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

[kevin987]

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.

The development team promised an improved performance for Mint 19 Cinnamon.

From my tests, 19 does seem as quick as 17.

This is only for Cinnamon and probably won't apply to Xfce or MATE.

[xenopeek]

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?

Both Linux Mint 13 and Linux Mint 17 were supported for 5 years. No difference.

Ubuntu 14.04 is supported for longer, if you're willing to share in the costs of doing Extended Security Maintenance (ESM). Starts from $ 7500 a year ($ 150 per desktop; 50 desktops minimum). See https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/09/19/exte ... rusty-tahr and https://buy.ubuntu.com/.

I get that it's not fun to find a new fit or spend time on upgrading when you'd rather spend that on other things, but that's what needs doing to stay safe online.

[Sobieski]

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!

HEAR HEAR!!!

17.3 has been - so far - the best Linux distro ever for me. I certainly lament the eventual passing of this beloved OS.

I recently installed a new motherboard, so perhaps I could give 19.1 a go. For now, I'm indulging in some gratuitous infidelity and having a fling and dalliance with OpenSuse because I'm not certain that LM has resolved the UEFI issues that lead to much frustration when setting up a dual boot system with Windows. In the BIOS of my new motherboard, the secure boot cannot be turned off and I read in another post in this forum that M$ and Suse have a little deal going that allows the latter to install and boot without issue. Does Mint have this deal, too?

[gm10]

the secure boot cannot be turned off and I read in another post in this forum that M$ and Suse have a little deal going that allows the latter to install and boot without issue. Does Mint have this deal, too?

UEFI is an open standard, I doubt anybody has any side-deals, that doesn't appear plausible. But LM 19.1 supports installing with secure boot enabled so just give it a try.

[sjmathis]

I came to Mint as a refugee from Windows XP, and it has worked very nicely for my purposes. I guess that LM 17 had been out for a while when I started using it. Since it was advertised as a "long term release", I was hoping to be able to avoid the forced upgrade that I was facing with XP for at least as long as I been using XP. Alas, this is not the case. I do notice that in general my performance has deteriorated, perhaps because I've accepted every software upgrade that was offered, and I could have been somewhat more selective. I'm sorry to be forced off 17.3, but I understand the necessity. My normal life will be disrupted while I try to figure out what all I've done to the computer that will need to be re-loaded. I think I have about three pages of short notes on things that I had to do to fix my system so that it would do the things I was doing with XP. This time I will keep better track of everything I will have to do to get back to where I am at present. I'm not planning to leave Mint, but I can understand how some folks might be tempted to jump ship as I did when End-of-life came for XP.

[Valsodar]

At least my Mint still has 2 more years to live, so I'm happy. And calm.

[bob12564]

I enjoyed reading the comments about 17.3. I agree that 17.3 and even 18.3 are stable and usable. I just did 2 clean installs of 19.1 and I'm finding too many issues to think about using it long term. I waited for a "dot 1" release before trying 19. I expected this version to have most of the kinks worked out. I use 17.3 for my work, so loss of support is a concern. But I also don't have the time to play technician to find bug fixes, work-arounds and other solutions for something that used to "just work". I read a post in another forum that suggested waiting for a 19.3 release before migrating to this version. I would suggest version 18.3, not 19. At least that buys 2 more years of support.

[Sobieski]

UEFI is an open standard, I doubt anybody has any side-deals, that doesn't appear plausible. But LM 19.1 supports installing with secure boot enabled so just give it a try.

I did so and I'm pleased to say that, so far, all has gone well. It works! My brief dalliance with Opensuse was interesting but at times frustrating. I'm glad to be back in the Mint camp. My dual boot is preserved and the problem I was having with being unceremoniously booted out to the login screen was solved by changing to the proprietary NVIDIA driver from the open source one.

There are, however, a couple of minor irritations. Some of the screensavers are choppy and slow in 19.1; this wasn't the case with 17.3. Perhaps with the proprietary driver, all screensavers will be smooth? I've yet to check.

Also, the gprenamer program installs OK but it can only be started up and run from the terminal. Installation from Synaptic as well as from a .deb binary did not put icons or links in the main menu. I'm using gprenamer as a replacement for the now defunct pyRenamer. This is a bug that will be addressed In updates?

[gm10]

Also, the gprenamer program installs OK but it can only be started up and run from the terminal. Installation from Synaptic as well as from a .deb binary did not put icons or links in the main menu. I'm using gprenamer as a replacement for the now defunct pyRenamer. This is a bug that will be addressed In updates?

Unlikely, it's part of the "community maintained" repository but the package doesn't appear to be actively maintained, it's been broken for years and hasn't been updated in that long. You can grab the latest release here, just follow their installation instructions: https://sourceforge.net/projects/gprena ... /gprename/

[Keith.A]

Well, FWIW, I've just installed 19.1 Mate on a 10yr old desktop.

Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L System Board
512 Mb ATI Radeon 4850 Graphics
4gb Memory
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 CPU
SoundBlaster Audigy SE
HP OfficeJet Printer
Canon 8800f Flat Bed Scanner
Logitech Webcam
DVD Writer
2 x HDD's

..........and it all just WORKS! It's brilliant!

Have it dual booted with W7, it will eventually take over from W7 next January. Certainly no complaints here. Boots up faster than W7, runs faster, shuts down quicker, programs load quicker. Thumbs up for 19.1 from me.......................

[BananaTech]

I'm thinking of sticking with 17.3 because I'm having an issue of my AMD APU not running as well under the others versions I've tried 18,18.1,19,19.1 ,being as im committed to making Linux mint my sole os, and not going back to anything associated with Microsoft, will i run into any issues continuing to run 17.3 till there is better apu support in the later versions ?

[Moem]

will i run into any issues continuing to run 17.3 till there is better apu support in the later versions ?

Yes: you'll be running an unsupported OS, which does not get any security updates anymore. That is an issue.

[oldgranola]

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).

This is the real point. Its not just an LM team thing.
And to the bizarre posts above saying that 17.3 is better than 19.1...Wrong on all points.

[blue_bullet]

Xenopeek,

Thanks for the heads up. I already remembered and have converted to KDE Neon 5.15 on 3 of my 4 machines. I have had better luck
getting it close to what I had with LM 17.3 KDE than I could get with LM 18.x KDE. KDE Neon is pretty bare bones so it is a good experience
learning how and what to install to get a system back to what was had in LM KDE.

Mint went away from KDE for their own reasons so I reasoned myself it was time to try Kubuntu and KDE Neon. KDE Neon won for me
by providing more up to date Plasma 5 on 18.04 LTS vs Kubuntu 18.10 with less up to date Plasma 5.

LM 17.3 KDE was the best, but there is no more support for KDE 4.

[ganamant]

This is the real point. Its not just an LM team thing.
And to the bizarre posts above saying that 17.3 is better than 19.1...Wrong on all points.

Diverging from your own opinion on all points: I'm fine with that. But would you care to explain why praise for LM 17.3 as a mature distro in itself that probably didn't need a full makeover is wrong in the absolute? I understand the necessity to keep up with Ubuntu, since that's the distro that LM is based on; what I don't quite understand is the impulse to fix what ain't broke. I'm not saying that LM is the only distro to follow the path of change for change: it is, in fact quite the opposite. I was very happy with the conservative stance that LM took about desktop environments while Ubuntu was doing that crazy Unity thing (Canonical itself later ditched that malformed and grotesque creation, by the way), but today I'm worried about the future of Cinnamon as a middleweight DE, hence my remark about maybe having to leave it. I perceive Cinnamon as fragile (I may be wrong about that, but it's a feeling I've got), because it's being pulled in two directions, i.e. traditional (wooden) desktop analogy versus smartphonish presentation à la Gnome 3. It's ironic that KDE was discarded from LM 19 only for Cinnamon to slowly take it's place (but I'm not saying that Cinnamon is yet half as bloated as KDE is, of course).

Many desktop users today are being influenced by smartphone UI up to a point where they expect to be able to recreate their smartphone habits on a desktop environment. Either this, or they will call the desktop distro old, or for nerds, or whatever. Some years ago, on the other hand, beginner-oriented Linux distros tried to appeal to former or current users of Windows and make the jump easy and smooth for them. It's not entirely clear -- to me at least -- what stance Mint is taking on this point.

[xenopeek]

This is an announcement topic. Please continue discussions such as above in chat and not here.

This topic remains open to ask general questions about the end of life of Linux Mint 17.x. For specific help with upgrading or reinstalling your system make a new topic in the Installation & Boot section.

[Plons]

Dear Rosa,

In May 2016 I got fed up with Microsoft's pushing towards Windows10. My Windows7 pro had been doing reasonably okay, so why "upgrade" ? I admit it was slow .... but so am I ..... so I could live with that.
I decided to move to Linux, no matter how much learning and effort would be involved. I first dated Ubuntu but that was not my type.

And then I met YOU. My Mate.
My computer-life was about to change. Okay, we had some issues but we sorted those out. As a result, I let you handle all PC's in the house, and even my GF likes you. A lot! My kids sticked to W10. But hehe .... kids don't listen to their parents, do they ?

I realise that you spoiled me. Fast booting, running smoothly, no complaints, no virusses .... always willing to serve. Gosh, I got fond of you. And still am.

But the time has come that I have to let you go. With pain in my heart.
In a month time your upkeep will stop. And I have to move on. It's a time-thingie. For humans, time moves in one direction, as you probably know. If not, ask The Guide Mk2.

I met Tara in an earlier stage, but there was no spark. Then Tessa. That went better but we had problems with sharing files.
Spicy Sylvia OTOH looks like a good successor of you, dear Rosa.
I thank you for your companionship these 3 years. Goodbye.

A big Thank You to all those people that make Linux Mint rock.
As a token of my gratitude I made another donation. The 5th IIRC. I lost count. Well deserved !

May I suggest "Tricia" or "Trillian" for Mint 19.3 ? As a reference to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ?

Cheers

Nard

[RubyStone]

So many glowing comments about the amazing 17.x (especially 17.3).

I have to say that I might consider moving to 18.3 until its EOL. However, it is my understanding that Mint (Cinnamon, etc.) are off-shoots that are based on the base code of Ubuntu. Everything else is home-baked by Mint. So, in order to keep Mint working fine, only the additional changes would need to be updated and all should be fine. After all, Mint was originally made to replace Unity.

All along, regardless of what was put on top of any version of Ubuntu, the repositories were pushed without major issue. So, just pull Unity off of the next Ubuntu release and slap Cinnamon (from 17.3) desktop on it.

Or better yet, modify the Cinnamon 17.3 desktop to go on to 19.3. All problems solved.

Again, the WHOLE concept of the Kernel and Desktop being separate is modularity. If the desktop and kernel are so mutually exclusive then it almost seems like Linux is no better than M$.

[Pjotr]

So many glowing comments about the amazing 17.x (especially 17.3).

I have to say that I might consider moving to 18.3 until its EOL. However, it is my understanding that Mint (Cinnamon, etc.) are off-shoots that are based on the base code of Ubuntu. Everything else is home-baked by Mint. So, in order to keep Mint working fine, only the additional changes would need to be updated and all should be fine. After all, Mint was originally made to replace Unity.

All along, regardless of what was put on top of any version of Ubuntu, the repositories were pushed without major issue. So, just pull Unity off of the next Ubuntu release and slap Cinnamon (from 17.3) desktop on it.

Or better yet, modify the Cinnamon 17.3 desktop to go on to 19.3. All problems solved.

Again, the WHOLE concept of the Kernel and Desktop being separate is modularity. If the desktop and kernel are so mutually exclusive then it almost seems like Linux is no better than M$.

For starters, Mint was *not* originally made to replace Unity. Mint began years before Unity.

And slapping outdated, no longer supported desktop versions on a new code base is a remarkably bad idea. Because of compatibility and because of security.

Frankenstein experiments are fun, but please keep them in the laboratory.

[jjjjjjjay]

I literally cannot bring myself to upgrade from 17.1 Rebecca even though the LTS is about over. It works perfectly on my 2005 HP hardware. To upgrade means leaving my iPod Classic (which I use every day) in the dust. Banshee has so far been the only Linux software that has worked to manually place radio programs onto my ipod. I know its no longer being improved. But it works. I don't use sync. So for that reason I am not upgrading. I'm old school I guess.