Linux Mint 17 codenamed “Qiana”

[Nami]

How about we finally get some real windows decoration options in Cinnamon with the new Mint 17? 2.2 could really use an option to remove borders with one click like in KDE, it really helps save vertical space on 16:9 monitors since titlebars are redundant space-wasters, what with that information and windows control functions already located in the panel when right clicking on it there in the panel.

Also how about some OS Key + Arrow functions and tiling? This might already be in, but I haven't fooled around with Cinnamon since the last underwhelming release (that I tried) missing these, what I would call, essential features for basic usability in a modern DE.

I want to love Cinnamon, there is a lot about it that is heading the right way and set it apart from the alternatives - but the two aforementioned features would really put it as the clear frontrunner I believe. An announcement to support those two simple additions would push me to contributing a decent donation as well to the project haha. And no I don't want to have to edit metacity theme data, and no I don't want to port over old maximus code from Gnome 2.x into Cinnamon to dump decorations in snap/side-by-side because these are work-arounds and often lead to Cinnamon crashing or vanishing/unrendered windows.

[solarcat]

One thing to note is that since 12.04, Ubuntu, and therefore Mint, has a feature called hardware enablement stack.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack

This means that the LTS kernel (3.13) will have updates made available when new kernels are released for the non LTS versions. You could keep running Mint 16, until Ubuntu releases 14.04.1, then the new kernel could be backported.

BTW, I'm running 14.04 on an AMD 7870 GPu that uses the same GCN architecture as your Kaveri CPU. Both FGLRX and the radeon OSS driver work fine. Furthermore, the OSS driver has some excellent video acceleration features enabled via vdpau. If you are adventurous you can install 14.04 and update your radeon drivers and mesa stack manually.

Thanks for that. I've been running the fglrx betas. Just updated to Catalyst 14.4 rc1 from here - http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-article ... river.aspx. Before I installed the earlier 14.3 beta there were several undesirable graphic effects on Mint, the most annoying of which was squashed mouse pointers (compressed vertically). After (on fglrx) it runs just fine, even though the docs don't mention Kaveri support and also say that 64-bit drivers will only be available in some future release.

But no temperature sensors without the 3.14 kernel. At one point I tried installing k10temp manually, and it did nothing.

[gibbs1984]

I have always done fresh installs, and I do not know how it can get any easier providing people mount their /home on a separate partition. I think the entire fresh install process is like 10 minutes, and it keeps all my settings that are stored in my /home directory. For that reason, I have always done a fresh CUSTOM install with separate /, /home, and swap partitions. After I do the fresh install, I spend about 10 more minutes loading the software store with about 5 extra applications, adding my windows partition to FSTAB, and doing 3 manual installs. If I was to do this same process for Windows to get it where I need to be, it would be a 4-5 hour procedure installing programs, creating settings, and installing service packs...which is why a third party True Image program is a must for Windows.

Yeah I do the same too although I run a quick command in the Terminal to get a list of my packages and then run the same command again to reinstall them all instead of having to do it manually.

[Jedinovice]

Given Mint 17 is going to be long term support I am likely to go with this on my netbooks. I only jumped from 13 in order to ensure the latest effects in kdenlive. I run with 14 on my Celeron as it is solid as a rock.

However, Mint 16 KDE edition throughly refused to install on my humble but oh so useful atom netbook. I confirmed the problem was KDE. I got around it by running up MATE and installing KDE as an app. It took a bit of work but seems to be running nicely now – just not running Morrowind via Wine yet. I am not a distro hopper and I may standardise on 17 for a long time, years even. Note that I also have major trouble with memory leaks in 15 leaks in both my netbooks and regressed them to 13 and 14 accordingly.

So I REALLY want 17 to work! I know the KDE team builds the KDE install and given KDE is abut heavier to use than other UI (though nothing like what people this it is. KDE has been marvelously optimised now) I suspect the 'umble single core atom is being overlooked.

With 17 fast approaching, would it be possible for me trail and test a Beta of the KDE edition sometime on my atom? I can keep my Celeron as my general purpose machine and give the Atom over to trial. I do loads in Mint – I download the kitchen sink from the repositories, do non-linear video editing, internet, multimedia handling, watch movies, run Windows apps via Wine, etc, etc. I don't do CAD, programming or hacking people's websites. Other than that, I do just about everything.

I also like playing with prototypes. And I spent 15 years as a software tester!

When 17 comes out I REALLY want to be able to install the KDE edition knowing it will install, run the SW I use and not leak RAM everywhere. Mint 15 was a horror! 16 works fine, just would not install the KDE edition directly on my Atom n455. Only my Atom, mind. AMD Turion was fine. I suspect, therefore, this is a hole in the KDE testing.

I am happy to play with a beta and see if it holds together and report back. Only when 17 KDE edition comes out I want to know it will work out of the box. I am willing to put some days to make this happen.

Possible?

[kmb42vt]

...With 17 fast approaching, would it be possible for me trail and test a Beta of the KDE edition sometime on my atom? I can keep my Celeron as my general purpose machine and give the Atom over to trial....

...

Possible?

Unfortunately, the Mint devs do not release beta builds to the public but they do release the RCs. The most probable reason for this is that too much code can change between one beta build and another and especially between a beta build and the first RC. This would generate way too much feedback about errors and glitches that may have been already been found and changed before the next beta release (or something like that).

However, given that there is usually an entire month between the first RC release and the Final release of any new version of Mint, you'll have plenty of time to test. Keep an eye on this web page in order to follow the testing teams progress on the new pre-release builds of LM 17:

http://community.linuxmint.com/iso

They haven't started testing the main editions of 17 yet but you'll know when they do.

[brencameron]

I'm posting to give a heads up - I don't know if you fine folks are aware of the return of this issue yet but it bit me last night. I have a Realtek 8188E wireless card on my laptop (HP Pavilion 17 from last year).
I installed the Ubuntu 14.04 edition last night, then later the Kubuntu 14.04 edition, and in both cases I have lost wireless connectivity after 10 to 15 minutes of being online. When this happens, my wi-fi network no longer shows in the list of nearby wi-fi, and I have to reboot to temporarily restore it. Researching this seems to indicate that there's an unstable driver for certain Realtek cards which affected the 13.04 release and is affecting some users now with 14.04. I hope that there will be a fix prior to the final release of Mint 17, but in the meantime I am forced to return to Mint 16 KDE until July, because I used it for 4 months with no issues whatsoever. I love Mint and returning to the current release isn't a problem at all, but I just want to make sure that the developers are able to check on this, so if there's no fix, then at least it can be entered into "known issues".

[Jedinovice]

However, given that there is usually an entire month between the first RC release and the Final release of any new version of Mint, you'll have plenty of time to test. Keep an eye on this web page in order to follow the testing teams progress on the new pre-release builds of LM 17:

http://community.linuxmint.com/iso

They having started testing the main editions of 17 yet but you'll know when they do.

That would be fine! I will keep an eye open. Only I do not want others to go through the grief I did on this with 16! I know from people's signatures here that a lot of folks are using KDE, yeah, on atoms!

Cheers!

[ChristofferHN]

When does Linux Mint 17 KDE comes out?

[Nami]

When does Linux Mint 17 KDE comes out?

Like a month or so after the Mate/Cinnamon versions, unfortunately.

[Alejandro24]

When does Linux Mint 17 KDE comes out?

Like a month or so after the Mate/Cinnamon versions, unfortunately.

Oh, that's too much time.

[simonbrown]

I am really not looking forward to the upgrade for this version. I am happy enough with the normal backup and install new from scratch, time consuming, but workable. But this time round I have dual booted my laptop with Windows 7, and so am really nervous about how I am going to manage this all. All the work to creat disk partitions etc. was hard enough for me the first time around, but this time there will be more variables to get my head around. Any good 'how to' guides out there ?

Simon

[Spearmint2]

Install first to a flashdrive, the full install. You can then do copy paste of the partitions from the flash drive to the ones you already have setup. In fact that's how I did my first hard drive install because I'd been using it from the flashdrive and wanted to keep everything I'd already setup on it. The only problem I remember was those darn UUID's. I changed them in some files that had to do with Resume from Sleep and Hibernate.

[simonbrown]

Great, thanks.

[ZenBeam]

I've set up my partitions with two bootable partitions of about 25 to 30 GB each, so I can ping-pong between them as I upgrade. So if something goes wrong with the new system, my old one is untouched (as is the main data/Windows partition). I did actually have to switch back to an older version once, after one of the versions became more and more unstable.


OK, time for a stupid question: I think I'm running Cinnamon, but I'm not sure, since it's been a while since I last upgraded. Is there an easy way to tell? I'd like to keep whatever i have.

[Spearmint2]

Code: Select all

env |grep DESK

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install hardinfo

[kmb42vt]

I've set up my partitions with two bootable partitions of about 25 to 30 GB each, so I can ping-pong between them as I upgrade. So if something goes wrong with the new system, my old one is untouched (as is the main data/Windows partition). I did actually have to switch back to an older version once, after one of the versions became more and more unstable.


OK, time for a stupid question: I think I'm running Cinnamon, but I'm not sure, since it's been a while since I last upgraded. Is there an easy way to tell? I'd like to keep whatever i have.

Open the menu and click on the settings icon.In past versions of Mint/Cinnamon it will be called "Cinnamon settings" or in Linux Mint 16 it may just be called "Settings" but I'm sure you'll know it when you see it. Once "Settings" opens, find and click on "System info" (or the equivalent) and it will tell exactly what desktop you're running. This applies to both Mint's Cinnamon and Mate DEs although the actual name for system settings may be different

[rosswmcgee]

Here is what I do before a clean install. I move all my files to a usb drive and also send them to google cloud. I export all my contact info and save that data

on the usb. I email to another address stuff that I need later as well. Then I do the clean install. Since I use opera, chrome and Thunderbird. I just import

my email and contacts. Chrome and Opera both sync with my smart phone and other computer, so I am now up and running. Then move files to the computer from the usb drive.

My only concern is that

I was unable to install Ubuntu 14.04 lts on this computer after many failed tries and different results. I hope Mint will install. Weird because I have

installed lots of different distros on this computer just fooling around, but could not get 14.04 lts. I would get a huge desktop and be unable to re-size it.

Or I would a good install it seemed but the minute I moved the mouse the screen would go all crazy colors.

[Spearmint2]

what's the latest distro version you successfully installed?

[rosswmcgee]

I installed Maya 13 last, after the failed 14.04 attempts. Previously I had Ubuntu 12.04 lts on the computer, then I added pc linux, and then Fedora. I like debian

based distros so back to Mint 13, which I am running on 2 computers, and Ubuntu 12.04 lts on a third.

[Spearmint2]

I installed Maya 13 last, after the failed 14.04 attempts. Previously I had Ubuntu 12.04 lts on the computer, then I added pc linux, and then Fedora. I like debian

based distros so back to Mint 13, which I am running on 2 computers, and Ubuntu 12.04 lts on a third.

Reason I wondered is because Maya 13 can run on a non PAE computer and the newer versions can't. Also Ubuntu only supported non PAE systems up to or maybe through Ubuntu 12.04.

There's a FAKE PAE which might work for you. Here's the google link to find it and info about it.