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Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon and MATE Editions Released

Posted by samzenpus on from the check-it-out dept.

linuxscreenshot writes The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 17.1 'Rebecca' MATE. Linux Mint 17.1 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2019. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use. Linux Mint 17.1 MATE edition comes with two window managers installed and configured by default: Marco (MATE's very own window manager, simple, fast and very stable); Compiz (an advanced compositing window manager which can do wonders if your hardware supports it). Among the various window managers available for Linux, Compiz is certainly the most impressive when it comes to desktop effects. Screenshots can be found here.

5 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Wait to upgrade by Pope+Hagbard · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you're running Mint 17 now, the release notes say to wait a few more days until they release an updated upgrade manager.

  2. Re:Cinnamon and MATE by juanfgs · · Score: 5, Funny

    We should fork mint and make a version with only Cinnamon available.

  3. Cheers for Mint by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My wife's 83 year old grandmother was distraught because her computer was running so slow it would take five minutes to open a program. I told her I would come down and fix it for her, but it might require a wipe and reinstall, and she was fine with anything.

    It was a 5 year old HP running Vista, and I have never seen a computer so fucked in my entire life. There were viruses in her viruses. Toolbars, toolbars everywhere! I told her it was a lost cause and we needed to reinstall.

    Before I left home I burned a copy of Mint 17 Cinnamon. I had never used it before (I run Debian) but I had heard it was the simple, user-friendly Linux. I gave her two options, that she could reinstall Vista and eventually wind up right back here, or, I could install Linux Mint. I explained the free software ethos, in terms of both beer and speech, she got it, and said that's what she wanted. I installed it with no problem (except for the nouveau Nvidia drivers. They caused it to freeze up and I had to get the proprietary drivers instead), set everything up for her so she could get her gmail, web browse and skype. Her webcam worked right out of the box, too.

    I poked a hole in her firewall and set up vino so I could VNC in if she needed help. It's been three weeks and I haven't needed to once. She loves it and has had zero problems.

    Thank you, Mint team, for all your hard work. Thanks to you there's a new 83-year-old Linux h4xx0r.

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    1. Re:Cheers for Mint by yelvington · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Linux has been a great platform for the elderly for years.

      My mother, who also is in her 80s, bought a Toshiba Latitude in 2007. It came with Vista and not enough RAM to run anything other than Solitaire. I installed Ubuntu, which took about 15 minutes, and fixed the sound config, which took about two days, and she's been fine ever since.

      But her version of Ubuntu is no longer supported, and rather than try to upgrade -- she lives 12 hours away, so it's not exactly convenient -- we bought her a self-updating Chromebook on Black Friday. So far, so good, although she's going to have to switch to an HTML5 solitaire game instead of AisleRiot, which has been her go-to for the last seven years.

      I'm still running Ubuntu on my own laptop, but Cinnamon may lure me away. I need to upgrade, and I am not a fan of what Ubuntu has done to the UI.

    2. Re:Cheers for Mint by theskipper · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Cinnamon was the antidote to the dumbed-down interface craze for me. Switched to it a year ago and haven't looked back.

      Nemo alone is worth the switch, it's a file manager that doesn't treat you like a child and "hide the knives" (and trees in the sidebar are intuitive to me, ymmv). Workspace management via panel, hotkeys or OSD all work well. The system menu is usable and makes sense. Applets are actually easy to install and manage. A couple clicks and sane scrollbars are back. And simple things out of the box like being able to resize a window without the idiocy of trying to hit a single pixel in the lower right corner reflects the productivity mindset it targets.

      Maybe all this has been fixed in Unity/Gnome 3/etc. but I haven't paid attention and don't care at this point. Sure there's still bugs and features that need polishing but imho it's worth setting up a vm to test it out.