It’s not just because of this awesome wallpaper...

I suspect this post will yield a lot of angry or dismissive comments — I’m prepared for that, but I’d much prefer to hear suggestions for fixes to the issues that I’m about to describe.

I’ve been using Linux Mint 9 Isadora since about June 1st on my main desktop computer. I didn’t even consider downgrading until I read this review on Dedoimedo:

Overall, the operating system is all good and well, but the extra edge of wow that was always there is gone… Given the choice between Ubuntu and Mint, this time it’s a tie, which means Linux Mint lost.

For me it was the sum of smaller issues that ultimately made me roll back to Linux 8 Helena over the weekend.

Brasero

The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was that I found myself unable to make my monthly backup to optical media using Mint’s default disc-burning app.

I’m well aware that there are plenty of other solutions just a few clicks away, but I’d never experienced such issues with Brasero before. No less than three times it spun up a blank disc to record, only to spit it out with an error a few seconds later. I knew something was amiss when Brasero informed me that my 8.5GB DVD+R DL would have over 4GB of free space after recording 7.8GB of data… That didn’t sound right.

Gwibber

This was a big one. For whatever reason the latest version of my favourite microblogging app would decide to stop working in Isadora after running for a few hours. Even worse, nothing less than a full reboot of my system could get it to run properly again.

As I share noteworthy links throughout the day on this site’s Twitter and Identi.ca accounts this was supremely annoying.

Aesthetic Issues

There’s some kind of bug with Plymouth that mucked up my Isadora boot screen. There’s also apparently an easy fix for that, but it’s one of those things that IMHO should have really worked “out of the box”, as it’s the first thing a new user sees after installing Mint on their computer.

There’s also an issue where I found myself unable to change the default wallpaper on my log-in screen. I’m a big fan of Zwopper’s wallpapers so I chose his latest as my desktop background, but I could never get the changes to stick across my system.

Taken separately these are minor issues, but together they make Isadora seem lacking in the polish that made the previous Linux Mint so slick.

So now, over to you. If you’ve any suggestions for fixing Gwibber or warnings about security issues with the older Linux kernel, I’m all ears. Thanks in advance. 😎