Mint 20.2 beta Xfce

[rossdv8]

I just wasted most of today installing Mint 20.2 bets Xfce. That's right on the back of wasting a large part of last week setting up VNC so I could play Audio after the Realtek chip in my old Lenovo m93pT 'apparently' suddenly died

Since then I have had the Speakers working perfectly via a wired connection to the Audio jack in my Gigabyte BRIX, with volume controlled through the VNC. - and now I thing there's an intermittent connection in one of the speaker wires, that is working if I wiggle it near the right angled male. I HATE Computers . .

So while I was finding a 'SIMPLE' VNC solution I decided to set up Networking between the three computers I use every day. Somewhere I screwed up a config setting or two and decided it was tie to reinstall Mint - and since I have the BRIX running Mint 20.1, I can risk a beta again.

So now I am running Mint 20.2 Xfce beta and going through all the usual things where I try to click on something I need and have to install it!

Mint Xfce 20.2 Xfce is working nicely, despite that I didn't intend installing it.
This is the first time I have installed a beta in years. So far, apart from the normal things like not being able to run scripts.

I checked in Settings Editor, and running scripts in Thunar was enabled - but it was definitely not working. I chose Add, typed in the '/misc-exec-shell-scripts-by-default' , set it to true and locked it.

Now I can execute shell scripts.

I am missing a few of my favourite themes, but I'm gradually getting most of them set up again.
After finally bothering to set up a LAN, that's a casualty of the change for now . .

It also found my Brother Inkjet over Wifi and installed it without needing drivers. That was nice. I was surprised when it seemed to happen after the Mint 19.x to Mint 20.x upgrade, but that didn't involve formatting / root so I thought it might have picked up on some leftover stuff.

And it found my neighbour's HP inkjet and installed it - also without needing drivers !

[rossdv8]

UPDATE:
After a couple of completely stupid mistakes, I remembered what i had to do to get Window Decoration theming consistent again across almost all Apps.

When I updated to Mint 20 (or was it Mint 19.x?) I lost all window decoration consistency any time I was using Compiz, but if I was using XFWM, it all worked.

I needed to run:

sudo apt install gtk3-nocsd

That fixed anything swapping between gtk3 and metacity themes. It kind of leaves legacy earlier GTK stuff out in the cold, but the bulk of my stuff now has themes with nice big coloured buttons on the Title bars, and in some cases nice grabbable frames. However, I solved teh frame thickness problem in the past by adding Drop Shadows to my windows using Compiz Config Settings Manager.

Everything else so far is running smoooothly.
Obviously it is a beta, but it doesn;t feel like anything other than a full release. Yet . .

The sound problem (dropping out on one channel) is still happening occasionally, but at least Mint 20.22 has shown me it wasn't my computer's hardware causing the problem. Turned out to be the thin wire right at the plug where the speakers connect to the computer's audio jack.

[Hoser Rob]

Unless your machine is VERY bleeding edge new, and/or you're a Linux expert, all beta Linux point releases are a waste of time. I wouldn't even touch beta app software unless I really, really needed it.

Beta = bugfest. All those people on these sort of Linux forums who say their betas are working perfectly just haven't done enough updates yet. ANd there's no newbie level sopport for betas either.

[rossdv8]

Beta = bugfest. All those people on these sort of Linux forums who say their betas are working perfectly just haven't done enough updates yet. ANd there's no newbie level sopport for betas either.
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That's why I avoided them for a few years while I've been sick. And that's why it doesn't feel like anything other than a full release 'YET'

Been using this forum for half a dozen years and just discovered it works with HTML . .

There's not a lot of 'oldbie level' sopport for betas either!

Now that I am officially 'elderly' and have several computers (left over from the businesses) all running Mint 20.1 nicely, I can afford to 'play' at computers again and see if there's anything in the Release notes that is exciting. And I've become rather adept at quick reinstalls without screwing up my /home. So these days because I like to see what I can break, I can check this stuff out for fun.

As an example, the day 20.2 Xfce beta was announced as 'released' I discovered that it would not run executable scripts (again), but as I know it is NOT a problem caused by Mint, I didn't report it.
However, I'm sure Clem or someone will work out that if running scripts is set to 'ON' in settings, but it is not enabled, that the Thunar 'hidden setting' we're all so used to turning On should be included by Default.

Last night I wanted to work on some graphics, and discovered GIMP was not installed.
One of the major criticisms of Linux in general over many years is that it cannot do much of the everyday 'work' that Windows and Mac can achieve.
Programs like Gimp and OpenOffice and Scribus can do more or less everything that Photoshop, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Publisher can do, even in a commercial setting.

OK, as of this morning, that might not be the case much longer:
https://www.news.com.au/technology/inno ... be13b54717

It is really strange though, for a modern distro to leave Gimp out of the iso !

At some point there should be a link in the Menu to some quickies about which programs can be used to substitute in many ways for Microsoft or Mac stuff. And how to make LibreOffice look and 'feel' almost exactly like MS Office with one or two clicks.

For now though - One of the reasons for releasing betas, is for some suckers like me to get into the thing and see what works.

Which is why I started this fred.

In the meantime, Mint 20.2 as of today is doing a few odd glitchy things, but some of the few odd glitchy things it was doing yesterday seem to have stopped. It is probably 'operator error'.