I'm trying Mint 13 (Cinnamon desktop) on a beat-up old Toshiba laptop. It might not have a working touchpad, but at least it has a dual core CPU (1.73GB; the most powerful I own), and the graphics support 3D acceleration blah blah that Cinnamon needs.

And to my consternation, I'm finding Mint 13 downright trying.

It's quick, it's light on resources, it's pretty. Not greatly different from old faithful Mint 9, in other words.

But I'm someone who came to Linux after it became easier to use. I liken then power and flexibility of the command line, but have resigned myself to lacking any aptitude for it. Thank goodness for forums/copy and paste.

And I get the impression that, to make Mint 13 feel as mature, useful and under your control as 9 (the last LTS), you need to be comfortable with the command line, and to own developer skills and aptitude.

These are the things bugging me at the moment.

I can find no way of getting rid of the loud and irritating startup tone - that racket a bit like the PA system at the old Luxembourg airport clearing its throat.

During installation, I opted for "require a password to log in" or whatever it is. Meh. They've made it harder work. With Mint9, the log-in screen opens with your main user account offered by default. Click on and enter your password. (If you want to use another user account, then sure, another step is involved.)

No longer. Now you have to enter your full user name manually. Every time. And thanks to the wonders of muscle memory, I keep launching into the password, blowing the authentication and having to start again.

Minor, but irritating. And I can't find any way to change it. Or even to set the darned thing to start without a password. There used to be a start-up manager that enabled these changes to be made. Blowed if I can find anything.

To change the date/time layout used to be simple. You clicked on the clock, and worked through the preferences offered.

Not any more. Oh, no. Now you're taken to a site which offers the code needed to change these settings. You're not told how to actually use the site, as that would spoil the fun. Thickos like me eventually work out that you put together/copy what you want, then leave the browser, return to the settings window and paste your new code over the existing version.

Talk about fix it until it's broken.

Which leads me to my next whinge. What happened to the little weather widget? The sadly missed clock settings app also allowed you to enter your physical location, and even the units you preferred your wind and temperature in. No searching, no copy and paste - just simple and effective dialogue.

It's gone. If I had any idea what the app used to be called, I suppose I could search for it. But it was part of clock settings. And those how have a completely different method. And so on.

I hate the black screen during start up. I found a command to replace the old Mint logo with the little dots - but this only happens after the initial black screen.

I just keep getting the feeling that it's not quite finished. That, yes, we changed some things, but haven't quite got round to making them as user-friendly as they were back in Mint 9.

And to top it all, I fired up these forums and was presented with that repellent we-keep-you-safe skinny bag in the pink shirt who makes me so happy I never married. Must get off my rear end and figure out how to import a Firefox profile from another machine to avoid having to bock these annoyances from scratch each time.

I'm determined to learn to like it - because apart from these quite extraordinarily irritating little niggles, I think it's going to be a pretty impressive piece of work. Cinnamon seems to involve less clicking than Unity, and I find the whole presentation somehow less claustrophobic.

The MATE version seems fine on my old Dell - which has been running Mint 9 very happily for yonks, and which lacks 3D acceleration.

So for goodness sakes don't take my whining too seriously.

And if anyone's found the answers to  the little bothers mentioned above, do tell. I know my stupidity and incapacity lies at the root of it. But would sure appreciate a hand.

(At least Element Hiding Helper saw off Miss Pink Acid Drop. Thank goodness for some simple solutions in life.)