Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' Release Candidate Is Out

New submitter Anand Radhakrishnan writes "The release candidate for the much-anticipated Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' is available for user testing. Its many new features include Cinnamon Control center, an improved login manager with HTML 5 support, a driver manager, and a lot of under-the-hood improvements. 'A new tool called MintSources, aka "Software Sources," was developed from scratch with derivative distributions in mind (primarily Linux Mint, but also LMDE, Netrunner and Snow Linux). It replaces software-properties-gtk and is perfectly adapted to managing software sources in Linux Mint. From the main screen you can easily enable or disable optional components and gain access to backports, unstable packages and source code.' This release with Cinnamon looks really tempting."

Comments

Obligatory comment

[Anonymous Coward]

When Ubuntu introduced Unity I switched to Linux Mint and haven't looked back.

Re:Obligatory comment

[aztracker1]

As someone who regularly uses Mac and Windows, Windows is closer to the Mac, than Unity is to either of them (Maybe not Windows 8, but Windows 7 for certain)

Re: Obligatory comment

[ozmanjusri]

When Ubuntu introduced Unity, I switched to Cinnamon. It's a shame that a DE has divided the biggest desktop Linux community

Why?

That's the the whole benefit of open source right there in one sentence. They did something you didn't like, you weren't locked in.

Re:Obligatory comment

[Clarious]

I still use Unity, it is strangely good after you used it for a while, despite some minor bugs here and there. Unity actually included many useful features from other desktops, such as:
- Menu on top, titlebar on top (when full screen): Saving precious vertical space, esp. useful with my 1366x768 laptop screen. And to be honest, I only care about the menu of the program I am focused on anyway, so one menu at a time isn't a big problem.
- Taskbar on the left, with grouping: same as above, with 16:9 screen I can spare some horizontal space for it. Also you can quickly switch windows with Super + F[1234], something taken from Microsoft Windows 7, it is more useful and faster than Alt-tabbing because you don't have to wait for the list of windows to appear, you always know which keys to press.
- Windows grouping, subgroup switching with Alt+grave (`). Taken from GNOME Shell, help unclutter my windows list, and switching is faster too. I loved this feature of GNOME Shell, too bad it removed the windows list (taskbar) so I can't have an overall view of which windows are on the screen. Same goes for notification area, GNOME Shell removed that part and go for a touch-oriented notification system (tap bottom right for the notification list), which is extremely useless since the notification area (or systray, as in windows) is supposed to always stay on screen so you can have a quick glance.
- Topbar widget/notification is more refined than GNOME Shell, with the later on you have to write an extension in javascript with little to no documentation. With unity you can write one in python, easy.
- Last but not least, Compiz is still better than metacity/GNOME Shell in CPU/RAM usage. With GNOME Shell you are practically running an webkit browser with all the javascript jazz and stuff. So while Compiz/Unity only eats ~90 MB RAM, metacity/GNOME Shell eats about 250 MB. Sure, RAM is fairly cheap these days but that doesn't mean your desktop has to use as much RAM as the sum of the rest of your programs.

Linux Mint with MATE or Cinnamon is okay too. But MATE is just GNOME 2 renamed, it works, but no better than GNOME 2, and with a bunch of leftovers tech such as libbonobo. Cinnamon is, well, nothing special, nothing attractive for me to use, that is it. And I have heard that Cinnamon devs have many problem following upstream too.

Re:In place upgrades still unsupported?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yes, I know what you are "suppossed" to do, it is a hassle that I do not need to do with ubuntu. Next up is the argument that I "should" do all that regardless of distribution to which I say my level of backups is sufficient for my needs even if it is not sufficient for Mint's needs.

Re:Only idiots use Linux Mint!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only twats use Ubuntu.

Upgrade to Debian!

Re:In place upgrades still unsupported?

[Just Some Guy]

I love my Mint desktop but haven't tried running and apt-get dist-upgrade yet. If a Debian descendant can't manage that, there's something fundamentally broken about it.

Re:In place upgrades still unsupported?

[Anonymous Coward]

apt-get dist-upgrade is quite a task actually, especially when you're considering some of the advantages/differences Ubuntu/Mint has compared to Debian, e.g. PPAs/all sorts of package sources. Even Ubuntu dist-upgrade have often been problematic for many people, Mint didn't want to go that road, because it meant a whole bunch of testing and support for myriads of hardware that somehow worked with the previous kernel/init/drivers/etc. but somehow have problems after the upgrade. A fresh install ensures there are no legacy left overs that might interfere or slow things down. In many cases it is fairly simple to upgrade Linux no matter what distro (i.e. backup home, get a list of apps you need from apt-get or any respective package manager, do fresh install and restore home and applications).

You also have the option to go with the LTS release thus needing only to upgrade once in a few years (maybe even around the time you're upgrading the hardware as well).

Or if you REALLY like the Debian way - why not just use Linux Mint Debian edition, which continuously updates to the newest version (aka rolling release). There's also the option to go with pure Debian - the fact that its derivatives are more popular doesn't mean it isn't feasible to use it instead.