My Linux Mint Mate is not robust. If I drag a window across the screen the system can hang. I've done it with Firefox and LibreOffice Writer. In fact I just hung my system by hitting the delete key to delete something in a document. Add to this the fact that I still can't use VLC without danger of hanging the system. And yesterday I was using Thunderbird and halfway though the email I can't remember what I did, probably hit the delete key and the system hung.
When I boot from scratch it takes about a minute for the system to come up, which seems long. I don't have that much on my PC.
My question is am I experiencing something common in Mint Mate? I'm using Mint v.18.
I have been toying with switching to Xubuntu, which I have on my laptop and it works fine. But I do like the Mint features.

how old is your system, and how much RAM do you have?

I use VOID Linux and it is fast....

and you can install that desktop of mate and cinnamon on it too.

And what is the CPU?

BUILD DATE = 03/27/2014. Intel Processor Pentium CPU J2900@ 2.42GHz. Memory size 8192 MB ASUS

Intel® Pentium® Processor J2900
(2M Cache, up to 2.67 GHz)
8GB RAM is plenty.
nope that ain't making no sense at all. nope. It wouldn't hurt to try a different distro.

you can wait and see what others say, but that is just plain strange behavior.

Have you checked the temperatures?

I saw something similar with a laptop that had a dead CPU fan. Worked just fine until the CPU locked up.

Does system monitor,(menu, admin, system monitor), show anything taking a lot of CPU?

Everything is normal. I had done a temperature check before and everything is OK. Although I just turned on the PC, temperatures range from 24 - 32 and the last one at -128 [or is it 128]? I also did a hardware check and everything is fine. I had re-installed mate twice using a verified iso. I more or less resigned myself to the uncertainty of the system by constantly saving my work, although the other night I lost the email I was writing! My next step would be to change to Xubuntu because it is working well on my laptop, although it is a 32-bit version, but I do like Mint. I am hoping to find out if others experience what I do.

if you have re-installed Mink twice then what is stopping you from installing something completely different, just to get a comparison to find out if it is MATE or the pc?

Installations never go easily for me -- I end up wiping my files off and then have to rebuild. I know it's possible to preserve the files but somehow I have never learnt how to and end up hitting the wrong button! perhaps over Christmas I'll do it.

best way to play.

split your system. two separate partitions and one for swap if you use it. making a possible 3 partitions total.

that way you can play with different distros all you want to. Just while installing, use the same /home for a mount point to /home, and MAKE DAMN sure that the install program is not checked for formatting it. then do the rest as normal install.

then when you need to create your user, just use the same user name, the system will see it is already there, then register it into the system. give it a password and you're back in easy peasy without loss to your personal data in your user account.

BUT, on your first install in a system like this have it format /home then never again.

Just a quick note that my Mint 18 MATE system works fine, so there well may be some hardware issue at play on yours.

Are you able to use Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to a virtual console when the system hangs?

Hi BW-userx --I'm a very dumb user -- just want a system to work. To do what you wrote sounds easy, but for me I am sure I'll screw up!
hyddrunga -- I had done a check on my hardware and it was fine. Thanks for the advice re Ctrl-Alt-F1. Will try it the next time my system hangs.
don't know why I am hanging on to the Windows recovery partition. Would like to remove all trace of Windows! Who knows it might be affecting my system. Wouldn't put it pass them.

Stop already.. practice makes perfect. and please stop lowering your self esteem by calling yourself dumb. You got it installed once, so you can do it again. Just take your time, and change your attitude about it. If I could count the times I had to post a help me every time I screwed something up in Linux I'd need a few more hands.

Renh: I had a similar problem with installing Ubuntu Gnome3 on a Dell Inspiron i3 8GB laptop; I even upgraded the drive to SSD thinking it would solve the issue but it did not. I installed a different Distro and issue stopped. Try Fedora or Xubuntu.