Slashdot Mirror
Linux Mint Hack Is an Indicator of a Larger Problem (techrepublic.com)
An anonymous reader writes: On February 20th, a hacker working under the handle 'Peace' took control of the website of Linux Mint, a popular Linux distribution derived from Ubuntu (and Debian) targeted toward non-technical users and power users unhappy with modern desktop environments. While these attacks are regrettable, and part of an infrastructure problem rather than a problem with the distribution itself, it increasingly appears that the Linux Mint team is spread too thin when it comes to security. The distribution itself blacklists updates that work perfectly in Ubuntu and Debian, and the graphical utilities don't update the kernel. Because the value added by Linux Mint is in Cinnamon, why do the developers need to distribute a broken version of Ubuntu when the Cinnamon DE could be distributed as an Ubuntu spin?
Wake me up when they hack the Denver mint.
Now there's your problem!
I'm moving to Arch
I think it means three things: "Why do people use Mint when Ubuntu is better in every way? Some people think the only answer is 'Cinnamon' . Ubuntu should port that over so they are the awesome and Mint can die"
Your ad here. Ask me how!
and the graphical utilities don't update the kernel. Because the value added by Linux Mint is in Cinnamon, why do the developers need to distribute a broken version of Ubuntu when the Cinnamon DE could be distributed as an Ubuntu spin?
My guess would be that most - or allot - of Mint users are looking for more than just Ubuntu with Cinnamon. If that is all Mint users where looking for, there would not be a KDE version, a XFCE version, or a Mate version. If that is all they wanted, they would download Ubuntu and add the ppas for their desktop of choice. People find value with those "graphical utilities".
The author is confusing what he wants from Mint for what others want.
Are you f'ing kidding me? The entire project is like 5 guys.
Jesus how idiotic can you be.
Actually, Linux Mint's value add was originally (and still is) providing an Ubuntu distribution that includes non-free software and codecs pre-installed and configured right out of the box (e.g. DVD playback, MP3 playback, 3D graphics drivers like then visual binary blob, Flash, JAVA, etc.). Yes, these features can be separately stalled by users in Ubuntu. But for first time or novice users, this could be difficult and Linux Mint took the approach of making sure these features were installed, configured, and working out of the box.
Cinnamon is a separate project to provide an alternative to Gnome3. Linux Mint sponsored it and is the primary user of it. But it's not the only "value add".
That said, Linux Mint did make some weird design decisions. I always thought it would be easier to just create and publish a custom Ubuntu spin that included these features rather than create a whole distribution from scratch.
I think it means three things: "Why do people use Mint when Ubuntu is better in every way? Some people think the only answer is 'Cinnamon' . Ubuntu should port that over so they are the awesome and Mint can die"
I agree with your interpretation. I even (unlike you, probably) kind of agree with the original author's point. I would be pretty happy if the Ubuntu team offered Cinnamon as an alternative of Unity. But of course they never will, because they specifically developed Unity to replace Gnome in the first place, thus creating all this demand for Cinnamon and Linux Mint.
I tried mint a few years ago when I found the default install of Ubuntu desktop unusable. Could I have customized it to the desktop I wanted? Sure. Or, I could try this new distribution that has a DE that is actually intuitive. If Ubuntu shipped with Cinnamon by default I'd go back to Ubuntu. Ubuntu really shot themselves in the foot a few years ago and I got tired of being a beta tester.
This message brought to you by Mark Shuttleworth
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think it means three things: "Why do people use Mint when Ubuntu is better in every way? Some people think the only answer is 'Cinnamon' . Ubuntu should port that over so they are the awesome and Mint can die"
I agree with your interpretation. I even (unlike you, probably) kind of agree with the original author's point. I would be pretty happy if the Ubuntu team offered Cinnamon as an alternative of Unity. But of course they never will, because they specifically developed Unity to replace Gnome in the first place, thus creating all this demand for Cinnamon and Linux Mint.
and now we're telling the folks at Mint to go fork themselves?
{ducks}
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Duh.
The candy of choice for hackers everywhere.
Linux Mint isn't just Ubuntu. They also provide Linux Mint Debian Edition, which is far superior, IMHO.
The Linux community is too concerned with feature churn and not concerned enough with security and stability. It starts from the kernel and flows on down. The BSDs have them laughably beat in this area.
It's what passes for trash talk from anonymous story contributors, a loaded question like 'when will the developers stop beating their wives?' Mint is not just Cinnamon, of course, and not all versions are even based on Ubuntu, 'broken' or otherwise. Mint fans might want to point out that Ubuntu-Mate, by far the best version of Ubuntu (see what I did there?), owes a great deal to Mint's support of the MATE desktop project...
If you don't think they do it well, clone it and roll your own. It's a free OS. Or, if you have a suggestion that's simple and easy to implement, why not talk to the maintainers and politely suggest it, instead of ragging on them in a third party forum?
I am so friggin tired of distro wars, and people criticizing maintainers who provide a service to others for free on third-party forums instead of making actual suggestions. You want to show off how much smarter you are than the people who do this for a living? Screw you.
The site in question used WordPress, which gets hacked early and often. Being hacked had nothing to do with how many Mint developers there are; it's more a commentary on flaws most php based platforms have.
Linux Mint chooses to blacklist certain applications in line with the project goals; these of course can be overridden at user's choice.
What a pile of FUD, I smell jealousy of Linux Mint's success as unlike Ubuntu the team does listen to end user needs and wants; while Ubuntu instead crams badly designed UI (Unity) down throats that neither meets needs nor was requested by anyone
I use it with Mate since day one.
I'm not a developer but Software architect and Mint Mate just do the job without any cumbersome thing to make it works with a normal stable DE unlike ubuntu.
And The distribution itself [DOESN'T] blacklists updates that work perfectly in Ubuntu and Debian, and the graphical utilities [DO] update the kernel when correctly configured when YRTF !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Right now hardly anyone knows that Ubuntu Mate exists.
In two months (16.04), expect a lot of Mint MATE and vanilla Ubuntu (Unity) users to discover that Ubuntu MATE exists. Once that happens, I expect to see Ubuntu MATE hit #1 on distrowatch. Currently, the lack of an LTS release is the main reason a lot of Mint MATE users haven't swiched to Ubuntu Mate already; that's why Mint is still #1 on distrowatch.
---
Gnome2 for life.
They were trying to portray as bad certain packages are by default not allowed, but its because of design decisions. of course that can be overridden...but I don't even get what basis their claim of no kernel updates comes from, of course it does them but doesn't jump kernel versions
I've been using Linux for many years. For most of them I was a very happy user. Linux distros in general were better than nearly all of the alternatives in terms of price, stability, quality, and capability. But I've seen all of those properties suffer these past several years.
It's not just the Linux kernel of course. It's the entire ecosystem of open source software that has built up around the Linux kernel that's suffering. GNOME 3 is atrocious, and way worse than GNOME 2. Recent releases of KDE have been very bloated. Xfce has stagnated. GCC is still slow. sysvinit wasn't great, but systemd is far worse. Wayland is nowhere to be seen. GTK+ 3 is archaic. Firefox gets worse with each release. LibreOffice is slow and bloated.
Linux and open source software used to represent great potential. They used to be better than proprietary software. Yet today they're worse. I don't think that the proprietary software has gotten better. Instead, it's the open source software that has gotten worse over time. GNOME 3 is probably the best example of how a great product can be ruined so quickly.
I don't know what to do at this point. Switching to FreeBSD is looking like the most likely option. It still suffers from some of the same problems as Linux distros do, due to it using a lot of open source software, too. But at least it will minimize the problems by FreeBSD itself being of an extraordinarily high quality, and it using better alternatives (like Clang and LLVM instead of GCC) where possible. If that doesn't work, then I'll have to try OS X or Windows 10. I never thought I'd say myself saying this, but Windows 10 is starting to look like a better option for me than most Linux distros are.
I need an operating system that works well and that is reliable. As much as I don't want to use FreeBSD or OS X or even Windows, if they provide me a better experience than Linux then I'll just have to use them instead of Linux.
That's the value for me, it works out of the box for all the hardware I've used it on so far. Unlike Ubuntu which has issues of it's own lately for me. Before the hack hit I had Mint installed on an MSI laptop with and Nvidia card and the thing fired up out of the box with no issues. Only thing I had to do was turn off that secure boot garbage in the bios which was easy.
Maybe Mint isn't the ideal distribution for people and maybe it could be done better. Still it's doing things right enough for me to use it and run Steam on it with no issues for all the games that provide native Linux ports. Could Ubuntu do it? Maybe but I hate Unity and Gnome 3. I also don't want one of the side distributions because unlike Mint I feel like they're treated as second class from the main one.
While I understand that the overlords of commerce like to pretend that nothing could ever be wrong with anything even remotely advertising-related, the reality is that Ubuntu foundation did itself some irreparable damage with that incident.
Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
Mint is Ubuntu with an additional repository that contains Cinnamon, and a different set of default packages. When I say Mint is Ubuntu with ..., I mean that literally, as in (for Rosa):
"Ubuntu Spin" is the term given to a variant of Ubuntu that's the result of a collaboration between Canonical and an interested community. For example, KUbuntu is a spin with KDE replacing Unity as the desktop.
So...
What the author is saying is given Mint is just Cinnamon + Ubuntu, why distribute this somewhat hacked together kludge, rather than collaborating with Canonical? If the two works together, then the "Mint" side would be able to build on Ubuntu in cooperation with Canonical, leaving "CUbuntu" to have the same advantages as other spins (for example, up to date releases, testing so that changes in one part of Ubuntu do not damage CUbuntu, etc) while still getting a Cinnamon desktop.
That's one solution, another is to get more people and disentangle the project from Ubuntu completely. It depends upon what the Mint team actually want.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
And the author is an ass. Mint includes, among other things, full multimedia support. Ubuntu does not have that. That's why it is very popular. Ubuntu made a choice not to include full multimedia support.
I keep reading this claim, I'm not sure what's being referred to. Ubuntu most certainly does play movies and music out of the box. It seems to have at the very least the same multimedia support that, say, Windows does.
(I just checked, Rhythmbox and "Videos" installed by default on the Ubuntu system I'm using now.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Why does Ubuntu need to distribute anything more than a shell script to build Linux from sources or precompiled binaries?
Because branding means more than reality, that's why. If you want to fix it then go LFS.
The truth is Mint the brand means more than anything and that's the problem with our society as a whole. Nobody cares about the Internals.
It's the same thing with the Internet, hell I work with people in Networking who don't even know what L1/2/3 is.
Write your own and open source it. Some of us might be willing to help.
Shhhh! Don't scare him. Later lads, popcorn time!
They wouldn't replace Unity with Cinnamon in the primary version of Ubuntu, but given they have no problems distributing versions of Ubuntu with KDE, GNOME 3, XFCE, LXDE, and even MATE (the other thing that came out of the Unity sucks movement), I don't see why they wouldn't do a Cinnamon version if there was a community willing to maintain it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Probably codecs that Mint has but Ubuntu doesn't include by default for legal reasons
I don't see why it couldn't be moved to Ubuntu.
The only reason reason why not would be if it takes away developer or test time and resources from their other, higher priority offerings. It would be an alternative, and Ubuntu does already offer alternatives. Unity or not, as long as the only work they had to do was minimal, offering the choice seems to not harm Ubuntu at all.
Look into Slackware
I think it means three things: "Why do people use Mint when Ubuntu is better in every way? Some people think the only answer is 'Cinnamon' . Ubuntu should port that over so they are the awesome and Mint can die"
I agree with your interpretation. I even (unlike you, probably) kind of agree with the original author's point. I would be pretty happy if the Ubuntu team offered Cinnamon as an alternative of Unity. But of course they never will, because they specifically developed Unity to replace Gnome in the first place, thus creating all this demand for Cinnamon and Linux Mint.
There are a variety of different Ubuntu 'flavors', which is basically Ubuntu+Alternate DE. So why couldn't Linux Mint be like that rather than a much larger project that's harder to maintain?
The distribution itself blacklists updates that work perfectly in Ubuntu and Debian,
It is good security practice to blacklist Mono, then disable Samba if you have no Windows machines to talk to.
The article was submitted by someone who doesn't know what he's talking about nor does he know anything about the history of Linux Mint. I use Linux Mate DE. It has nothing to do with Ubuntu and nothing to do with Cinnamon.
you can have any kernel you want to.... they push out security updates... used mint update and select kernel update and you get a list of 20-30 of them. Been running mint on parent's pc since version 6.
Encrypted DVDs don't play out of the box on Ubuntu, you have to manually install libdvd-pkg. Which admittedly isn't hard, but it is an extra step. And there may well be other codecs they don't support I'm not aware of.
I like the subjects in comments, douche nozzle.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Concern trolling masquerading as content!
I don't know what to do at this point.
I do. Wipe your i-don-wanna can't-do-it tears in your fucking sleeve, pick yourself up out of your self-pity, tie your shoes like a big boy and get to work figuring things out, working hard and making things better like the rest of us.
Honestly. I've had it with you people. You want a nice little machine to fellate you? Ask Redmond or Cupertino. You want to build your own hot rod? Be a man and hit the books, FFS.
It's in "Update Manager", "View", "Linux Kernels".
Also allows to delete kernels although that is slow, and must be done one by one.
It has to be said, although updates to the kernel are never automatic. Thus pproximately no one does them I'd say.
In fact, with straight Ubuntu I had to do the apt-get get dist-upgrade described in the story to update the kernel (which I did very rarely) and I did not bother with graphical tools. Now there's a likable graphical tool for updates, so instead of the graphical stuff disabled or not present I get notified for every software non-kernel update that comes up.
I don't know about security updates held up, and I don't use Cinnamon (can't buy an Intel graphics card to run a desktop). This I believe is where's most of the hackery due to e.g. GTK3 upstream constantly trying to ruin the game for devs that are not building UIs that look like a cross of Mac OS and Windows 8.
The article seems fairly preposterous. For me the Mate and Xfce editions are where it's at and yes the default themes etc. are a good reason, along with cross-DE tools. Not gonna using and pushing some hastily thrown together desktop with e.g. a black task bar on top rather than a gray task bar on bottom, ugly icons and wallpapers and so on.
The guy that owns Slackware is a giant douchebag. I wouldn't use his OS again if he paid me to.
sudo apt-get install cinnamon
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Well they also have a debian edition and there was some discussion a while ago, no idea if it is still happening, of shifting their base from Ubuntu to debian.
You want a nice little machine to fellate you?
Apparently I've been buying the wrong computers. Tell me more about these nice little machines.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
For the majority, just 'ubuntu-restricted-extras' will get you started but yeah, you'll need to do extra work for some DVDs and BluRay discs. All of them can be found by the name of the thing you want to play (blueray) and your OS (Lubuntu) and what the hell you want to do (play). 'play bluray lubuntu' seems to work just fine.
For the packages specific to your flavor, change Ubuntu to Lubuntu or Kubuntu or whatever official flavor you use. (Dunno about others.)
Hmm... For DVD it is: /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
sudo
At least that's what's in bash_history from a few days ago.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
n/t
Linux Mint Cinnamon was a bubble waiting to burst. Bursting it did last week in an oblique way. If you want Cinnamon, install it under Debian or Ubuntu.
Time to break out that secure website/download server and distro knowledge and start a Spearmint variant.
Xfce has stagnated.
Great! I'd rather have something that goes nowhere at all than something that goes downhill. Software that improves itself while avoiding the eventual downhill part is extremely hard to come by, which is backed up by all the examples you posted. Putting a bunch of developers on a project yet managing to make it worse is just a waste of human resources.
I've not tried it, but I can't imagine it would avoid the same problems. The issue isn't Ubuntu, it's that a third party controls, directly, 90% of the software that makes up a Mint distribution.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If there is ever going to be "The year of the Linux desktop", Mint with Cinnamon has the best shot. IMHO
Legal reasons that ONLY APPLY TO THE US!
The video encoding patents aren't recognised in Europe or much of the rest of the world, because it's just maths.
While I'm not sure that every *buntu "distro" needs to actually be a discrete distro, we're in this mess to begin with because DEs just love to shoot themselves in the foot. KDE 4 (at least they've improved somewhat), GNOME 3, Unity, you name it.
debian live has an excellent cinnamon spin, and non-free in the non-official area, its good++
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/8.3.0-live+nonfree/
did i read that right? if that writer just called mint "broken ubuntu" I want to buy him a beer then slap him upside the head, as that is damn comical.
GNOME for life!
"CUbuntu"
Clearly, it would be called "Cinnabuntu"...
Stick a fork in them, they are done
I'm running mate on debian.
So the point is why a desktop environment needs its own distro, rather than polishing debian/ubuntu upstream.
Fucking GCHQ.
But isn't Ubuntu just a derivative of Debian? They probably use 80%+ pure Debian in their releases so you could argue why don't they just partner with Debian instead of rolling their own.
I also could be biased though as Mint is my distro of choice. I prefer its interface and how it works to every other distro I have used. As for the comments in the article it feels to me more that he has an axe to grind because he doesn't agree with how mint is structured. He talks about why not partner with cannonical and become a Cbuntu. But if they did that they stop be able to brand differentiate and will essentially disappear in short order. Longer term I expect that mint will start to role its own packages as it gets more and more popular.
The other thing is that mint and ubuntu have different goals and design principals. The user interface of mint is extremely stable. I run one machine with mint 13 on it and one with the latest shiny on it. You can move from one to another with almost no change to work flow.
Finally I question his other assertion that because of blacklisting packages or not upgrading kernels in place the machine is inherently more prone to security issues. The whole concept of the LTS releases of ubuntu is that they receive long term updates for security. I doubt very much that there will be a blacklisted package upgrade in mint which has security implications. That is the sort of package upgrade that they would make work. There is no question that you may not be running the latest version of every piece of software but that isn't unique to mint. If you run an LTS version of Ubuntu you won't be running the latest versions of the same software.
I don't know what to do at this point. Switching to FreeBSD is looking like the most likely option. It still suffers from some of the same problems as Linux distros do, due to it using a lot of open source software, too. But at least it will minimize the problems by FreeBSD itself being of an extraordinarily high quality, and it using better alternatives (like Clang and LLVM instead of GCC) where possible.
I can install and use Clang and LLVM under Linux as well. Interesting troll though.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
I think it means three things: "Why do people use Mint when Ubuntu is better in every way? Some people think the only answer is 'Cinnamon' . Ubuntu should port that over so they are the awesome and Mint can die"
I use Fedora which IMHO is better. Now let the battle lines be drawn and I will get the popcorn \{^,^)/
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Hubris, probably.
Thanks for pointing that out, hadn't heard of the project. And after spending some time on the site, it looks like you may be right. This may be the distro that fixes the damage from the UI wars. Going to try it in a VM and throw a few bucks in the tip jar just because they seem to have their heads screwed on straight.
Write your own and open source it
Exactly what is wrong with opensource right now. So much crap. Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's not crap. Please, please. Don't just start your own code unless you know what you're doing.
It's even simpler than that, actually. All that need to do is include a Cinnamon package (and potentially whatever auxiliary packages they need). I know personally, I use Xubuntu. But I don't use XFCE. Instead, i use Icewm. In the end, Cinnamon is a DE and one can have many DEs installed.
PS - Even if Ubuntu refuses to support Cinnamon official, you can make a PPA and people can go that route. Honestly, the biggest reason Linux Mint sounded at all appealing to me is the whole "rolling versions". If there was more effort on Linuxt Mint's part to integrate that into Ubuntu, we'd all be better off. Otherwise, we're stuck on upgrading from LTS to LTS.
PPS - You might think it odd that I'd be for rolling updates and be suggesting LTS to LTS, but the whole point is that every upgrade is a whole process where things can break very badly and there's a radical shift in a lot of underlying libraries. A good LTS rolling update would be basically a lot like Debian stable, except with smaller shifts instead of bigger upgrade events. In the end, I'm most concerned about breakage events that basically are undiagnose-able and irreversible. It's the one thing Windows does really good, to be honest.
I didn't like Gnome 3 or Unity at all, KDE was ok, but annoyed me in small ways that eventually caused me to switch (granted that was years ago, might be better now), while XFCE was ok. When I tried Cinnamon though, I loved it.
This is definitely a difference between the bsd and Linux crowd. I think Xfce is great; if it's not broke, what's to fix? It's only an opportunity to make a good thing worse. Besides, there's a plugin interface you can write new stuff to easily, if you want to.
However much you think you're invested in Linux, you're not as invested like the people you're demanding make things 'better'. If you can't even articulate what you actually want, other than better, then you're setting up all the guys who want to do something bold like gnome3 or go conservative and stable like Xfce. I can't believe anyone would shit on Xfce. It's got to be the most stable environment on Linux or bsd.
Because I like rice.
Cinnamon (2.6.13) is available in Ubuntu universe repositories. For me, apt-get wants to install 88 additional packages when installing that meta package.
http://packages.ubuntu.com/wil...
I haven't tried to use it so I have no idea if works well.
Better than what came to my mind first.... C....untu....
What the author is saying is given Mint is just Cinnamon + Ubuntu, why distribute this somewhat hacked together kludge, rather than collaborating with Canonical?
I don't get how that's a hacked together kludge. Ubuntu + repo + default packages seems like it's using the package system exactly the way it's supposed to be. I mean, every person I know running linux adds extra repos, and switches out the default packages at some point. This doesn't sound like a kludge so much as a slightly differently configured base install. Whether that's a significant enough difference to merit a new distro name might be a reasonable question, but it doesn't sound very kludgey.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
There are many things Mint does that Buntu does not. For example, the software centre is much better and comes with important software such as Steam. Buntu, last time I checked, blacklisted Steam because they probably view them as a competitor. Furthermore, I'm glad they hold back on some of Ubuntu updates until they're tested more.
Re the comment on kernel updates, it could hardly be easier in Mint. Open the update manager where the regular updates are listed. Select "View" from the Menu bar, then select "Kernels" which opens up a list of all the kernels.
And the author is an ass. Mint includes, among other things, full multimedia support. Ubuntu does not have that. That's why it is very popular. Ubuntu made a choice not to include full multimedia support.
While mint uses a majority of its software Ubuntu, its still independent from Canonical. These days I do not trust Canonical they could be selling our info to 3rd parties and that's another story. So no the Author is not an a$$ IMHO.
Mint has done well for itself over the years and sometimes ranks above Ubuntu on distro watch. Its a great distro and I use it myself as my main Desktop OS but use Debian for all my servers. I am a Debian supporter, however for a front end Mint is nicely presented, very clean and fresh.
Unfortunately like everything that gets popular, it is subject to some sort of criticism and attack as we have seen this past Sunday.
This will put a damper on it popularity but I will not stop using Mint.
To team doing Mint awesome job so far, dust your self off learn from this attack, and get back to what you guys do best.
XFCE is not stagnant. The users WANT it to stay the same. It's also highly configurable, you can change things around so much that it's unrecognizable compared to the original layout. Again, the XFCE community doesn't want change, you see what change did to Gnome.
You want a nice little machine to fellate you?
Apparently I've been buying the wrong computers. Tell me more about these nice little machines.
Ah, so *that's* why everyone get's so excited about the MATE desktop. I have heard good things about the user experience it can offer.
It's the entire ecosystem of open source software that has built up around the Linux kernel that's suffering. GNOME 3 is atrocious, and way worse than GNOME 2. Recent releases of KDE have been very bloated. Xfce has stagnated. GCC is still slow. sysvinit wasn't great, but systemd is far worse. Wayland is nowhere to be seen. GTK+ 3 is archaic. Firefox gets worse with each release. LibreOffice is slow and bloated.
I think by "ecosystem of open source software", you mean "projects with a massive scope".
XFCE and GCC are the only ones you listed that don't have a massive scope -- merely large.
It's no surprise that when the scope is massive, you don't have enough developers. Keep the scope reasonable and you have something that may work.
Great! I'd rather have something that goes nowhere at all than something that goes downhill.
Well, if temporary setbacks are not allowed, there is never an advance after the local maximum is reached.
Really? That's too bad. I was going to pay you $195,000 if you would install Slackware on your computer. But since you don't want it, I'll make the offer to somebody else.
the TTIP will fix that...
I really liked Windowmaker. At one moment I went to XFCE due to driver issues, What I liked is that the only thing it did was out things on my desktop. It did not try to do anything else.
Now we have a booty system that wants to do everything, running a kernel that trees to do everything, launching a desktop that tries to do everything with a browser that wants to do everything.
One of the reasons I started with Linux, because I liked how everything was separated (Last Windows version was Windows 95 without IE) and now we have this mess.
I like that I have 25 different programs and that each program can be replaced with something I like for reason only I know and only I need to know.
At this moment I run KDE, GNOME and XFCE programs at the same time, because sometimes I like one more than the other for any random reason.
Mmmm. Perhaps I should look back into Windowmaker as new drivers are out since a few years.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Anon really hates Mint.
Mark Shuttleworth, is that you?
So the point is why a desktop environment needs its own distro, rather than polishing debian/ubuntu upstream.
Mint isn't a single desktop distro, quite the reverse - the Ubuntu-based edition is available in MATE, Cinnamon, Xfce and KDE versions, and the Debian-based version in Cinnamon or MATE. It exists for much the same reason as any other distribution - the developers wanted to do something different to what was already out there, and their changes weren't limited to the DE (before Gnome 3 and Unity happened, Mint ran Gnome 2 like Ubuntu, but still had its own character).
They already do ship cinnamon packages apparently. But here we're essentially talking about a "You install the operating system and it comes with everything set up more or less how Mint would do it" type experience, hence the talk of a Cinnamon Ubuntu spin.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Sure, that would be another option. That said, Ubuntu has nailed the "Install it and it just works" aspect of distributions in a way virtually nobody else has, and they're already set up and have a proven track record in the distribution spins ("our distribution with these modifications to create a different user experience") department. So if it were up to me, and partnering was the only option on the table I'd pick Canonical over Debian.
As far as security goes, I mostly agree in that I don't think Ubuntu/Canonical and its integration would be the principle problem with security holes. But the team doesn't appear to have a security focus and probably doesn't have the expertise required to have that focus. It's too small a group, and probably needs the (appropriate) people posting enthusiastically about it to start involving themselves in its development. Otherwise it's destined to become a Ron Paul of operating systems, loved enthusiastically by those who are attached to it, but too small to actually make a difference.
I'm a Mint user myself, but after 20 years or so of using GNU/Linux, Slackware, RedHat (pre-RHEL), RHEL/CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and now Mint, I've learned not to attach myself emotionally to any particular system. Originally I thought that sharing repositories with Ubuntu was a great thing given Ubuntu is a great operating system marred only by a relatively poor UI, but I'm not as inclined to agree right now.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
There's a world of difference between adding a repo to add some extra applications, and distributing an operating system where the majority of core components are coming in via a repo you don't have control over. That's why I think the word kludge is appropriate here.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
[...]As much as I don't want to use FreeBSD or OS X or even Windows, if they provide me a better experience than Linux then I'll just have to use them instead of Linux.
Nice troll, but you forgot the goatse.cx link at the end.
The best way to know is to try. It's a little thing we call 'learning.' This learning is frequently necessary. This may not be the same from where you are from but humans on this planet are rarely borne coding expert level C and designing secure websites. Most people are good if they can cry and poop themselves on day one.
You pay for what you get. For a lot of free software the price is merely the correct one for the quality. If you got anything better it was because someone else paid your way - usually by learning on that way.
You want a nice little machine to fellate you?
Apparently I've been buying the wrong computers. Tell me more about these nice little machines.
Well, it's generally illegal (and socially frowned upon) to outright purchase them. However, you can request one. Random expenditures (patterned fabric, very small bits of precision forged metal, and colorful plants) and dialog are usually requirements, and their firmware is generally considered to be difficult to understand and changes frequently with minimal documentation. If you manage to acquire one in exclusivity, upgrading is incredibly expensive.
Please clarify; what does the window manager have to do with drivers?
difficult to understand and changes frequently with minimal documentation
So, you're saying they run Linux?
Which is the equivalent of, what, a four line script? One add-apt-repository, one long apt-get install, one long apt-get remove, one line to alter some config files? I mean, having a whole other distro seems a bit much.
If the entire point is to make it easy for end users, then yeah, it's worth it for them to have a separate .ISO that has everything configured from the get go, rather than say "You want a user friendly version of Ubuntu with a traditional desktop? Sure, just download the ISO, install it, and now follow the following list of instructions. 1. Log in. 2. Go to the Ubuntu logo, click on it, and wait for the menu to appear. Now type "Terminal" in the search box and press return. Now select the Terminal icon. Now, in the terminal type 'sudo apt-get...'"...
The aim here is to make it simple for end users. A simple alternative ISO isn't going to be hard to make. It's not as if the ISO will need to be maintained after making it, beyond making new versions for each major Ubuntu release.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Many modern desktops require 3D.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
It would actually, really be Cubuntu List of forks
Case in point: Microsoft Windows UI, which peaked at Windows 7 and is showing no signs of anything as good as stagnating since.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Do you always base your product selection on the personality of the owner of the company? That's like the last thing I look at, particularly if I never meet or interact with that person.
Thanks for the information, I might give LMDE another try.
left at the release 12 when clem got a) very political about Palestine b) very commercially focussed. c) obsessed by cinnamon when actually KDE was the most stable and popular spin oh I went to manjaro coz it has a boss i3 spin. https://manjaro.github.io/Manj...
You make a good point. I went to mint because it was the easiest way to get Ubuntu base w/cinnamon. Now I'm not sure why I shouldn't go to straight Debian with cinnamon on top.
I'm with you. I'll buy one of these machines for each room and the mobile for the car too.
The article describes the fact that an 'overall problem exists'. However an issue with a web page should be the least of their\our issues. The site provides checksum calculations that should be used, though that is somewhat besides the point as it can be adjusted if the site is truly taken over (if it is). Wordpress is very much the easiest CMS to install and get running (by far) (Google it). And just as easy to take over (mainly when you add plugins). But besides that, security topics have become a flamboyant topic, but generally lack overall emphasis on the general code that is applied due to vast amounts of coding that very few topics will include. In reality, while linux has adopted different philosophies, Ubuntu has been ever increasing in both the user environment and business world, which has lead to less emphasis on the individual person's security and certain sacrifices that many traditional Linux\Unix might not always agree with. While no lines of code will be included in this post, I will also remind you that Linux Mint is and still will be one of the best distributions around. If you want to help, instead of posting something such as the above topic, maybe you should spend your time writing some code instead.
Except that's not what Linux Mint is. And if it was, we wouldn't be having 99% of this issue.
Samsung has you covered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvCGqhShNnk
I thought the original intent of Linux Mint was to include non open source software like flash and codecs so the user didn't have to mess with finding/adding repositories and things like that.
The bit about Gnome 3 was spot on though.
Listen to Joe's Garage, Zappa explains it all. Di-chromium in serious leather