Well, I've been using Linux in various forms since 1993, and for many years it was only regarded as a geeks and hobbyists OS -- it wasn't until the very late '90s/early 2000s that commercial games started appearing for Linux, thanks to Loki games, and the like -- I've still got a couple of their early Linux releases, Descent 3 and Sin, that I have to do a fair bit of fiddling around to work, considering that the recommended OS is RedHat 6.2! :-)

Games for Linux, or so it seems to me, have made massive leaps in progress since the early days, as has the hardware support. So I tend to look on the optimistic side with regard to the future of Linux.

I've been waiting for Hunter65536 to post again, to see if my little tip worked.

I happen to have Mint 17.3 installed on an Acer Aspire laptop myself, but not the same model unfortunately.

I don't have that load times here. here launching a steam game takes seconds (linux mint 17.3). the last time I had that loading time was on windows with Race 07, (since it's got 12gb of addons)

I have a question.

How can you upgrade Mint version? I am now using Mint Cinnamon 17.2 . And I would like to upgrade to 17.4 when it comes. I read about it a while ago and solutions were insanely hard work. Almost as hard as upgrading from Win XP to Windows 7.

Sorry about the delay in reply, I tried what you said but it didn't work so I thought I would try later today and then post the results.

@adamhm I'll try it again later today and will post there if it doesn't work. Just curious, if it does work can I boot using efi mode once I'm done installing?

As of Mint 17 you can upgrade through the update manager. Also there won't be a Mint 17.4 - the next release will be Mint 18 and it should be out in about a month or so. I don't know yet if they'll be offering an upgrade option for that, but the Mint devs did say they were looking into it.

Me and my friend have a slightly off topic problem with Linux Mint. We are playing a browser game called managerzone which is about managing football and hockey teams. There are 2 programs that enables us to get and store data but they have problems with linux.

First Mzmanager

You can see the error message it gives when trying to connect to the game in the attachment as mzerror. You can download the program from my website to see if it works for you. You may click !!! Mzmanager 24c Türkçe indir !!! . The program works fine when I open it and can see data. Players, matches etc. However it doesnt let me get the game data from the game. I am using a windows laptop to get data.

MzAsistant.
http://mzassistant.com.ar/

I downloaded the Java version which was supposed to work on any platform. It works on windows but i only see an archive file in Linux. It downloads a file called MZAJ.jar and even after making it exacutable it shows what is inside it like a zip file.

I know this is totally off topic but I would appreciate any help.

Am I the only one with OSS emulation broken?

# apt-get install osspd
$ echo "asdasdasd" > /dev/dsp
bash: /dev/dsp: Input/output error

$ ls -alh /dev/dsp
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 14, 3 May 7 19:40 /dev/dsp

i have a story with regards to how easy it is to use mint to migrate from windows.

my father is a bare user of his computer, with no technical knowledge at all. one time, i browsed his hard drive with windows explorer and he muttered ‘that way of accessing the computer will forever be a mystery to me.’ that’s the level of proficiency we are talking here.

a while back, he bricked it. got his boot sector messed up and the thing wouldn’t boot anymore. i didn’t have time to get a new oem key for his windows (of course, one of those newfangled offers where they don’t even give you a dvd with the OS on it) and do a wipe/reinstall, so i gave him my mint dvd (i had migrated a few months before), told him how to live-boot from it, so he can at least use his laptop for the time being. my plan was to use linux to backup his stuff, wipe the hdd, and then install windows.

few days later, he comes: ‘say, is it possible to install this linux on my laptop?’ – ‘sure’ me says, ‘if it runs from the dvd, i’d be mighty surprised if it won’t install.’ – ‘do i do it by clicking the install mint thing on the desktop?’ – ‘yup’ – ‘ok. i’ll call you if i get stuck.’

next time i saw him, he had installed mint on his laptop and was happily using it without a hitch. (remind yourself of the general level of computer proficiency we’re talking here)

granted, he’s not using his laptop for any complex tasks at all, but mint really eases the transition. there might be its own set of downsides to it (the mint dev team being too small to develop MATE & cinnamon while also properly maintaining a distribution, for example), but i think it’s great for what it is.
try opening the folder with the jar in it in terminal and run it like so:

/folder/to/your/jar $ java -jar <jarname>.jar

if that works, you can write a shell script file (think of it like a .bat in windows) to clik and run it:

runmyprogram.sh:
----
#!/bin/sh
java -jar blahblah.jar
----

that should do the trick.

If you get nothing, but a blinking cursor on the screen at the end of your boot, it would be interesting to know if your PC responds to either of the following key combinations: <ALT> + <F1> or <CTRL> + <ALT> + <F1>.

If you get a command prompt, then at least we have a better idea of where the problem might lie.

I had tried that before and i am getting the following error.
-------- ERROR MESSSAGE --------------
engin@engin-VirtualBox ~/Desktop/Mz Asistant $ java -jar MZAJ.jar
Inicio de Carga: 2016-05-08 12:58:15
LoadForm: 2016-05-08 12:58:20
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: -1
at java.lang.String.substring(String.java:1911)
at mzassistant.MZAMain.d(Unknown Source)
at mzassistant.MZAMain.<init>(Unknown Source)
at mzassistant.ao.run(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:312)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEventImpl(EventQueue.java:745)
at java.awt.EventQueue.access$300(EventQueue.java:103)
at java.awt.EventQueue$3.run(EventQueue.java:706)
at java.awt.EventQueue$3.run(EventQueue.java:704)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.security.ProtectionDomain$JavaSecurityAccessImpl.doIntersectionPrivilege(ProtectionDomain.java:77)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:715)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:242)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:161)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:150)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:146)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:138)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:91)
---------- END OF ERROR MESSSAGE ------------

Also, I tried using the update manager. I updated everything i saw there and my version is still the same. My LibraOffice versions hasnt changed either (4.4.. something ).

:/ damn. sadly, i have no idea what to make of java’s error msg, but it sounds like something to take up with the programmer.

as for updates, i found it not uncommon for mint to be a bit (=a lot) on the slow side.

Keep up the good work OP,I may be convinced to try it and I'm not being sarcastic.

Finally it worked, spotted a warning by doing what blakstar said and upon doing a google search I learnt that the BIOS version 1.27 is the one giving me trouble.

Updated my BIOS before trying again and this time it worked. (1.27 was the one I got and I upgraded it to 1.31) It booted the DVD without any problems in UEFI mode and dual booting works good as well.

Wireless driver is missing but everything else works just fine. Thanks blakstar for the helpful tip and thanks to adamhm for making this thread to help those less experienced with Linux like myself.

Edit: Updated stuff and installed wireless driver. Reboot and I can't get into Linux anymore. :(