Linux Mint 17.x has reached end of life; upgrade now!

[xenopeek]

Heads up for anybody running a Linux Mint 17.x release: it has reached end of life this April 25th. That means that you'll no longer receive (security) updates for your system. To stay safe online please plan accordingly to replace or upgrade your Linux Mint 17.x system asap.

You can see till when Linux Mint releases are supported here: https://linuxmint.com/download_all.php

While we recommend you replace Linux Mint 17.x by installing a newer release of Linux Mint, you may considering upgrading it in place (without reinstalling) to a newer release. See here for links to instructions for the latter: viewtopic.php?f=143&t=235992

If you need help or advice with your situation don't hesitate to make a topic in Installation & Boot section.

[mlive]

Great still in March as far as I know and very happy with 17.3 except when wi fi goes down...why...update?....so how do I get it back...have tried every thing posted so far ...no go...seems to be present in all the right places ..says its connecting but never does...am on ether presently...any magic solutions??sony vaio 64 thnxs

[Pjotr]

any magic solutions??

Try the magic of Mint 19.1. No earthly use in spending time and effort on a system that'll reach end-of-life in a month or so. Utter waste of time.

[mlive]

hate to be waiting for you to untie me hanging upside down with my bits caught in a rabbit trap.....the situation mentioned in the previous post has been resolved...miraculously on its own with some sort of nudging from my end....dont know how when or why...but its working again....thank u dear lord.....

[Moem]

....dont know how when or why...but its working again....thank u dear lord.....

I think he prefers to be called Clem.

[ganamant]

Thanks for the info. What would happen if one sticks with LM17? Apart form security updates, will regular software still be installable via aptitude? Will it be frozen in time after next April? Or will it just not work anymore?

I know the main suggestion to this one will be "just upgrade and forget about it", but I have tried newer versions of Mint, and I actually like 17.3 more than any other. How involved is it to try and merge newer software into an older distro, if at all feasible?

[Moem]

Thanks for the info. What would happen if one sticks with LM17? Apart form security updates, will regular software still be installable via aptitude? Will it be frozen in time after next April? Or will it just not work anymore?

It will become impossible to install software through the repos, as they will eventually be taken offline.

And to the best of my knowledge, it's generally not possible to use newer software on a distro that's no longer supported.

[kevin987]

I wonder if "Additional Repositories" will continue to update.

I certainly don't expect Rosa and Trusty to continue.

[Moem]

I wonder if "Additional Repositories" will continue to update.

That entirely depends on the maintainers of those specific repos, and over time I assume they will stop being updated, one by one.

[gm10]

If those are PPAs, they will stop updating, launchpad doesn't build for archived releases. But if you're really desperate to get your hands on the official repositories after they're gone, they get archived to this address: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/, you'd have to manually point your apt configuration to that. It is very strongly discouraged though (and no, you won't ever be receiving updates that way, only access to old, outdated and unsupported software).

[xenopeek]

to get your hands on the official repositories after they're gone, they get archived to this address: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/

To be clear, those are indeed frozen in time after April.

I know the main suggestion to this one will be "just upgrade and forget about it", but I have tried newer versions of Mint, and I actually like 17.3 more than any other. How involved is it to try and merge newer software into an older distro, if at all feasible?

You'd have to compile newer versions from source code or—if newer versions are incompatible with the older library versions on your system (most likely)—you'd have to backport changes from newer versions into the source code of your older versions and then recompile. Considering you probably have around 2,000 packages installed on your system that you'd want to keep up with security fixes, this just isn't feasibler.

It's annoying but for any system connected to a network you should really plan to upgrade. Perhaps try a different edition of Linux Mint 19.x (Cinnamon, MATE or Xfce) and see if you like that better?

[Sobieski]

Version 17.3 was/is the best distribution I've used. When I tried out the 18s and 19s, I had annoying issues of being unceremoniously logged out to MDM whenever I mounted or simply opened a partition/drive or certain files. This NEVER occurred with 17.3. I'm rather frustrated and disappointed with these later iterations of what, for me with 17.3, has been an almost totally flawless and trouble-free experience.

I surmised that perhaps some of my hardware had been getting long in the tooth and I even tried an installation of Ubuntu Mate 18, which STILL plagued me with the same above-stated issues. I recently replaced a deceased motherboard with a pristine one with up-to-date RAM and CPU; therefore, I'm concluding the fault/bug/issue is in the software and someone in the coding department is a bit lackadaisical.

If good ol' 17.3 is going to be retired, then it would behoove those powers that be (expert coders for whom I have the greatest of respect and admiration) to take care of these more-than-annoying bugs found in the more recent editions.

Long Live 17.3!

[Pjotr]

logged out to MDM

MDM has been retired; 19.1 has LightDM. So these issues shouldn't plague a clean installation of Tessa...

Long Live 17.3!

It won't. I advise to install 19.1.

[Sobieski]

I thought I HAD done a clean installation of 19.1. I'll try again soon.

What about the UEFI issues? I've been seeing an absence of Windows 10 in the Mint install even though Windows is on the machine. Is this going to be an issue with 19.1?

[rbeltz48]

Mint 17.3 is by FAR Mint's very best release ever. Everything just works! And with a LOW memory footprint. Once everyone jumped on the bandwagon and went to GTK3 and Sysyemd, things went downhill with 18.x and 19.x. The Distrowatch hits over the past 2 years confirm this. Everything became more sluggish and required more memory. After 35 years of using PCs and various OS's I do not call that progress. Long live Mint 17.3!

[Pjotr]

Long live Mint 17.3!

As said: it won't. Better adapt to that....

[JCSenar]

Maybe we should not say "Long live" but, at least and in my case, I do want to say:

Thank you very much, LM 17!

[Sobieski]

I also express that gratitude.

[ganamant]

Long live Mint 17.3!

As said: it won't. Better adapt to that....

Yes, I think we all get the point, but I also can see that I'm not alone in regretting already LM 17.3. Maybe Mint 17.3 won't live long but, as some have already pointed out, Mint is losing traction among the most popular distros. What if the reason for this decline in popularity was the imminent retirement of 17.3? Could it be the case that more than a few "nostalgic" users are being let down by the performance and overall feel of the newer incarnations of Linux Mint? While I'm all for security updates and bug fixes, I have never liked change for the sake of change, and I'm sure many other users feel the same. LM 17.3 was mature and usable enough and I suppose that many users are feeling disappointed about it being taken away from them and substituted by something that, whilst looking more "modern", whatever that means, is also heavier on resources, especially for older hardware (and being able to use older hardware is what has brought many people from Windows to Linux in the first place). At this point, to compensate for the heavier footprint of LM 19, one could switch form Cinnamon to Mate or Xfce (if one was on Cinnamon to begin with, that is), but I couldn't help feeling forced to make the switch if I ended up having to. Of course, the world is full of distros among which to pick, but being forced to abandon Mint only because newer versions are less appealing would feel like -- you guessed it -- being forced.

Since LM 17 is ( or was/has been/whatever) so popular, why can't it be supported longer like it's been the case with LM 13?

[Pjotr]

Since LM 17 is ( or was/has been/whatever) so popular, why can't it be supported longer?

As Mint 17.x is based on Ubuntu 14.04 (some 90 % of its packages are unchanged upstream Ubuntu), you'd have to ask the Ubuntu developers that.

Maintaining the EOL upstream Ubuntu packages would be quite impossible for the small Mint team (even if they would want to do so).