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Then tried Mint 17 MATE (Everyone's obsessed with Mint, and calling Ubuntu obsolete.): Wifi dies or slows down after a few minutes, so always rebooting. init 1 - crashes system, instead of shutting down to single user. telinit 1 - does the same thing. shutdown now - does the same thing. Sent Q's to relevant forums on all the above, no good replies. Googled my brains out trying to find solutions, nothing worked. </snip>
I'm a latecomer to this post but from experience I believe the problem is the wifi/internet. It doesn't matter which ISP one is with but for me Telstra internet is poor. The only way I can install linuxen is with eth0 cable to the modem and through a copper line to the exchange, and the process takes around 10 hours. My eth0/copper internet runs at 0.2 to 30 Kb/sec, with occasional bursts to 130kb/sec but mainly 0.2 to 0.9 kb.sec. Internet simply stops very frequently, I mean it's on and working but there is no exchange of data for hours at a time, System Monitor graph is flatlined. I do know folk in Millgrove/Warburton area have similar line speeds and failures. Other people in this town have the same problem. <Rant> I've had my Ubuntu 14.04 corrupted 4 times during updates in the past 2 weeks and this after losing everything due to corruption of Fedora, CentOS and Ubuntu 2 weeks ago and having to fresh install ubuntu from dvd, have this as my working system. To download Fedora 20 will take 7 hours just to get the dvd install. </Rant> May I suggest that if you can possibly get hold of a TG782t modem and a splitter, use wire and give it a try. Roger