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Hi,
I'm experiencing a problem with a Dell Latitude E4310 that has to go to Camerun. I have installed the OS with the Disk-Maker several times, in Legacy and UEFI modes and I've also tried with the previous OS version in French.
The problem arrives when executing the application to change the environment language. Just double click on it and the system logs out and I'm presented with the login screen. The same happens when executing the script to load the educative contents. I'm asked for the password and, then, the system logs out, and I have to log in again.
A colleague of mine is helping with this trip to Camerun and has found the same problem with an old Toshiba. We have made six laptops in total, with two different Disk-Maker drives, only two of them have shown this problem. The rest have worked just fine.
I have tried to change the language via terminal too but, after booting, the language remains unchanged. The rest of local variables change but not the LANG & LANGUAGE ones. I have searched for solutions but nothing that I have tried has worked.
I have decided to install the Linux Mint with the previous 24_04_LTS FR and load the French contents. I hope the users wont need to change the language. The rest of the programs that I have checked seem to work fine.
Have you encountered this problem?
Thanks in advance for any suggestion.
Best Regards
Josep M
Commentaires
Hi Josep,
Hi Josep,
it sounds like a problem which we faced here in Germany as well with some older laptops.
Sometimes, even the desktop disappears / crashes and you end up at the log-in again, if you want to change language or add content after booting.
We were not able to find out the reason nor find a workaround nor solution. The guess is it has to do with the CPU, limitation of it etc.
As mainly very old CPUs were involved (2010 or earlier) we decided here to dump such devices, not to invest more time and not to use them. There is a reason why Labdoo recommends ca. 12+ years old devices as minimum requirement :)
Sorry that we are not able to offer a solution this time. But at least you know now - you are not alone.
Thanks,
Ralf
Labdoo.org (Germany)
Hi,
Hi,
After sending the request to the Team, I thought I coud do some tests with the oldest one of the laptops, a Toshiba with an I3 and 4 Gb of Ram.
I installed directly Linux Mint 22, wilma, then I checked if the Languages app worked. I could change between English, French and Spanish, flawlesly, no issues. Then I updated the OS to Linux Mint 22.1, Xia. Same tests, same results.
I decided to check the other laptop that had the same problem, a Dell with an I5, four cores, and 8 Gb of Ram. I repeated the same steps, and I got the same results, the language can be changed, no forced logout.
I don't know why the same OS installed via Labtix makes these specific computers behave differently than installed directly but it doesn't seem related to their age, brand or CPU.
I just wanted to share with you these results, in case it can help. Logically I went back to our 24_04 version, in French, in both laptops.
Best Regards
Josep M
Hi Josep,
Hi Josep,
that was already known by the German helper team, but what does it help, when a "blank" Linux Mint installation is working on very old devices? So you can install a "blank" Linux Mint, of cause.
But then all additional tools and programs for education would be missing. Because, as soon as you add those, you will notice the above mentioned problem. So when you receive any answer for your questions, the answer always refers to an image based installation. One or several of the installed programs Labdoo uses cause the problem you described. But to find out, which one out of meanwhile more than 100 tools would be wasting too much time.
If you find out, let me know.
BR,
Ralf
Hi Josep,
Hi Josep,
we spend some time trying to find a solution for this problem. In my opinion it is a problem with the MATE-Desktop. There seem to be some incompatibilities with some scripts / programs and some hardware. Using the XFCE4 desktop does not show this problems. But if we would change to XFCE4 there surely will be new problems like this issue.
While installing MINT from an USB-Stick MINT is looking for the hardware it is installed on and it will automatically install / activate needed drivers. So the installation will deliver a higher compatibility with the hardware than cloning a whole image with previously installed drivers that depend on the hardware the clone was originally installed on.
Installing and cloning are simply two different processes !!! We are glad that we deliver images that work with 90-95 percent of the devices we use. But there will always be problems that can only be solved by installing ( not cloning ! ) MINT or another Linux-OS. For older with Labdoo incompatible devices I recommend MX-Linux with the XFCE4 desktop. There is even an 32-Bit-ISO in the downloads.
best regards
thomsen
Hi Josep,
Hi Josep,
yesterday I've got two laptops from Ralf with this problem. As I mentioned before I believe that "mintlocale" ( the Mint-Languages-Tool ) crashes the running MATE-Session and the device falls back into the login screen. I can not exactly identify why this happens. I believe that some changes in the linux-kernel or in MATE lead to this incompabitility. Or it's simply a problem that only appears if the system is cloned and not installed from scratch.
I found the follwing workaround to use mintlocale outside of a running MATE-Session:
=============================================================
As some older hardware crashes if the Mint Language-Tool ( mintlocale ) is used inside MATE
a workaround can be used to start mintlocale outside a MATE-session:
- boot the device and login as labdoo.
- open a new teminal-session with Strg + Alt + F1
- login with labdoo / labdooadmin
- start the windowmanager for this session with "startx" in the terminal
- close the appearing "Could not aquire ..." window. If there is no mousepointer ( in some cases )
press the "Tab"-key some times until the "Close"-button is marked and press "Enter" to close the window
- now there is a black empty screen with a mousepointer
- open a Terminal with Strg + Alt + T
- type "mintlocale" in the terminal, mintlocale ( "Mint-Languages" ) will start
- change the preferences as used
- close the mintlocale window
- reboot from the terminal with "sudo reboot"
==========================================================================
I would have prefered a solution within the labdoo-session but this workaround works with the MINT-Language-Tool so there is no need for unexperienced users to edit any config-files.
It worked well on the two different devices I had and we will keep an eye on it if works on other devices.
Best regards
thomsen from labdoo
Hi Thomsen,
Hi Thomsen,
Thank you for your information. I have some laptops waiting to have time to find a solution for that problem so I'll try your method and I'll come back to you to explain the results.
On the other hand I followed the suggestion of trying the XFCE4 version of Linux Mint 22.1 in one of those computers with just 2Gb of RAM and it worked fine.
I could execute the language app, and execute all the scripts for loading contents, programs, backing up and restore student and so on, without any problem, even the Internet synchronization of the clock works swiftly.
I have duplicated the environment of the MATE version. The result, logically, is a bit different, but the whole experience I think is pretty similar. I have cloned the image just in case, but I'll prioritize your solution in order to keep the MATE desktop.
Thank you again for your kind support,
Cordially
Josep M
Hi Thomsen,
Hi Thomsen,
I have checked the solution on one of the laptops, a HP 6730b from 2011 with just 2Gb of Ram. Following the steps suggested, I've been able to change the language and local configuration.
I have three questions, though:
- The result of this operation would be the same as using the previous Linux Mint image in English, French.. that we had before, right? Could I use them instead? Afterwards, it's easy to update the system to its last level.
- If using the last version, should I remove the desktop access to the change of language in order to avoid the session crash if the user wants to use it?
- Should I remove the desktop access to the script's folder? Some of those scripts crash the session too. As the content is already installed, the user shouldn't need it.
Thank you in advance for your answer,
Josep M