Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' Release Candidate Is Out 134
New submitter Anand Radhakrishnan writes "The release candidate for the much-anticipated Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' is available for user testing. Its many new features include Cinnamon Control center, an improved login manager with HTML 5 support, a driver manager, and a lot of under-the-hood improvements. 'A new tool called MintSources, aka "Software Sources," was developed from scratch with derivative distributions in mind (primarily Linux Mint, but also LMDE, Netrunner and Snow Linux). It replaces software-properties-gtk and is perfectly adapted to managing software sources in Linux Mint. From the main screen you can easily enable or disable optional components and gain access to backports, unstable packages and source code.' This release with Cinnamon looks really tempting."
Obligatory comment (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Obligatory comment (Score:4, Informative)
Not Obligatory...Linux mint is basically Ubuntu (Score:3)
When Ubuntu introduced Unity I switched to Linux Mint and haven't looked back.
I'm actually running Ubuntu with Cinnamon installed (I would be running Mint if it wasn't for the delay between their respective releases) . Its kind of sad that Mints main benefit (since Debian rolling releases stopped) is that its everything you like about Ubuntu....great support; almost cutting edge, with backported fixes for stability(although not as Stable as Debian...but that is not cutting edge) with some sensible defaults...because it is basically ubuntu.
Hell I quite like the fact that canonical tri
Not Obligatory...Linux Ubuntu is basically Debian (Score:2)
I'm actually running Debian with Sid installed (I would be running Ubuntu if it wasn't for the delay between their respective releases) . Its kind of sad that Ubuntus main benefit (since Debian experimental releases are too wild) is that its everything you like about Debian Sid....great support; almost cutting edge, with backported fixes for stability(although not as Stable as Debian stable... but that is not cutting edge) with some sensible defaults...because it is basically Debian Sid.
Hell I quite like th
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Obligatory response (Score:1)
And have they actually explained publically what the "Mint Search Enhancer" extension for Firefox does? You know, the one that you can't remove without also removing your desktop's meta-package in Mint, ensuring that it's reinstalled on every UI upgrade?
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They have. They use it do get revenue from your searches.
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Which is exactly what Ubuntu was doing with Unity/Dash.
No, it's not.
A web browser search bar transmitting your search terms to the internet is expected behaviour.
Your desktop "find files" doing that.... not so much.
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And have they actually explained publically what the "Mint Search Enhancer" extension for Firefox does? You know, the one that you can't remove without also removing your desktop's meta-package in Mint, ensuring that it's reinstalled on every UI upgrade?
This [linuxmint.com] is a bit old, but they have explained it several times. I actually wouldn't mind it if it didn't stupidly break functionality like the Google calculator and cached pages. Someone benefits from your searches anyway. I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I got rid of it, and it didn't come back.
Sorry Mint, but if you destroy basic functionality in the process of earning money off of my browsing, your hacks go away just as other annoyances such as online ads. I kept the default home page, though, I
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Using Mint 13 LTS with Mate -- I had been using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, but they stopped updating it in any useful way. Mate is like an improved version of Gnome 2: not beautiful, but no drama, and it lets me easily put things in the panels. Most of what I do is writing, so I figure I'm good until 2015 or whatever.
Re:Obligatory comment (Score:5, Insightful)
I still use Unity, it is strangely good after you used it for a while, despite some minor bugs here and there. Unity actually included many useful features from other desktops, such as:
- Menu on top, titlebar on top (when full screen): Saving precious vertical space, esp. useful with my 1366x768 laptop screen. And to be honest, I only care about the menu of the program I am focused on anyway, so one menu at a time isn't a big problem.
- Taskbar on the left, with grouping: same as above, with 16:9 screen I can spare some horizontal space for it. Also you can quickly switch windows with Super + F[1234], something taken from Microsoft Windows 7, it is more useful and faster than Alt-tabbing because you don't have to wait for the list of windows to appear, you always know which keys to press.
- Windows grouping, subgroup switching with Alt+grave (`). Taken from GNOME Shell, help unclutter my windows list, and switching is faster too. I loved this feature of GNOME Shell, too bad it removed the windows list (taskbar) so I can't have an overall view of which windows are on the screen. Same goes for notification area, GNOME Shell removed that part and go for a touch-oriented notification system (tap bottom right for the notification list), which is extremely useless since the notification area (or systray, as in windows) is supposed to always stay on screen so you can have a quick glance.
- Topbar widget/notification is more refined than GNOME Shell, with the later on you have to write an extension in javascript with little to no documentation. With unity you can write one in python, easy.
- Last but not least, Compiz is still better than metacity/GNOME Shell in CPU/RAM usage. With GNOME Shell you are practically running an webkit browser with all the javascript jazz and stuff. So while Compiz/Unity only eats ~90 MB RAM, metacity/GNOME Shell eats about 250 MB. Sure, RAM is fairly cheap these days but that doesn't mean your desktop has to use as much RAM as the sum of the rest of your programs.
Linux Mint with MATE or Cinnamon is okay too. But MATE is just GNOME 2 renamed, it works, but no better than GNOME 2, and with a bunch of leftovers tech such as libbonobo. Cinnamon is, well, nothing special, nothing attractive for me to use, that is it. And I have heard that Cinnamon devs have many problem following upstream too.
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I liked it as well, until the last update. Little things started killing my productivity. Like when I would get a new chat message in Pidgin. I would go up to the indicator area, click on the envelope, then see a list of several chats I had, many that were quite old, I would click on hte newest one, and it woudl blink, and the indicator would go off.. But that was it. It wouldn't actually load up the pidgin window to the chat. If I went directly to pidgin, it wouldn't turn off the indicator envelope.
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Re: Obligatory comment (Score:5, Insightful)
When Ubuntu introduced Unity, I switched to Cinnamon. It's a shame that a DE has divided the biggest desktop Linux community
Why?
That's the the whole benefit of open source right there in one sentence. They did something you didn't like, you weren't locked in.
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When Ubuntu introduced Unity, I switched to Cinnamon. It's a shame that a DE has divided the biggest desktop Linux community
Why?
That's the the whole benefit of open source right there in one sentence. They did something you didn't like, you weren't locked in.
Indeed. One of the biggest benefits, but also the biggest disadvantage. This is what stops Linux from gaining traction with a wider market.
Buy a device for windows, (screen, printer, wifi key, whatever), plug it in, works. (Yeah OK, most of the time, especially if you ain't got 64bit). With Linux, it's harder, especially for the non-techie. One distro that all the major OEMs could aim for would really help.
(Spoken as an old BSD wanker, so I suppose I'm part of the "problem"...)
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Maybe half a decade ago. Now, for anything that's supported, Linux is far easier than Windows.
Buy a device for windows, (screen, printer, wifi key, whatever), plug it in, works.
Sometimes, but most times you ahve to track down and install a driver along with a gigabyte or two of annoying bloatware to get a device which works, but constantly nags you with crap you don't want to have to deal with.
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Oh, you must have an HP printer. 300 MB of trashy GUIs, drivers and ????ware.
Lots easier on Linux. "System settings->Printers->New". Click. "Print test page?"
ALL HAIL! (Score:2)
Re:ALL HAIL! (Score:4, Informative)
Re: All hail to Debian. :-)
Huzzah! Yes, indeed, all Hail Debian, the basis of these all! It is sad that so much bounds forth from these springs yet so few are aware of the source of these precious waters!!! As I said earlier, to one who dared mock Debian's utility [slashdot.org]:
Debian has stayed being what it has always been. It's just being used more as the foundation that supports the work of the facade builders and marketers that put a pretty face (or not-so-pretty Tammy Faye Baker clown-makeup face, if you want Gnome 3, imho) on top of all that and market it as if they made the whole thing.
Again, I say to thee, all Hail Deb-Ian ! (also, have you ever seen the canadian cartoon "Being Ian" ? )
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I'm undecided about switching to LMDE, aptosid, or just plain sid. On the one hand I like the idea of not ever having to reinstall the OS for upgrades, on the other hand I feel that eventually I'll have to because of an accumulation of botched installs.
Meanwhile the fuckers at Valve decided that only Ubuntu deserves Steam. But then again TF2 runs like molass in linux with an AMD setup.
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I have been running Debian for about 10 years, and the only time I've had to re-install it was when I bought completely new hardware. I never got so botched that I need to start again. Most of the time I have run as SID, although over the last 6 months or so I migrated slowly to testing which became stable - since I seem to have everything I need at a suitably high enough version.
Because I run all my disks as raid 1, when I upgraded from 1 to 2 TB disks, I did that with the system in situ.
In place upgrades still unsupported? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm running Mint now, I think it is MInt 13 or maybe 12. I would have upgraded a long time ago except that in place upgrades are not supported. If I had known that, I would never have left ubuntu for Mint.
Next time I "upgrade" I'm just going to go back to Ubuntu so I don't have to deal with that hassle anymore. In place upgrades always worked fine for me on Ubuntu since I would wait a month or two after release for all the other guinea pigs to work through any problems.
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You're supposed to use the backup utility to save your data and package choices, then do a clean reinstall and re-run the backup utility to restore everything.
Re:In place upgrades still unsupported? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I know what you are "suppossed" to do, it is a hassle that I do not need to do with ubuntu. Next up is the argument that I "should" do all that regardless of distribution to which I say my level of backups is sufficient for my needs even if it is not sufficient for Mint's needs.
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Already got backups? Jolly good, then the shortcut would be to say:
sudo dpkg --get-selections > selections
to save your package selections, and then when you're reinstalled & copied your data back, say
sudo dpkg --set-selections and then
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -u dselect-upgrade
I'm not 100% sold on this idea, having been spoiled by Ubuntu and Debian supporting in-place upgrades, but it does have the advantage of avoiding breakage if the package maintainers didn't consider your par
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Slashcode ate that second code invocation, sorry.
sudo dpkg --set-selections [lessthan_sign] selections
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Logically we should keep copies of each copy of each copy, then. :roll:
Seriously, though, you should have more than one backup /anyway/ given how quick, cheap and easy it is these days. Thank Hastur I don't have to use 40-odd 1.44MB floppies to back up a hard drive anymore like I did in the mid '90s.
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Exactly. I stress to people to have at least two copies of the important data, one of which is kept offsite. Usually they use two USB drives, swap them each day, and bring one home each evening. (Small offices or businesses, not megacorps.)
What happens when you have only one copy, and the building burns down? Or a thief breaks in to the office and steals the server? I've seen both situations, so now I make sure that not only are there multiple backups, but one is not in the office overnight.
Re:In place upgrades still unsupported? (Score:5, Informative)
I agree that a distro using Debian packages and APT really ought to be dist-upgradeable. It's lame that it's not.
But the Mint guys are the ones working hardest to let me have the kind of desktop I prefer, so I'm willing to cut them some slack.
You can avoid some pain if you set your computer up properly. Put /home and / on separate partitions. Then, you can upgrade just by running the new installer! The installer always wants to clean-wipe the / partition, but it doesn't care whether you wipe /home or leave it in place. (I always back up the /etc directory, just by copying it somewhere on the /home partition. I also back up a complete list of all the currently installed packages.)
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Mint LMDE is based on Debian, with rolling releases. I've only recently switched though, but seems good so far.
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LMDE's problem so far IMO is its infrequent updates for anything but web browsers. Usually you wait several months in between updates for anything else, no matter if it's got a known security hole or not.
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Well, Debian Testing gets more frequent updates than Stable, but they are explicit about security patches being intended for the latter.
That said, your desktop environment is most likely to get owned through a browser glitch anyway if it has a firewall up, so it may not be that unreasonable.
It is nice to see that the latest Firefox came through in a timely fashion.
Re:In place upgrades still unsupported? (Score:4, Interesting)
On my laptop I'm using the last Xubuntu LTS, and this does get updated regularly with security patches etc. Next time I switch distributions on the desktop it will be either to a proper rolling release distribution (Arch perhaps) or back to Xubuntu (latest rather than LTS) with regular updates and in-place upgrades.
The reinstallation recommended every time there is a new version is the reason I'll avoid Mint Main. If I'm going to reinstall, I might as well install a different distribution.
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"I agree that a distro using Debian packages and APT really ought to be dist-upgradeable. It's lame that it's not."
You should understand that it is not the use of deb/apt what makes Debian dist-upgradeable, it is Debian's focus on being so.
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You should understand that it is not the use of deb/apt what makes Debian dist-upgradeable, it is Debian's focus on being so.
Oh, I understand that all right. But given that they are inheriting from an upstream that does such an excellent job, it's lame that they can't keep their end dist-upgradable.
I never meant to imply that there is something magical about the .deb package format; it's the hard work of the Debian community that really makes Debian so smoothly upgradable. Ubuntu, in turn, works enough to
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Please; supported or not, in-place upgrades have never worked properly on Ubuntu. The first question asked to anybody who has a problem in the first two weeks is "upgrade or clean install?"
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I've done in-place upgrades on Ubuntu at least a couple of times. I never saw a single problem from it. I was surprised it worked so flawlessly since it seems like something that could be hard to get right.
I've not been happy with a lot of Ubuntu's recent decisions, but in my experience this is one thing they got right.
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When using UNIX (and Linux) rule #1 is learn to partition your disk. (Incidentally that is also rule #2, #3 and #4).
Say you have a 100 G Disk in your laptop, are using a Debian derivative and is doing a fair amount of SW development, a simple scheme could be:
40 G: /home /opt /
20 G:
20 G:
The remaining 20 G is used to enlarge any of the above partitions, should the need arise.
Now when you 'upgrade' you simply re-install. That will leave /home untouched and only touch the parts of /opt that "belongs" to the dis
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If you don't partition - well - you should - if you still don't want to then at least stop complaining.
No, partitioning is for multi-user systems with long uptimes. For single-user systems it is just a waste of space.
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Having a separate /home partition is a good idea, simply because you can reinstall the whole system, switch to a different distro or whatever, without wiping your personal stuff and having to reinstall from backup. I usually move my old home directory to /home/old first, to avoid conflicting dot files. No space wasted, and lots of time saved.
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Of course there is space wasted - whatever is in the / partition is not available in the /home partition and vice versa. Got tons of /tmp files - you might up fill up / and cause the system to crap itself despite having gigs of free space in /home.
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Most distros automagically use tmpfs on /tmp these days, so tons of files in /tmp will only fill up swap. If you filled / to the brim, your partitioning scheme simply sucked, and if you filled /home you need to either buy more disks or delete some redundant fluff. There's no space wasted since / really needs some free space, and using it for pirated .avi files or whatever harms your system.
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If you filled / to the brim, your partitioning scheme simply sucked, and if you filled /home you need to either buy more disks or delete some redundant fluff.
Lol, nerdrage for the fail.
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I see. You're an idiot.
Re:In place upgrades still unsupported? (Score:5, Insightful)
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apt-get dist-upgrade is quite a task actually, especially when you're considering some of the advantages/differences Ubuntu/Mint has compared to Debian, e.g. PPAs/all sorts of package sources. Even Ubuntu dist-upgrade have often been problematic for many people, Mint didn't want to go that road, because it meant a whole bunch of testing and support for myriads of hardware that somehow worked with the previous kernel/init/drivers/etc. but somehow have problems after the upgrade. A fresh install ensures there
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That's actually still simple to deal with if you prepare right.
What I do with unpackaged s/w is manage it with GNU Stow. I've got a directory /usr/local/stow, and if I want to compile foo v2.05 I'll extract its source, say "./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/foo-2.05 && sudo make install", then "cd /usr/local/stow" and "sudo stow foo-2.05". Now I've got the program installed into the stow folder but with symlinks to /usr/local/bin and elsewhere in the /usr/local hierarchy.
You have to use a separ
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Yes, that's what the Mint team tells you and that's because according to them, dist-upgrade is not reliable. I find this rather strange because it worked reliably on Debian and Ubuntu for me for a long time and I guess it's because the Mint team broke something. That's rather unfortunate because I like the system very much.
The other big flaw is the la
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Simple solution, keep you files on a second hd and use the first one for the os. Plop in a new usb boot disk and 15 later you got a new OS.
Re:In place upgrades still unsupported? (Score:4, Informative)
You could use Debian Testing with optional packages from Mint. You get the best of both worlds. And Debian just automagically upgrades itself.
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lsb_release -a
will tell you the version of Mint.
you can do in place upgrades with mint, what does "supported" mean anyway as you will be the one to fix your computer if you hose it for most any distro. I do the in-place but have to do some minor tweaking afterwards. Just dump your /home and whatever other data files to an external disk beforehand
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Only twats use Ubuntu.
Upgrade to Debian!
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Looking forward to it... (Score:2)
How good is it? (Score:3)
I've been running Ubuntu for a long time, with increased disappointment at each upgrade, not all of which are caused by Canonical.
I had been mostly OK for a time with GNOME fallback, or whatever it is that they call running gnome-panel and metacity. But now I've also had to replace Nautilus by Nemo (Cinnamon's Nautilus fork) because the latest Nautilus introduces too many regressions.
Is Linux Mint what I need? Or should I just consider moving to Debian?
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I've got Mint on my wife's laptop and ubuntu with Cinnamon on mine. On my desktop I recently installed an SSD and did a new install. Had mint 15 been out I would have strongly considered it, but ultimately I decided that for now Ubuntu 13.04 + cinnamon is a pretty good combination. Not sure if that will continue to be the case, but for the moment I think it's about as good as it gets.
Having said that, Mint 14 on my wife's laptop has been rock solid and I'm guessing she will continue to happily use it for
The exodus from Ubuntu... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was late to the party, but I was so disgusted with several of the recent decisions from Canonical (Unity, spyware, ads, removal of Synaptic, steering toward commercial apps when better free alternatives exist, and on and on) that had rendered it marginally useful on the very machines it had once redeemed from the Windows quagmire that I not only switched them all to Mint, but switched them to LMDE- Linux Mint Debian (Cinnamon).
Yes, there are a couple of rough edges, but the general increase in speed and usability has been a relief like a thorn removed from my flesh. It is MUCH better. Whatever advantage the mainstream Linux Mint has over the Debian Edition, I'm more than willing to forgo them to be removed from dependency on Canonical entirely.
A couple of years ago I felt completely differently. Ubuntu did great things for the desktop user and it pains me to have to reject their direction now... but human institutions tend to become evil the moment they think they are indispensable. The nature of open source and the hard work of the folks at Mint have rendered this change of Ubuntu's character ineffective and irrelevant, and I am very grateful for both.
I wanna live with a Cinnamon Girl (Score:2)
Cinnamon is pretty nice. It nicely captures the features of the traditional app bar and combines the ability to use plugins and 'pin' apps. I LURVE me the ability to manage my networks and VPNs from the applet interface.
It does have a few problems. First off, it's somewhat confusing to edit the Cinnamon menu. My ideal solution would be to create a nested folder structure filled with softlinks so I could simply manage it with a file manager. (Sorry, haters. MS just got it right there.) However, a more-full-f
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You know what I love?
Being able to set custom keybindings.
Workspaces...in a grid.
Alt-Tab to any running app on any desktop.
Ya know, all the things that Gnome 3 actually did right (no matter how much I've come to despise it), and the Mint team decided to break. For now I'll just keep on trucking along with XFCE, and if Clem and the gang ever decide to stop fucking with login manager settings and fix some of their outstanding bugs, maybe I'll give Cinnamon another look.
No KDE version yet (Score:1)
I have 14-kde; GNOME just doesn't work for me. Too simplistic, perhaps. I was always leaning toward KDE, and its C++/Qt base was far richer than the objects made by hand in C (GTK.) I'll get one to try again, though, just to be educated.
Crashing under VirtualBox (Score:2, Interesting)
I installed it under VirtualBox, but when I run it, after I log in, the virtual machine closes by itself and it appears as "aborted" in the list.
Minix 3 for me!! (Score:1)
The microkernel is going to catch in any day now.
login manager with HTML5? (Score:1)
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If someone has enough access that they can modify the login manager it doesn't matter what language/markup it's in.
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Have you heard of the concept of attack surface? HTML5 can do scripting, it can include remote files, with a lot of media types, and dozens of underlying handling libraries.
Asking for login credentials is a simple and security-critical task. Implementation should be kept as simple as possible IMO
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Do you advocate making security component design decisions based on the existence of implementation exploits? i.e. like "I see a risk there, but I think nobody will try to exploit it so let us do it anyway."
When Ubuntu introduced Unity .. (Score:3)
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I just went with the LTS server edition and downloaded/installed the desktop I wanted rather than futzing with Unity at all.
new features! (Score:1)
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"Linux Mint 15 is the most ambitious release since the start of the project. MATE 1.6 is greatly improved and Cinnamon 1.8 offers a ton of new features, including a screensaver and a unified control center."
Really, linux mint, a screensaver, really?
Well, the last time I tried Ubuntu 3d screensavers wouldn't work properly, meaning the screen went black and I had to enter my password with no visual feedback to unlock. Also the screensavers weren't configurable and were generally an example of all that was wrong with ubuntu, linux and everything.
password not recognized (Score:1)