LinuxMint13 RC Is Available For Testing 114
donadony writes "LinuxMint13 RC is available for testing. This release comes with two versions on separate DVDs: Mate and Cinnamon. LinuxMint13 Cinnamon is very light and offers some customization, integration of new applets, extensions and themes that can be found on the official website."
Mint is nice, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Mint is nice, and it's the Linux flavor I'm using currently (although I use LMDE, not the standard Mint) after having left Ubuntu when they transitioned to Unity. The best thing about it is that the maintainer(s) actually listen to users regarding development directions, which was what drove them to develop Cinnamon and adopt MATE as an option - as opposed to Ubuntu / Canonical, that just forced down the users' throats their ideas and UI decisions, alienating a large part of their user base in the process.
Having said that, there's still one thing that keeps me from recommending it to new users or users migrating out of Ubuntu: lack of automated upgrade procedure to newer major versions - one thing that Ubuntu has and generally works nice there. On Mint, the official procedure is to backup you files/settings using the backup tool, install the newer version from scratch on top of the existing install, and then restore the backup after. That's just too cumbersome. Yes, it's possible to upgrade without reinstalling by manually editing the sources.list file and upgrading manually with apt-get, but it's considered unsafe and error prone by the maintainers and hence not recommended. I did it anyway on a past install, and sure enough I had hiccups - I still had a working install, but there were a lot of rough edges and inconsistencies on the upgraded install. Because of that I ended up installing LMDE so I didn't have to worry about major version upgrades anymore. It's not a fully smooth ride either, but it's far more manageable, and having previous experience with Debian, I'm totally at home with it. But it's obviously not something I'd recommend to casual / new users either.
What is it? (for the rest of us) (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, we can use the Goggle (an amusing misspelling of an acqaintance of mine), but it wouldn't hurt if the article would mention what these things actually are (or link to a page that directly explains what they are) instead of leaving me to guess. My research now shows that:
I don't live and breathe Linux, though I'm reading Slashdot pretty much every day. If someone wandered onto Slashdot by mistake, would they know what the heck this article is about?
p.s. Shame on you for linking one particular mirror. Find your best download options here [linuxmint.com].
Re:WoW (Score:4, Informative)
Wine has improved by leaps and bounds in the last 6 months, so it would be very drastic if the last time you saw it was years ago.
I am only suggesting as an option not that you should use it.
Re:Mint is nice, but... (Score:5, Informative)
.. and kiss goodbye to your mysql & postgresql databases as well as any web sites you were developing in /var/www and for that matter anything at all that stores its data in /var..
Your method is a decent one, but it requires that you know for sure you don't have any important data anywhere other than /home and /etc. The parent poster is complaining that on generic ubuntu you can do a full upgrade and not have to worry about this.
Re:How does it compare to Gnome3? (Score:5, Informative)
Cinnamon is basically Gnome 3 made to look more or less like Gnome 2 - i.e. the traditional taskbar, app menu etc.