

You can also use "apt recommends packagename" to ask Mint to point at missing recommends recursively for a given package name. You can get the list of installed packages with "dpkg -l", if you diff it with the list you currently have (without recommends) you might be able to identify the difference and point at the culprit. To test scenario 1, temporarily edit /etc/apt//00recommends and set APT::Install-Recommends to "true". I would recommend you test both scenario in a fresh install. The drivers acting differently based on LSB (if part of the drivers or some package read /etc/lsb-release and is hardcoded to only work with Ubuntu/Debian, well, it will only work with Ubuntu/Debian).A missing package (Ubuntu installs recommended packages, Mint only installs dependencies).
