Linux Mint 14 Is Out

New submitter medge_42 sends words that Linux Mint 14 has been released. Check out their list of features and release notes to see what's new. One version uses MATE 1.4, which includes some long-needed bug fixes as well as functional bluetooth and mate-keyring, its own character map, fast alt-tabbing, and improvements to Caja. The other version uses Cinnamon 1.6, which contains a huge number of fixes and new features including its own file browser, persistent workspaces and a window quicklist to go with them, a notifications applet, an improved sound applet, and alt-tab graphical improvements. MDM now supports legacy GDM 2 themes and userlists, and has improved user switching. Gedit 2.30 has replaced Gedit 3, and MintStick replaces USB-ImageWriter.

Good but...

[Andy Prough]

I still find that for sheer ability to work on nearly any system and those with minimal resources, it's an excellent idea to keep a Mint 10 LXDE live DVD laying around. Darn thing will run on just about anything. It's practically become my new Knoppix.

Re:Good but...

[Taco Cowboy]

Why would the newer versions be less capable?

New versions are all fine except for the problem of BLOAT

Re:

[Blaskowicz]

Wrong, you get a newer Firefox that puts a lower load on the CPU, and various crappy bugs in the Xorg server, the file manager or damn anything are fixed. Drivers improve, sometimes even on older hardware, sometimes not at all. You're always fine if you're at least running pentium 3 level hardware.

Re:

[Blaskowicz]

edit : damn, I should have made clear that you need to run Mint 12 LXDE if you want something really lightweight, else Mint 13 Xfce (will get a 14 version) and Mint 13/14 Mate are great as well and don't require silly shit like OpenGL for windows management.

Re:Good but...

[ifiwereasculptor]

They tend to require more resources. Also, newer versions of drivers aren't as throughly tested on old hardware and can act very funny. Believe it or not, getting any modern Linux distro to run well on my old Athlon XP is actually a bit of a challenge (video and usb ports can be particularly problematic). And now, with llvmpipe being en vogue (the only thing it renders on slower machines is them unusable), things are worsening rapidly. Also, older ditros fit on CDs and lots of old machines don't even have DVD drives. Having said that, my favorite course of action on slower machines is Debian stable, with select packages from testing or unstable (which is getting harder to do, for some reason - it's very annoying and unexplicable when apt won't update hplip without pulling gnome-shell).

Re:

[ifiwereasculptor]

I"m not even aware of a flash debacle. But I haven't used flash in quite a while, now. And my Athlon XP has a Nvidia card, but it's an FX, so drivers (both proprietary and open) are in a sorry state right now. Don't really know what's up with the usb ports. It's a bit weird. But Linux 3.1 and 3.2 have a certain chance of freezing everything when I insert or eject a flash drive or a usb wifi antenna, while 2.6.32 works just fine. May have been fixed in more recent versions, I don't know. These minor inconven

Re:

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

Newer versions don't come with LXDE installed as the default DE. Right now, there's MATE, Cinnamon, KDE and XFCE.

Re:

[mister_playboy]

He's referring to this. It's from last year, but Mint is still ahead of Ubuntu in those metrics.

I still expect Ubuntu has more users total, but that's not going to last forever.

Re:

[mister_playboy]

Oops, messed up my link:

He's referring to this [pingdom.com]

Re:

[Gavagai80]

Distrowatch ranking has nothing to do with the number of people using a distribution, just the number curious about it. People have already heard of ubuntu for years.

Re:

[Blaskowicz]

I never run a compositor so I guess this requires even fewer CPU resources. Really, I like black backgrounds on my terminals fine.

Re:

[cristiroma]

But will it run on your toaster? Geez, it's a DESKTOP for God's sake. What would you expect to boot in command line and have 64MB? Go somewhere else! Actually instead of repacking packages like most other distros, these people took the matter into their own hand and started to build something closer to a real usable desktop more than Ubuntu will, probably, ever be. Or other lame distros. I really appreciate it and glad that Mint exists.

Re:

[kh31d4r]

all lyes!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you calling me a lyre?

Re:

[mcgrew]

He's calling you sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide.

Re:

[DickBreath]

live DVD laying around.

Lying around. Lying

It may not be corruption of the language. It may simply be evolution of the language. Language changes over time. Speakers choose the most suitable word for their porpoises. If you suggest otherwise then you are laying.

Re:

[zooblethorpe]

live DVD laying around.

Lying around. Lying

It may not be corruption of the language. It may simply be evolution of the language. Language changes over time. Speakers choose the most suitable word for their porpoises. If you suggest otherwise then you are laying.

I *wish* I were laying... with my wife!

Aww yeah, you know what I'm saying... I'm talking 'bout business time.
You know how I know?
Because it's Wednesday.
And Wednesday night is the night that we usually make love...

(Apologies to Flight of the Conchords. :) )

Re:

[fbobraga]

Calm down, it will take some time: it's hard to reinvent the wheel :P

Re:

[EmagGeek]

You know the full-disk encryption in Ubuntu stores the passphrase in cleartext on sector 0x7Gh on the hard disk, don't you?

Re:

[jones_supa]

You are not supposed to put both '0x' and 'h' to indicate a hex number.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh.
These hex numbers go to G.

Re:

[jones_supa]

But still.

Re:

[fibonacci8]

That's not a hex number, that's his signing key in cleartext.

Amazing!

[zooblethorpe]

You are not supposed to put both '0x' and 'h' to indicate a hex number.

That's not a hex number, that's his signing key in cleartext.

That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

:-P

Re:

[EmagGeek]

Apparently nobody watches The Simpsons anymore ...

Sheesh...

Re:

[rtfa-troll]

I wish these guys were in charge of gnome. Talk about getting it.

A quick question; why can't I have both mate and cinnamon installed on the same system. I'd have thought that was the most obvious gnome stupidity to get rid of?

Re:

[RDW]

A quick question; why can't I have both mate and cinnamon installed on the same system.

You probably can. A major reason for renaming everything in MATE was to allow co-existence with Gnome 3-based systems (which would include Cinnamon). You'll get one from the installation media, and can install the other from the repositories, then choose which you want to run at login time. However, each is a complete desktop (MATE rather more so) so you probably only need one.

Re:

[number6x]

You can

You pick which desktop environment to use at login. Your choice becomes the default so you don't have to choose every time you log in.

Re:

[Blaskowicz]

You also get duplicated entries in Preferences etc. (well, those seem to come from me installing LXDE, Cinnamon only put a shortcut to a control panel). also I'm running Mate, which uses nautilus 2.x (renamed) caja for the desktop window, but the default file manager has changed to Nautilus 3.x. I could change the desktop file manager to Nautilus 3.x in gconf-editor or something, but I reverted back, dunno why (I guess I didn't want to re-arrange the icons)

Horray !

[Celarent Darii]

So many volunteers and so many packages - just thanks everyone for another release !

Re:

[hihihihi]

seconded.

Great many thanks to Mint team for this. Had used 3-4 major linux distros before, but after first try with mint, no going back :)

LTS

[Andy Prough]

For production machines, you would use the Long Term Support version, which currently comes with 5 years of support.

So what? Ubuntu has been around 8 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

For most people it has been 3 major releases in 8 years. 6.06, 8.04, 10.04, and 12.04. You can expect another major release in nearly 2 years. Plus the variations of Ubuntu like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc which are the same distribution but with a different set of default packages. You can grab mini.iso and pick through every variant on a large list if you want.

Re:

[Billly Gates]

I couldn't agree with you more!

Besides the terrible gui that supports multitasking and the ability for us to think for ourselves and choose what we want, is having something younger than 11 years old! That means change and we can't have any of that. Just ask any (l)user at work? THey will tell you IE 7, and XP work just fine thank you very much.

What we need is the console with a green color as the background just like in 2001. We just type startx or ./xf86config and manually enter the monitors horizontal an

Re:

[Dr Max]

Having everyone use linux would need big changes. If the masses can't figure out how to use an os themselves within about 10 seconds they start rioting, anything remotely confusing would have to be deeply hidden (so they don't accidentally open command prompt and freak out), and good luck getting them to customize anything that isn't the simplest of GUI. The Linux crowd aren't paid enough to put up with those people, let apple or maybe MS do it.

Re:

[mcgrew]

If the masses can't figure out how to use an os themselves within about 10 seconds they start rioting

I've put Linux on clueless, computer-illiterate users' machines for years. Without fail, they all found Mandriva and kubuntu easier to use than Windows. When it comes to useability (especially discoverability), Windows suck big time. From what I've read, W8 and Unity are tied for the #1 unusable OSes (I haven't tried either one).

They all especially like the fact that their computer is faster with Linux than

Re:

[Dr Max]

Oh yeah of course, if you set it up, make sure all the devices and hardware are working, save a shortcut or two and point them in the direction of the software center (explain they can't just download stuff and double click), they will be fine (I've done it for a few people, kde mint is my weapon of choice), but are you willing to do that for all the noobs, for free. Windows generally haven't really been for the noobs either (that's why IT departments are so big) if you want it to work well you have to be w

Re:

[Dr Max]

Things can be broken out of the box providing it's easy enough for the person to fix (and be the right price). I may have been a bit harsh on the masses, i appreciate an OS that works well easily as well, i just don't think linux will ever be like that (without great changes that would remove what linux holds dear). It's very powerful in the right hands, but usually the people that need/want that kind of power have the right hands any way.

Re:

[Dr Max]

Do you remember all the people freaking out when Microsoft gave them vista? If not just look at what is happening with windows 8, any fairly computer literate person would have it setup and running well for them in a hour or so, but the masses are terribly confused.

So outdated!

[Billly Gates]

It has too many things that help content creation. The gui supports the mouse, gives you the ability to change it, and worse lets you have more than one Windows open at a time!

Screw that. Where is the crappy cell phone interface? I want to be hip and have my productivity limited so I can save 10 whole pixels on my 27 inch dual screens and tweet to my friends, which is why I purchased my Icore7 extreme edition! Now I can read a document and cut and paste things into another app at the same time which is sooo 2000s.

This is too technical to get my brain around Mate and this whole concept of multitasking that I need my shiny things back. Going back to WIndows 8.

Re:

[BrookHarty]

No doubt. You have dual 27 inch monitors you really want that MP3 on the lock screen! You also want to run all your apps in full screen, you have 2 monitors, 1 app per screen. Functionality and user friendly interfaces died at gnome 2, its gnome 3 and unity baby. The future is NOW!. Don't you read the gnome3 blogs?!?

Re:

[fbobraga]

Remember: the new DEs are not made for your setup, but for the most common...

Looks tempting ..

[blackpaw]

Ramblings ...

I love my KDE 4.9x/Kubuntu 12.10 install except for the flakiness that the poxy virtuoso/nepomuk/akonadi brings to it. Thats what I find attractive about the gnome derivatives - they haven't bet the farm on integrating their environments with the buggy unstable CPU hogging piece of crap that is nepomuk/virtuoso.

But I find gnome unattractive compared to KDE and I dislike Unity & Gnome Shell. But I do like where Cinnamon is going and this latest rev looks quite good.

If only I could find a decent gnome based Pim - I love Kontact, when its not being ass reamed by nepomuk/virtuoso. Thunderbird is getting creaky, Evolution is OK but not as slick as Kontact.

Re:

[ifiwereasculptor]

You're running KDE without deactivating nepomuk and akonadi? Are you trying to turn into the Hulk or something? If you're not, just go to System Settings and nuke them, for christ's sake. If you are, though, might I recommend Bit.Trip Runner? Great game for inducing murderous rage. In the words of Gandhi: "FUCK! I JUMPED, YOU FUCKEEEER!"

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Disabling akonadi disables kontact, unfortunately

Re:Looks tempting ..

[Gadget_Guy]

Disabling akonadi disables kontact, unfortunately

Parrots are not the only fruit, apparently.

Greetings, comrade. Your code phrase has been authenticated. Proceed to the safe house for debriefing.

Re:

[ifiwereasculptor]

If you haven't noticed, "akonadi" and "nepomuk", backwards, are "idanoka" and "kumopen", japanese words meaning, respectively, "torturer of users" and "that which cripples hard drives".

Re:

[graphius]

Exactly, good names like Excel, Outlook, Access, Safari, Firefox, Thunderbird, Vim, and of course who can forget Gimp

Re:

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

Unity was my biggest complaint with Ubuntu. Cinnamon is awesome. I've been using version 1.6 of Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.04 for a few months. This weekend I will make a full transition to Mint 14 Maya (Cinnamon). I used to be a big fan of KDE before 4.0 came out...Maybe some day I'll check it out again.

upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

can you upgrade a mint 13 system?

Re:upgrade?

[MurukeshM]

Not directly, since the upgrade tool packaged is for Ubuntu, and well create a horrible mix of Ubuntu Quantal and Mint 13 if used (if it even worked at all). There are alternate instructions provided at http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2 [linuxmint.com]

Re:upgrade?

[jones_supa]

Better yet, keep system and home on separate partitions. Then you just only reformat the system partition during reinstall.

Re:

[mgcarley]

I'd be interested to know who *doesn't* do this already - and why not.

Recently transitioned from Ubuntu (12.10 broke a lot of stuff that I had set up nicely in 12.04) to Fedora 17 myself... seemed to work mostly OK and best of all, almost everything was kept intact, right down to desktop icons and background images.

Re:

[ssam]

yes, you can update using apt. but it not recommended.
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/62 [linuxmint.com] (note you want to change "maya" -> "nadia" and "precise" -> "quantal")

Coming from a Windows background

[Shemmie]

I am loving Mint. I had a look at Mint 13 a while ago, and Ubuntu 12.10. I downloaded the Mint 14 RC a few nights ago.

And I liked what I saw enough to dive into something Linux-ie on my desktop. And I decided I prefer KDE for my desktop. And I prefer regular updates to big version changes, so I opted for LMDE KDE. I actually stuck around long enough to have an opinion on gnome vs KDE. The KDE menu is awesome - like a highly customizable version of the Windows 7 Start - very impressed.

So I'm dual booting Windows 8 and Mint - and Mint is getting a lot more use at the moment. In fact, if I could just find a way to get the bloody Steam beta to install on Mint, I'd spend even more time there. But I know it will come as they sort things out.

Mate on Mint = Awesome

[BrookHarty]

I switched to Mint when Ubuntu forced Gnome 3/Unity on me. Been extremely happy except one big issue. Mate uses GTK 2 but newer apps use GTK 3, so you get stuck in this world of mixed themes that looks bad. Found a nice gtk 2/3 clearlooks compatible theme, so I end up with Mate DM with GTK 3 apps looking normal again. Best thing, Compiz still works...

While I'm very grateful of what Canonical has done for the Linux community and have paid for services and software to show my support, I cant take the design choices or direction the company has went seriously. Gnome 3 has chosen a new direction, one that I don't need or want. Ubuntu is embracing that direction.

Mint right now is the best balance I can find out there. Keeps the popular Ubuntu base, but with Mint or Cinnamon DE which is hands down superior to Gnome 3 for the desktop.

Re:

[mrbluze]

Mint right now is the best balance I can find out there. Keeps the popular Ubuntu base, but with Mint or Cinnamon DE which is hands down superior to Gnome 3 for the desktop.

I agree, in most cases Mint is the best general purpose Linux distro out there at the moment, and it is very slick indeed. The problem is that Windows has produced an OS that looks stupid now, but the strategy is there because it is clear that displays intended for interaction are all going to be multitouch. It is just too easy to do now to not consider it standard in the future.

I am waiting and waiting for the Linux community to come to this realization that desktop linux has to take into account a mous

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I am waiting and waiting for the Linux community to come to this realization that desktop linux has to take into account a mouseless touch-screen userbase that is set to grow rapidly, especially once GNU/Linux distros appear on more tablet PC's.

As long as they don't abandon us mouse+keyboard users entirely like Microsoft is trying to do. Windows 8 is the main reason why I even considered switching to Mint.

Re:

[mrbluze]

I am waiting and waiting for the Linux community to come to this realization that desktop linux has to take into account a mouseless touch-screen userbase that is set to grow rapidly, especially once GNU/Linux distros appear on more tablet PC's.

As long as they don't abandon us mouse+keyboard users entirely like Microsoft is trying to do. Windows 8 is the main reason why I even considered switching to Mint.

If history is a guide, they won't abandon you!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none." comes to mind.

Just look at Unity and Windows 8... sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little.
You need to have one interface for mouse+keyboard and one for touch, you can't have the same for both.

Re:

[lennier]

You need to have one interface for mouse+keyboard and one for touch, you can't have the same for both.

Agreed. But it's a far bigger problem that, after decades of preaching object-oriented loosely-bound separation of concerns and Gang of Four pattern-language model-view-controller dogma, changing an interface apparently still requires rewriting all our application software from scratch. Instead of, just, you know, changing the interface, which all that MVC stuff was supposed to take care of.

How did that happen, OOP advocates?

Re:

[Raumkraut]

I am waiting and waiting for the Linux community to come to this realization that desktop linux has to take into account a mouseless touch-screen userbase that is set to grow rapidly, especially once GNU/Linux distros appear on more tablet PC's.

Where have you been these past couple of years? Gnome 3? Unity? KDE Plasma Active?

Re:

[Waccoon]

Mate uses GTK 2 but newer apps use GTK 3, so you get stuck in this world of mixed themes that looks bad.

That is not a big issue. It's a feature. A big issue would be old stuff (GTK 2) not working at all, which seems to becoming the norm with other OSes these days.

Re:

[Captain_Chaos]

Been extremely happy except one big issue. Mate uses GTK 2 but newer apps use GTK 3, so you get stuck in this world of mixed themes that looks bad.

According to the site [linuxmint.com]:

Special attention was given to Mint-X and its support for GTK3.6 to make GTK3 applications look native and integrate well with the rest of the desktop.

So perhaps Mint 14 will solve this problem for you?

Re:

[BrookHarty]

I bet you are right, the Mint team does provide a great looking desktop. I just installed the Mate 14, and it looks great.

Re:

[lennier]

direction the company has went

Went, or has gone. Unless you want to sound like you flunked high school English.

There will also be KDE version soon

[aglider]

Read here [linuxmint.com]!

Release all together

[unixisc]

I wish they'd wait until all the DE versions are ready, and release them all simultaneously. Also, if they are supporting XFCE and LXDE, wish they'd add Razor-qt support as well

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

What surprises me is that they have so many versions, similar to Ubuntu. Debian has tasksel, you can select pre-defined bundles of packages when installing it. You don't get different OSs or different versions of the OS by choosing different desktop managers, what you get is the same OS with diffent desktop managers, and those are just packages, like all other software in the distribution. Why are they so keen on misinforming people about that?

Supports four monitors

[cruachan]

Anyone know if this... or any other debian distro... can support 4 monitors? I run Ubuntu on most of my machines, but my main desktop has a motherboard with dual graphics cards and four (large) monitors. I'm running windows 7 which allows me a nice continuous desktop with all the eye candy, but I'd like to move to a debian based distro (I'm agnostic over what UI I use) but when I tried this 6 months ago with Ubuntu 12.04 and the corresponding Kubuntu/MiNT variants none would support 4 monitors without sev

Re:

[evilad]

I've had good success with 3 dissimilar monitors (small-wide-small) on Ubuntu 12.04 / fglrx. The irritations are pretty minor, and mostly involve the occasional dropdown dialog or maximize operation not going to the expected screen.

Re:

[Blaskowicz]

You probably need two graphics card from the same vendor and able to run the same driver - and have it supported. When I tried two graphics card I had two X11 graphical sessions runnings, with different panel settings, I could move the cursor from one screen to another but couldn't move windows around.

Re:

[cruachan]

Yes, that's exactly my setup, a pair of identical graphics cards... on a twin PCIe motherboard. It's just really frustrating, I'd love to dump windows but linux seems so far behind on this (and you wouldn't have thought 3+ monitors was that unusual among geeks)

Looks interesting

[Gordonjcp]

But when is it going to ship with Unity? The desktop is so old-fashioned and clunky looking.

Just stick to Ubuntu,,,

[unixisc]

... if you want Unity

Re:

[mcgrew]

Or...

(lowers sunglasses)

Windows 8!

Cinnamon on Ubuntu

[dmt0]

I installed Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.10 through a PPA and I'm liking it a lot. Is there any reason why I would want to switch from this setup over to the actual Mint?

Re:Cinnamon on Ubuntu

[jones_supa]

Good question and it brings up a point which I have been wondering. Why was Mint released as a complete distribution and not just a collection of packages for Ubuntu? They could have released the tasty bits (Cinnamon, MATE) only as PPAs, no need to duplicate the whole Ubuntu base.

Re:

[0123456]

Because I totally want to give random PPAs root access to my machines.

I trust an actual distro used by large numbers of people far more than a PPA few have ever heard of.

Re:Cinnamon on Ubuntu

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

I am currently using Ubuntu 12.04 with Cinnamon (through PPA). I plan to replace all this with Mint 14 Maya (Cinnamon) this weekend. I've heard it's not just the choice in DEs that sets Mint apart from Ubuntu. Ubuntu only provides free open-source packages in its software library (along with some optional non-free proprietary stuff). Mint supposedly provides most of the Ubuntu open-source packages, plus the option to install free proprietary software. This sounds appealing to me because I have to use Oracle Java for a lot of software dev. I usually end up installing Java straight from Oracle's web site because I don't trust 3rd party ppa. So, on Mint, I'm assuming, I can install packages for Oracle Java and other stuff directly from Mint's repository.

Re:

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

Would you prefer I call it "Sun Java"? I'm not a big fan of Oracle as a company but Sun is no more. Maybe you're implying that open java is what I should be using. Well the fact is there are some applications and development environments that still require Sun/Oracle Java instead of the open one.

Re:

[dnixx]

By installing Mint you'd get:

* mintUpdate: Mint's update manager which lets you categorize packages into different levels depending on how "dangerous"/unstable they are. Eg. level 5 packages ("dangerous packages") can be excluded from the update. Screenshot: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Mintupdate.png [wikimedia.org]
* mintInstall: Mint's software manager which features a lot of crappy reviews written by users.
* MDM Display Manager: Themable and based on GDM 2.20
* Nemo: Mint's file manager, forked from

Re:

[dmt0]

Nemo actually is in the Ubuntu PPA...

Does it still use Nouveau?

[sadler121]

So can you boot this version with a newish nvidia card? Cause last time I checked, it used nouveau as default, which fails massively for any newer nvidia cards. All I get it a screen with white blocks. Why linux distros insist on using an alpha video card driver to boot the system for the first time is beyond me.

Doesn't it make sense to use a generic one that will work with everything and then let the person choose to install the alpha one (or propitiatory one)?

Re:

[WhitePanther5000]

You might just need to choose "Start in compatibility mode" when you boot of the disc to use the generic drivers. Alternatively, I've seen several suggestions to add 'nomodeset' to the end of the grub boot line - though I haven't had to do this.

Very polished release

[bwat47]

I am really liking Mint 14/Cinnamon so far, which surprised me since I never particularly liked mint or cinnamon when I tried them in the past. Mint 13 with cinnamon just seemed kind of buggy and unpolished to me. Linux mint 14 just works perfectly for me, one of the best out of the box linux experiences I've ever had. They fixed a ton of issues in cinnamon 1.6 and added some useful features. Cinnamon has now become my preferred DE. I really like that cinnamon maintains a sane interface, while being built

WHEN THE HELL

[xuvetyn]

are they going to implement rolling updates?????!!!!!!

Re:

[jones_supa]

On this day in history thousands of new versions of software were released.
Many of them far cooler, way more interesting and useful than this one.

If you have found something even cooler, you must submit them as articles to Slashdot. Ever noticed that "xxxxx writes" in beginning of each article? That's how stuff gets published here.

Liberated software

[unixisc]

Trisquel, Dyne:bolic and GNewSense are all based on Ubuntu, just like Mint is, but are Libre distros. So take any of them, which will give you your Libre kernel and then take a Mint DVD and then install all the liberated stuff you find there to that base system. Should give ya the same thing. Of course, had Mint put what you sanctimoniously called 'Designed for Crap' out there, the FSF wouldn't endorse them - just see their approach to Debian, which all this is based off in the first place.