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Operating Systems Linux

Linux Mint 17.3 Officially Released (softpedia.com) 109

Posted by Soulskill from the onward-and-upward dept.
prisoninmate sends news that Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" has been officially released. Following a few technical problems with their website, the Mint developers posted release announcements for both the Cinnamon and MATE flavors of the operating system. "Both Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" editions ship with the same improvements for some of the operating system's core components and in-house built apps, such as Software Sources, which is now more reliable, responsive, and fast, Update Manager, which can perform more checks, Driver Manager, which is now more robust, and Login Screen." Here are the release notes (Cinnamon, MATE), and the summaries of new features (Cinnamon, MATE).
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Linux Mint 17.3 Officially Released More

Linux Mint 17.3 Officially Released

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  • Uh (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Until 2016, the development team won't start working on a new base and will be fully focused on this one.

    Uh, three weeks?

    • Re: Uh (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's like three Firefox releases.

  • Since I'm new to Linux Mint (started with 17.2), let me ask at this occasion: How safe are rolling upgrades as opposed to fresh installs?

    • Since I'm new to Linux Mint (started with 17.2), let me ask at this occasion: How safe are rolling upgrades as opposed to fresh installs?

      The systems I've done it on upgraded with no problems.

    • I always get confused with the realtioship between OS updates and the software update mechanisms in linux. Is there a way to update my install in-place using something like apt-get or the Linix mint software manager or is that a separate process. If it's a separate process, what precautions do I need to use to make sure I don't nuke my installed software yet at the same time replace all the cruft. Finally on apples OSX there is a permissions and ownership tune up one can run. Since this very often finds

      • Re:How safe? (Score:5, Informative)

        by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Saturday December 05, 2015 @11:55AM (#51062789)

        Just change the release name in your /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list file, apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade, and then apt-get autoremove

        You can always mount /home as a separate partition, device, or even better as a RAID array (1 or 5, 1 should be sufficient). Then when you want to re-install completely just wipe the OS and after your first boot remount /home where it belongs

        • is there a good place to read more about what you just told me?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Just change the release name in your /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list file, apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade, and then apt-get autoremove

          Clearly Linux is ready for the desktop.

          Isn't Mint intended to be easy for the "average user"?

          • Just change the release name in your /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list file, apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade, and then apt-get autoremove

            Clearly Linux is ready for the desktop.
            Isn't Mint intended to be easy for the "average user"?

            Yes, it is ready for the desktop.
            You can, of course, use the above commands in the terminal. That is the easiest way if you need to write the steps in a post or do a support over a phone.
            You can also
            - click on the "updates" icon in a right

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              That's good to hear, it's a step in the right direction.

              However, it's still far to common to seek help with Linux and get replies like:

              "Go to a terminal and type banana banana banana."
              "OK, it didn't work. What now?"
              "Type banana banana."
              "It says 'cucumber orange banana.'"
              "Read the man page for cucumber"
              (user tries to read man page and can't make head or tail of it)

              I'm not a Linux geek but I'm slowly learning how things work under the hood. It's incredibly frustrating when someone gives you a magic incantatio

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by spitzak ( 4019 )

                The text is designed to be copied and pasted into a terminal.

                Generally this is a lot easier than "find Registry Editor here on the start menu, now click here, here, here and then scroll down to find this item, now paste in this text which is just as mysterious as any Linux command".

                It is true that when it does not work there is not a lot of help.

    • More important question: does it have systemd? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      A more important question is, Does Linux Mint come with systemd?

      If the answer is a resounding "No!", then it's probably safe to use. Traditional Linux distros have a solid reputation for being robust and reliable.

      If the answer is a resounding "Yes!", then beware! I've had nothing but trouble with systemd on Linux. I'm talking about systems that wouldn't boot, binary log files that were difficult to work with, problems with stderr, and other such issues.

      • It's still on Ubuntu 14.04, so there's an answer (and a support term : 2019)

        When it'll be on 16.04, well by then maybe systemd will be old enough so that it somewhat works.
        After that all that remains to you is to sell your house, spend $50k on a computer that runs AIX. Use it CLI-only and quit coming here to troll the news.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by armanox ( 826486 )

          What, you're not running KDE on your AIX workstation?

        • It took Lennart ten years to make pulseaduio workable.
          From some people who are more focused on doing things with audio, I hear that it still doesn't work right.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Sounds like a problem with Kodi.

              Oh wait,
              http://kodi.wiki/view/PulseAud... [kodi.wiki]

              Summary: if you intentionally break your sound, it doesn't work, surprise!

              • Comment removed based on user account deletion

                • It's a travesty, but then Kodi likely ought to transcode the TrueHD or DTS-MA to DTS or AC3 or the other one (for DTS-MA to DTS a quick lookup tells it's trivial : DTS-MA includes a DTS stream).
                  High quality lossy ought to be acceptable.. 24 bit, 96KHz sound actually is useless : it is mathematically and physically proven that 16/48 playback gives the absolute best quality that can be heard.
                  It sucks but transcoding the sound on the fly would be a solution if it's easily doable.

                • Uhm, alsa supports truehd and dts-hd because somebody has written the support for those. New format support does not just magically appear. Part of the problem is getting the format recognized, part of the problem is changing the sink passthrough code to allocate the higher bandwidth needed for these formats, and part of the problem is a smooth transition between passthrough and PCM, allowing different clients to handle things differently. I agree that it definitely needs to be there, but it is not trivial.

                  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

                    • All decoded streams need to have matched sample rates. Pulseaudio doesn't upmix or downmix encoded bitstreams. It needs to know the content because it needs to know what to do with it. Say you are watching a bluray and then you turn on your Bluetooth headphones. What does pulseaudio do? Pass the encoded bitstream through? No because that would be bad. Even decoded 5.1 would be bad. What if you want to play to both devices simultaneously? What about when you receive a skype call? Should that be passed throug

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mikael ( 484 )

            Audio only partially works on a MSI GT72 laptop (bluetooth headphones work, onboard speakers don't). You also have to roll your own Ethernet network driver.
             

          • Oh please. The only problem with pulseaudio was that sound on linux has always been a clustf$&k. Whether needing to detect your hardware capabilities and auto configure /dev entries, or setting something like a default output device, allowing per-user settings that are saved, allowing users to use the audio device without being root, mixing audio channels, whatever...it was the drivers/audio subsystem/system device configuration that created the problems. Pulseaudio was ONE attempt at a solution, and th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbssm ( 961115 )
        That's not a "more important question" at all. Except from a small fringe that's very vocal in /. nobody really cares if it uses systemd. Even Linus Torvald is mostly fine with it, and so are the users of Linux in general.

    • Re:How safe? (Score:5, Informative)

      by inhuman_4 ( 1294516 ) on Saturday December 05, 2015 @11:18AM (#51062699)
      I started on LinuxMint 17 and rolled into 17.1 and 17.2 without any problems, and I don't expect any problems for 17.3.

      The thing to remember is that LinuxMint 17.x series is based off of the Ubuntu 14.04LTS. So the upgrade from 17.2 -> 17.3 is like going from Ubuntu 14.04.2 -> 14.04.3. The major changes are to the parts of the software stack that are added by the LinuxMint team like the Cinnamon DE and the Mint* series of apps. Although this release does include a kernel upgrade from 3.16 -> 3.19, that still isn't exactly bleeding edge. And an upgrade for LibreOffice from 4.4 -> 5. So these are all pretty safe upgrades. These aren't Arch style rolling releases, morel like Windows service pack upgrades. There shouldn't be any major changes to the core of the system like switching to systemd or moving from python2.7 -> python3 or anything like that.

      Also note that the upgrade will not install automatically. To do the upgrade you have to open the Update Manger like you do for normal upgrade, and select "Upgrade to 17.3" from the Edit menu, or something like that (sorry it's been a while). Accurate instructions will be posted on the LinuxMint blog in a little while. If you are concerned just wait a week or so and see if people on the forums have had any issues.

      • I suppose the kernel upgrade will not be part of the actual upgrade, you do it if you feel like it (kernels section of the Update Manager makes it rather easy).
        I ended up rolling back to 3.13, it makes the older lines of nvidia drivers happy.

    • I've never had a problem (apart from the time when I accidentally did an rm -fr on my home partition for some stupid reason). Backup you stuff first.

    • I've just upgraded my daily driver system from 17.2 to 17.3. It took only a couple of minutes and so far I haven't had any issues (only a few hours in).

      I followed the instructions here (the terminal version):

      https://sites.google.com/site/... [google.com]

      Best,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by KGIII ( 973947 )

      I've got a Linux Mint (Cinnamon) spare laptop with me in my suitcase. Well, it was in my suitcase. I dug it out and it's booting and doing all the regular updates first (habit, I don't know as I need to). Then I'll reboot it, VNC into it, and run the update process through the terminal with dist-upgrade and all that. I'm going to shoot blind and not even back anything up on it - there's nothing on it but a few VMs.

      I don't have a huge amount of time to play with it at the moment but, if you want, I can post

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KGIII ( 973947 )

        So far, VMware is not loading (something about compiling something against the running kernel) and the bootup is a bit slow. Meh... It was time to give VMware more money anyhow. They get their near-yearly pound of flesh. I simply like their features enough to pay for it.

  • Linux Mint is the most Desktop Ready ever Linux. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MindPrison ( 864299 ) on Saturday December 05, 2015 @11:51AM (#51062779) Journal
    I've been using Linux since 1998. I really wanted to break free back then, it's a need deeply buried into me and I want total control over my own computer - even I can't claim to know enough about that, and I probably never will...but that said...

    Usually over the last 16 years or so - I've had Windows installed as a second boot partition because there was always this special software I needed to run under Windows, at times it was games, at times it was 3D proprietary software, at times it was stuff I needed for work, paying my taxes to the gov. etc. All stuff that REQUIRED Windows to be present.

    Ever since Mint Linux 17.x those days where absolutely GONE. My windows partition was gathering dust - and became a big liability as it took 30+ minutes to boot every time since I used it so seldom that it had like 10ths of updates that needed installing each time, Mint Linux does this seamlessly and there's no need for 100s of reboots.

    It turns out there's literally drivers for anything on the planet on Linux today, so I have drivers for my Card Readers (Needed for gov. work), I have drivers for my weird hardware that doesn't even work under windows - and I enjoy modern software with it. On windows you constantly have to purchase NEW hardware to make the older (but nice expensive stuff) work as the manufacturers simply drop support after a while.

    Linux Mint is also one of the most flawless Linux distros I've ever witnessed - it had nearly made me forget about anything Linux (that's how you can tell you've got a good OS...) It simply means ...I just USE it, and don't have to repair stuff under the hood each day of my working life. And I like it that way, I'm not 20 years and loving to fix basic bugs anymore, I'm at that age where I concentrate on MY job and what I like to do, that's when it feels awesome to have something that just works.

    Thanks a lot to the Ubuntu and Mint Linux team - you guys have made my life SO much easier over the years. (and btw. The windows partition is gone, don't even miss it).
    • That's the thing with windows, the less I use the longer it takes to install all those updates. and I love the bit where I'm trying to shut Windows down and it says "Wait... installing updates" is pure hell.
      • Tank often. The longer you wait with tanking, the more expensive it gets.

    • Just the other day, my roommates' dogs went ballistic when the store delivered my new desktop. They always do when someone knocks on the door but Teddy just wouldn't stop. I had to lock him out of my room while I set it up.

      I had planned to install Mint side by side with Windows but I was worried about UEFI considering all the complaints I'd read. The first Nerd Squad guy said, "I don't know anything about Linux." But the other one said, "I do. Is it a Debian based distro like Ubuntu or Mint?" "Yes." "You'

    • I just USE it

      That's the bottom line for me. While I love to tinker and hack (especially ELISP!) in the end I have a lot of things that have to get done, and Linux (Mint 17.2 Mate in my case) is a positive aid instead of an obstacle.

      I also have a secondary boot to Windows 8.1, but I don't use it any longer. I used to have to go there to run my scanner/OCR but that's no longer the case, hasn't been for a while, and I'm not much of a gamer (Out of the Park Baseball has a Linux version, so I'm happy).

      I know there's the old

    • This has been my experience as well. I love Linux Mint + MATE.
      Thanks for the hard work!

    • How did you find drivers for windows applications that don't run on Linux?

      • 1) Applications don't require drivers. The hardware does. Linux supports more hardware than just about any OS out there... granted, it may be old or very esoteric hardware, but it is supported.

        2) Many times, it doesn't matter what application you use so much as are you able to complete a specific task and work with specific file types. You need to submit a docx file to your English teacher for a term paper? You can create it in many different word processing suites - some from MS, some Free software, som

    • I just USE it, and don't have to repair stuff under the hood each day of my working life. And I like it that way, I'm not 20 years and loving to fix basic bugs anymore, I'm at that age where I concentrate on MY job and what I like to do, that's when it feels awesome to have something that just works.

      This is why I use a Mac. I'm a Linux engineer by trade, but when it comes to the desktop Mac OS X is my goto operating system of choice. If I had to use Linux on the desktop I would agree that Mint Linux is probably the best desktop distribution. I use Mint inside a virtual machine at work.

  • I've recently installed Mint 17.2 on an old (2007-era) 32-bit laptop. Everything works fine... except for the audio. I'm hoping that 17.3 will fix that.

  • One feature it still needs is the ability to do it's own updating (like Windows). It's nice it has auto checking and will give a non-intrusive icons when updates are available, but I have relatives that don't notice the update icon and have complained about the updates being too frequent (only complaining because they keep having to run the Update Manager to install them. For level 1 & 2 updates, would be nice if they can just install themselves.

    • Couldn't you just set a cron job to do an 'apt-get update' and 'apt-get -y upgrade' nightly?
      • apr-get, unlike the mint update program, doesn't give you the option for example to only install security updates or updates that are guaranteed not to break your system. But yeah, a commandline version of it would be highly appreciated.

      • "Do you want to overwrite your custom configuration with package maintainer's default one? (Y/n)"
        this is what --trivial-only was created for

    • sudo apt install unattended-upgrades

  • was better if you have 3 OS it is really hard on some mixed system bios to now where anything is at all. Even the Windows installer gets confused and now wont install to a partition the bios cant see like when OSX is installed first. Now I got to add Grub seems LILO was so easy for me legacy now guid gpt mbr its nuts I figure purposely so. My second gen i3 is long in the tooth I may not replace it and quit computing for good. 25 years was a good run.

  • I love Linux Mint, but the start menu and file folder lag on access is a silly nuisance and it makes the whole seem amateurish when it really isn't.

    I'd love to see that issue go away. Otherwise it's a really nice OS.

  • Upgrading via the Update Manager: (Score:3)

    by Zanadou ( 1043400 ) on Sunday December 06, 2015 @06:06AM (#51066427)

    The penitent information that the story blerb doesn't mention is that 17.3 'Rosa' isn't available via the update manger yet. (An upgrade option should be in the "edit" menu.) But, according to Kirk M. [linuxmint.com]:

    "Once the new version of the Mint Update Manager is released (next week sometime, there will be an LM blog announcement as well) the option to upgrade to 17.3 will be included usually in the "Edit" menu. By default, the Update Manager will only continue to update your current install (17.2 in your case) unless you specifically choose to upgrade to 17.3. Just click on the option to upgrade listed in the "Edit" menu, sit back and relax until it's done. Reboot.

    It shouldn't be any more complicated than installing normal updates since the base remains the same. Your current kernel should stay the same as well (not upgraded to the newer kernel thatâ(TM)s automatically installed during a "clean" install) which is a decent safety factor for those that upgrade."

    However, upgrading via the command line can be done right now. According to this website [google.com], just issue the following commands:

    sudo sed -i 's/rafaela/rosa/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list

    sudo apt-get update

    sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

    Reboot; you're good to go.

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