Mint 21--How is it working for you?

[Valsodar]

When it was released I decided to remember the good old days of constanly breaking packages out of the blue , so I installed it. The installation went well until... I installed the "recommended" video driver. After the installation I performed the mandatory reboot, so that the driver can come into effect and... instead of a pretty desktop with 1920x1080 resolution, I suddenly felt like meeting Ubuntu 10.10 for the first time when the maximum screen resolution was 800x600. It turned out the video driver somehow has been completely removed during the reboot OR it simply doesn't support 1660 Ti, despite what its description reads. Needless to say what I did after that and why my signature still reads "Arch".

[antikythera]

Ubuntu's recommended is crud, the better nvidia driver is 470

[Valsodar]

Ubuntu's recommended is crud, the better nvidia driver is 470

That was the "recommended" driver that Mint installed and that had no trace of it after the reboot. At this point I realized that if I wanted to try the new Mint, I had to install my old video card (1050 Ti) which worked perfectly with that ancient video driver, which I wasn't inclined to do.

[antikythera]

It recommends 515 for my older GTX960 and current RTX3060. Mint do not make the suggestion at all though, that is just a UI for the ubuntu hardware detection and driver checker api made upstream by Ubuntu 22.04. The suggestion comes from Ubuntu devs.

[Valsodar]

Then they must have messed up something. Another thing I don't like about Mint when it comes to drivers - you can't install the driver you want. For instance, on Arch I can install 515.57 any time I want (even when no propr. driver has been installed yet) by simply using sudo downgrade nvidia and choosing the relevant version of the packages, whereas on Mint all the repos have only the latest beta driver, so whether you like it or not, you have no choice but to stick with the beta driver which has some limitations (such as no support for NVENC).

[BigEasy]

With my own pleasure, I found that I was smart enough to switch the video driver before update to LM21 from Nvidia to nouveau.
P.S. OK, not really so smart, just knew that my Nvidia is not supported by the kernel 5.15.
After the upgrade, the rest of things just works as usual. Thanks to the LM team.

[Liltoot1]

Hi All I've found that upgrading to Mint 21 corrupts all .XLS files and some PDF files.
Fortunately a backup solved the problem!
Take care Regards

[kelevra]

I installed Cinnamon 21 beta on my new to me PC and haven't really had any issues. I have been installing all the updates, as I do with all my systems, and am really liking the new release. My MSI B450 MB and MSI RX580 hum right along. I did have couple minor things pop up, but with the help of the great people on this forum, they were remedied quickly.

I have been playing with Wine and a few older games, as well as some native Linux games. I found an old spinner HD and installed Windows 10 on it, just to play with a dual boot system. It never hurts to keep a toe in the door for any troubleshooting I might have to do on family members computers. I thought it might be easier to get some of my older games to run but that really hasn't been the case. If Wine won't run it, chances are Windows won't either. To be fair, there are a couple games that do work in Windows but not Mint (USAF and Motocross Madness 2).

I will be trying a 20.3 to 21 upgrade soon, just to see how it goes.

[billyswong]

It sucks that you can't simply go to the Cinnamon panel settings and change the panel color or transparency or use a background image instead of solid color like you can in Xfce.

I am running LM 21 Mate now. I can select panel color / transparency / background image in Mate. Cinnamon can't do that?!

[RollyShed]

There was mention of shadows. I'd not noticed until a recent installation. Actually quite bad once I'd noticed it.
So?
I tried a few different resolutions, same aspect ratio. Dropped down a bit and clean sharp resolution on screen.

[RIH]

For the first time in 3 years (Covid-19) I was going back to the UK for a visit.
I was going to take my laptop in order to keep in touch with the world but my version of Mint 20.3 on it was a mess because I had been constantly playing around with it.
So I decided on a clean install of Mint 21 & transferred Applications & Settings from my desktop version of 20.3 over the top of the install.
I threw a USB ISO of 20.3 into the bag as back up & off I went.

All in all it performed very well indeed, apart from being a bit slow on start up.
I put that down to the system searching additional USB drives that I didn't bother to carry with me.
I was going to sort that once I got home again but a misplaced glass of red wine the day before I returned home made that task unnecessary.

Now to install 21 again on a new Acer Aspire 3..

[RollyShed]

I was going to sort that once I got home again but a misplaced glass of red wine the day before I returned home made that task unnecessary.

So you are saying that Mint 21 won't handle WINE.... or just RED wine....

Or is it (glass of red wine ) Through A Glass Darkly and your laptop was booked (by Barry Boggs, PhD).

[RIH]

No, Mint 21 is fine (I think) but Lenovo can't handle red wine.
I am not sure about other colours, but that is an experiment that I am reluctant to attempt.

[rattkjelke]

It sucks that you can't simply go to the Cinnamon panel settings and change the panel color or transparency or use a background image instead of solid color like you can in Xfce.

I am running LM 21 Mate now. I can select panel color / transparency / background image in Mate. Cinnamon can't do that?!

No. Cinnamon can't do that. XFCE can and MATE can. It should be a standard feature. It might be possible by editing .css files or something but that's above my pay grade.

[randomness]

did unity hub stop working for anyone else or is it just me

[SteveR]

Concerning computer #1, the upgrade went well with a bit of manual intervention. No complaints.
Concerning computer #2, the upgrade flopped. Installed Mint 21 as a "fresh" install. Fortunately, the HOME directory was on a second partition, which preserved the user settings and files.

More detail on computer #2:
Before undertaking the upgrade to Mint 21, I used timeshift to make a back-up. At first the upgrade to Mint 21 went successfully, but then I noticed that libreoffice locked-up. Attempts to remove and reload libreoffice failed. I then used timeshift to "restore" my Mint 20.3 system. That failed.

I then reinstalled Mint 20.3 from the Mint repository. That worked. I then used timeshift to restore my last Mint 20.3 configuration. Surprisingly that failed!!! . I then made a fresh install of Mint 21.

Mint 21, after installing my customizations, is working fine on computer #2.

[ivar]

No, Mint 21 is fine (I think) but Lenovo can't handle red wine.
I am not sure about other colours, but that is an experiment that I am reluctant to attempt.

Some Lenovos are built with keyboard drains.. We got one for a coworker after he had a mishap involving red wine and his fujitsu
laptop, lol!


As for LM 21, I've done 2 upgrades. Bth just fine. Havent noticed much differences - things still works without fuzz. Biggest difference: Firefox with too many tabs open is now leaking memory at a slower rate than with 20.x and 5.4 series kernel

[Bleys]

hassle free update from 20.3

[fotisv]

Fresh installation of 21 Cinnamon and is the first ,not rpm based distribution that my graphics are acceptable working. I don't know if its Mint or Ubuntu, but now its working. Although I came across a bizarre effect. An application icon, normally appeared in right corner of the panel, has a blank square and the image of the icon appears on the top left of the screen
I read about similar effects in the past, but can't find a solution.
In general is nice and fast

[MurphCID]

So far other than the USB-C/Thunderbolt issue on ONE laptop, Mint 21 is really the best Mint yet. I have it on four laptops so far (the 5th has LMDE 5).