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Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' Is Out
An anonymous reader writes "The Linux Mint blog today announced the full release of Linux Mint 15 'Olivia.' Here are the release notes and a list of new features. As before, it's available with either MATE or Cinnamon as a desktop environment. The included version of MATE has been upgrade to 1.6, which saw many old and deprecated packages replaced with newer technologies. Cinnamon has gone to 1.8, which improved the file manager, added support for 'desklets' (essentially desktop widgets), and completed the transition away from Gnome Control Center to Cinnamon's own settings panel. Other new features of Linux Mint 15 include improved login screen applications (one of which is an HTML greeter that supports HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and WebGL), a tool developed from the ground up to manage software sources in Mint, and a vastly improved driver manager. The project's website sums it up simply: 'Linux Mint 15 is the most ambitious release since the start of the project.'"
...I'm going to try it out later today.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
No?
Well at least now I have an excuse for why I didn't get any work done today.
I love it, I've been with Mint since Fedora switched up the UI too much for me with Gnome 3. Both my laser printer and USB wifi adapter worked turn-key and no problems with my Nvidia graphics card. Easy to install onto a fully encrypted LVM too for only a few extra minutes and a LiveDVD.
So when is Cinnamon going to support window grouping "out of the box"? I know there's a 3rd party applet for it, I tried it, it was buggy and kludgy. Despite members of the community clamoring for it, the devs claim that not having it is a "design decision". So it's a design decision to make it frustrating and difficult to find the right window when I have a many windows open, which I usually do, because I'm a software developer and power user? It's a design decision to ignore the requirements of the Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition community?/rant
Overall I have to say I've been very happy with Linux Mint. It really "just works" and I wouldn't even consider switching to another distro, the above complaint notwidthstanding. Cinnamon is mostly sexy and cool.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Even if you posted Lubuntu's releases (the distro I use) I would still be posting this. Why do we care about random distro releases?
Sure Linux Kernels, but beyond that, who cares?
If you are a fan of a specific distro, you probably already know a new one was released.
That Cinnamon Control Panel looks very similar to OS X's System Preferences.
On the one hand it is great that Linux allows people to innovate, and fork when the need arises.
On the other hand the Linux desktop has reached the point that I simply don't want to choose between the myriad of desktops and window managers any more. Just reading Wikipedia on MATE and Cinnamon leaves me shaking my head.
Seems to me that the massive fragmentation of the Linux desktop probably does work for the hard core geeks who can pick the one that scratches their itch. It also gives every programmer who wants to develop a desktop or window manager their own private little place to do it.
On the other hand, Linux on the desktop is pretty much doomed when it comes to any ordinary person just wanting to install it, use it and have it work if the first question they have to deal with is which of 20 UI's and desktops they should pick.
Not sure how you are going to maintain a critical mass of developers and users for testing when resources are scattered across so many, mostly, mediocre UI's and desktops. If you don't have that critical mass, chances are every effort will come up short quality wise.
Developer's thinking about developing a serious app with a lot of UI and desktop integration must cringe at the prospect of doing QA across so many desktop variations and either only support one or give up on supporting Linux all together.
Who would have figured that Android, running a Java front end, would be the one and only place that Linux would have any chance of making it as a consumer OS.
@de_machina
I just run linux in a vm on top of Win7 enterprise. Sigh. Can't keep reinstalling my OS every so often; ain't nobody got time for that.
I don't view Ubuntu as its own distro. It just piggy backs off of Debian's success and hard work.
There, fixed it for you.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Replaced my 13 with 15 RC a few days ago. The new file manager is pretty nice. Right click to run with higher privileges pops open a new file browser window with a big red bar letting you know so you don't walk away and end up screwing something up when you get back. Also shows a small bar graph under each mounted partition so you can get a good idea how much space you have left at a glance. "Disk Utility" is replaced/merged with "Storage Device Manager" so I can just go to one place for all my partition renaming, automounting, and SMART options now, which seems to have gotten rid of a glitch that would always try to read my first two drives (sda, sdb) as identical drives for some reason. As of yesterday I still had a glitch with automounting my old Mint 13 partition at bootup but it mounts fine if I instead click on it in the file manager after booting. Mounts all the NTFS partitions with no problems. New applets organization makes it much easier to install applets without futzing with the terminal (This is important for newbies and out of the box experience.) but getting some of them to actually WORK after installation is another story. Having issues with the weather applet at the moment. In previous versions I also had issues with my firefox tabs locking up randomly, seemingly caused by a new song coming on the media player and the popup going over the tab button. Minimizing/maximizing the browser made it return to normal for a while. This glitch seems to have been fixed as well. Backed up and recopied one of my VM's to the new OS and it seemed to have spasms and refuse to shut the VM down but after a few cycles of update, force close, install guest additions, force close, startup again it went back to working order.
I like to keep my drivers close and my viruses closer.
Anti-Semitic != Anti-Israel in all cases. Israel is a particular political entity who's actions are not above criticism.
Just because someone is in favor of Palestinians receiving statehood and not having their houses bulldozed doesn't make you anti-semitic.
I run LMDE (Mint Debian Edition) or straight Debian Testing on my computers whenever possible. They're fully compatible, just add one or the other to your sources. Similarly, I'm reasonable sure that standard Mint is compatible with the Ubuntu repos. I'm sure others will correct me if I'm wrong
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
Slashdot has a new Linux distro release notice before Distrowatch.
I was looking for a new distro to upgrade an old netbook and installed the RC this weekend (with MATE desktop). It started out a little shakey as the keyboard didn't work, and the mouse wouldn't click (due to a hardware issue and trackpad clicks not enabled), but after a restart and some mouse settings, it's nice and snappy.
Previously had Ubuntu netbook remix and tried Ubuntu with Unity, but that was just so awkward to use with a tiny screen and trackpad, and somewhat sluggish when web browsing.
I'd never tried Linux Mint or MATE in the past, but it seems to be a good combination for a low power computer.
Even if you posted Lubuntu's releases (the distro I use) I would still be posting this. Why do we care about random distro releases?
Sure Linux Kernels, but beyond that, who cares?
If you are a fan of a specific distro, you probably already know a new one was released.
Other people may not know about it.
I'm getting ready to do a desktop upgrade. This is something I usually avoid because it always causes pain and after avoiding it for a few years, the pain is rather significant. So, when I bite the bullet and do the upgrade, I want to know I'm using the best, most usable, and longest lasting installation available.
Though I am aware of Mint, I have not used it, nor have I been following its development. I know that my distro is no longer good enough and that although Ubuntu is the common favorite, Unity SUCKS and I won;t be switching to Ubuntu.
But, hey, a new version of Mint just dropped! It has the Ubuntu goodness without Unity. I think I'll give it a try and see if I want to use it for my impending upgrade.
You see, way back when, Slashdot was "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." The announcement of a new version of Mint, DistroWatch's #1 for the past year or more, definitely qualifies as "News for nerds. Stuff that matters".
Would it, in principle, be possible to to provide cinnamon or mate as packages for other distributions, e.g. Ubuntu?
Sure, both Mate and Cinnamon provide these packages (right now I'm running Mate 1.6 on Ubuntu 12.04 and it works very well):
http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download
http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?page_id=61
However, you won't them in the official Ubuntu repository. I suspect Mate at least will make it into Universe after Debian adopts it, which now looks like it's going to happen:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=658783
The Unix way is (briefly) to divide things up into small modular pieces. You know you're a success as a distro when people start taking pieces from yours and using them. Debian has apt which is really nice, for example, but doesn't need Debian, and is used as far away as iOS.
They say, "those who don't understand the Unix way are doomed to rewrite it, poorly." Make the new pieces good and they will be used for a long time, just like apt.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Correction - Cinnamon is actually already in Ubuntu 13.04 Universe (though you may get a later version from the developers' ppa).
This distro doesn't have KDE? Why?
MATE has been upgrade to 1.6, which saw many old and deprecated packages replaced with newer technologies
oh no! things were removed! Better fork MATE so I can have it be exactly the same as a previous version!
How? Ubuntu came up w/ Unity, which people hated. They flocked to Mint, which then started working on alternatives. First, they offered Mate as the DE, then they came up w/ MGSE and finally, Cinnamon. The work on Cinnamon is about as much as Mint's as Unity is for Ubuntu. Unlike other Ubuntu knock-offs, such as Zorin or Pear or Puppy, Mint listened to what users wanted and came out w/ a DE that people more or less liked, and then offered it to their users. It takes quite a stretch of imagination to call that piggybacking.
Indeed i wanted to ask, is it hard to switch between Mint Cinnamon and Mint Mate? I want to give Cinnamon a good try, (for about 2-3 months) but I don't want to reinstall the OS just to run Mate in case I don't feel at home in Cinnamon.
I would also like to try a recent Gnome 3 build. I remember when it used to be easy switching desktop environments. back in the days of KDE3 and Gnome 2.
But... the future refused to change.
So... you can play MP3s and other "non-free" media types without further modification.
sig: sauer
Plus, green is better than brown.
sig: sauer
Could someone explain the implications for this? Having just battled with getting LTSP under Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, I understand it's because non-execute functionality is tied to PAE. But I have a bunch of machines that don't have PAE and they would be worthless moving forward. So I modified LTSP to create non-PAE kernels.
The biggest problem is that the Israeli government continues to expand the borders of "Israel". All these settlements? Those are government sanctioned or supported, or government "turned a blind eye to"'d.
No, let me correct myself. The biggest problem is the lack of anarchism and freedom the world over. Shoot the bosses. Eat the rich. Skim the scum.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
In case you didn't get it. I am opposed to racism, and I never advocated killing all the Jews. Just the government.
And regardless of history, the fact remains that the current Israeli government does a lot of things that the Nazi German government did too. Like, govern. Oh, and looking for extra living space. And pretend like their people are the chosen people, and therefore have the rights to clear the bit of land they want of the people currently living there.
But no country has no blood on its hands. So let's do away with them altogether.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
I know you're just being snarky, but really why is it so hard to keep my desktop the same while still getting security updates for the over all system and new versions of my apps when they upgrade? Why?
I hate to give Microsoft credit for anything, but at least they had enough insight to keep the option to switch back to the previous version of the desktop available for many many releases afterwards. Up until fairly recently it was pretty easy to go back to your preferred work space in Windows. From Win95--Windows 2000 you could still get Progman.exe to run. You could still revert the taskbar and themes from Fisherprice to the 'standard' look that carried over from Win95 all the way through Windows XP to Windows 7.
Why is it so unreasonable to expect the same in Linux?
Oh and I'm one of those people who prefer MATE over the mess that Gnome 3.0 has become with its intentional breaking of the system to prevent people from keeping what they had before, but if these changes actually ruin the desktop you can be sure that people will indeed fork MATE.
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
Great distro. Had everything up and running, network connection, software in 2 hours. I am really impressed with Mint. 15 is the best one so far. Good work, Clem :)
My two bits
I don't view Debian as its own distro, it just piggy backs off of Linux and GNU success and hard work
I don't view GNU/Linux as its own OS, it just piggy backs off of System V and BSD
I don't view Unix as its own OS, it just piggybacks off of the ideas and aims of Multics
I understand your point completely. It's reality vs. the invisible pink unicorn ideal of perfect segregation of data, apps, and OS. But if end users aren't going to expect and demand improvements, very few packages will actually be improved on their own. It's good for all of us that people keep trying, even though there's not a snowball's chance in hell that he will recover it without a hitch.
John
Ah, so it's the same as installing Ubuntu 11.x and then upgrading to 12.04 which does not force PAE kernels under 32-bit.
Thanks.
It might be time for a Mac.
There, I said it!
This Mac runs Debian Mint quite fine, thank you :) But I won't upgrade because bleeding edge is for my kamikaze machines, this machine needs proven stability. Like most machines do.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
And they owe it all to the low entropy generated at the moment of the big bang. Well, that shortcut a lot of unneccessary development of that line of thought.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Some of the above is true.
When the Israeli's pulled back in Gaza, and they brutally removed their own people's settlements via an agreement to try to change the above fair comments, the response was and has been to use that repartriated land to fire rockets into civilian Israeli areas..
Its a war, I expect nothing less. But expecting the Israeli's to be angelic is cloud cookoo land.
We`re all equal
Two things. First of all, I was answering the contention of the parent AC that Mint just piggybacks of Ubuntu, which as I proved, is hogwash. That then brings us to your point about Unity.
The biggest thing wrong w/ Unity is the lack of customization, and its locking the UI into a definite look & feel. If it works for you, that's fantastic. However, most people hated it b'cos not only did they dislike the way it looked, they couldn't even change it if they wanted to. And that's what was behind all the hate. I've heard that it's since improved (I've heard the same about GNOME 3), but nonetheless, there are people who didn't want to go w/ either Unity nor GNOME 3, and for those people, particularly those who like Cinnamon, Mint is a great option. Of course, if one wants KDE, LXDE or XCFE, then one could either go w/ K/L/Xubuntu, or go w/ Mint or another Ubuntu based distro.
If you wish to make a Linux distro from scratch, you must first invent the Universe.
Uh, you could use Mint/XFCE on a PC, if the OS-X UI is what you want, and you're coming from Linux to start w/
That convinces me to support Mint. I don't like RMS' jihad against Open Source, Proprietary Software, Coca Cola, ID Cards or even Israel. The link didn't say anything about what Mint is guilty of, but if Mint happens to be pro-Israel by implication, it has my support, even if I don't have it on my computer.
Oh, never mind. So Clem is one of the Mint creators, and a pro-Jihad activist? I don't have Mint - wasn't planning to anyway, since any of the other Ubuntu based Linux distros w/ KDE or Razor-qt would work for me, as would PC-BSD.
I don't view the big bang as the origin of anything, it is just piggybacks off of a neverending cycle