Linux Mint 14 OEM released!

The following OEM installation images are now available:

Reminder: OEM images are for computer vendors and manufacturers. They allow Linux Mint to be “pre-installed” on a machine which is then used by another person than the one who performed the installation. After an OEM installation, the computer is set in such a way that the next reboot features a small setup screen where the new user/customer has the ability to choose his/her username, password, keyboard layout and locale.

53 comments

  1. I wish more manufacturers offered Linux Mint as a choice. My Dell Vostro 14 inch laptop came with Ubuntu, but I immediately installed Linux Mint instead. Dell would probably sell more Linux systems if the made Linux Mint an available option.

  2. I’m glad to see Mint available in OEM ISOs, especially with Christmas coming up. It will give Mint fans another way to share the joy that is Mint, even if it isn’t my preferred KDE varient.

    An OEM of LMDE would be nice, but for installing on a computer for someone else it may be better to give them plain Mint since the Debian version isn’t generally recommended for newer Linux users.

  3. I am new to Linux after years of micro-soft & apple os Linux is a wonderful change. While I have NO software /developer background I look forward to the learning curve. Recently I moved from a mac book to an Asus Q500 just to have a linux machine. Immediately I dumped windows 8 which is as useless as it is ugly.

    Another thing that amazed me was how easy it was to export my ipod { mac format} to banshee, very cool. Love Linux I am looking forward to learning all I can..

  4. “Edit by Clem: That’s not a good reason to switch to Mint.”

    Why not?

    Edit by Clem: I’m not interested in getting into that controversy so I’ll be very brief here. First, although I don’t personally like the implementation of Amazon in Ubuntu, I don’t agree with RMS on the issue and I don’t think it’s fair to spread FUD on a project like Ubuntu with words like “spyware” which imply the project actively aims to collect and reuse personal data on its users behalf. Second, I’m very proud of what I do and I do it with passion. Everybody is like that not only here in my team, but also out there at Canonical. There are many reasons to choose one over the other or over the hundreds of other distributions out there. With such a vibrant community and pool of developers, I would assume people have a lot of choice and can decide on what they like because of positive reasons, not as a plan B in response to some controversial negativity hype.

  5. Canonical’s spyware is not a good reason to switch to Mint? So, are you saying that Mint spies on its users too?

    Edit by Clem: Just in case that question was genuine and not rhetorical: No.

  6. Glad I dropped in for this. Before, I was filling in the basic information with a generic easy to remember password that I had the buyer change after taking ownership of the computer.

  7. @Nestar and Stuart

    Oh for crying out loud!

    I can’t believe Clem dignified your questions with a response.

    Who cares about that incredibly one sided link. Pure controversy. Not a thing worth a nickel there. If you agree with the article, fine. Shun Ubuntu and all of it’s derivatives.

    But whatever you do, don’t waste Clem’s time. He gave you a perfectly good answer, which is way more than I would have done–it’s over.

    Next question please, and make it pertinent to the improvements of Mint this time.

  8. fwiw, and not wishing to start an argument, but the FSF’s concerns about Ubuntu are part of the reason I switched to Mint, tbh. Ubuntu’s direction is increasingly guided by corporate interests, and I consider that to be a move in the wrong direction. RMS is being his usual bombastic self, of course, and the invocation of the heavily loaded term “spyware” is perhaps not terribly helpful, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a genuine point in there somewhere.

    Mint won’t want to position itself with reference to this, of course, and nor should it – it becomes Clem and the Mint team maintain a respectful distance on these kinds of issues. With that said, however, the community-driven focus than I and so many other Minters find so appealing is really just the flip-side of this coin.

  9. Hi,

    I install Mint for other people too, and like ShogunV, i usually use an easy to remember password that they can change later. So this version would really be helpful. I’m no expert, and the people i do this for are casual users (most are windows users), so sometimes, they have some difficulty.

    Anyway, I was wondering if there is a way to do this for a 32 bit version. or is there a set of instructions to convert a different version (like XFCE) to behave the same way?

    Thanks!

  10. simon@26

    great response, no argument there–at least not on my account.

    i will further agree that RMS does express a valid point. but in a world filled with over used terminology–spyware being one of them–it does nothing to truly inform the user. in fact, it serves to degrade their understanding of the real issue that people have. yes, spyware is a big problem, but it is another problem entirely–one not related to this particular controversy. perhaps it is more of a technicality than i realize, but for me, “spyware” clearly does not apply here.

    Clem put it best when he said in not so many words, that we have many choices. if we don’t like the direction of ubuntu, or others, we can opt out, and choose something else. but make sure that we can read between the lines, and fully understand why we are changing. remember, the Linux community is deeply intertwined, and the damage we cause to another distro could wind up hurting everyone in the end unnecessarily.

    keep it real folks.

  11. Well, it is not relaly surprising that Ubuntu is guided by corporate interests, after all, it is a company and should generate some profits. The fact that they included Amazon in return for some revenue….. who cares. I would rather see that they ditch Unity for something else that is actually for use on a computer and not just a tablet.
    Mint is still not completely stable for me, in LM 14 the freezes i had in all my LM 13 laptops have disappeared but i often have trouble connecting to wireless networks or accessing the web page to login to a half open wireless connection. Nothing is perfect i guess….

    Thumbs up for the OEM version, i think every linux distro should default to this rather than forcing you to setup a user during install time

  12. Very cool feature from mint, recently i brought an asus laptop, i choose that because the come with only bios, I really like that. I dont have to be married with an os. Usually windows

  13. @PB: Hey, it’s Nestar again. I didn’t mean to waste Clem’s time or create a discussion. I genuinely just wanted to know why.

    @Clem: Thank you for your excellent answer, it was exactly what I asked for. 🙂

  14. Congratulations for the good work.

    I just had a conversation with the lenovo sales. you can read here:

    Please wait while we connect with you with a Lenovo Chat Representative.
    You have been connected to ^Ashwini Veldurthy.
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: Thank you for contacting Lenovo Sales Chat. My name is Ashwini and my Rep ID is 2900713398. Happy to help you today.
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: Hello
    ilias: hello
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: How can I assist you today?
    ilias: i need some info on the thinkpad t430 s
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: Sure
    ilias: i am interested for this laptop, but i am a linux user
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: We do not offer systems with Linux but you can load your preferred operating system on your own.
    ilias: sure, but my question is if i can buy the laptop without windows
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: No, this cannot be customized
    ilias: why not?
    ilias: why i need to pay for something i will not use/ need?
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: All the models come with preloaded Windows
    ilias: sorry, but this is unexptable.
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: I am sorry about that
    ilias: my moral code doesnt allow me to buy something that comes with payed software that i will not use. lenovo just lost a sale.
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: I am sorry about that.
    ilias: you should forward this chat to your supervisor. this is not the 80 s when microsoft could have the monopoly
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: I am sorry, our supervisor is not available at the moment. We will consider your suggestion and will forward to concerned department.
    ilias: thanks for your help. to your information this chat will be posted to ubuntu forums. thanks
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: Is there anything else?
    ilias: thanks
    ilias: you have my email, if there is a change to your policy…
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: OK
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: To ensure that we are always improving our service, you may receive a survey invitation at the end of the chat session to tell us what you think about our products and services. Your feedback will be highly appreciated.
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: Thank you for contacting Lenovo Sales Chat. Have a nice day ahead.
    ilias: same to you
    ^Ashwini Veldurthy: Bye

  15. Sweet!
    Is it possible to customize the installation to ensure correct workings on target machines, so that end-users won’t have to worry about wireless/gfx/audio?

  16. Also, let’s imagine that we can manage to convince a supplier of, for example, student laptops to provide their current Windows installation in dual boot with a Linux installation, using a generic disk image that is simply copied over (which is what is currently the lazy procedure when anything needs to be fixed).
    I think it would be a very crucial point to properly provide easy end-user support for basic tasks in a transitional environment.
    To give new users a smooth user experience, it would be very useful if a tool can be included that automatically asks them – as soon as it’s detected that both operating systems have booted – to have direct links made to their windows user directories from their home directory. Most users would give up as soon as they can’t easily find their documents. Handling those kinds of basic details would definitely increase adoption.

  17. happy with the lm mate 14 release, but only thing is when using compiz, 3d windows are broken. the same as in all the *buntus but in lm13 and the 12.04 of the *buntus it worked fine, hope it gets fixed soon

  18. Is there any way to decrease my mouse scroolling speed?

    Please put a mouse scroll speed setting and an update. 🙂

  19. Still running Mint 12 on my T-42 and love it. Is there any way I can update it to Mint 14? PAE is the issue on this box. Thanks…

  20. Love your work. I’m a distro hopper myself, have tried almost all of them. More or less I now exclusively use Ubuntu and Linux Mint, although I have to say that Mint is more user-friendly and offers better out of the box functionality !!

  21. Nice, but I think this should be done with Mint 13, since it’s LTS and a no techie Windows user is not used to 6 months updates and the techie users can simply download and install by themselves….

  22. Never mind about OEMs, as a renewed way of introducing Linux to others it’s really great, so well done team !
    Previously sabotaged by the introduction of Gnome3 and Ubuntu’s Unity, an OEM version allows Linux fans to create ‘Linux on a stick’ for others who can immediately set their own username and password without having to wrestle with all the complications and uncertainties of an installation and customisation process !
    Although Linus Torvalds and Peter Anvin now seem determined to kill off 32bit Linux for less privileged owners of older hardware, 32bit versions could still be useful, if its not too much trouble.
    Whilst reviewing my own USBkey installation process to make it more predictable in outcome, I will be seeing if I can re-introduce NVIDIA-295 to the Cinnamon version in particular, that’s so useful for OverScan Correction with large screen demonstrations.

  23. I have some trouble with LM14(Cinnamon):
    My fan ist contantly runnig and I don’t know why. The temperature is about 37°C and the CPU usage is also very low(approx. 5%): Any ideas how to solve this problem?

    My system:
    Dell Latitude E6430
    Intel graphic HD4000
    Intel core i5-3320M

    Thanks in advance

  24. ilias35

    That chat is so typical. This is the key reason that I stopped buying desktop computers off the shelf, and went to building my own. I know there are some manufacturers like Dell, and maybe some others that sell desktops with preloaded linux, but generally, the hardware itself is a little lacking.

    I also have to buy PC’s for the company I work for, and I hate all the extra manufacturer specific garbageware that they include. It takes a good half an hour to get rid of all the garbageware, and you just know that Windows is all fragmented up after that–definitely not a nice clean install for the PC’s where we have to have Windows.

    Why can’t we just by the exact desktop that we want, with no OS, and put on what we want? I know it’s all about money, but it really stinks.

    Anyway, have you thought of building your own desktops and/or laptops? Laptops are a just a little more difficult, but there are a fare amount of bare bones systems that are easily upgradeable.

    There is a significant cost benefit to this also. The downside being is that you give all support to your project. For me, it’s been fun, but not completely without it’s headache. It is worth it in the end though.

  25. Hi everybody!!!,
    This release,specially 14 Cinnamon OEM 64-bit is really the complete package in the history of Linux world for desktop people, thank you sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much to the Linux mint team)))))))))))))………….i really appreciate you people from bottom of my heart…………

  26. Thank you Clem for this wonderful version of mint. I have an acer aspire one 522 with amd fusion and ALL the linux distros I installed on my netbook didn’t start after a second restart. The problem was with my wireless card. I had to dualboot, disable wireless card in windows and then boot into linux. When Linux Mint 14 Rc appeared I tried it on an usb flash drive. I was amazed that it booted without the windows tweak. I restarted the system 5 times (just to be sure) and after that I immediately formated the hard drive and installed LM 14 rc as my OS. What I am trying to say is THANK YOU Clem for this awesome LM verion and keep up the good work. One question: I have Ubuntu tweak installed and I can’t change my wallpaper from love wallpaper hd section. It says that wallpaper was downloaded and installed but the desktop background doesn’t change. Can you help me with this small problem? Thank you in advance.

  27. A great work and hats off to Clem and his team for all this. I am a proud LMDE user for the past two years and would love to try LM 14 OEM on my friend’s computers. Any updates for LMDE in future because I would love to stick to it as long as I can.

  28. @ The Doctor:

    “Awesome! Many thanks to the entire Mint development team for an excellent operating system.”

    Just installed Nadia (Mate). Not an excellent operating system, just the best operating system that I have ever used!

    OK, to quote “The Doctor”: “Awesome! Many thanks to the entire Mint development team for an excellent operating system.”

    😉

  29. This is awesome, i simply don’t see why manufacturers don’t allow users to preorder systems with Linux Mint by default. I mean if i buy a System that comes with Windows8 for example, the cost of the system is high due to the licence of Windows i am buying with it. I would prefer to buy a Linux System which i know will cost me less, than buying a Windows System and then installing Linux Mint on it.

  30. I`ve been looking into installing something different than rather the usually oem system from Microsoft…..Anybody knows any website that can provide drivers for a linux mint installation on Dell system….._

  31. I’m not surprised that Lenovo wouldn’t sell an individual a computer without Windows installed. However, if you wanted to buy a few hundred machines they would probably change their tune. I really like the two Lenovo thinkpads I have running Linux Mint. I bought them second hand from sellers on ebay that handle machines coming off lease. This is a good way to get a good deal on a used late model computer. I don’t care if I wipe Windows XP or Vista off such a machine.

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