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Linux Mint 18 'Sarah' Released, Supports Generic GTK X-Apps (linuxmint.com)
Slashdot reader Type44Q writes: The Linux Mint team announced the immediate availability of their latest release, Mint 18 "Sarah," in Cinnamon and MATE flavors. These follow on the heels of their respective beta versions, which have been out for nearly a month.
"Linux Mint 18 is a long-term support release which will be supported until 2021," the team announces on MATE's "new features" page, adding they've improved their update manager, included support for the Debian syntax of "apt", and are working on the "X-Apps" project to "produce generic applications for traditional GTK desktop environments...to replace applications which no longer integrate properly outside of a particular environment."
"Linux Mint 18 is a long-term support release which will be supported until 2021," the team announces on MATE's "new features" page, adding they've improved their update manager, included support for the Debian syntax of "apt", and are working on the "X-Apps" project to "produce generic applications for traditional GTK desktop environments...to replace applications which no longer integrate properly outside of a particular environment."
Since it was missing from the summary, the Mint 18 release is based on Ubuntu 16.04 and now includes systemd.
future assassin, on a dual boot machine make sure to shut down properly or else the DIRTY POWEROFF remains set, and the rendering will not initialize and only give you that accursed blank screen with cursor.
Playonlinux is easier than just wine BTW. Wines a bit tricky for newbies
"Long-term support" only means 5 years now?!
Linux Mint's long-term support cycle is tied to that of Ubuntu's. Maybe you should be complaining upstream?
Here is the rationale for the GTK3 X-apps and a couple finished example of them.
http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2016/02/the-first-two-x-apps-are-ready/
It's about how Gnome 3 has crapified gedit, evince etc. and uses non-standard GUI elements - Gnome-specific parts of GTK3 - in client-side decorated windows.
Another reason is to remove a few dependencies, and in particular remove some of the distro-level hackery where Mint had gedit locked at version 2.30, so you couldn't install gedit 3. More generally it's part of removing warts that have historically made Cinnamon difficult to run on other distros, or some Gnome 3 applications on Cinnamon or Mint.
Earlier blog post on it
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2985
Noting depends on systemd. Nothing depends on a specific init system.
Software may depend on specific APIs that expose certain kernel features like cgroups, so if you're not happy with having systemd do that then either write your own interface or pay someone to write it for you.