Mint 13 LTS ideas?

[faolan]

To address some of these issue bimbasse pointed out with the artwork, there are a lot of copyleft themes out there on great sites like DeviantArt, etc. Why not find a Gnome Shell / Cinnamon theme that is very nice (there are quite a few of them) and make a few adjustments to make it more "Minty" and ship.

Seriously folks, some of those themes are just amazing and I think with Custom Theme + Farenza Icons + Great Wallpaper will make for a good first impression and that is very important. If a distro doesn't wow the user out of the box then it is a real confidence bust.

I wonder if it would be possible to put together a small art team to create and test various themes, settings, designs, etc. This is something that is easy to do if the community is involved and really would pay off. Quite frankly I think a good setup on KDE that would be "Minty" would be:
- QT Curve: "Soft Plastic"
- A nice beige / greenish theme color theme.
- Fareza Icons
- A slick "mint" wallpaper. I would say go darker but keep it organic.

But that's just me speaking as a KDE user. I'm not a fan of Oxygen and quite frankly I think it's overplayed. Please go with a decent pre-configured QT curve that isn't Oxygen inspired.

[bimsebasse]

Mint already pays plenty attention to deviantart, though - the default window theme Mint-Z is a slightly tweaked Zukitwo, the most popular window theme for Linux on deviantart, and the default icon set is a mix of elementary and Faenza, the two most popular Linux icon sets same place. Mint just needs to use the most popular Cinnamon theme (Minty) too, then it's going places

Not sure about the most popular wallpaper, haven't seen a really good green/mint wallpaper there

[altermontrealiste]

Just had the "mbr erased after installing windows" issue at a client's house trying to make a dual-boot, the windows cd they had wasn't viable and led to a corrupt install with no usable bootloader, so there wasn't much to do... Tried reading forums to restore grub2 rapidly, but I finally couldn't sort it out in the short time I had, and had to re-install mint completely ; I did achieve it on my own computer, once, but I had time to fix it by trial and error. The need for a solution to restore the bootloader (grub2 or burg) easily, either from the rescue cd/dvd/usb key or from windows is important.

Could the usb install key / cd include a script to fix grub2, or even install / fix a cool looking bootloader like BURG (if it's stable enough) from both the install cd and the windows autorun.ini? To a further extent, at-home-system maintainers need various tools out of an installation / rescue CD, like clonezilla (to make system / partition images that could be put on an usb key), or an anti-virus to check files on the windows-to-be-repaired, or other software that are generally included in a rescue cd (like ubcd or hiren's), most of them open-source. Could a cd image prioritise those "rescue CD apps" and compensate the shorter space of the cd by downloading the additional apps and codecs during system install or after initial install? Being a good platform as a rescue cd (for techies) seems to me to be important for an install cd and could help mint get known. Having just another question at the end of system install to ask which apps I want installed and then downloaded may be a nice idea, if there's a default button for newbies, and a custon checklist, or even some preset app selection buttons (server, multimedia, education, scientific, etc.) for techies.

Size-wise, such a question doesn't apply to a dvd image : it could even could carry both cinnamon (default for the traditional desktop and live cd/dvd/usb key), unity or mate (default for tablet / touch), LXDE, Gnome3, KDE, (and even (if you're evil) an M$metro to show how linux performs kernel-wise compared to M$), etc. and ask us, during install, which environments we want installed (and even give us thumbnails or a preview of each environment).

As I mentioned on previous posts, if the medium is a USB key (which is more and more the case), the possibility of making this install / repair tool save the downloaded apps and locales to the usb key during install (so that it doesn't have to during the next with the same medium, or even copy this updated install medium on to other usb keys) could make mint viral.

[esteban1uy]

Following this thread, I'm sure Mint 13 could include the new Privacy Sweep (its proper name is Activity Log Manager) found in Ubuntu Precise.
I made a little experiment with my own "mintified" Ubuntu Precise LXDE and it can be easily installed without pulling a lot of dependencies.
Take a look:

[Monsta]

offtopic: LXDE looks very nice these days I also see a universal Mint wallpaper - it hasn't got a release number on it

on topic: this feature will probably require a heavy bit of integration from the browsers, instant messengers and so on... or not?

[esteban1uy]

offtopic: LXDE looks very nice these days I also see a universal Mint wallpaper - it hasn't got a release number on it

on topic: this feature will probably require a heavy bit of integration from the browsers, instant messengers and so on... or not?

offtopic: of course, there's no release number in the wallpaper because this is not a real mint release , it's only an experiment to see how difficult (or easy) could be the porting of the whole mint's lxde desktop to precise pangolin.

on topic: I'm not sure about the required integration because what Activity-log-manager really does is to modify the way zeitgeist records your activities. Take a look at the package dependecies in precise: http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/activity-log-manager

By the way, you can install it in oneiric via backports.

[SaintDanBert]

I have and use Table-PC workstations. These are laptop machines equipped to use either a stylus or finger(s) as pointing devices in addition to the traditional touch-pad or track-point (eraser key) pointers. Some are also equipped (mine do) with a screen that can change orientations from the
traditional laptop, landscape with keyboard to a tablet, portrait without keyboard configuration.

Let me begin my request(s) saying that the other workstation platform manages my hardware
far better than anything that I've been able to accomplish with any linux distro and a huge
investment in tinkering.

I do not understand nor have I been able to discover why the following do not just work.

• all of the hardware keys and buttons
• acpi or udev or similar reports for all of the hardware parts like batteries, ports,
  bluetooth, media cards, docking stations, etc
• mechanical screen orientation vs. X-windows screen operation and use. This includes correct
  up-down-left-right orientation of visual, arrow-keys, pointer movement, etc.
• detection, configuration, activation, and use of removable drives and components

Remember !! Win-dose sees all the parts and software does something reasonable with all the parts.
That tells me that the hardware can be read by software. Why not by Linux software?

It is extremely frustrating to have an 80% solution with Linux running the hardware compared to a mostly complete solution with win-dose running the hardware.

Wishing and hoping,
~~~ 8d;-/ Dan

==========
Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet-PC, X220-tablet and X61-tablet
linux Mint-12 with Cinnamon (X220t) and Mint-11 (X61t)
dual boot with Windows-7 (X220t) and Windows-XP (X61t)

[nunol]

Would be great if Mint 13 LTS worked with non-pae CPU's unlike Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Lubuntu/etc 12.04 that have to use the mini.iso for i686 non-pae support.

[AlbertP]

on topic: I'm not sure about the required integration because what Activity-log-manager really does is to modify the way zeitgeist records your activities. Take a look at the package dependecies in precise: http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/activity-log-manager

By the way, you can install it in oneiric via backports.

If the package is in the Precise repository, you will just be able to install & use it on Mint 13.

[esteban1uy]

on topic: I'm not sure about the required integration because what Activity-log-manager really does is to modify the way zeitgeist records your activities. Take a look at the package dependecies in precise: http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/activity-log-manager

By the way, you can install it in oneiric via backports.

If the package is in the Precise repository, you will just be able to install & use it on Mint 13.

Yes, and you can even install it in Mint 12 via backports repo, but the point is not what you can install but what you'll have out-of-the-box.

[altermontrealiste]

@SaintDanBert
I also have a x61t and mint11 recognized it's hardware pretty well ; hardware keys and buttons work, some are recognized and linked to a command out of the bok (arrows), some you have some work to have it done (script for screen rotation).

Indeed there is some work to have it fitted to the x61t, I would add a good OCR / writing recognition ; if you use it for graphism, it does the job great.

[KBD47]

Does anyone know if the default desktop for Mint has been chosen yet? I think the idea to use MATE as the default desktop in the Mint Debian RC was a good one. I like Cinnamon, but for older computers and just for the fact MATE is a bit more mature, I think MATE as default in Mint 13 might be best.

[rijnsma]

I know Gnome3 good now, it's o.k. Cinnamon too and for me still MATE is great. I use MATE like Gnome2 everyday
to do my work. (I also love xfce and Lxde but do not use it on Mint 12).
MATE is very stable and handy especially because of the fine window-manager which also shows the apps very important.
And it has normal menu's which one can see as a whole.

The WM of Cinnamon is better then the one of Gnome3, which shifts if one is empty.
Themes and window-attributes of Cinnamon is still rather simple. It does not look too fantastic.

Still I'm a little worried about the number of fine, working, finished, so usable applications, when I see what tsunami of apps is
available for handhelds and so.

[baptiste]

since 13 will be LTS might as well make a spin for each DE

yes, with both 32bit and 64bit versions.. and then releases for ARM
I'm joking a bit, because mint devs are overworked enough. they need our support.

[rijnsma]

since 13 will be LTS might as well make a spin for each DE

yes, with both 32bit and 64bit versions.. and then releases for ARM
I'm joking a bit, because mint devs are overworked enough. they need our support.

When MS Windows 8 is there? Secure boot will be 'on'.
Don't know if one ever will be able?

[AlbertP]

M$ has changed the requirements. Except on ARM, you'll be able to turn off Secure Boot in the BIOS of your Win 8 computer.

[rijnsma]

So indeed you can't do anything on ARM when there is M$ W8 I think.

[AlbertP]

ARM yes. But not on "normal" computers.

Mint doesn't even have an ARM version.

[rijnsma]

Alright, thanks!

[baptiste]

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.