LMDE Update Pack 4 is being prepared and tested at the moment.
Among other important updates this new update pack features:
- Linux 3.2 kernel
- MATE 1.2 (with mintMenu and mintDesktop now fully ported to MATE)
- Cinnamon 1.4
- KDE 4.7.4
- Gnome Shell 3.2.2
- Xfce 4.8
The one thing it’s missing is Gnome 2.
Gnome 2 is, by far, the most used and popular Linux desktop. It’s also the environment we’ve been improving and polishing since we started in 2006 and it’s been a core component of the Linux Mint desktop. Gnome 3 carries the same name but the similarities stop there. It’s a new and radically different desktop and it has very little in common with it.
As you probably know, Gnome 3 conflicts with Gnome 2 and so most distributions lost Gnome 2 about a year ago. Linux Mint 12 lost it in November and LMDE is about to lose it as well with this update pack.
As more and more Gnome 2 users couldn’t use it anymore, many people migrated to other existing desktops such as KDE, Xfce or LXDE. Some people used Gnome Fallback (a Gnome 3 environment which looks like Gnome 2 but which lacks support for Gnome 2 applets and is meant to disappear) and others migrated to a distribution which still had Gnome 2 (Linux Mint 11 or LMDE for instance).
Since that happened, we’ve been worried about the lack of satisfactory alternatives to Gnome 2. Looking towards the future of LMDE and the upcoming Linux Mint 13 release, our top priority was to get to the stage where we can provide our users with something most people would find as good or better than Gnome 2.
We worked extremely hard on Linux Mint 12 and provided an early release of MATE 1.0 and a set of extensions to Gnome Shell called MGSE.
LMDE was frozen at Update Pack 3 with a Gnome 2 desktop until we reached the point we are at today, where both MATE and Cinnamon are ready.
MATE is basically Gnome 2 renamed. The more the Mate team works on it, the more stable it gets. What it looks like and how it behaves is exactly like Gnome 2. So for most people, this is probably the best alternative.
Cinnamon is a brand new desktop which looks modern (like Shell and Unity) but which works in a similar way than Gnome and Compiz. It’s also a desktop we develop ourselves, which is tailored to the vision we have and so which fits the purpose of Linux Mint perfectly. For this reason Cinnamon is both extremely innovative in the features and polish it gets and very traditional in its layouts and paradigms.
Like Gnome Shell, Cinnamon uses Clutter and needs 3D acceleration. It’s stable and full-featured but it might not work well for you, depending on your graphics card.
With Update Pack 4 LMDE users will gain access to new versions of KDE, Xfce and LXDE, but also for the first time to Gnome Shell, MATE and Cinnamon.
We’re delighted with the current state of these desktops. It’s still too soon to predict which of MATE or Cinnamon will become the most popular desktop in the future, but they both, and in a very different way, represent viable and quality alternatives to Gnome 2.
Last but not least, if you’re still not convinced by the alternatives you can freeze your LMDE system and avoid Update Pack 4 (thus keeping Update Pack 3 and Gnome 2), by pointing to the following repositories:
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb-src http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/gnome2-frozen testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/gnome2-frozen/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/gnome2-frozen/multimedia testing main non-free
We hate to put people in a position where they can’t choose, so we will maintain these repositories for a little while, but please consider your options going forward as Gnome 2 will eventually completely disappear.
A bit off-topic, but I’m sure people wonder about this as well:
– Yes, we will respin the LMDE ISOs for Update Pack 4
– No, we can’t say whether MATE or Cinnamon will be the default yet, and whether they will be on the same medium, but both will be fully supported.
– Yes, we’re also updating Firefox and Thunderbird to version 11.0
so i’ll test this when it’s out 🙂 probably with MATE! Now and the moment I just use mint 9 gnome and i’happy with it (10.04 rockz but mint 10 was the boss) 🙂
thanks Clem!
Thanks clem.
It’s hard to believe that gnome 2 has reached its end, by the way I like Cinnamon’s behavour, it looks polish and professional,and extentions will help people in customizing the desktop ( i personally love the alttab coverflow, simple and immediate) I hope that lmde will gradually become your first choice, but in meantime I’ll continue to use the ubuntu-based iso 🙂
Wow that hit to soon. But Gnome 2 is/was very polished I think it was getting better and better after every release. So now I must choose between you MATE or Cinnamon but first one question will Cinnamon work with an older nvidia card? I have a G-force 5500 and a 5200 cards. Will Cinnamon work with those??
I have an older Pentium IV with a 5600 and Gnome 3 worked, so I suppose the same goes for Cinnamon. Not sure if Nouveau will give you good 3D, but the proprietary drivers will.
…c’è mica il download di questa distribuzione aggiornata al pack update 4, siamo ancora a settermbre 2011?!? col mio portatile un hp625 non riesco ad installare per via che la scheda wireless non è riconosciuta e quindi non posso aggiornare… grazie. e buon linumint a tutti!!! 😉
google translate to english ——————————————–
If there is to download the updated distribution of this update pack 4, we still settermbre 2011?!? with my laptop a hp625 can not install because the wireless card is not recognized so I can not upgrade … Thank you. linumint and good to all! 😉
@dorylinux scommetto ( dato che ho due hp XD) che la scheda wireless è una broadcom bcm4312?
http://wiki.debian.org/wl
con questo tutto va a posto:)(segui le istruzioni per squeeze!)
I’ve lurked here and never left a comment before, but I would just like to say that I hugely admire your devotion to giving choice to the user. Gnome Shell and Unity have some innovative ideas, but I know there are people out there who prefer Gnome 2 and hate to see it be phased out, and you’ve offered them MATE. I think that’s awesome.
As for me, I love the look of Cinnamon so far, currently using it on Mint 12 and looking forward to trying it out on LMDE.
Thank you Clem and the Linux Mint team!
Good news, hope you will release it soon..
Ciao
brilliant! i’ve been waiting (patiently) for this for a while. as usual, i’m very pleased and impressed with the way Clem and his team approach these issues. rock on Linux Mint 🙂
I have to admit, Mint 10 was far the best distro I’ve came across with; stable, speedy, power saving.
I’ve moved to Mint 12 last week and I’m looking forward for 13 (and I do like number 13 😀 ).
As for bugreport: I can install kernel 3.3 (ubuntu mainline) along with thinkpad tp_smapi dkms on Mint 12 but the system freeze on lightdm.
How and where can I report this?
I’m happy to see KDE updates on the list (as well as other desktops). I’ll give it a try for that alone. LMDE has certainly opened up a lot more in terms of choice. Keep up the good work mint team.
I’ll give her a spin that is “after” I image my system with Clonezilla 😉
Thanks Clem, yeah I’ll take Cinn along with Mate for a spin. I’m hoping they’re both not only stable enough but can adapt to needs and requirements at work.
Sigh… that darned requirement for 3D graphics keep me from using Cinnamon (yesterday, I made an LM12 installation in VMware Player, for “test-driving”, only to learn that Cinnamon [OK, Clutter] won’t work w/o 3D graphics).
So, it looks like MATE will be the way forward. Now, all’s I have to do is decide between Linux Mint 12’s Main Edition (GNOME), or LMDE.
Thanks for the choices, Clem! (and the hard work that makes ’em possible)
Edit by Clem: I don’t like talking about it before it’s done, but there’s very big changes Cinnamon will support software rendering in Mint 13 (i.e. that should make it work on any chipset…). I can’t say about performance though, we’d have to test… on one of the boxes here (Sony Vaio W Series, Intel 915) it looks like the software renderer is actually faster than the GPU! I don’t expect most specs to be like this though 🙂
I am really happy with Cinnamon. Its not completely polished or bug free yet, but its really the best implementation of Gnome3/GTK3 out there. Excellent work. I also appreciate MATE as an alternative to “fallback mode”.
However, the move away from Gnome3 causes some problems for me.
I am actually a huge fan of XFCE with Compiz. I actually prefer it to Gnome2 in a lot of ways.
The problem for me is that I import Mint-Menu and Gnome Applets with XFapplet (I think thats what its called?), so that my desktop looks a lot like the old Mint Gnome2 only on an XFCE base rather than MATE. I sometimes switch to Nautilus though Thunar has really caught up and use Compiz-fusion, etc.
I dont think that XFapplet works to import applets and Mint-Menu from MATE.
Could you offer a solution for those of us wanting to use Mint Menu and Gnome2 applets in our other desktop environments? Either by tweaking the applet (to work with MATE) or by providing Gnome2 applets despite the move to Gnome3? Mint-Menu is the big one, though I also like many of the Gnome applets that are not native to XFCE.
Edit by Clem: The XFapplet devs should port it to MATE applets, or someone might patch/fork it. It’s pretty easy to do and the MATE devs will be happy to help. I talked about this with Stefano-k already and I’m sure we’ll see it happen at some stage.
thank you for your work, I user Mate-Desktop
Will conky still work on either environment?
been eagerly anticipating this update pack…this can’t come fast enough.
Thanks Clem, Changed to Mint from Ubuntu a short while back – never regretted it for a moment 🙂 Using KDE now, love it, hoping for a LM13 KDE version – 5 years of stability sounds good to me 😀
btw, not really sure about gtk desktops any more – but if the “stop desktop effects in fullscreen” were added to the default Mint version, Cinnamon and Gnome would not suffer the video tearing I saw on LM12 default and allow us some of the stability we miss from GNOME 2.
Keep up the good work Linux Mint team, you’ve made the all the difference to me – I’ve proudly branded my Netbook and Desktop with “Powered by Linux Mint” badges 😀
Gnome Shell 3.2.2 by default + MGSE, please, please…..
Great work. Thanks.
Edit by Clem: MGSE was discontinued. All its features were integrated into Cinnamon and everything it does, Cinnamon does better.
Thanks Clem, you’ve been very busy and it’s much appreciated.
I will wait for the respin, because I broke my LMDE by installing UP4 prematurely, currently running Mint12 but want to go back to LMDE.
Keep up the good work 🙂
@darco
yes, conky works great after update
Clem,
I’m very much looking forward to this update pack release! I’ve been an LMDE user for about a year and have been very pleased so far. When Mint 12 came out this past fall, I tried it out in VirtualBox and have seen the rough edges of Gnome 3 smoothed out with MGSE, and Cinnamon looks to be my desktop choice when I get Update Pack 4. Even virtualized, it seems to run very well, but I just hope my graphics are up to snuff for a full screen environment. As a fall back, I’m very happy that MATE, LXDE, and KDE will be supported by LMDE. I have a high amount of faith in you and your team and your abilities to pull these transitions off and in your sense of what just works.
(P.S. I’m hoping that a more recent version of Digikam is available with UP4!)
Glaaaaaaaaaaaaad to see your efforts! Congratulations to Clem & The Team!
Looking forward to the LMDE Update Pack 4 ISO respin.
Can hardly wait, I want to drop Ubuntu so bad!
What’s the window for the release of the new LMDE ISOs? Will it be after Mint 13 comes out?
Edit by Clem: No, we’re working on it right now, it will happen before.
64Bit + Gnome_2 please,And please Update Intel GL_40 Driver..Thanks
Gnome3, please!
I don’t understand why share forces. Why don’t join to do better?
Ubuntu started attacks against Gnome, and some distros are going on the same way…
I use linux mint on my note and netbook. But LMDE with MATE… I don’t know…
Can’t wait for the update. Cinnamon is the best.
Just curious, but what will be the default desktop on the LMDE re-spin…would it be Cinnamon?
A big THANK YOU to Clem and the LM dev team for keeping LMDE up to date. I’m eager to see the Minty refinements.
BTW I’ve been very happy with the existing LMDE-X 201109 – it has been a stable xfce 4.8 desktop for me. Curious about MATE, but IMO xfce is (slowly) evolving to be a user friendly, easily customizable classic DE beyond GNOME2.
Thanks for all the work and understanding. Linux Mint forever!
I’m all ready on the lmde incoming repos(playing around with up4& cinnamon) and yes congrats are in order, just about every thing is working smoothly now. I for one was rly upset over the gnome 3 ‘wheal reinvention approach’ and for a short while adopted xfce and after giving cinnamon a chance to prove itself i must say i’m rly happy to see that cinnamon has matured so fast&well and is now a viable/comfortably DE for me to use.
As far as i’m concerned it would be a real blessing if lmde(with DEs Cinnamon and MATE) becomes the flagship OS for the mint team.
Sorry Clem, but… are You going to release new LMDE isos with separated DEs (1 ISO for 1 DE) or You will bring ONE iso with all the DEs in it?
I prefer 1 iso with cinnamon or gnome 3.
or, if you’re going to release one iso only, is that possible to “make possible” choose the DEs to be installed? I guess, like me, many peorple will not apretiate to have an large SO with extra DEs that they will not use.
sorry about my english.
I have a question to ask Clem. Will we be able to choose Gnome 3 (shell) at login or will MATE and Cinnamon be the only choices? At this point, I am strongly being pulled towards KDE! It kinda sucks though because KDE 4.8 sucks on 2 gigs of ram!
Let me just say that I understand that things are changing. Like Gnome 3 and the upcoming KDE 5. Clem, you have done above and beyond of what anyone would have expected! Keep up the good work and thank you!
One iso will be better, since, during installation user will be able to choose(suggested by the installer) the DE depending on whether hardware acceleration is available or not.
Maybe, if Cleim release in that way… But its mandatory, I guess, to have the option to choose the DEs to be installed and not install the hole thing..
“No, we can’t say whether MATE or Cinnamon will be the default yet, and whether they will be on the same medium, but both will be fully supported.”
+1 for MATE
looking forward to LMDE with gnome shell.
great! waiting for the respin iso with up4!
I haven’t found an official statement regarding recommended system requirements for running Cinnamon.
What is the bare minimum (measured in specs or hardware age) when I should expect a comfortable user experience?
To the users of GeForce FX cards who want to use cinnamon: it should just work, probably with a little artifacts. However you need to install libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental to get nouveau 3D acceleration as Debian still considers it experimental (but maybe it’ll be installed by default).
Don’t forget the new GDM3 http://iloveubuntu.net/pictures_me/gdm%203.2.png
@bario > bcm 4313
…aspetto la prossima release LMDE, non posso passare le giornate al terminale e dall’altra andare in giro a dire che Linux è per tutti.
google translate |————————————————
@bario > bcm 4313
LMDE appearance the next release, I can not spend all day at the terminal and the other going around saying that Linux is for everyone.
Hi Clem, congratulations on your continued progress with Linux Mint, I too have been waiting for this development, will you announce the availability of the updated iso respins via this blog?
The bit about Gnome Fallback Mode being ‘meant to disappear’ is INCORRECT. The Gnome developer who ported Gnome panel and the applets to Gnome 3 clearly stated that Fallback Mode WILL BE AROUND AS LONG AS GNOME 3. So please stop spreading this disinformation. It is not productive.
Edit by Clem: He did (on his blog). With that said, you can ask the Gnome devs on the IRC and you will see that there is no commitment on this. You made me doubt, so I checked again today (I did so before Mint 12 because it impacted our strategy already) : “it will stay around as long as somebody cares enough about it to keep it alive; but I would expect the interest to diminish quickly […] we don’t really have any means to get more official than that”. It’s my understanding that some devs are continuing to maintain it while others want it gone. Either way, there is no commitment or guarantee that gnome-panel (aka fallback) will stay. If you’re lucky enough, it will, if you’re not you’ll see Gnome released without it.
I’ve given up.. gnome 2 is not coming back so I’m moving everything to LXDE (but it feels like half the menu is missing) I DO have a machine that runs LMDE so I will do the updates and if I don’t like what I see I will switch it to LXDE.. I couldn’t get MATE to work at all when I tried it last but it sounds ideal..
Wishing for the mint menu for LXDE though..
Thanks for working so hard on this Clem.
My ideal descktop [url=http://overpic.net/viewer.php?file=xpvwnu9ua5q9wfl0y1tq.png]
Great work. Waiting ISOs.
Thanks Clem!
We wait for the new ISO.
My personal choice will probably be Gnome3, cause I like the Shell workflow, but Cinnamon is a great work.
Merci de votre travail pour LMDE. J’espère que je peut installer que KDE, je ne suis pas du tout intéressé dans un autre «desktop». Et des grands bisous pour vôtre promesse d’une ISO, on se sent vraiment gâté.
Thanks Clem and the team for this update! I’ll be waiting for the updated .iso and give it a go on my tower (still Mint 10 there :o). If that works out I’ll see how well it does on my laptop 🙂
No offense to anyone but I dare say that considering LMDE’s user base especially that xfce 4.8 with compiz is best option. I have tested them all, and I find cinnamon is slow to respond, and though it is excellent in concept, it still needs work and as of my personal testing crashed when I attempted to do some configuring. As for MATE there was a memory hole, which has been partially plugged and it can be slow to respond as well. while Kde is now much more stable and customizable then it was, it is very resource hungry, good desktop but recommend it for well equipped computers.
xfce is fast, light, stable, and highly customizable, not to mention lmde’s implentation of it is excellent.
Kudos to the LMDE TEAM
I’ve managed to install LMDE on old laptops, including a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600, which I’ve distributed to a few local churches. In all the haste to develop super distros, I think it would be remiss to ignore the fact that Linux keeps older hardware away from landfills! So it is important to have options that enable this principle to continue. The “rolling distro” approach is very helpful when encouraging people away from Windows. I would hope that this would be the future mainstream.
Can I add my grateful thanks to your team for their good and careful work.
Thanks, Clem, for keeping the needs of your users in mind, and providing us with reasonable alternatives to Gnome 2, and also for letting us have the option to remain frozen at Gnome 2 for a little while longer. We’re using LMDE for staff & public desktops in almost all of our 9 public libraries, and I’m glad to have some extra time to decide which desktop to standardize them on. Do please give us a bit of advance warning as to when the Gnome 2 repos are going to go away.
Thanks again for all your hard work! It’s much appreciated!
Looking forward for this release, I was waiting for an LTS release (and for Cinnamon!) to try out Gnome3 for the first time.
Really looking forward to this update pack for LMDE, which I’ve been using for some time now….really appreciate the multiple desktop options, including the rapidly maturing Cinnamon….keep up the excellent work Mint Team 🙂
gr8 job linuxmint team,i have been using both MATE (updated from tridex repositories) and cinnamon 1.4 on lm12 and its just great.Much better than default gnome3.
i should say you have incorporated all the features in cinnamon that were lacking in gnome3 making it very much user friendly and customizable.
will try lmde edition too..
I think Linuxmint 13 should come in 2 editions :
Linuxmint mate edition : for gnome 2 users which would be purely mate.(because i see sometimes nautilus File manager pops up instead of caja when a folder is opened from an application while using mate desktop )
and the default edition with cinnamon as default desktop.
Also see this ubuntu 12 has gnome classic similar to gnome2 :
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/?p=53670
Re Clem’s edit in Msg. 15 (J.B. Horen), where he says “make it work on any chipset”: That surely caught my attention! NVidia GeForce 6100 (chez moi) was something rather nice, but seems close to obsolescent.
While I applaud and understand Clem’s intent, imho it’s a tall order to say “any chipset”. For instance, a neighbor has an old machine with (iirc) an SIS chipset, and has had trouble with it, even in MS Win.
I’ve been looking closely at barebones kits sold by a well-known online dealer (big striped cats), wondering whether I should “eat beans” for a month or more to afford one. Smarter to save up, over some months.
Katya is working very nicely, but it will become outdated before too long, as I see things.
I’ll add my appreciation for what Clem and “crew” are doing, as well as Clem’s periodic candid comments. Very nice going!
Btw, it’s possible that Google Translate for Italian –> English isn’t especially good; I really do hope I’m wrong. Perhaps translating isolated phrases might work better, sometimes?
Edit by Clem: I can’t guarantee we (not just us, there’s a lot of people and projects involved in making this work) will manage to completely pull it off.. but in theory, yes, it would work on any chipset because the rendering would be done entirely by software. Whether that will happen soon, next year or in 5 years, I can’t say.. but there’s really promising progress being made right this moment.
Best regards to all,
[nb]
still thinking of donating this machine to Mint if I get a better one,
hoping that shipping cost wouldn’t be horrendous.
Well… LMDE with KDE. Hum, that certainly makes things interesting. Instead of Gnome Shell or Cinnamon, this might be a very good way to go. It’s modern enough, still logical without too many changes, it’s stable and tested, and it’s had time to mature. I will definitely have to look at this as my most likely upgrade.
I do hope that it UP4 KDE will upgrade nicely from UP3.
This is a good news, but it’s been too long since the last update pack. As a rolling release, there should be a snapshot of the OS more than twice a year. I’d recommend every three or four months.
Edit by Clem: The delay didn’t matter to us. I would have held off LMDE at Update Pack 3 for another year if that’s what was needed. Remember that people can move from Latest to Incoming, Testing or even Unstable… so it’s only “long” for those who prefer to wait.
@NicholasBodley: I also run Katya — on my dual-PIII/1.4GHz/2GB ‘puter (AOpen DX34R-U motherboard), equipped with an *ancient* ATI Rage 128 PF/PRO AGP 4x graphics card. It won’t run Compiz, but Gnome compositing looks great and runs plenty fast for my needs (read: not a gamer).
@Clem: If you’d like, contact me re: pre-release testing.
Mint, the best distro linux.
Clem,
– first thank you for this amazing masterpiece that is lmde (and is only getting better with time)
– second, my question(s) here, you introduce here the gnome2-frozen repos, as i understand it is a frozen UP3 so that users can keep gnome2 as long as they want or decide for options. what is the advantage of the gnome2-frozen repo over simple just not update? in other words, is any kind of maintenance/point updates scheduled (from within the gnome2-frozen) or some specific backports planed? and also is there any EOL planned?
sorry to many questions 😉
Edit by Clem: Hi Zerozero and many thanks for your help on testing UP4 (I love your feedback, it helped me a lot there). Gnome2-frozen is basically a copy of what latest is at the moment (aka Update Pack 3). There’s no advantage, it’s basically the same as not taking updates. There’s no backports or anything planned for it… Basically we’re moving Latest to UP4 but if it makes a few people happy it doesn’t cost us anything to make a backup copy of UP3. There’s no maintenance involved and no backports planned. We put a lot of work in MGSE, in supporting MATE and developing Cinnamon, and we held firm on LMDE until all of this was ready… this, gnome2-frozen, that’s just a little attention which doesn’t cost us any efforts and might make a difference to a few people. Eventually we’ll remove it (to claim back the pool it’s pointing to), but before doing so we’ll make an announcement, and explain how to make a copy of it (by then I doubt anyone will be interested, but again, you never know, some people might, and it doesn’t cost us anything to do it).
Could you please add encryption options (LUKS) & LVM2 to the installer?
that would be very kind as the procedure of adding disk encryption afterwards is kind of… you know… not really user friendly.
Disk encryption can be a dealbreaker when it comes to mobile devices.
I’m really thinking about moving from LMDE to mint13 to get native full disk encryption, isn’t that weird?
I was really worried about the path Gnome decided to take with Gnome Shell (and the same applies to Unity). I believe it was quite arrogant and Gnome/Ubuntu should reconsider fast.
Nonetheless I luckily found Linux Mint providing perfect answers to my worries: (MATE and Cinnamon). Thank you guys. I believe Cinnamon could become the most preferred desktop one day. Piece of really good work. Thumbs up :).
Hi Clem
– Is there the patch of energy save in new LMDE’ kernel?
Faithful Debianite and xfce LMDE user here, pleased to hear about UP4.
I’m definitely in favor of a robust installer, as found in Debian and alternate install Ubuntu. Allowing experienced LMDE users to fully control how their machine installs is something that I missed from LMDE.
As for update packs, my only beef is that I’d rather settle for a “stable” update pack issued every six months that serves more as a snapshot, serving as a nice base to upgrade or reinstall a system along with security and other fixes, but maybe minor updates to media programs like VLC, or Exaile. My money says keeping a few programs current like Firefox and Thunderbird and a few others would also help as well.
Personally, I use a jury rigged mixture of Debian stable backports and various clutter stuffed into my system by Aptitude from unstable to fix hiccups left in the Testing Repos.
With the next LMDE ISOs is the time to give it a new opportunity.
– Debian is difficult to use.
– Ubuntu based distros response time are slower than in Debian (and more and more every version). Also, them are non rolling release distro (if the application packaged version of your distro have problems, you can’t do anything if to compile apps is impossible for you).
I expect that LMDE will be easier as Ubuntu-based version in a next future.
Thanks to the Linux Mint Community and Team. Keep it up, LMDE is the right way!
Will there be a 64-bit version?
Dear talented Mint Team,
I am gald I do not see gnome 3.4.x on the list. If I remember correctly gnome 3.2.x came out a while back and is tested extensively by the team. What I do not see though is the new 3.3 kernel which brings android support. Are you planning to include that kernel in a maintaince release of lmde? Also, will the cinnamon menu re-adopt the amazing mint-menu feature where he user can search for a package straight from the menu? I understand that that is written in gtk2 but I am aware that it is possible to port over to gtk3 as you shown with the mate-desktop. Also, I would like to know if it is possible to be able to move the cinnamon-panel around to different locations such as the top,left, and right. Thank you for this update. Keep up the excellent work and Continue to stay away from unity. Thank You!
Cinnamon looks nice, but it lacks at least one thing I desperatly need before I can use it. I need to be able to make the panel larger so I can read the text! what might look like 12px/pt font on your screen looks like 6 px/pt font on mine…
Does LMDE come with LXDE?
@cshin9, you can install *any* desktop/WM from either LMDE spin.
– if you anticipate trying out Cinnamon or Gnome Shell, start with the GNOME spin.
– otherwise, I would stick with the XFCE spin – probably fewer unneeded services to disable.
R.I.P. Gnome 2 – long live XFCE!
ATI Catalyst DOES NOT WORK well with Muffin/Mutter Cinnamon and Gnome3 composite windows.
The best implementation I proved is Sabayon, and still not as good as Mate or Kde for desktop use.
DO NOT MAKE Cinnamon the default until this is solved please
I am using Mate at Mint12 and Gnome2 at LMDE – I use both – – with almost every desktop enviroment installed at Mint12, Unity, Kde, Xfce, blackbox, openbox, cinnamon, gnome shell, razorqt. And unfortunately Gnome shell and cinnamon – since last month better – still have problems with catalyst.
The only problem I have is switching sound devices in MATE, I change session to a Cinnamon one, switch audio between HDMI and analog output, and go back to MATE.
I’ve gave a try to LMDE just yesterday, and, man, it looks great! I was looking for a distro which is user-friendly as Fedora, well-supported as Ubuntu, solid-based as Debian, rolling as Arch… and the answer was LMDE!
Just a little problem while installing: the procedure required me which disk I was going to use for LMDE, and when I choose /dev/sda it ignored completely the existence of my /dev/sdb, were my /home directory is. I had to mount it post-install, hand-modifying the /etc/fstab file.
Is there a way to make it possible to set mountpoints for every disk and partition within install process (as any other distro I tried do)?
Do you plan to keep on developing Mate until it achieves the full elegance of Gnome 2? I wanna use Mate forever. I hope that in a few weeks time, Mint with Mate becomes as good or better than Mint with Gnome 2 ever was. I hope this is what the Mint team has in mind as well. Kudos to the developers.
(I ask because all the focus and media mileage has been on Cinnamon)
Edit by Clem: Not all of it. Cinnamon impresses because it’s new and because we re-factored the code and that allowed us to make a lot of changes quite fast (we didn’t care about losing Shell functionalities or to rewrite some of them from scratch… in MATE we can’t afford to lose anything). There’s also the fact that Shell is further away from what we want of a desktop than MATE so it requires much more development… MATE, from day one, was almost already there since it started from Gnome 2, and only had stability issues to worry about. With that said, the MATE team’s been extremely active, you can follow what they’re doing on gitub and their IRC channel, they’re always very active.. not to mention the amount of work done by Stefano-k on the packaging. I haven’t been personally involved in the code within the MATE team but we’re fully supporting this project and giving it everything it needs, exposure, hosting, technical help, guidance, MATE is very important to us. As for the media, I’m not sure they’re appreciating the importance of MATE… Unity, Shell and Cinnamon have to prove themselves and gain new audiences, MATE just has to work well to immediately become the de-facto continuation of the #1 most popular Linux desktop.
While I realize that there might not be enough resources for turning it into reality I wouldn’t mind having a spin of LMDE with LXDE as default environment.
Ran the “regular” LMDE as a base with LXDE on top for a couple of months on my netbook and couldn’t quite “get there” with regards to customisation and removal of all the stuff that maybe wasn’t needed for running LXDE. Also – I’d really like to have the “minty” touch that “our” team of devs manage to add to everything they release.
Now I’m running LM12 LXDE on that netbook instead, and while that is working out quite well I feel it is a bit more resource hungry than my previous debian-based install.
Anyway – I’m happy either way, and I’m really looking forward to the release of UP4 for my desktop computer.
Thanks again to the LM team for your work!
Please explain me, where to get an ISO with this edition?
@Clem – as ever, thank you for the ‘open’ update on progress.
In case it’s of interest, as a long time Mint10 (Julia) user whose ‘support’ ends very soon, I have ‘bought some time’ by using Artyom Zorin’s 32bit OS 5.2 that’s still using Gnome2, allowing my preferred customization and suite of added packages, but whose ‘support’ will probably die in October. (Please Note that Zorin 64bit OS 5.2 ‘plugins’ simply don’t work.)
However, thanks to a recent cataract operation restored vision and the discovery that a 500GB WD MyPassport Essentials can run well off a USB2 let alone a USB3 port, I’ll be giving LMDE and Mint12 another trial run, whilst awaiting further developments, further encouraged by other user Replies !
Bruce R, why not try Mint 11 Katya? It is still using Gnome2 and will end life in November. It’s an extra month from Zorin and is Mint.
Clem I got two request for you.
1. Please fix Gnome Zoom in Cinnamon 1.4 like i said when i turn on this option my desktop is a one big mess and even right click disappears just like that. but in Cinnamon 1.3.x was everything great but here is something “wrong”
2. Kernel 3.2 is still a bug Kernel because of slow copy to Ntfs partition and finaly he can even “hang up” your system. This problem was fix in KERNEL 3.3 so think about adding 3.3 as basic Kernel please
@Bamm – Thank you for the suggestion, but I have been using Mint11 on a second rig and it’s not been as slick as Mint10 or Zorin and not as stable, sometimes even locking up. On that rig, 32bit PinguyOS 11.04 or ZorinOS 5.2 on a USB drive has been better behaved, but I’ll now be putting effort into trialling LMDE and Cinnamon on Mint12, courtesy of another My Passport Essentials USB drive.
Great work Clem… If there is one project i would bet on for a great future at the moment, it is cinnamon. Reading through your comments feels wonderful because it affirms the fact that you listen to your user base. It is dificult to make a DE which pleases all, and somehow you guys seem to pull it off famously everytime!!!
P.S. could you point me to more info on the software renderer which will remove 3D graphics dependence? It sounds aweeeesommmeeee…
Edit by Clem: Cinnamon 1.4 is built for Clutter 1.8 (Mint 12), but we’re almost ready to jump to Clutter 1.9… in Mint 13 we’ll have a new renderer called llvmpipe. I can’t say how stable and snappy (or slow and buggy) this will be, but the next release of Cinnamon will include two sessions, one launched with GPU acceleration and one launched with software rendering. After that, we’ll do some testing and gather user feedback… we’ll probably see people for whom it still doesn’t work well, but 2 options are better than 1 🙂
*bows*
Clem, this sounds super awesome… In many many ways, 13 is going to be a landmark release!!!!!
I hope LMDE will switch to debian unstable by the time next freeze on testing is enforced…
@ThorneO.
I am in the same position as you with a 8 year old computer. I tried the cinnamon and gnome 3 desktops but my nvidia GeForce 5500 simply can’t handle it. So I am trying xfce and I’m gonna see how MATE goes.
Let me know which desktop you decide to use.
I have been using Gnome3 in LinuxMint12 and I am getting used to it.
Initially you feel a bit awkward, starting at the top left corner instead of the bottom left corner, but it definitely grows on you.
One thing that I do miss is the ability to put programs into the panel.
I am looking forward to the number 4 upgrade and will initially try and persist with Gnome 3. (Nvidia cards willing!)
Thanks to all of the hard working team.
martin
About security: I was running LMDE for a while until I noticed that
there are no security updates for firefox and thunderbird – or at least there haven’t been for a while.
As I navigate the internet from behind a firewall, webbrowser and mail client are the main attack vectors to my machine and I take the security of internet access software seriously.
I figured out that there is iceweasel, etc. from Debian which is maintained, but in the end I dropped LMDE because I was not sure if firefox and thunderbird are the only unmaintained security critical packages in the LMDE system.
Maybe you could think about a security policy for LMDE to keep the packages up2date? For example dropping firefox and thunderbird and switching to iceweasel & Co … maybe with a “firefox/thunderbird” symbolic link if this does not cause legal problems. This way the effort for maintaining the packages should be manageable.
Edit by Clem: We’ve automated the build process for both TH and FF and v11.0 is in Romeo, waiting to hit Latest in the days to come.
Am I correct in thinking that we are soon going to get a Debian based KDE from linux Mint?….If Yes…THANKS VERY MUCH
Can’t wait to try out Cinnamon, I’ve purposely been withholding myself from trying it on the Ubuntu variants because I want to see how resource-intensive it is on Debian.
Clem, you continue to do fantastic work that is truly appreciated by the entire Linux community, not just Mintheads. Keep it up man.
Sounds good. May turn out to be exactly what I’ve been looking for for years…
@Clem : developing a shell, a window manager, many apps, maintaining several distros including a rolling-release one (based on existing ones of course), etc. need manpower.
-> Considering the number of donations / sponsors, will you consider “a bigger picture”, like starting a company, or better, foundation / charity that would hire several keys developers or allocate some grants or bounties, in a complete transparency / democratic way ?
Devs need to feed their families and most of the work is done by devs that work in big corporations that have their own specific agenda…
In comment 87. I forgot essential stuff, like backporting important fixes, ensuring there is no important regression etc… All this needs, maybe not an army, but quite a few fulltime persons. (and, in spite of what many people say, it *is* a major issue in rolling release distros — but not only –, well, at least if you want Mint to be a distro for everyone).
This is why Ubuntu is still popular, despite some controversial choices. (one of the reasons, at least)
Or well, you can continue to rely on Ubuntu. But then, users should be aware, that Mint is good because Ubuntu is good which is good because Debian is good 🙂
Hi Clem!
First of all I would like to thank you and your partners the hard job you are doing with Linux Mint. I started with Julia and now I am a LMDE user.
Please, I would appreciate if you could give an approximate date of the release of the UP4 and the release of the new ISO of LMDE, because I’m planning on making a clean installation.
Thank you very much!
Thanks for the reply Clem! Are there plans for Mate to work beautifully and elegantly with Precise the same way Gnome 2 with those little Mint enhancements worked wonderfully in Katya?
I am hoping for: (Precise base + Mate + Usual Minty Enhancements) that works as good as or even better than Katya, Julia, or Isadora.
I’m actually fine with Katya, but I’m worried about its end of life this year. I want something that looks and works like Katya but with a much longer update support.
I’m also worried because Lisa with Mate doesn’t work well for me, and I’m back to Katya with Gnome 2. I’m crossing my fingers that Mint 13 with Mate will be much better, and will actually exceed Katya in beauty and elegance.
I didn’t mind Unity too much, but it didn’t work well on my dual display. I didn’t get on with Gnome 3 (probably will when it’s been refined a bit more). Cinnamon is working well for me, again needs a little more refinement though. Then I tried the preview of Windows 8 (just to see what it was like). I found that the changes we are facing with the deprecation of Gnome 2 are all good compared to what Windows users have coming!!
Good work Clem and the team, keep it up!
Linux Mint post:
Any LMDE will ONLY make sense if you copy fonts and fonts configuration from Ubuntu. It will require some effort to maintain, but its worth it. Otherwise we all can just go for Fedora and Infinality patches. There’s no point to stick to eyesight-killing fonts and unstable distro.
As for the Ubuntu based distribution, since there’s no Unity in Linux Mint, there’s no point at all in keeping the spyware called Zeitgeist. It can be completely removed. It will require some effort to repackage Nautilus/Brasero and Rhythmbox to deattach it from libzeitgeist, but it is worthy.
As for omitting Xfce on purpose by Linux Mint devs, I really don’t understand it. You can make Xfce to look very similar to Gnome 2. It requires very little effort. One allplet only needs reconfiguration: drop down menu called “Places”- it needs to open Home/Music/Donwloads/… folders in Nautilus instead of Thunar (with option “natilus –no-desktop” so the Nautilus wan’t take charge of desktop). Its very simple. The removal of Zeitgeist and libzeitgeist stands. We don’t need spyware in Linux.
Despite the great effort from Clem in developing Cinnamon, I believe that Xfce (with the changes to look like Gnome 2 plus fonts and their setup from Ubuntu) should be the default Desktop Environment for LMDE. This way its the best of the best without any stability, 3D acceleration and speed worry.
Let me know what you think.
Some Screenshots of that configuration:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/803/14217452.png/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/35/77862392.png/
Picture for default wallpaper for all alpha and beta distributions (you have my blessing to use it):
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/36/17109071.jpg/
Edit by Clem: Omitting Xfce?? Xfce is what I’ve been working on all week, its LMDE edition is 95% ready.. in fact the only remaining issue in the ISO are the fact that it points to Romeo (a couple of days left to switch UP4 to latest) and that print to pdf doesn’t work as expected… I know how good Xfce is and if I forgot to mention it somewhere, it certainly wasn’t intentional.
As many have said, it bears repeating: Thank. you. Mint team 🙂
Its getting really scary these days with the more popular distros courting big money and its wonderful to see the work & focus being done by everyone at Mint for the people. You guys along with the fine folk at Trisquel (IMHO) are really respecting & listening to the userbase and that is a very, very wonderful thing.
Currently i’m still a LM9 user and the prospect of a stable LMDE with MATE goodness is very appealing to me since I (and my hardware) really don’t want (nor can afford) anything else than a Gnome 2 desktop and so i’m looking forward very much to this update! Kudos again to everyone…thanks for fighting the good fight.
Since I came gnome3 had been looking for a distro that will use Gnome2 and found Mint. It’s really a great distro.
Greetings.
Looking towards mint 13. You should see more migration from Ubuntu. The basic i386 version of Ubuntu (i.e., with Unity) appears (at least as of Beta 1) to be going with a PAE kernel. That will leave folks with older systems, e.g., pentium M’s, etc. a choice of xubuntu, lubuntu, or Mint. Mint will certainly look even more attractive at that point.
I was afraid to stop using Gnome 2 because I really like it. I use it with LMDE in my desktop. But as my laptop is really old, I installed like 1 month ago LMDE + XFCE… I thought that it would be a nightmare because I couldn’t use Gedit, Dropbox, GnomeDo and other Gnome programs… but what a good surprise to see that all of them are available in XFCE (Gedit is already installed).
Definitely I’ll install LMDE+XFCE in my desktop once UP4 is launched.
Clem, thank you again for the most amazing Linux Distribution.
Clem and the team!
Every day, since Mint 3, I am glad I tried and start using Linux Mint. I am not an expert on any level so I can only, occasionally, make a donation and just enjoy using MINT. The main thing for me is that I was never disappointed with Linux Mint and I came to learn that with every new version Mint comes out better and better. I can not thank you enough and I am looking forward to Linux Mint 13 – my lucky number.
Cheers!
What I’d like to see is to be given a choice during the install of which desktop to use. Debian’s installer does this, though you have to make the choice at boot time. I guess the question is will the new LMDE ISO’s be for a “live” cd or just an installer? Please consider making a universal installer ISO that can set up any of the desktop choices in 32 or 64 bits (OK that will probably have to be a DVD with a net connection), and a live CD in the least common denominator to show off the distro.
Forgot to mention: I’ve currently installed LM 12 KDE on a machine at work with Cairo-Dock and love the Macish desktop. Only bug I can’t seem to squash is the “no touchpad found” popup every time I log in. WTF did THAT come from?
GNOME 3.4 has just been released. Any chance of including that (or will that break Cinnamon?)
I have a few comments and questions..
I find that Compiz + Gnome Do enhances the usability of LMDE a LOT! There’s just so many configuration options. Incompatibilities with Gnome 3 are making me think about other options and I’d rather not have to use fallback mode or XFCE for that matter.
– Is Compiz or being slowly phased out for some reason?
– In the next update pack, will users only able to select one desktop environment and have to stick with it or can we select from a list when we boot / log in?
– Linux Mint spin of Android?
Thanks and congrats on the huge surge of users in recent months.
Edit by Clem: As far as I know Compiz is working with MATE.. but… since it’s no longer compatible with GNOME and since Canonical hired its devs, expect it to either disappear in the future or adapt itself to Unity. In Cinnamon, acceleration and compositing are present as well as plugins such as Scale, Expo and window animations (fade and zoom)… there’s no question it’s missing a lot of functionality Compiz had, but it reintroduces some of them using a different technology. The community also might come up with a cube one day.. who knows.. they already coded a Cover flow alt tab extension. About your other questions, an Android port? No. Will you be able to choose your desktop at the login screen? Yes, definitely.
Since Gnome 2 conflicts with Gnome 3 why don’t you leave out Gnome 3 completely? It’s not rocket science!
Edit by Clem: It’s not really an option.. it wasn’t designed to be modular, a lot of other apps/libs rely on it and expect it to be there. To do this properly we would need to split completely away from Debian and Ubuntu and to build our own base… to tell our users they can’t run Gnome 3 (which also means they can’t run Cinnamon), their versions of Brasero, gedit.. probably everything they use is stuck to an older version… well basically we’d get to something that isn’t more recent than Mint 11 and is no longer compatible with Ubuntu/Debian/Gnome3… alternatively we can just use MATE..
Thanks for being so responsive toward your users. It seems like Ubuntu and the Gnome project are too busy meditating on their navels to bother with the preferences of Joe User.
thank you for your efforts
I also agree with you … However, since the gnome 3 has become the default, I finally migrated kde
I also think the developement of Mate is very supported by users of Mint. because sometimes that simplicity and charm of Gnome 2 and much larger than anything Gnome 3 provides users with the Gnome desktop.
Thanks for working so hard on this guys, we all really appreciate you letting us have linux the way we want it.
Thanks for LM guys, absolutely excellent job with this distro! I can’t wait to install UP4 on my S205 netbook. I hope it will support AMD APUs as I’d like to have full graphic acceleration. Cheers!
I agree with dalcde #93
I think it would be better to include GNOME 3.4 (just released) in LMDE, maybe building Cinnamon on it. OK, we have to wait a little bit more to have the updates, but it would be a great idea i think 😉
@dalcde #93, and @Manuel Ray #96 — I think you’re mental! This update pack has been in testing and development for weeks (months!), and at the eleventh hour you suggest a major update to the core component? This update pack is a huge one, with the shift away from Gnome 2. Surely it’s best that Clem and the team get this out (since it’s basically ready, and they’re already in the release phase), let it bed in, and future update packs for LMDE will not be such a large undertaking. No doubt Clem will then turn much of his attention to other Mint versions for a while, and that’s important to other people too, I’m sure (I’m LMDE all the way, but that’s just me!). I appreciate you’re obviously not developers, but this is a totally crazy idea 🙂
@Simon #97
Yes, you’re right! I’m not using LMDE with GNOME right now, but I’m using Mint 12 with LXDE, waiting for the updated iso of LMDE XFCE to go with it 😉 You’re right about the major upgrade, but, since I see the greatest part of the LMDE users still prefer GNOME 2, I think it won’t be such a problem if they delay the release to include GNOME 3.4 😛
But that would be totally indifferent to me, since I don’t use it (right now) (but I’m so curious to try out GNOME 3.4).
I hope LMDE will get more and more attention, because I believe it’s the best debian-(directly)-based distro: nice, user-friendly, functional 😉
Keep on Mint team!
if i install the newest available snapshot iso of lmde now, do i have to change anything in my sources.list to get this update when it appears? ta
Edit by Clem: Yes, a couple of things. We’ll explain this in the announcement for UP4.
Great, wonderful, wonderful job!
I’m more of Gnome2. So deeply appreciate the effort with MATE.
It is still early, but Cinnamon can be very large
Thanks mainly to consider the feedback from users.
Thanks!
Hei Clem, now its time announce the release date, I guess…
When the new LMDE will be released?
Im waiting for it so I can say GOODBYE (forever) to my win partition..
Edit by Clem: Sorry, we don’t do release dates. It comes out when it’s ready, not when it’s planned to be ready.
On behalf of all the silent types – a Big Thank you to Clem and his team
He is Busy doing things most of us appreciate.
LMDE is a real game-changer and having the ability to choose
between the lightweight XFCE and a reborn KDE will make this release
an extremely _popular_ download.
I do hope Clem and his team finds financial prosperity from all this
excellent effort – they deserve it.
LMDE puts wheels on the linux distro upgrade process,
Clem, is it possible mirroring ‘gnome2-frozen’?
Edit by Clem: Yes, via rsync, refer to linuxmint.com/mirrors.php for instructions
@Clem #118 rsync mirror ‘latest’ without problem but end with error when trying ‘gnome2-frozen’
we need iso with up4!!! 😀
thank you very much for trying to save gnome 2. keep up the good work.
Thanks Clem and to your team, great work.
A question, could you speed up a little bit the KDE update on LMDE.That would be great.
Thanks again,
Michael O.
Can we download that new LMDE release?
Please update the installation to include support for full disk encryption as well please.
If Mint is released with Mate, is it necessary to have Gnome 3? Or can the apps latest versions just be backported into Mate?
Edit by Clem: For most of them, no, you don’t need GNOME.
So finally the wait is over for the most important update to LMDE. I,m an LMDE fan and user since it’s release and will stick to it as it is simply the best. Thanks for taking LMDE to greater heights. The efforts of Team Linux Mint under Clem is really commendable. What the existing LMDE users need to do in order to get this update pack without re-installing LMDE again?
Cinnamon will be the new Desktop Standard.
MATE is based in old tecnology. It’s still usable, but it’s old and sooner or later will disappear.
There’s no reason not used Cinnamon. It has (or will have) the same functionlity as Gnome2, and is built around newer technologies.
I have not tried Mate for a while, looking forward to it.
I remember Cinnamon, it and when it matures to the basic usability of Gnome 2 I will give it a spin too, but the last time I tried it I was not at all happy… too much double handed, multiple key stroke effort to call it truly flexible and friendly.
Thanks Clem!!!!
nomadewolf….MATE is not a stop-gap measure. The team that has forked is planning on improving it and even porting it to Gtk3. It is now a separate desktop, like Xfce, LXDE, GNOME and KDE. Clem has indicated it will be a fully supported option in the future.
I began using Linux Mint with version 9. I’m still using it.
I’ve read, I believe, all of the updates one finds when Logging on to Linux Mint.
Can any of the older users who have updated help me to understand why
many, I say many, updates, versions, changes in names, the use of
abbreviations vs. explaining what the abbreviation for version names means?
I am very confused.
It looks like Linux Mint has simply segued away from being the desirable, easy to use online Op. system it once was.
Confused but sent with respect,
W H Ferguson
Florida
So when shall we expect to see, the update pack 4???
Ok Clem, NOW its time to the release date of LMDE…?
Which kernel will be in this release, and have the power regressions been fixed (in the kernel)?
@BK Singh: if you have lmde pointing at latest, you don’t need to do nothing, this UP(4) will be made available to you through mintupdate; just open it, read the Update Pack Info and that’s it 🙂
I’ve looked, and haven’t found recommended/realistic/practical minimum hardware for LMDE.
Specifically, would like to know requirements for 64-bit, GNOME and XFCE. I’m thinking of trying LMDE, perhaps dual-booted; I’m thinking of the longer term. A rolling release looks very attractive.
Maybe the best bet is to burn a CD (DVD?) and try running live.
Here:
Athlon single core, 2.2 GHz, ~890 MB avail.; total 1 GB. NVidia GeForce 6100 graphics on motherboard, rather minimal, but generally useful. NVidia Northbridge (and Southbridge?), apparently.
Katya’s running fine (at last!), in ordinary situations. Oodles of HD space; no problem there.
=+=+=+=
I just shot some casual video with a little Nikon Coolpix S3100, a lovely, rather-affordable, really-small/thin pocketable. Had a well — colorful? — time offloading GB-size video files. Usual way, which as worked fine for smaller files: Nautilus, copying to where I want them to be, using file tree structure that I want, caused an endless stall. However, a re-try, copying only a single video file at a time, worked nicely. For GB-size files (biggest was 1.8 GB), one really does need to wait a while before a small transfer-progress window appears. Some sort of “setup” (allocating inodes?) has to happen, first, and it can take a while.
I had 2 GB of swap configured; it was not enough! Once RAM and swap were full, thanks oodles to some developer, transfer continued, although slowly; ~3 MB/s, iirc.
I decided to set up a bigger /swap, and also was determined to have its partition aligned properly. I’m using GPT (didn’t mention that, previously), which means many out-dated partitioners just won’t work.
Was essentially the usual story: Use GNU parted to define the partition as start and finish in integral %_ages of total HD space; With a 500 GB HD, that meant 5 GB of swap space; rather large. I also used gparted for its very nice graphic display, and for trying to name the partition (success, iirc). System Monitor still thinks there’s 0 bytes of swap, though, even after a reboot. More homework to do. Will look into a command to tell the kernel, and also /etc/fstab.
My best to all,
[nb] in eastern Mass., USA
who loves a stable OS that works
SOLVED: Re previous message, swap=0 GB: Simple; had done a [swapoff] command before redefining /swap; it was a sticky command (survived rebooting and various kinds of chaos (Dvorak letters for the Alt + SysRq dangerous commands apparently worked fine; “mojibake” for Dvorak is “p.cogx”).)
Thanks to that really-peachy disk Utility (thanks bunches for including it!), I think that must have been where I saw Swap status; did a [Swapon], and Happiness Returned. So neat (^_^). <– That emoticon is a mess to type with dead keys. 🙂
[Mojibake: Japan has at least two mutually-incompatible encodings for kanji (characters that came from China). If text is rendered with the wrong encoding, what you see is mojibake. (= moh jee bah kay, using English phonetics to give approx. Japanese pronunciation)]
my best to all,
[nb]
currently reading _The World's Writing Systems_
edited by Daniels and Bright. Typesetting and
proofreading that book were quite extraordinary.
Please don’t get me wrong but I have big problems with all the things Clem and his team are doing. I still have.
For years Gnome made Gnome 2 and it was a success. So much in fact that distribution developers just could implement it as-is in their distro.
Then Gnome decided it is time to kill Gnome 2 and they showed up with Gnome 3. Something no normal person wants to have.
What is happening for close to a year, or maybe longer, already: distributions have to find other ways to present an interface people do want. I mean look at Clem and his team. They invented Mate, they came with MGSE, now the magic word is Cinnamon. Imagine the time and effort to restore a working interface, just because Gnome killed Gnome.
In the mean time they could have done so much to further improve the distro, kill bugs which are still there, add new items. But no, they chose to redo Gnome’s work.
I wrote this several times before in other Mint blogs and I write it again: distro’s should just stop using Gnome altogether. Why keep inventing the wheel which is called a working interface? There are others for the taking: XFCE, LXDE and KDE. Use these three, they work, they do what they have to do in a way people like, and concentrate on the distro itself, not on fixing the interface.
We can simply say Linux did not progress in the last year at all since all major distro’s were fighting the Gnome 3 battle. And that is a shame, that is something Linux can not afford if it wants to be more and more popular.
I have said.
Edit by Clem: A lot of fair points. Still… the one area we identified as needing improvement urgently was the desktop itself, so that’s where the work went. About MATE, I’m personally involved in the project, but it doesn’t come from Linux Mint, it’s an independent project founded by a developer called Perberos.
I desagree..
Whats the point working in some de that has no gain for users in usability plus interface plus facility?
Like xfce that has a “great” de but is not capable doing some tweaks that everyone wants like the explorer that has no search that works…
or lxde that has a very tiny de, using low resources, but its not capable of doing something good like what gnome did with gnome2..
of KDE with its beautiful interface but full of craps that nobody use…
I think that when You come with a new idea, or an improved idea about something done by others, and You want to aply your view of uability, visual and facility, so thats nothing wrong with it. in fact its for that people, who wants to inovate or improve something, that Linux is what it is…
like cinamon.. its an fork from something from gnome3 but with the view of usability/visual/praticity from mint devs and it works… sure, its in fact in early process of dev, but it shows the good desktop that everybody likes with a new interface, new usability, etc.
I dont like the ideas of mate. I think that gnome 2 is dead and has to be dead, but i think, too, that gnome 3 asks for forks with better aproach..
im realy excited about cinnamon and waiting for the new LMDE isos so i can try it here and eve if it turns to be a new crap in des, I will enjoy the new concepts and ideas from mint team…
sorry about BAAAAD my english.
Edit by Clem: Take it from a Cinnamon dev., Cinnamon is brilliant, but it doesn’t replace MATE. I work on many projects here and with many computers and I can tell you MATE is badly needed for many of them. If your hardware can handle Cinnamon, if you like it, and if you don’t need the features MATE provides which aren’t there in Cinnamon, then yes, it’s probably a better desktop for you… but it doesn’t mean it’s better for everyone.
..
there are devs and people doind their jobs with existing des… its time to get some new devs, nem people, for doing new des.. bringing new ideas..
@Yro:
“and eve if it turns to be a new crap in des, I will enjoy the new concepts and ideas from mint team…”
What you say is: even when it is crap you will still enjoy it.
Well sorry, but I most certainly will not agree to that. When it’s crap it is crap and I am not going to use it. How can you say something like that?
You just like the Mint team, no matter what they come up? Well I like Mint when it is good, when it is useful, and then I thank the devs. It’s not that I like the devs and hope they come with something good. If not I will still use their product. No way, it doesn’t that way. Not for me.
Gnome 3 is great, I like it !
Those who think the past ist good, can stick to that…
In german there is a say: “Wer nicht mit der Zeit geht, der geht mit der Zeit”.
means like: if you don’t adapt yourself, time will do and you will pass away…
Anyway, if Mint 13 will remind me on ages of XP, I will switch to distros with clear Gnome 3.
have been using mint 12 w cinnamon for several months now and I must say it is a nice environment! crisp clean and modern . similar to gnome 2 so small learning curve but more up to date.
am using 1.4 right now and it just keeps getting better and better.
my only complaint is that firefox keeps crashing. Has anyone else noticed this and I wonder if it is related to something else or is it a firefox problem
Keep up the wonderful work Clem and company!
Hm still no release – waiting for it 🙂
Thank you for the best linux distro. For many years i used ubuntu but…
Please:
-Gnome apps by default, not modify or add new apps (mainly evolution with seamless integration). No Thunderbird and others. User’s decision (that are available in the repositories). Minimal “debian testing” install
-Improve boot with plymouth u other and new GDM3
-Don’t use faenza (everyone uses). Use tango/gnome look like icons
Thanks
im gonna try out lmde again when the new isos are released. hopefully i can make it work for me this time.
now just need to decide xfce or cinnamon?
@Yro i agree.
we need to leave gnome 2 behind. if someone wants lightweight xfce or lxde do just fine.
cinnamon is looking good.
lots of choices.
DeMus, sorry.. that was my bad english..
what I mean is that even it becames crap, Ill enjoy it because of it is a new comcep, a new idea.. sure, if it becomes a crap de, ill not use it, but even then I prefer new craps instead the already done craps like kde and its lots of craps inside it, or the lxde with its lots of leak of functions, or lxde with its leaks of things that everybody ask for a long time and until now nothing was done about i..
You say that its to mint devs work on already existing des, I say no. because of what I tried to explain here…
sorry, again, about my english.
Will the next ISO have an easier installation procedure, one that doesn’t require manual partitioning?
Hello guys. I just come across a very good article about Gnome-4. Please read it.
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20120402
Clem you also please read it a serious matter. Please also read my comments at 116. Ha ha ha it is just for lightening the moment.
Where are LMDE UP4 ISOs?
When I read,
“computers that do useful work are so 20th century – we’ve moved on.”, I started to think something was askew.
IIrc, the French would call a spoof like this an “April fish”
(Poisson d’Avril?).
For people in other cultures, April 1 is our traditional day for fooling people with something that might seem believable at first. We use the term “April fool” in the USA (and probably all the English-speaking world).
Regards,
[nb]
who likes to drink [yerba] maté
but does not do so, often enough
Use mate at the moment, that iĺl find a shell to use. Gnome ist also good, but my pc istn the newest one and.. i use the graphic card on board:D
Clem no google plus share button? its getting pretty popular i use it quite a bit. that would be cool if you could post updates on there also.
Think Mint flubbed it by losing direct contact with their market.
Have done 150 Mint installations, and find Mint 12 confusing, without
any redeeming goodness. This also has the implication of the OS losing
the ability to work with older equipment, one of Mint’s previous strong
points. My feelings are that changes should include strengths of the past incorporated into growth of the future. Could not have inhibited Linux’s growth better had we been attacked directly by MS.
A lot of people don’t want to open the OS, going beyond icons on their desktop. Get it Mint-ites? A lot of people don’t want to backtrack to less functionality….get it? A lot of people don’t want to go through 2 steps or 3, when they did it with one step before…get it?
[quote]Will the next ISO have an easier installation procedure, one that doesn’t require manual partitioning?[/quote]
It’s still debian, so ……
The discussion about de is to old and the answer is so easy. It is linux, anybody has the freedom of choice. If you feel sad about what mint is going on, then feel free to choose another distro with another de
Linux Mint Debian, AptToSid, Semplice Linux, Crunchbang?
All they are a Debian based distro with a rolling release model.
It would spare you a lot of time, if you work together on Debian CUT.
And you only need one server for the (few?) differences from Debian CUT.
[1] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/debian-cut-a-new-rolling-release/
well.. will be added gnome3.2, cinnamon, kernel 3.2.xx, kde 4.8.xx, mate or even thinderbird/firefox 11.xx?
no?
thanks.. ill keep on LMDE…
LMDE is an amazing distro, and I can’t wait for the new update pack. I have used incoming on multiple occasions to get a feel for the update pack and it works like a charm.
I truly feel the next ISO should include the Ubiquity installer (or something like it) and jockey (or something like it). I feel many people are unwilling to try LMDE due to these 2 facts alone. New linux users don’t always want to mess with partitions and graphics drivers. You can call them newbs, but anyone truly willing to break away from the mainstream AND try a Mint Debian distro should be welcomed with open arms – think about it.
Clem – any ideas and/or hope here? I’d love to bring more people to LMDE and I think this would sway a lot of people.
I don’t know if someone above me asked the following questions:
Will I be able to install mate or cinnamon on my LMDE with gnome2?
Can I uninstall completely gnome2 if I install cinnamon?
Do I have to keep gnome2 if I install MATE?
Damn you gnome3 dividing the community !!!!!
I was wondering…
Is there any plans (if thats possible) to get cinnamon a standalone de? Like, to have cinnamon without Gnome3?
Fork all dependencies so we can have cinnamon without Gnome3?
Just curious… otherwise, maybe, Ill keep Gnome3 without cinnamon in it.. 🙁
Since the people using gnome2-frozen probably just wants GNOME 2, wouldn’t it make more sense to only freeze the GNOME 2 part and have the rest being lastest? Or will that raise compatibility issues?
Alternatively, we might be able to have separate repos for DEs, so we have a GNOME-2 repo and GNOME-3 repo.
Thanks clem.
But I’m happy with Linux Mint 11 . 🙂
Ah..It seems that MATE will be an alternative after Gnome 2.
@K Scharf (comment #103)
re “’no touchpad found’ popup every time I log in”:
If memory serves, I removed the “kde-config-touchpad” package (“synaptiks” touchpad configuration tool), not to be confused with the “synaptic” graphical package manager (which was used to do the removal). I don’t have a touchpad and don’t get that msg anymore.
@WH Ferguson (comment #130)
re confused with abbreviations:
This forum thread might help:
“What is the difference between Debian, Fluxbox, XFCE, …”
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=54945&sid=f2f955d4508a5190c844e31f7cdc66bb
We are looking forward to new powerful and stable LMDE XFCE
Xfce 4.10pre1 released
http://www.xfce.org/about/news/?post=1333238400
I dont care about the absolute total bullshit unity and maybe other “new” desktops are, give me MATE with(or) gnome2 functionality and forget about that tablet shits, i dont run a tablet, i dont run a smartphone ffs, i need a functional desktop/workstation to be alternative to microshit…
I finally got Mint 12 with MATE working(something wrong with the other machine I tried it on). To me, it’s what Mint should look like.. Thanks for a great distro..
Any chance we can get a full disk encryption install option this time?
More Debian, less Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu. I think Ubuntu, and the efforts to make Gnome 3 usable are holding you back. Less desktop environments, focus on 1 or 2 desktop environments, XFCE and/or LXDE, they’re sane.
Edit by Clem: I disagree. Today we got both MATE and Cinnamon on a single live DVD, MATE is fully working with Compiz and Cinnamon works even within Virtualbox. We’ve got another ISO as well featuring XFCE. All three environments are fully integrated and they will all pass QA before release. That’s a major achievement and at this stage it doesn’t matter if it took resources or not, I’m proud of what we have and I’m finally happy to present it to a user base which has been, for the most part, running Gnome 2. To do what other distributions did and be contented that users could find alternatives themselves where none were satisfactory, that wouldn’t have been acceptable. It’s good enough, probably, for a package base, but not for a desktop distribution. Even if it had failed, we would have had to try, as today, this is the most important regression most Linux users face and telling them to run a desktop like XFCE/LXDE which wasn’t their favorite desktop to start with was never an option. This is the essence of open-source, that’s the reason free software is so important.. if something is good you can improve it, if there’s a regression you can fix it… for years Gnome has been the most popular desktop around, so if the Gnome developers stop developing it we don’t start looking elsewhere, we start thinking of who is going to replace them.
Why is MATE written in all caps? If it’s not an abbreviation, the it shoud just be “Mate”.
Edit by Clem: Same with Gnome/GNOME… I have no idea tbh. They both relate to some obscure acronym nobody cares about so I guess we should ignore the acronym and simply lose the caps… I don’t really know. I’ll ask Perberos the next time we chat 🙂
@Bamm – Interesting point. You may want to notify the site maintainers for it (http://mate-desktop.org/) as well as their GitHub branch (https://github.com/mate-desktop), since all of the developers on the project seem to have made the same mistake every time they referenced it. I’m sure they’d love to know.
Hi LMDE Team,
I am frustated with this UP4. It’s necessary, but many users like me have a hard that don’t support 3D effects. So, what happens? The unacceptable Gnome Fallback Mode. There was many time LMDE that LMDE was my main and productive distro, but now I will need delete the entire LMDE, against my will, and back to Unity 2D, at lesat Canonical thought for us, offering 2D experience. This is resposibility and liberty for linuxers, in fact. I hope some day a 2D interface to Cinnamon or Mate will made.
Thank you, for your hard work on LMDE. I use it with Xfce beside Debian (with backports) with KDE, to test, what fits better for me. What i realy miss by Cinnemod und Gnome Shell is the ability to edit the application menu with a GTK3 based GUI. Such a GUI i miss by Xfce also. That would be nice to find it one time in LMDE. I hope also Compiz will still continue working with other desktops in the future.
One suggestion, why not use GnoMenu for the Mintmenu. It would work on different desktops and reduce so the work, give LinuxMint a unified look.
@Nicholas Bodley (comment #135)
re LMDE Hardware Requirements:
With a 13+ year old Compaq Deskpro EN (700 MHz PIII cpu, 512 meg ram–502 meg reported total), I have an LMDE-latest/Gnome install and an LMDE-Debian-stable/Gnome install. Both work fine and are only occasionally slow. I can have several applications running with multiple files/tabs for each, and they work great! That might be surprising, but hey, this is Linux…and Debian…and, of course, Linux Mint.
I would think the specs on your computer would be quite sufficient for LMDE. Your idea of dual-booting for LMDE sounds good, especially since you say your Katya system is finally running the way you want. You might not want to switch over until you get the LMDE system running the way you want.
I’m not sure I’d want to put LMDE on a system with lower specs than the Deskpro (although it might indeed work); those are probably minimum requirements. For intense graphical applications or frequent compiling, I’m guessing a more modern system would be needed.
IMHO, the following are reasonable, *practical* minimum hardware requirements for LMDE:
– 1 GHz CPU
– 1 GB RAM
– 5 GB HD space
YMMV
@Jesse5567 (ref: #161)
Linux Mint 11 (Gnome) FLIES on my Asus EeePC 1005PEB (1.66GHz Atom N450 w/2GB RAM); ditto on my hand-built desktop workstation (2×1.4GHz PIII w/2GB RAM); ditto for LMDE-201109 as a guest OS in VMware Player on my desktop workstation.
I’ve had the dual-PIII workstation since 2000, with no plans to upgrade any of its hardware (in the past 11 years I’ve only had to replace one of the CPU fans).
@dalcde
It would be very hard to use GTK 3 apps in Gnome 2. There would be tons of missing libraries and it wouldn’t work, so no I don’t think (although I might be wrong) that that would work.
@Yro
I guess it is possible, but what is the difference? Having gnome-shell installed is not a problem – you don’t have to use it. There isn’t a lot of cinnamon that is independent from gnome 3. I’d like everything to be forked to, but then it would take a lot longer to migrate to a new release (like gnome 3.4)
Just to add my experience to the system requirements discussion – I have an old Gateway desktop with ~490 MB of RAM, a 2.7 GHz P4 HT processor, and integrated graphics, and I can run LMDE XFCE on it very quickly, gnome 2 is fast too, but I haven’t been able to get kernel 3.0 to work (and I don’t want to install LMDE right now because I’m waiting for the ISO respins), so I haven’t been able to try gnome 3 on it.
Bamm Said, on April 4th, 2012 at 4:05 am
Why is MATE written in all caps? If it’s not an abbreviation, the it shou[l]d just be “Mate”.
Agreed. There seems to be a tendency, that I understand only poorly, to type words with all caps — sometimes. In this case. people who type it that way probably don’t know of the quite-popular South American tea called yerba maté, or (afaik) just “maté”. It’s pronounced “mah-tay”; not sure about the stress accent. Try Paraguay, for instance. Mate, the D.E., was named for this, and the accent was omitted, at least in English. (It’s /not/ pronounced “mayt”! — That’s a matter of the Great Vowel Shift, definitely something worth knowing about, but I’m getting too far off-topic.)
##–>> Likely explanation: GNOME is a true acronym*, and somebody probably thought that Mate is, also. It might be too late to correct the misunderstanding. Furthermore, because small capitals are still not easy to create in all text-entry areas (such as this!), all-caps words in a body of text stand out too much, so it seems that initial caps (“Gnome”), especially in known context, ought to be OK.
*For me, if you can’t say it, it’s not an acronym. There seems to be no good term, however, for “letter-clusters” that you can’t pronounce; “initialism” seems too formal/pedantic.
From Wikipedia:
“Name
Initially, “GNOME” was an acronym of GNU Network Object Model Environment, referring to the original intention of creating a distributed object framework similar to Microsoft’s OLE;[5] it was dropped, because this no longer reflects the core vision of the GNOME project.”
One does wonder what GNOME’s core vision is, lately. (^_^)
When I type in an international blog such as this, I try to be aware of words and expressions that might not be understood by speakers of other languages. Nevertheless, I typically use my full English vocabulary and [?] rhetoric (in the 19th-century sense).
ESOL: English for (native-)Speakers of Other Languages
HTH, and corrections always welcome.
Regards,
[nb]
Word play:
Orthomaribo
Metamaribo
Paramaribo — Benzene ring …
I was fascinated and heartened* by the two recent messages from Jesse5567 (#161) and Jonathan B. Horen (#162). Many thanks to both of you! There really is hope!
*ESOL: encouraged
Some years ago, I bought a used Compaq Deskpro (named it “Desqpro”) with a 233-MHz Pentium, iirc a P II. Was a remarkable machine.
I decided to install a good amount of RAM — 128 MB. It served me well. Would be very interesting to do some more research and find a distro. that could keep it busy, but would still work OK. Puppy Linux seems to be well known, for one.
Regarding LMDE: I value stability a lot. Those detailed replies are truly welcome.
(Backup:)
(I might even install [backintime] — any opinions? It’s not Mintified, if I understand the orange ball.) (Still am not completely sure what that o.b. signifies; little legends that define icons can be quite helpful.) Moreover, present KDE is out of the question, which leaves GNOME as the choice of frontend. But, that must be GNOME 2.32 (or whatever its last minor version was). That means limited lifetime.
Mint’s own Backup (from Ubuntu) seems good, but reverting after a Major Mess, backintime style, doesn’t seem necessarily easy.
Fwiw, instead of RAID, I bought an “enterprise-grade” 1 TB SATA HD and put it into a nice Rosewill fan-cooled external enclosure. It should outlast me, but fan might not. (I’m 76, alive, and kick sometimes).
Back to LMDE, though, LMDE-Debian-Stable/GNOME looks like what I want.
Being LM, I’d expect bunches of codecs, etc, because I like to watch and listen; hope for more streaming TV online. As well, hope for simple video editing (just shot a 1.8 GB 720p file, a bit over 8 min.)
and full GIMP functions.
The HD I expect to use for a few years is a 500 GB hot-running Seagate Barracuda, so space is no problem. Triple-booting, with a LMDE-Latest/GNOME, as well, seems sensible.
Haven’t used Debian much, but the first time was via floppies on an outdated HP Vectra 386/16N, typical CPU clock speed for the time*, 8 MB of RAM. Deb’s. stability was amazingly good. Fwiw, that machine max’ed. out at 16 MB of RAM, which, new, back then, cost about $5,040. *Forgot what it was!
A while back, maybe 2 years, I was bitterly frustrated, borderline angry, when straight Debian offered no way I could figure out (didn’t want to mess with modelines) to set my monitor beyond 800 x 600. I should have asked Debian how, but gave up too soon. Mon. is the Mother Of All Curb Finds, a DEC-badged Mitsubishi 21-incher, good for 1600 x 1200 (wee text!), and possibly even better. (CRT’s getting dim, alas. CRT rejuvenator?)
More on-topic: Currently, I’m set up to dual-boot with Lisa, but don’t recall for sure which D.E. (will try to follow up on that). It was the recent release that had no way to change monitor resolution; that’s “broken”, and not easy to fix. (No matter; I’m rebuilding, Yet Again, soon.) The [resapplet] seems to have nothing to do with monitor settings — the Help data, a good screenful on a terminal, seems irrelevant. Very perplexing.
[Still haven’t done more than dipped a toe into the regular Mint forums. Am thinking of posting to the Newbie forum to ask where to post my queries. Does that sound reasonable? I feel guilty, posting lots of borderline stuff here. Should start a blog, maybe a Web site. I’m no newbie, though; fwiw, was a midnight hacker (machine only, nothing outside; “white hat”) in 1960.]
I’ll probably burn a CD with LMDE Live in a few minutes.
Best regards, and thanks again,
[nb]
clutter addict — almost a dozen computers here,
including a complete Amiga 1000 system (Sony KV-1311, NTSC), that one
looking for a loving home. Test machines for Mint? All are likely to run on 240 V 50 Hz. Shipping cost — sea freight? $100s likely. There must be no shortage of similar used machines Across The Pond.
Sorry i don’t know where to report this BUT the download mirror for my country(India) is not working , can anyone tell the website to give correct link , Thanks 🙂
Dowloading page http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=94
Indian mirror link http://iso-linuxmint.hnsdc.com/stable/12/linuxmint-12-gnome-dvd-32bit.iso
🙂
to Nicholas Bodley
Did you try KDE with pure Debian? It is lighter than in any other linux distro, elegant, I have not experienced any bugs so far.
to Linux Mint Team:
Is KDE in LMDE as light as in pure Debian? Or is it slower?
Thank you for offering KDE to LMDE users.
Tried here and Ive to say: LM-KDE runs faster than Kubuntu or any other KDE editions ive tried so far, run better and, after some updates, have no bugs at all (in my machine atleast).
But I personaly dont like KDE so I keep with LMDE-Debian2 edition, waiting fot the new ISOs with Cinnamon, Gnome3 and (hopefuly) LXDE too..
Sorry if that was not understanble.. Yes (in my case) LMDE-KDE wuns better than Debian Squeeze with KDE and Debian 6.0.3 KDE Live edition too.
ops.. and sorry about my english and for some mistakes iin my words.. some issues with my crap keyboard.
Cinnamon should not be an environment. Should be as GNOME Tweak Tool but better… to make more usable Gnome.
whats about the driver install helper aka Ubuntus jockey; I think it is one of the most important points for beginners who cannot install their WLAN or graphics driver.
Thanks for LMDE hope it will be improved, long live Mint long live XFce
liviu Says:
April 5th, 2012 at 5:55 am
to Nicholas Bodley
Did you try KDE with pure Debian? It is lighter than in any other linux distro, elegant, I have not experienced any bugs so far.
Thanks, indeed! I’m about to burn a recent LMDE GNOME DVD; will download the KDE version, probably soon, and (assuming it’s a live CD), will burn and try.
I really liked KDE 3, and the transition to KDE 4 seems to have been done a great deal better that the GNOME 2 –> 3 transition.
Also noted Yro’s comments; Thanks!
Don’t feel distressed, though; your meaning (and good intentions) came through nicely.
[Unfortunately, it seems that my machine is too old (but not by much?) to boot from a USB “stick”.]
=+=+=
I’ve been burning 12-cm DVDs (the common size), but I see that most of their capacity is unwritten, for these distros that run around 1 GB or slightly more. Will try to get some 8-cm DVD+R’s (or RW’s); iirc, they can hold 1.5 GB or so.
8-cm CD-R’s are nice for, for instance, Parted Magic (recently updated, more than once, iirc). (P. M. is close to a useful, practical standalone distro(!)) (“Parted” does not mean “separated”; it’s [Part]ition [ed]itor. Typical ‘nix/’ux fun with naming…)
Best regards, and many thanks for the help!
[nb]
Really liked Gwenview and Krusader, although
Nautilus “grows on you”. Nothing in Linux
equivalent to IrfanView, though?
OK, back from visiting a couple of mirrors. First, it seems that “LMDE” doesn’t appear in the filenames of Mint Debian rolling distros.
As well, I don’t see Mint Debian + KDE in mirror listings (although I haven’t searched exhaustively).
I came back here after following a few links, and re-read this blog using Ffx’s Find [KDE] (Match case).
Indeed, I did read Liviu’s message again, more carefully:
“Did you try KDE with pure Debian? It is lighter than in any other linux distro, elegant, I have not experienced any bugs so far.”
That does not mean Mint, unfortunately. Just now, I’m wondering what to do; another Ffx tab is pointed to heanet.ie, which (afaik) should have everything Minty that’s important. Just burned linuxmint-201109-gnome-dvd-64bit.iso from /pub/linuxmint.com/debian, and then I see that Heanet has linuxmint-debian-201012-gnome-dvd-amd64.iso. That’s later, and amd64-specific; seems that this is a better version to try out. Running an Athlon, here.
While scanning a few forum and maybe blog entries, I saw a mention of downloading and installing a whole KDE from a repo., and then deleting GNOME files.
I might try that, but (if it would work), would like to keep the GNOME DE as an alternate choice on bootup.
Oodles of HD space…
Further complication is the forthcoming Update 4. I’m patient…
However, this machine is obsolescent (becoming obsolete or out of date), and I’d want to be reasonably sure I can run KDE.
Guess I’ll download the 201112 version, and rather reluctantly try the latest pure Debian Stable.
I’d love to try a recent build of Update 4! Would try hard to give detailed reports; no printer set up just now, but shouldn’t be hard; have an HP DJ 672C (iirc) that needs new ink. This machine seems to find things that don’t work, although making everything work on this machine doesn’t necessarily help Mint in general; I’m keeping in mind that Mint doesn’t have hundreds of developers (yet) :).
In general, there have been many times when I would love to have a profiler (?) or ICE to let me know where the CPU is spending most of its time. Seems that crash backtraces generate lots of hex memory dumps, and these days, it seems that not many can analyze them.
I’m blessed with serious, Korean-grade broadband, 25 Mb/s symmetrical, and will probably upgrade to 35… for an extra $5/month. Good karma (that must explain it) can be really nice!
It’s great for Bit Torrent seeding new releases.
Ongoing…
Again, thanks for the encouragement, and I’ll try to read more carefully.
[nb]
Woops — wrong year. Duh. Been up too long; need sleep.
201012 comes before 201109. Wee apologies to heanet.ie…
[nb]
who shouldn’t make any drastic changes just now.
Lost interest in Ubuntu with Unity. Using Mint 12 but want to switch to LMDE. Debian or lmde like fedora seems to detect Atheros wifi but not connect (bet theres an update for that).
Gnome2 (the whole thing) was my fav but gnome3 is now working with my hardware and I’m getting used to its (shell?) 1 swipe and 3 click menus. Soon I’ll be able to use Gnome3 without needing the menu at the bottom.
Gnome 3 is fine, once you got used to slide the mouse into the corner, it’s easy.
But:
why does it take so much distance to travel for the mouse pointer and to many clicks to open a specific application ?
this can be improved.
I’m eager to see what Mint 13 will bring, when will there be a pre-release (Alpha or Beta)?
I think that for the Linux community it is better to stay at a 2D Desktop environment, all other ways will fail and the people will leave. It is a fact that the 3D driver support is still a problem and it will be a problem in the future. The 3D should be optional for some people who are more advanced users. Further on i hope that the new Desktop environments are fit good enough with the gnome applications and applets, then there are many good gnome applets.
The only thing i want to say is that i really really miss Gnome 2!!! i tryied to pass to Gnome 3 but i really don’t like it and there are many problems on it. I kept it for 2 months, after i was so tired of it that i installed again Mint 11, that in my opinion is the best Linux distribution of ever.
^^^why didn’t you just use mint 12 w/gnome 2.x^^^
my gfx card doesnt really like gnome 3.x so I switched to gnome classic with linux mint 12, and everything seems to be working well.
Reply to Nicholas Bodley, #187 above:
Nicholas:
You said: Nautilus “grows on you”.
I can’t agree more. It is my main ‘app’. I spend 90% of my time using it — for web dev, script dev, etc.
You also said: Nothing in Linux equivalent to IrfanView, though?
That’s why I developed ‘feNautilusScripts’, available at
http://www.freedomenv.com.
Cheers, B
#Geb: True, Gnome 3 is fine for many… but it still lacks many functions:
1. drag and drop files to the panel for quick access.
2. quick add apps to panel
3. one handed (mouse only functions)
In my working environment environment I refer to lots of paper documents and keep many windows and workspaces at the same time… something that windows can not handle and got me entrenched in Ubuntu. I still actively use Ubuntu 10.04 (Gnome 2) for those basic features… Maybe Gnome 3 will mature to usability for me, but is sure does not look like that in in the future plans. Maybe Mate will have those features, but I will wait and see.
Hi guys, has anyone from Britain/France/Germany or anywhere else in Europe managed to download update pack 4 yet?
The Mate website http://mate-desktop.org/ last update was Jan 18. I installed mint-meta-mate on a fresh install of Mint 12, and the version it installed was 20111202. However your announcement mentions Mate 1.2 which I can’t find. How do I see the latest updates in Mate?
Edit by Clem: The version of MATE in Mint 12 is 1.0.. versioning was standardized in MATE after Mint 12.