'Final stable' version?

[webwalker]

I don't get on the forums much any more, but this looks like the most obvious place to ask this question. I've been running 17.3 KDE since it came out, but now it's time to do fresh installs on four computers. I know, no more KDE, but I installed 19.1 Cinnamon on one computer and added the KDE desktop, made the necessary tweaks, and it's running VERY smooth. No problems so far. (sorry, but I REALLY like KDE and was really disappointed to hear mint was ending it)

My question is, before I install to all four computers permanently, when can we expect the 'final stable' release of 19? With 17 we went all the way to 17.3 Before it was really considered final. I know, the updates bring it to the latest version, but figured I'd maybe wait till I have the OK on the 'final stable' version.

Thanks,

Webby

[BG405]

It should be in or near December 2019. I'd use the Xfce edition as a base for installing KDE on, though.

[karlchen]

Webby,

you seem to misunderstand the Linux Mint point in time releases.

The Mint release policy follows this rule:

Every 2 years, a major new Linux Mint release will be published. (Mint 17 in 2014, Mint 18 in 2016, Mint 19 in 2018)
Each major Linux Mint release will have 3 minor upgrade releases, e.g. 18 => 18.1 => 18.2 => 18.3, before the Mint developer team will focus on working on the next major release, Mint 19 in our example.

Mint 19 has only recently got its first of 3 minor release upgrades, Mint 19.1. This does by no means imply that Mint 19.1 were more stable than Mint 19 or less stable than Mint 19.3 may be one fine day.

Every Mint release, no matter whether it is the new major release or one of the 3 minor upgrade releases, is considered "stable" at the time, when it gets published.

So there is no real point in waiting, till Mint 19.3 has been released, before jumping onto the Mint 19 train.

Best regards,
Karl

[webwalker]

karichen

Yep, I understand how it works, but thought I might wait. If 19.3 won't be till (Dec?) I'll go ahead and get things installed, especially since 17 support is about to end in the spring. I have the time now, but may not in the spring. Winter is my slow time for work.

BG405 - I've heard that's the best route to go, but I thought I might download and try Cinnamon just to see how it's progressed. Still like KDE better. I'll see, I may go ahead and download the XFCE version. So far the KDE over Cinnamon version is working fine, besides, I may want to jump over to Cinnamon sometime and play with it some. I'll see.

Thanks to you both - BG405 and karichen

[Hoser Rob]

A universal "final stable" OS release? Sorry but you are dreaming.

[grabro]

Webwalker

Hi

I am using mint 17.3 kde. Having been meaning to upgrade to 18.6 but left so long
thought I might jump to 19 but no KDE version. Why!!
You mentioned using the XFCE version and putting KDE over it! Would be very interested
in how you do this.

Thanks

[Pierre]

if you do like the KDE version, then the KDE Neon would be the obvious choice:
https://neon.kde.org/
do have that on one of my machines & it's an nice system.

[tekklinux]

if you do like the KDE version, then the KDE Neon would be the obvious choice:
https://neon.kde.org/
do have that on one of my machines & it's an nice system.

I'm happy with Cinnamon (Tessa 19.1), but KDE Neon is pretty cool. One of the many things I like about Linux is being able to configure everything including the desktop. I remember reading a post that listed which Linux desktops were the most 'resource-heavy' - If I'm not mistaken - XFCE being the lightest and often recommended for older, slower PC's, followed by LXDE, then MATE - Cinnamon or KDE need a bit more. Could someone verify this or suggest other considerations besides user preference - that is, how a desktop affects performance of the overall system?

[Pierre]

Yep that's about right:
- XFCE being the lightest & then followed by LXDE, then MATE - Cinnamon or KDE

[Pjotr]

LXDE might be a bit lighter even than Xfce, but for the rest I agree.

Sidenote: LXDE isn't very alive any more; the attention of its developers has shifted to LXQt. But the problem with LXQt is, that it's not as lightweight as either LXDE or Xfce.... And the future of LXDE is uncertain to say the least.

[rene]

XFCE being the lightest & then followed by LXDE, then MATE - Cinnamon or KDE

Note that KDE has in fact made some pretty major steps lately especially in regards to memory use. When I recently looked at KDE Neon I found the boottime memory use to be about 350M; at about Xfce and (supposedly, I don't use it) MATE levels that is and far below Cinnamon's 900M or so.

Now admittedly memory use, doubly boottime memory use, is not the only possible definition of heaviness, and I wouldn't for example have called its software manager snappy, but still. KDE does seem to be the current desktop with a promising direction...

[BG405]

@rene: I tend to agree with (much) respect to the leanness of the later Plasma iterations. Using the latest Plasma I find that the memory footprint is quite close to Xfce! The usual memory hogs are the browser and other applications; in these cases the DE won't be the primary issue on low-memory devices like mine .. however, I can get away with a lot on my daily-driver netbook (BIOS or hardware limited to 2GB, gracias MS) and certainly more so than if I were running Cinnamon on this machine.

Windows 7 or later? Forget any prospect of decent performance !!! The machine in question came with that OS & whilst I really liked it, dammit, it was SLUGGISH.

Cinnamon is a fantastic DE but it does need more RAM in order to provide those nice things.

[smurphos]

Note that KDE has in fact made some pretty major steps lately especially in regards to memory use. When I recently looked at KDE Neon I found the boottime memory use to be about 350M; at about Xfce and (supposedly, I don't use it) MATE levels that is and far below Cinnamon's 900M or so.

I did side side by sides of used memory 2mins after boot in a VM a little while back.

All Mint 19s fully up to date at the time - XFCE 338MB, MATE 349MB, Cinnamon 513MB and KDE NEON (on an 18.04 base) 400MB

Cinnamon 4 in Mint 19.1 comes in at about 480MB in that environment.

Not quite 900M but still needs significantly more resources.

[Pierre]

Windows 7 or later? Forget any prospect of decent performance !!! The machine in question came with that OS & whilst I really liked it, dammit, it was SLUGGISH.

and my experiment #1428 is to 'upgrade' an similar sluggish win-7 Laptop - - to win -10

do fully expect the laptop, to Not Have any better performance,,
& in which case, it'll then be converted to LinuxMint Mate

as I'm still loathe to waste an Windows Licence Key, that could be re-used, on that Laptop,
so- we'll see what happens.

[rene]

[ ... ] as I'm still loathe to waste an Windows Licence Key, that could be re-used, on that Laptop,

Last time I tried, not too long ago, it actually still worked to simply enter the Windows 7 key during installation of Windows 10. Be sure to try...

[rene]

Cinnamon 4 in Mint 19.1 comes in at about 480MB in that environment.

How did you manage that? While possibly having to specify that my own numbers are with a graphical login for myself active I'm not getting anywhere under 650M. I do suppose my previously observed 900M was me not having waited long enough for some of the delayed desktop startup tasks to complete.

As to KDE the 350M is by the way while having disabled System Settings -> Hardware -> Display and Monitor -> Compositor -> Enable compositor on startup. Can not currently play around with it any more since current KDE Neon in VirtualBox 5.24 has rendering issues serious enough so as to make it unusable...

[BG405]

I'm still loathe to waste an Windows Licence Key, that could be re-used, on that Laptop,
so- we'll see what happens.

Is the key tied to that machine? I felt that way too for a while but never got round to setting up a new Windows installation. One of the keys (an Anytime Upgrade key) has actually been used on more than one machine & I'm tempted to pass it on to a mate if he still needs it, as it's unlikely I ever will now. I'll keep the retail one though for use in a VM (at some point).

Win10 would be a downgrade for me anyway as both keys are for Win7 Ultimate.

[MtnDewManiac]

I did side side by sides of used memory 2mins after boot in a VM a little while back.

All Mint 19s fully up to date at the time - XFCE 338MB, MATE 349MB, Cinnamon 513MB and KDE NEON (on an 18.04 base) 400MB

Cinnamon 4 in Mint 19.1 comes in at about 480MB in that environment.

Not quite 900M but still needs significantly more resources.

Memory shemory, lol. How many computers that cannot be upgraded to at least two gigabytes of RAM are actually running a currently-supported version of Mint? I'm sure there are a few, but... Even my cheap ($350) and slightly old (seven years) laptop came with six gigabytes. The one I had before that was OLD and I still managed to upgrade it to four gigs.

I don't think that's the real stumbling block with older computers, though. I have an old laptop around here somewhere that only has something like 768 megabytes of RAM, but even it could have been upgraded to either two or four gigabytes (I forget which). I was going to do that for my elderly mother so that she could watch Youtube videos on it (she doesn't have cable television and has become addicted to them). The CPU is old, slow, and runs hot - I can't recall if it's a Pentium 4, D, M, or what, but something of that sort. Therefore, I supposed that, whatever it was capable of doing, it would end up doing it rather slowly. But she's almost 80 and might not care overmuch about that.

The real showstopper was that its video system was wholly unsupported in linux at the time (and the time was back when Mint 14 was still supported). No way to play videos on it. Upgrading its RAM wouldn't have helped.

I guess I could still use it for something. But nothing that required CPU prowess or modern video capacity. My guess is that those kinds of things don't generally require much RAM, either.

Find a way to throttle your CPU down "five or more years" (so to speak) and then compare the various desktop environments. While you're at it, see how well you like doing a common task - such as browsing your favorite websites - with the computer in that state. If you haven't given up in disgust by then, disable your video card and try again .

There's more holding old computers back than just a lack of RAM.

Regards,
MDM

[smurphos]

How did you manage that? While possibly having to specify that my own numbers are with a graphical login for myself active I'm not getting anywhere under 650M. I do suppose my previously observed 900M was me not having waited long enough for some of the delayed desktop startup tasks to complete.

Default of of the box fresh installs in Virtualbox (5.2.0 at the time IIRC). I've got a hunch that Cinnamon as a whole base memory use (due to the 3D graphics requirements) might be more sensitive to display resolution, number of active monitors, graphics hardware etc than other DEs. These tests were conducted with a 1366 x 768 display.

Edit - just done a quick test on 19.1 Cinnamon Vbox install (currently on Vbox 5.2.4). This isn't a fresh install and comes in at 575 used a couple of minutes after boot in full screen 1366x768. Just tried booting it in windowed Vbox at 903x368 resolution and used comes in at 493.

Same effect is apparent in Mate but not so dramatic 310 used at full screen vs 299 windowed

[smurphos]

I don't think that's the real stumbling block with older computers, though.

It's not, but folks regularly get their knickers in a twist about Cinnamon memory usage, hence why I out of interest conducted those tests. Properly excessive Cinnamon process memory usage ( i.e several GB) has been and can occasionally still be an issue for some folks that like to keep their machine uptime in double or triple figures (in days) as it has had and still does have a few memory leak issues that can be exposed over time in certain hardware / software configurations. I wouldn't consider Cinnamon on anything with less than 2GB of memory, assuming appropriate graphics hardware.