New media desktop: Linux Mint 18.1

I have recently moved, and found my self in need of a computer outside of my gaming station. So I set to build a desktop for light browsing and music. Now my requirements were actually quite light, it should be able to run Netflix and Spotify, as well as an optical out for my audio. It also helped a little bit that I had a 120GB SSD laying about unused, so I didn’t have to invest in that. In the end I decided for an Intel build, simply cause I am a Intel / Nvidia kinda guy, don’t ask me to explain it. After the break, we will reveal the specification.

Specification:

Motherboard: Gigabyte H270N wifi (mini ITX)
Case: Fractal Design Node 304
CPU: Intel Pentium G4400, 3MB cache, 3.3 GHz, 2 core
RAM: Corsair 2x 4GB DDR4
HDD: Corsair 120GB SSD

To start off, this motherboard does not support the newest kernel of Linux, or rather the onboard Intel graphics card will mess up. Every liveCD boot attempt I made ended up in a no signal on my display once X server started. This is mostly due to the way newest kernel loads the driver, if I understand it right. It is “easily” solved by adding “nomodeset” to the boot options in GRUB, however I found that some distributions will not boot at all on this motherboard with onboard graphics. Finally I managed to get Linux Mint to boot into live mode, and after some Googling and fiddling, I managed to start the X server as well, and be able to log in to the system. All is fine with the world, or so I thought.

Booting in to Cinnamon for the first time, after 258 tries, I get the message that it is in software accelerated mode. After upgrading the kernel to get wifi to work, and for those interested, run:

sudo apt-get install linux-generic-hwe-16.04-edge

Reboot after above, and wifi will work, though network connection is required (and I recommend putting connecting your android phone to the system for network with usb). Next is to run scheduled mint updates, and at this stage I notice I am running 100% CPU consistently through upgrade period. I check System Monitor, I run top, and I triple check my numbers, but they are right. I figure it is down to the update running, so I let it run out and reboot. Find I am still running closer to 80 – 90% CPU, just with default Mint. This is where I get suspicious and start to track down processes. Two stand out, Firefox (web services) and Cinnamon (Desktop environment).

Here is my gripe with Mint; It is a damn resource hog. If you are running intel CPU and don’t have an i in front of the model, stay away. Especially if you are on a low end graphics card, or built in. From my testing, I could spike the system running on idle, > 10% cpu usage, and just move a window and it would spike at 60 – 80% CPU usuage. Please note, my methods are extremely unscientific, and is probably a result of me having a poorly supported onboard graphics card, resulting in more overhead for the CPU. If you have PCIE card on the same board, you can probably survive. %

Now, to my conclusions, I am not really sure. Because I really like what Mint is doing with their desktop. It is clean, though going in the same way as Windows, and are not as much focusing on having the desktop as a widget container, but rather focusing on accessibility of software, settings and the important stuff (to me). The problem is, it is so dependent on you having a 3D cabable graphics card, a budget system will not be able to run this efficiently. I will most likely end up with an XFCE edition of something, because I just need something to run my shit off of.

Also, before you start, I disabled everything I could of effects, thumbnail previews etc. It didn’t matter too much, I still had way too much CPU load compared to what I am comfortable with on relative light use. I would probably be able to alleviete allot of my issues by having a bit more graphics power, but that is not an option. I need something that I can run ro configure to run on, low end graphics.