Three months is not a bad run

At long last, finally, as things go, my neighbor’s installation of Linux Mint LXDE spun out of control into a digital fireball and splattered against the cold hard surface of reality.

Just for review, about three months ago I offered Mint for the 2.2Ghz Celeron, and was flabbergasted when I never heard anything else about it. Apparently it was working without interference or demand for months on end.

Which made me quite happy. Any time a day-to-day computer user can enjoy Linux without relying on day after day of unprofessional tech support (or professional tech support, now that I think about it) … well, that’s a good thing.

But all good things come to an end, and something — possibly a system update or perhaps a stray system setting — caused a splintering of that pretty little green world, and now it just constantly returns to the login screen.

I suspect something in the core graphics card libraries, but neither I nor my neighbor is keen on tracking down something teeny and discreet over the course of days, in hopes of bringing it back.

Instead, a fresh installation of Mint is in order. First a proper weeding out of the home directory and an emigration to an external drive. Then a system check and a reinstall, and a full update from there.

And if all goes well, then files and data will be restored.

Personally, I have faith. Mint LXDE made enough of an impression on the owner to ask for the same thing again, and I concur this time. That’s a grand total of two thumbs up.

Little hiccups like this can happen to anyone, on any machine. But three straight months with absolutely zero attendance from me … good grief, but that’s very rare. For me, anyway. 😀