Mint 13 LTS ideas?

[z06gal]

@baptiste,


I believe Clem has already said that there would be a 2D option for Cinnamon

[esteban1uy]

Edit by Clem: Cinnamon 1.4 is built for Clutter 1.8 (Mint 12), but we’re almost ready to jump to Clutter 1.9… in Mint 13 we’ll have a new renderer called llvmpipe. I can’t say how stable and snappy (or slow and buggy) this will be, but the next release of Cinnamon will include two sessions, one launched with GPU acceleration and one launched with software rendering. After that, we’ll do some testing and gather user feedback… we’ll probably see people for whom it still doesn’t work well, but 2 options are better than 1

Source: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1944#comment-60789

Here a screenshot of Cinnamon working without 3D hardware support:

[zerozero]

esteban, as you said in another topic it works but with glitches and tweaks needed, so i think Clem is preparing a plan B (or i'm reading all this wrong wouldn't be the first time)
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2000#comment-63986

Edit by Clem: Cinnamon is likely to come with Gnome-Fallback. Users will be able to add Shell by simply installing “gnome-shell”, and by doing so they’ll have all three desktops available on the login screen.

[KBD47]

This all just reinforces my belief that MATE should be the default in Mint 13. People come to Mint because they want an OS that works out of the box. Cinnamon just doesn't sound like it's quite there yet. But you can hardly tell the difference between MATE and Gnome 2 at this point.

[rijnsma]

That is right in my opinion. MATE works quite right. But it looks not like Gnome3 and/or Cinnamon. So what?

[KBD47]

That is right in my opinion. MATE works quite right.

I'm using it now on LMDE and continue to be impressed by it. I'm hoping it can be tweaked well and fitted well onto an Ubuntu base by Mint. My concern about the Ubuntu base is that I've tried several desktops on 12.04 now, Xfce, LXDE, and MATE and only LXDE was not a PITA on Ubuntu 12.04. Of course Unity and Gnome Fallback work well on it. Also concerned that Ubuntu 12.04 is having crashes and needs restarted almost every day to keep it running correctly, that reminds me of Windows But I think 12.04 shows promise and I hope Mint can really get it working well. Can't wait for the Mint 13 RC release

[craig10x]

Been running ubuntu 12.04 since beta2, KBD47... though i did do a re-install upon final release and have not experienced one single crash or need to restart on either...
rather surprised you have had that experience...I run unity on it, nothing else...if you were running Cinnamon on it, perhaps that introduced problems into the system...
I've never tried Cinnamon on ubuntu so i can't say what would happen in my situation...but as i said running stock unity 3d...no problems with that, whatsoever...
It's been extremely smooth and stable...and keeps improving as the updates come along...

[rijnsma]

Mint 12 is running with Mate like a rock here, whatever I do all day long, and that is a lot..
Of course Gnome3 and Cinnamon available under the switch.

If Mint 13 is too experimental I think I have to stay with 12 until things are fizzled out. I do my work with it.

[KBD47]

Been running ubuntu 12.04 since beta2, KBD47... though i did do a re-install upon final release and have not experienced one single crash or need to restart on either...
rather surprised you have had that experience...I run unity on it, nothing else...if you were running Cinnamon on it, perhaps that introduced problems into the system...
I've never tried Cinnamon on ubuntu so i can't say what would happen in my situation...but as i said running stock unity 3d...no problems with that, whatsoever...
It's been extremely smooth and stable...and keeps improving as the updates come along...

My specific problems with Ubuntu 12.04: On my desktop it generates a crash report on every startup running Gnome Fallback. On my netbook using Unity 2D it runs fine, maybe all day with no issues, but unless it is restarted it starts acting up with firefox and thunderbird refusing to launch, wireless refusing to connect, and just general bugginess. On restart everything works fine. On LMDE I can leave the thing on all week long on the same computer without a single issue. I could do the same with Mint 12 and Ubuntu 11.10. But I will say this, 12.04 runs cooler and lighter than earlier versions. I'm hoping with some updates 12.04 will feel more stable.

[esteban1uy]

esteban, as you said in another topic it works but with glitches and tweaks needed, so i think Clem is preparing a plan B (or i'm reading all this wrong wouldn't be the first time)
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2000#comment-63986

Edit by Clem: Cinnamon is likely to come with Gnome-Fallback. Users will be able to add Shell by simply installing “gnome-shell”, and by doing so they’ll have all three desktops available on the login screen.

Ahhh... so there's been a change of plans.
What I'm really curious about is why llvmpipe works so good with Fedora's 17 gnome-shell (try it, you'll see), but it looks so ugly in the case of Ubuntu's gnome-shell (and Cinnamon too).

Hmmm... another little experiment I'm planning: Fedora 17 + Cinnamon + llvmpipe

(I love doing experiments )

[zerozero]

i had a month ago or so one of the F17 betas in VB (llvmpipe) was working just fine (slow but i guess it's more the VB to blame than anything else) and full shell experience as well (just managed to break that >> something very easy with fedora development releases )

[esteban1uy]

i had a month ago or so one of the F17 betas in VB (llvmpipe) was working just fine (slow but i guess it's more the VB to blame than anything else) and full shell experience as well (just managed to break that >> something very easy with fedora development releases )

So no horrible glitches in Fedora + Cinnamon + llvmpipe?

If so... we must deduce the trick they used!
(kind of a moral imperative)

[craig10x]

quick note to kbd47...there's a good reason why 12.04 is running much cooler then previous editions...it is because of the patch that ubuntu added in that was contributed by a red hat developer and emulates the windows power management system which unfortunately was being shut off on a lot of desktops/laptops with the previous kernels and would still be happening if the patch had not been added...it really REALLY improves the temperatures and power consumption...and of course, mint 13 will also benefit by it...

it wasn't scheduled to become part of the linux kernel until the next major release, but ubuntu wisely chose to add it in now
i had psensor installed on my 11.10 and now on my 12.04 and boy what a difference!!!

[cwwgateway]

what's not entirely clear for me is if Cinnamon requires 3D acceleration. Can we run it 2D-only?

a buddy runs mint 12 main edition on a Fusion APU laptop, from the start the 3D animations were slightly slow but he had weird sound glitches.
I downloaded and ran the Catalyst driver suite but it failed to install (something about kernel module failed to build). so, terrible driver support from AMD, which I didn't expect in this age.
we were given without notice the gnome3 fallback mode, which didn't look too bad and worked 100% smooth so it was okay for this time, though I don't like this dekstop. buddy only cared that there were no bugs anymore.

so my question is, if Cinnamon is the default desktop, will we get a selection of broken desktops randomly thrown at us?
or can I get the real thing even if my hardware is unsupported, or in a virtual machine.

Right now Cinnamon requires 3d acceleration. However, with Cinnamon 1.5 and Mint 13, Cinnamon will work with software rendering (2d).

[baptiste]

thanks (and sorry if my post sounded a little angry)

actually this is still 3D. llvmpipe is just an efficient OpenGL software renderer.
this should be quite slow on an old computer such as a pentium 3, or a lowly ARM (yes mint is not for ARM but other distros do run on ARM, and you'll be able to use cinnamon there). but I guess ok on a low end dual core. sse2 instructions are a must, probably.

[kiiid]

Please (!!!), put a pre-configured web server in it (for doing web on the local machine). I am so sick of all those scripts, configuration files and so on just to make something that can be done by three mouse clicks in Windows...
Thanks in advance

[cwwgateway]

thanks (and sorry if my post sounded a little angry)

actually this is still 3D. llvmpipe is just an efficient OpenGL software renderer.
this should be quite slow on an old computer such as a pentium 3, or a lowly ARM (yes mint is not for ARM but other distros do run on ARM, and you'll be able to use cinnamon there). but I guess ok on a low end dual core. sse2 instructions are a must, probably.

Ok, thanks for the correction. I'm really not that technical (relatively ), so I have no idea the difference between 2d and software rendering.

Edit: By no idea I mean not much of one, I have some idea.

[vandamme]

The power consumption thing makes 12 unuseable on my laptop. On Ubuntu12.04 the fan runs half speed, on LM12 it burns my pants. On Bodhi, it runs cool.

A minor thing that bothers me is when you install an app, there's no indication that it's done installing (unless you re-search); on Ubuntu you get a check mark saying it's done.

[cwwgateway]

The power consumption thing makes 12 unuseable on my laptop. On Ubuntu12.04 the fan runs half speed, on LM12 it burns my pants. On Bodhi, it runs cool.

A minor thing that bothers me is when you install an app, there's no indication that it's done installing (unless you re-search); on Ubuntu you get a check mark saying it's done.

That's because 12.04 has a patch in its kernel that fixes a regression in laptop battery life and Ubuntu 10.04 (which Bodhi is based on) was released before the regression. 13 will be cool like Ubuntu.

About the software center, that bugs me too.

[KBD47]

quick note to kbd47...there's a good reason why 12.04 is running much cooler then previous editions...it is because of the patch that ubuntu added in that was contributed by a red hat developer and emulates the windows power management system which unfortunately was being shut off on a lot of desktops/laptops with the previous kernels and would still be happening if the patch had not been added...it really REALLY improves the temperatures and power consumption...and of course, mint 13 will also benefit by it...

it wasn't scheduled to become part of the linux kernel until the next major release, but ubuntu wisely chose to add it in now
i had psensor installed on my 11.10 and now on my 12.04 and boy what a difference!!!

Yeah, I couldn't even run Ubuntu/Mint on my netbooks before without the Jupiter app to bring the temp down a few degrees, now I don't need the app.I noticed they also fixed the Udev problem, some laptops were running 100% of the cpu because Udev was always on, something to do with laptop batteries I think. Anyway, it's gone now. I think 12.04 is not bad right now, I think it will get a bit more solid in time.