for you to upgrade according to the developer.
The Cinnamon Edition of Linux Mint 17 Qiana and 17.1 Rebecca uses Cinnamon, instead ofGNOME shell, as a user interface for the GNOME-3 desktop environment. And unlike Ubuntu Unity sporting a vertical launcher on the left side of the screen, Cinnamon maintains a traditional layout with a bottom panel and a Mint menu. If you're using this Edition, you might find these tips and tricks useful for working with the system on a PC.
Frequently used programs can be easily pinned to the panel.
Note: In the same way by right-clicking an application from the Menu, you can also add a program shortcut to the Desktop or the Favorites located at the left column inside Menu. The Favorites support drag-and-drop and re-ordering. See also “Enable Superbar”.
An applet is a small tool or application which you can access directly from the panel for performing a task. Some applets have been enabled by default but you can disable the applets you don't need to use or enable the ones you like pretty easily:
Note: You can also get more applets online from here, or in Linux Mint 17.1, go to System Settings > Preferences > Applets and click the “Available Applets (online)” tab.
In recent versions of Windows, frequently used programs can be pinned to the taskbar (hence called Superbar) for launching the programs and their icons are highlighted when the programs are running. Likewise, an applet called “Window List with App Grouping” can be added to the panel to achieve almost the same effect.
Note: Since this applet serves as a new launcher and the running programs are indicated, you can remove the applet “Window List” from the panel. To add a program shortcut to this new launcher, just drag a program from the Menu and drop it to the launcher, and you can pin or unpin programs from the panel as well with a simple right-click.
Linux Mint has a Menu button where you can start doing things like running a program, looking for files, log out or quit the system and so on.
The Menu allows you to set your personal preferences with the steps below, for example:
Note: In this Settings window, you can also set Menu hover delay and more.
Quite often a shortcut is automatically added to the Menu when you install an application. But you might also download a program which requires you to manually add a shortcut for it to run from the Menu. This can be done without breaking a sweat.
Note: If an executable file is not accessible, try to add permission to execute the file in the Terminal, for this example assuming the file for running in the 64-bit system is extracted to the “Downloads/clipgrab-3.4.8” folder:
cd ~/Downloads/clipgrab-3.4.8 chmod +x clipgrab
When you select a theme from Menu > Cinnamon/System Settings > themes, the theme may come with a non-transparent or semi-transparent panel. But you can adjust the level of transparency for the panel if you like. For example, I've selected a Linux Mint theme and I can make it more transparent with the steps below. (Caution: changing the code incorrectly might result in a non-responsive desktop environment.)
When running an application without maximized, Linux Mint always puts it in the left-top corner of the desktop by default, but you can use this handy tool gDevilspie to automatically detect and move the window of an application, such as the Terminal app, to the center of the desktop. You just need to set it up once for the applications you need and it's good for use each time you log into the system.
Ideally, the window manager in Linux Mint should restore the last known position of an application window, but it doesn't do that unless an application remembers its own window position. Using this tool, however, you can do more controls over the application windows by the rules you set.
Note 1: At time of checking, a bug was reported that gDevilspie did not start. But there's a workaround as follows:
Note 2: If you've encountered an error when starting the devilspie daemon, try install devilspie in the Terminal with the command below:
When you double-click the title bar of a window, the default setting is to maximize a window. Since there's already a maximize button you can use for this, I always like to change the default setting to rolling up (or 'shading') a window when I double-click on its title bar.
Now you can roll up a window when you double-click its title bar, and roll it down by double-clicking the title bar again. Simple as that.
Linux Mint (Cinnamon Edition) provides you with several settings for Themes. You can easily select a theme and get a new look for the panel, windows, icons and more in the system.
Linux Mint creates two workspaces by default, but you can add more and manage your workspaces pretty easily in several ways:
These shortcuts are also helpful:
In addition to the Computer and Home icons, Linux Mint adds an icon to the desktop for every removable drive that you attach to your system. The icons can be hidden by these steps:
The drive icons as well as computer and home icons would then disappear from the desktop, simple as that. Remember that you can always access the drives from Menu > Files.
Linux Mint 17.1 allows you to change the desktop background or wallpaper at a fixed time interval via System Settings > Appearance > Backgrounds, but if your system doesn't come with it or you need more choices, try Wally.
Your wallpaper on the desktop will automatically change following these basic settings when you log back in the system (or right click the Wally icon on the system tray and select “Play”).
Keyboard shortcuts are preset in the system, but you can add new ones or change them easily. For instance, you can add a new keyboard shortcut to the text editor Gedit, like below.
Xkill is part of the X11 utilities pre-installed in Linux Mint and a tool for terminating misbehaving X clients or unresponsive programs. You can easily add a shortcut key to launch xkill with the steps below.
Xkill is ready for use. Press the above key combination to turn the cursor to an X-sign, move the X-sign and drop it into a program interface to terminate the unresponsive program, or cancel the X-sign with a right-click.
If you press Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Linux Mint brings you a menu to log out your system. But for some reason you might encounter that the system freezes, the mouse cursor can't move, neither pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete can work.
Remember that there's a shortcut key Ctrl+Alt+Backspace that can bring you back to the log-in screen immediately without the need to reboot the system. That's a time saver.
Windows Explorer allows for users to set a default view to all folders. In almost the same way, Linux Mint's File Manager allows for these settings:
Other various settings, such as single or double click to open items, icon captions, list columns and preview files can be done in the same window as well.
When running the File Manager, you will see that the folder icons are predetermined by the theme you set. If you wish to change a folder icon to another for it to stand out from the system-wide icons, follow these steps:
Note: You can change your custom folder icon back to the default by clicking the “Revert” button in the “Select Custom Icon” window at Step 2 above.
In the Mint file system, you can use File Manager to browse most files but can only write files in your home folder/home/your_name and its sub-folders such as Desktop and Documents. If you have to rename a folder or write files outside of your home folder using the File Manager, you won't be able to but you can create an advanced file manager for this purpose.
Now you can easily access the Advanced File Manager by pressing the shortcut key you assigned. But be careful since you can use it to delete or change any files on your system.
If you use a PC with an integrated audio device and it has no sound when playing a media file on a player, try these simple steps to set Sound Preferences for your PC. It works for me for the audio device I have.
As the items available from the list might differ depending on the hardware devices detected by the system, you might want to try other items in the menus to see if they work for your devices.
Each time when you login to Linux Mint, it may play a login sound depending on the setting. If you don't like how it behaves, you can easily enable or disable a sound, or change it to your favorite sound.
Log out and log back in to check the new setting for login sound. Similarly you can try out sounds for other actions.
Do you prefer Windows TrueType fonts to the default fonts installed by Linux Mint? The mscorefonts package containing most Microsoft fonts can be installed and configured easily in a few steps below:
Besides this, you can run an application such as Font-Manager to view, install, remove fonts and so on.
Screenlets are small applications to represent things such as sticky notes, clocks, calendars around on your desktop. You can launch a pre-installed screenlet from Screenlets manager, or install a new one into the manager for launching it. Here are the steps for installing and launching a screenlet, for example, WaterMark System Information.
Linux Mint uses OpenJDK by default, but some web services might need the Oracle Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to be installed for running the services properly. If you would like to get the proprietary Oracle Java package for your system, you can download and install it with the steps below:
At any time, you can check the Java version you're using and configure it when necessary:
Linux Mint's Software Manager lets you search and get free software. You can go to Menu > Software Manager, type in an application to search, download and install it. You can also go to Menu > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager, type in an application name to search and install a software package from the repositories.
Besides this, you can also go to Ubuntu Apps Directory to find the software products you need. If you like a product on the Directory, just click the orange download button and it opens up in a package manager for you to confirm the install.
Alternatively, you can get the latest freeware applications by clicking the Install this now button from the GetDeb Repositoryafter the getdeb package is installed with the instructions given.
See also our Best Free Software for Linux.
Linux Mint is capable of reading and writing files stored on Windows formatted partitions using NTFS file system, but partitions must be 'mounted' before they can be accessed. With these steps, you can auto mount the drives or partitions without the need to manually mount them for access each time you start up the system.
UUID=1234567890123456 /media/ntfs ntfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,allow_other 0 0
Restart the system and check if the partition is mounted.
image34 To identify disk partitions by label, either use sudo blkid or ls /dev/disk/by-label -g in the Terminal. To view partition sizes and file systems, enter sudo fdisk -l. Disks app mentioned in “Name or Label a Partition” also gives you a glance of device numbers, partition types, sizes and labels.
A USB storage device plugged into the system usually mounts automatically, but if for some reasons it doesn't automount, it's possible to manually mount it with these steps.
Enter sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/usb to mount a USB drive formatted with NTFS system.
To unmount it, just enter sudo umount /media/usb in the Terminal.
The File Manager shows the root directory as File System for your Mint system partition. If you have other partitions (or volumes), it shows them as xx GB Volume if they're not named or labelled.
Using Disks app is one of the effective ways to name a partition easily:
The File Manager should now show the partition label, such as Data-Disk, instead of xx GB Volume. This tip is for naming a partition using the application; use other advanced features such as format, edit or delete partition with caution as they can delete data on your disk.
In Windows, you can place a program shortcut in a startup folder for running a program automatically when the system starts. In Linux Mint, you can do the same in this way:
The above program will then be listed in additional startup programs. Check if the program runs automatically by logging out and back to the system.
Linux Mint offers you a Mint Display Manager (MDM) to configure a login session. You can use it to change a login screen or a theme you like in a few steps:
Moreover, you can download a similar theme for installation. For example:
After full installation, Linux Mint is commonly set to be the default operating system to boot up if no key is pressed within a few seconds on a multi-boot system. You might want to set your preferred operating system to boot up by default. This can be done easily with Grub Customizer.
Press Ctrl-Alt-T to call up Terminal, copy following codes and paste (Ctrl-Shift-V) them inside the Terminal to install Grub Customizer.
After installation, run Grub Customizer to set the default boot options with the following steps.
Avoid changing timeout to 0 seconds if you need to select a system to boot up from a multi-boot menu.
Each time when Linux Mint updates to a new Linux kernel, the old one is left behind and the boot menu gets longer. If your new Linux kernel works well, it's safe to clean up the boot menu. Do take these steps carefully as incorrectly hiding the items can make your system unbootable. You can check the Linux kernel version you're running by entering this command lineuname -r into the Terminal.
To clean up the boot menu, it's pretty straightforward with Grub Customizer used in the tip above.
A simple command can be entered in the Terminal to schedule a time for the system to shut down.
OR: enter sudo shutdown -h hh:mm (replace hh:mm with the time on the 24hr clock, e.g. 23:15).
The system will then shut down within the minutes or at the time specified. To cancel a scheduled time, enter sudo shutdown -c in the Terminal.
Alternatively, you might want to download and install GShutdown, which is a GUI program for scheduling a time to shutdown the system.