Monthly News – April 2014

May 14, 2014 by Clem·132 Comments

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To become a sponsor or to see the full list of Linux Mint sponsors, please visit: http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

Donations:

A total of $8912 was raised thanks to the generous contributions of 350 donors:

$500 (2nd donation), Travis C.
$500, chainsaw
$200, Tord K.
$132.85, Joerg P.
$132.85, Jane S.
$132.85, Meises I.
$132.85, Sten L.
$100 (3rd donation), Jon Espenschied aka “xeno”
$100, Daniel W.
$100, Laserlab, Inc.
$100, Mikael L.
$100, Gary C.
$100, Danny L.
$99.64, Wemmarus W.
$81.6, Jacques P.
$75 (4th donation), Trevor H.
$70, Joseph L.
$66.43 (8th donation), Raymond E.
$66.43 (2nd donation), C. Lamb aka “Mike”
$66.43, Kaj S.
$66.43, Carlos C. C.
$66.43, Christine T.
$66.43, F HOU2BERT
$66.43, Ausra P.
$50 (49th donation), Matthew M.
$50 (3rd donation), Jeff W.
$50 (2nd donation), James G.
$50 (2nd donation), Pamino F.
$50 (2nd donation), Roy Q.
$50 (2nd donation), Frédéric S.
$50 (2nd donation), Stephen C.
$50, David P.
$50, Michal C.
$50, Steven N.
$50, Daniel S.
$50, Christopher B.
$50, Levon P.
$50, Brad L.
$50, Rodney W.
$50, Peter J.
$50, Styles D. aka “threeta“
$50, John S.
$50, Graham M.
$40 (2nd donation), Tom W.
$39.86 (50th donation), Olli K.
$39.86 (2nd donation), Ines R.
$39.86, Rémy M.
$39.86, Jascha L.
$39.86, Javier C. M.
$39.86, Pascal H.
$39.86, Michael B.
$35 (2nd donation), Devendra R.
$33.21 (3rd donation), Simon C.
$33.21 (2nd donation), Christophe L.
$33.21 (2nd donation), Jolyon H.
$33.21, Ruth S.
$33.21, Stephan B.
$33.21, Jan Müller
$33.21, Lars G.
$33.21, Patrick Vollring aka “Falco2“
$33.21, Enrique G. G.
$33.21, Bartosz K.
$33.21, Robert Sweetnam
$33.21, Markus S.
$33.21, Eric S.
$30 (15th donation), Maarten E.
$30 (3rd donation), Robert O.
$30, Nancy M.
$30, bkn
$30, PulpKult
$30, Tony C.
$30, Stephen G.
$26.57 (9th donation), Frank Bechstein
$26.57 (2nd donation), Pentti T.
$26.57 (2nd donation), Marko aka “playforvoices“
$26.57 (2nd donation), Pedro C. F.
$26.57 (2nd donation), Mark S.
$26.57 (2nd donation), Kari Y.
$26.57 (2nd donation), Roberto R. D. T.
$26.57, Paolo S.
$26.57, Niall M.
$26.57, Ronan P.
$26.57, Johannes F.
$26.57, Markku T. K.
$26.57, Michel J.
$26.57, stathious
$26.57, Stefan E.
$26.57, Andreas L.
$26.57, Thomas G.
$26.57, Tommi T.
$26.57, Gerhard R.
$26.57, Julio F. T.
$26.57, Frank D.
$26.57, Matthias M.
$26.57, Heinz M. S.
$26.57, Alain T.
$26.57, Jens M.
$26.57, Stefan B.
$26.57, Anita Z.
$26.57, r
$26.57, A J. M.
$26.57, Jose L. R. M.
$26.57, Ahmed B.
$26.57, Helmut Z.
$26.57, Pascal F.
$26.57, Nigel J.
$25 (31st donation), Ronald W.
$25 (2nd donation), Don L. aka “I.M. Online”
$25 (2nd donation), Waqas S.
$25 (2nd donation), Anonymous aka “MrNiceGaay”
$25 (2nd donation), Richard L.
$25 (2nd donation), Evan N.
$25, Ian M.
$25, Robert B.
$25, David T.
$25, Bruce S.
$25, Kirk G.
$25, Michael B.
$25, William S.
$25, Timothy L.
$25, Miroslav K.
$25, Joseph G.
$25, Justin M. H.
$25, F. N.
$25, P H.
$25, Richard L.
$25, Thomas S.
$25, Cameron T.
$25, David L.
$25, Charles T.
$24, Vernon G.
$20 (34th donation), Tsuguo S.
$20 (5th donation), Roger B.
$20 (4th donation), Jonathan Drake
$20 (4th donation), Kevin Safford
$20 (3rd donation), David M.
$20 (3rd donation), Nicholas T.
$20 (2nd donation), Wing T.
$20 (2nd donation), Yahya The Impaler
$20, Glover Electronics
$20, Richard L.
$20, Lindomar E. O.
$20, Tyler Mulligan aka “-z-“
$20, John M.
$20, Kelly S.
$20, Mary H.
$20, William J.
$20, James A.
$20, Beeblebrox, Z
$20, Adrian R.
$20, Milt K.
$20, Steven J.
$20, Carlos F. L.
$20, Jim D.
$20, Joseph V.
$20, Chris S.
$20, Brian Hilmers
$20, Brett H.
$20, Mauzz
$20, Gerardo E. R.
$20, Richard D.
$20, Conner C.
$19.93 (3rd donation), Roy S.
$19.93 (2nd donation), Michael J. L.
$19.93, Herminio F.
$19.93, Stoyan N.
$19.93, Michael J. L.
$19.93, Daniel C. M.
$17.27, Juergen F.
$17 (2nd donation), Athanasios F. aka “thanosfrag”
$16 (2nd donation), Rockford C.
$15 (3rd donation), Vincent B.
$15, Christian S.
$15, Mario L.
$15, Fraser P.
$15, Y.Satoru
$15, Harvey M.
$15, Gordon M.
$15, Kostiantyn M.
$15, John S.
$15, Kathy A.
$14.61, Ivy
$13.55, Andreas A.
$13.29 (10th donation), Mark W.
$13.29 (5th donation), Joanna Z. aka “GreenCatX”
$13.29 (5th donation), Rene Schwietzke aka “Rene S.“
$13.29 (3rd donation), anonymous
$13.29 (3rd donation), Veeti
$13.29 (2nd donation), Robin KAY
$13.29 (2nd donation), Viktor F.
$13.29 (2nd donation), Touko N.
$13.29 (2nd donation), Dirk G. aka “Dirken”
$13.29, Michele B.
$13.29, Franz J. S.
$13.29, Fabio L.
$13.29, Lorenzo Novara
$13.29, Rik aka “rik”
$13.29, Ticià Sala
$13.29, Thomas S.
$13.29, Ralf R.
$13.29, Bernd D.
$13.29, Thomas F.
$13.29, Wilfried S.
$13.29, Robert I.
$13.29, Carsten S.
$13.29, George S.
$13.29, Roger B.
$13.29, Marcel C. G.
$13.29, Harpreet D.
$13.29, Jürgen M.
$13.29, Stephan K.
$13.29, Herbert T.
$13.29, Mark P.
$13.29, Kevin O.
$13.29, Markus T.
$13.29, Leonhard K.
$13.29, S D
$13.29, Christian B.
$13.29, Richard G.
$13 (2nd donation), John C.
$12, CHAZMAN
$10 (37th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
$10 (3rd donation), Larry I.
$10 (2nd donation), Indarien’s G. T.
$10 (2nd donation), Michael S.
$10 (2nd donation), Владислав Х.
$10 (2nd donation), Darlan P. C.
$10, Duncan O.
$10, Acm V. R.
$10, Corey W.
$10, Charles G.
$10, Pouya T.
$10, Richard M. aka “Richmelk”
$10, Steve D.
$10, Donald M.
$10, Federico L.
$10, Mark O.
$10, David M.
$10, Johnny O.
$10, D. M.
$10, Charlie T.
$10, Paweł S.
$10, Craig M.
$10, Raphael S. D. O.
$10, Bobylev O. aka “QDesnic“
$10, Annaniassen B.
$10, Matthew T.
$10, Frank V. Pedersen
$10, 手塚優.
$10, Ian C.
$10, Nicklas L.
$10, Nicholas P.
$10, Pete D.
$10, Kurt B.
$10, Runar B.
$10, Niels T.
$10, Victor B.
$10, Kevin H.
$10, Shawn L.
$10, Ron A.
$10, Irma O.
$10, Mark Y.
$10, Lars M.
$10, Leonhard K.
$10, Ashlon H.
$10, Breno B. T.
$10, Kyle R.
$10, Peter Nielsen
$9.3, Fabian van B. aka “Nishe”
$7.97, Lluis Solanelles
$7.97, Benedict B.
$7 (7th donation), Christopher R.
$6.64 (28th donation), Marco aka “Dictionary-Maker“
$6.64 (4th donation), Theis Hinz
$6.64, Ferit O.
$6.64, Philippe L.
$6.64, Oscar J. G. C.
$6.64, Francisco J. M. S.
$6.64, Jörg U.
$6.64, Matthias M.
$6.64, Michael F.
$6.64, Ivaylo K.
$6.64, Rafael Kallis aka “rafael94b“
$6 (3rd donation), Nicolás Costa de la Colina aka “NCosta”
$6, Piotr G.
$6, Dewey R.
$5 (13th donation), Mein Lenovo aka “LinuxMint“
$5 (9th donation), Carlos W.
$5 (9th donation), Edward S.
$5 (7th donation), Mordi K. aka “Mordik”
$5 (5th donation), Randolph K.
$5 (5th donation), Vladimir Kivernik
$5 (4th donation), Scanplus aka “The Brochure Printers“
$5 (3rd donation), Jh B.
$5 (3rd donation), Radim aka “myself”
$5 (3rd donation), Toronto Maple Leafs
$5 (2nd donation), Dan N.
$5 (2nd donation), Ronald K.
$5 (2nd donation), Dadykin A.
$5 (2nd donation), Marcin B.
$5, Kochetkov S.
$5, Diego L. F.
$5, Ondrej M.
$5, William S. M.
$5, John Sandora aka “obiwanjohn”
$5, Jerry L.
$5, Nicholas S.
$5, Daryl S.
$5, Mark D.
$5, Arwen N. A.
$5, Thomas B.
$5, Nicholas P.
$5, Bernard H.
$5, Heinz W. K.
$5, Robbie K.
$5, David H.
$5, Mohri K.
$5, Christopher D.
$5, Torsten T.
$5, Arno S.
$5, Thomas M.
$5, Dmitry Rutkov aka “Scanerdarkly“
$5, Geoffrey H.
$5, Kevin P.
$5, Frank P.
$5, Rick Gilley
$5, Sheldon F.
$5, Al S.
$5, Andy M.
$5, Business Credit Workshop
$4.42 (2nd donation), Erick P.
$4, Helton B. T. P. J.
$3, Clayton S.
$3, Susan M.
$2.7, Thomas P.
$14.82 from 15 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

Rankings:

Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 3792 (1st)
Alexa (website ranking): 5335th

Events:

The development team announced the release of Cinnamon 2.2 on Segfault

News and summary:

Many thanks to all the people who have sent us donations and to all our sponsors. You’re making it easy for us to focus on Linux Mint without worrying about anything else. In April, your help reached an all-time high. Not only did it surprise us, but we could see that donations had been high yet very stable since the beginning of the year. That put us in the very comfortable position where we were able to identify the reasons for our success and allocate a new budget to boost them even further. We get a lot of help from volunteers and people from our community who step up, get involved and join our teams. These people come with very different skills, very different interests, and they all have very different lives, jobs and availabilities. What they all have in common though, is that they love to help us with their spare time and when we look at the net result, their contribution to the overall Linux Mint project is simply amazing. Linux Mint 17 is just around the corner, and if I look at all the features that were developed for it, all the new improvements, I can see so many of them coming from volunteers. With this new budget, for the very first time, we’re funding these contributions. Money is given without asking anything in return to people who made a difference to our project. Ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, the sums involved aren’t large enough for volunteers to leave their jobs or to consider changing the way they live, but if their passion makes them work with us, it empowers them to have that spare time, to buy equipment if they need to, and to not worry about money, overtime, and whether they shouldn’t be doing something better with their spare time than helping Linux Mint. We’re also being very careful not to change the nature of these contributions. Linux Mint is not run like a company and it would lose a lot of flexibility if it was. Contributors are not entitled to funds and they are not expected to produce anything. We’re trying to get the best of both worlds with this new scheme, where people who are part of a team and actively make Linux Mint better also benefit from it financially, yet where the reason for their involvement remains the fact that they love what they’re doing and they’re not actually working but simply enjoying themselves. It’s only been a month but it seems to be working really well so far within the development team. The moderation team is currently discussing the idea and deciding whether or not they want to be part of it as well.
Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” passed QA yesterday. It was approved for an RC release which should come out either tomorrow or the day after. Some of the improvements featured in Linux Mint 17 came extremely late in the release cycle but they all managed to get in and we can’t wait to show you what’s new. Of course, you always find a lot of bugs during the RC process, and we’re ready for your feedback, we know we’re going to be busy. But in the meantime, I found the quality of this release to be outstanding. Everything is smooth, some bugs which affected multiple past releases (the shutdown sequence, the inability to install broadcom drivers offline..etc) have been fixed, and Qiana comes with the same traditional look-and-feel but implemented in a brand new Mint-X theme, so the experience feels very polished.
The decision was made to stick to LTS bases. In other words the development team will be focused on the very same package base used by Linux Mint 17 for the next 2 years. It will also be trivial to upgrade from version 17 to 17.1, then 17.2 and so on. Important applications will be backported and we expect this change to boost the pace of our development and reduce the amount of regressions in each new Linux Mint release. This makes Linux Mint 17.x very important to us, not just yet another release, but one that will receive security updates until 2019, one that will receive backports and new features until 2016 and even more importantly, the only package base besides LMDE which we’ll be focused on until 2016.
New equipment was acquired, including hidpi laptops for two members of the development team, a broadcom chipset (finally), a macbook pro and some NUC units sent by Intel.
Our traffic doubled lately and all our stats are on the raise, and we don’t know why. Maybe it’s related to the the end-of-life of Windows XP. We’re not really sure. The blog went down a few times, we’re addressing this by tuning its configuration. Post-release we’re likely to buy more servers to split services and scale our infrastructure.

132 comments

Simon says:

May 14, 2014 at 8:05 am

Does that mean that Linux Mint 18 will be based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS?

Edit by Clem: Hi Simon, although that’s too early to say, yes, that’s the idea.

Reply
4everfinding says:

May 14, 2014 at 8:11 am

Can’t wait for RC release. Thanks you all for this excellent work!

Reply
Gustavo says:

May 14, 2014 at 8:23 am

Thank you very much for your help indeed. Linux Mint has been been an amazing experience. Your last sentence about Windows XP is the clue behind the traffic. My best wishes to all the team. Thank you.

Reply
dale f says:

May 14, 2014 at 8:25 am

Clem,

Thanks so much for all your efforts on Linux Mint.
Since the LM17 RC iso files are showing up on the mirrors, can you please post the torrent files?
Thanks!

Reply
Dave says:

May 14, 2014 at 8:32 am

Thanks for all your efforts!
Do you think LM17 will be able to run on a Macbookair mid 2013 without particular hassle?

Bye

Edit by Clem: I’m sorry, we don’t have any to test it on. We do have a Macbook Pro with Retina display though and I started writing a tutorial for it: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1643

Reply
Pedro says:

May 14, 2014 at 9:25 am

Could you maybe clarify better what will happen after Mint 17?
What will happen in 17.1, 17.2, etc?

Are you going to be doing kernel updates in those releases?
Updating non-system packages as Libre Office, GIMP, games, DE’s, etc?

Edit by Clem: We’ll be updating DEs and popular apps as much as possible. We’ll have more time and less bases to maintain so it won’t only boost our development but also our ability to maintain package, to tweak the base and to document/support their usage. You’ll also receive security updates and kernel revisions as that’s already the case in any LTS release.

Reply
Anand says:

May 14, 2014 at 9:38 am

Glad to hear on the contributions pouring in and hardware donations*. Waiting for ISO’s to land, no other torrents till i give Mint 17 a ride. 🙂

“The moderation team is currently discussing the idea and deciding whether or not they want to be part of it as well.” That’s indeed a good discussion to have, new users frequent the forums / community sites and nothing wrong on having incentive for mods.

http://community.linuxmint.com/idea/view/4900 – I posted an idea while ago and keen to hear your views.

Edit by Clem: It’s a good idea although in practice you get much better results when developers buy what they want themselves. Their availability and their focus is defined primarily by how much fun they’re having and how eager they want to see something work. Sure, we could do with a wacom tablet (I don’t think any of us has one), but the problem isn’t money.. I can buy one right now, and with that new budget so can many of our devs. Looking at the other issues you mentioned, most of us have multi-monitor setups (maybe even all of us now..), two of us have retina/hidpi displays, and.. when it comes to Intel and Optimus, I can’t say just yet, it’s something I really want to dive into personally, but I haven’t had the time to do so just yet.

Reply
Denis says:

May 14, 2014 at 9:57 am

About the traffic. I started recently with linux (and I choosed Mint) not because of the end of windows XP, but because of the change to windows 8 and the obvious business model in progress at Microsoft. Microsoft was a relatively open system supplier with windows, and seems to move towards a much more closed model. For PCs, linux will probably be in the future the only open system (i.e. where you can install programs from various sources, and even create your own ones). And why Mint, simply because conventional Pcs remain the most efficient platform for a lot of tasks. Mint is a classic PC environment, easy an convenient to use with PCS. It has as well very specific features : its ability to be installed on a removable device, which can be used on different machines. So, don’t be surprised by the traffic. May be it’s just the beginning.

Reply
owen says:

May 14, 2014 at 10:05 am

Bit sad by this. Looks like I will have to move away from Mint because I am worried about updates etc. If it based on same ubuntu release for two years then it won’t get update at all (talking about kernels and stuff)

Edit by Clem: Although we’ll backport important apps, we won’t jump into brand new technologies, systemd, wayland/mir etc.. but I think that’s a good thing. By the time we do they’ll have had 2 years to mature. On our side we’ll get security updates, I think LTS will cover kernel upgrades and we can always jump in on that as well if it’s not matching expectations. Sure, we won’t be running the latest GNOME, and if brand new versions of some apps use brand new versions of libraries we don’t have, we won’t upgrade them… we’ll lose some people as a result, but that’s ok. Choice is a good thing within the Linux ecosystem. There are different distributions for different people, we decided to be more like what we wanted to be and to please our core audience a little more at the cost maybe of trying to please everybody. Our goal isn’t to attract every single Linux user out there, but to do our best to reach our own standards and expectations. I think I can talk in the name of everybody involved in the development team when I say this: We’re delighted to be doing this. We’re looking at two years of pure development and we can’t wait to take advantage of it.

Reply
Corsack says:

May 14, 2014 at 10:10 am

I can’t wait to see Qiana and upgrade my home and work computers. Thank you for your hard work!

“Does that mean that Linux Mint 18 will be based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS?

Edit by Clem: Hi Simon, although that’s too early to say, yes, that’s the idea.”

I think that’s a brilliant idea! I only go for LTS releases, as I don’t have to upgrade every 6-9 months. I prefer to do it every two years.

Reply
konjad says:

May 14, 2014 at 10:16 am

I can’t wait for the final release. Thank you very much for all your work!

Reply
thanosfrag says:

May 14, 2014 at 10:21 am

Hi Clem,

This is really great news! The future of LM looks even more promising!

In regards to the significant increase in donations, web traffic etc. I personally know three former XP users which either tried or emigrated to LM. Have you thought of placing a poll on the download page? It may shed some light on the issue at stake.

Reply
Jeffrey says:

May 14, 2014 at 10:47 am

This sounds like a good decision on Mint’s part. Basing on the LTS release of Ubuntu should make it more stable and provide longer support for users on older releases. Assuming the point releases (7.1, 7.2 etc) are simple upgrades like Service Packs on Windows.

This could make Mint more popular than Ubuntu overall. Of course things like Steam OS, Chrome OS and Android will likely remain far ahead in terms of popularity to the general public.

I wonder if basing a distribution off of Core OS (itself based off of Chromium OS) would provide more longevity. There seems to be more interest from enterprise and Docker seems to be a superior way to manage application installation and upgrades to most package managers.

Reply
Tymek says:

May 14, 2014 at 10:50 am

Thanks for all your hard work! As most i cant wait to get my hands on the new release.
As far as the reason for the increase in users, i wouldn’t be surprised if Valve pushing for linux so hard had something to do with it. Hell, Valve and Blizzard voicing their initial “concerns” about the future of gaming on windows 8 was the reason i became curios about linux in the first place. After that i installed linux mint never to look back again.

Reply
James Bagley says:

May 14, 2014 at 10:50 am

Have just migrated from Windows XP to Linux Mint and what a brilliant package it is. Wish I had done it ages ago! Next step is to get rid of Windows 7 on my wife’s laptop. Congratulations to the Mint team for developing such a superb OS. Looking forward now to getting Qiana.

Best regards

Reply
quentin says:

May 14, 2014 at 11:02 am

Hi, what about nvidia-prime support?
Nvidia-prime depends on lightdm, but in lm17 is mdm as well.

Thank you very much for all your work!

Edit by Clem: Looking at the source code, it’s pretty clear it’s designed to only work with LightDM. I added this to the roadmap to see if/how we can improve this for MDM.

Reply
Keith says:

May 14, 2014 at 11:05 am

i downloaded the Mint 17 Cinnamon RC iso and i have been testing it and have found the following

1:there is lag in the package manager when you make changes to the list its slow to update the list on screen its like visual tearing this happens in any Distro that uses the Synaptic Package Manager 0.81.1 the older 0.75 build in fine

2:Device Drivers in the system settings is very slow to load it took over 18 seconds for me on quad core intel i7 based system

3:in the languages settings all i have installed is English UK and its set to system default ( thats all i need) but Hardinfo 0.5.1 reports that i have English Zambia,Nigeria,India and Antigua and Barbuda installed as well

4:The new wallpapers are the best yet and very hight resolution there very good

5:The FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer 0.10 is not in the repository and it affects Firefox H.264 playback and other applications you can see http://www.webupd8.org/2014/04/10-things-to-do-after-installing-ubuntu.html for the PPA to install the package gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

Reply
Nick says:

May 14, 2014 at 11:10 am

Does this mean that the kernels in Mint 17.1, 17.2, 17.3 etc. will all be 3.13.x?

Reply
Giles says:

May 14, 2014 at 11:29 am

I’m looking forward to the fresh Mints 🙂

I hope the new release schedule will allow the Mint team to give LMDE more love – I think it’s very good already, but with a bit more polish it would be great!

Nick – Canonical backport the Linux kernel from their latest releases to their LTS after each release, so I expect Mint will use those kernels. If you need something newer than that, you can pick up the latest (unsupported) Ubuntu kernel builds at http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/?C=N;O=D and install them manually with dpkg. I have to do this because my ATI Radeon 7790 doesn’t like to play with kernels before 3.14.

Reply
Ron says:

May 14, 2014 at 11:44 am

I would like to suggest that you turn LM into a rolling release that will automatically upgrade to the newest releases every 2 years as well as just updating backports, etc. That way LM would always be the latest version for every user and it should give development more time to focus on bugs, regressions, etc instead of having to produce an entirely new release periodically.

Edit by Clem: Although it’s costly I find it very important for updates to be opt-in. The principle is that when things work well and people are happy, unless they want more, we shouldn’t upgrade anything on their behalf. In 6 months time we’ll have a brand new Cinnamon 2.4, we’ll make it trivial to upgrade to it but also completely optional. It’s too early to say exactly how things will change or if they will at all when it comes to release management (we’re no longer tied to the Ubuntu release cycle for instance), but this principle is important.

Reply
Nick says:

May 14, 2014 at 12:00 pm

@19 Giles:
Are you sure? I read this in ubuntuforums:
“LTS never gets kernel upgrades as that has been their policy for LTS”

As far as I can tell, the kernels in Ubuntu 12.04.x have always been 3.2.0-x.

Edit by Clem: They went from 3.2 to 3.11 http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=linux-image&searchon=names&suite=precise&section=all. Note that they’re also all built on LTS, even when you run a non-LTS base. When it comes to kernel stack, there’s only one base, so no changes there.

Reply
thomasg says:

May 14, 2014 at 12:01 pm

This new plan for the next set of releases sounds very good. I’m still a bit worried about the state of the wireless drivers for Realtek cards, but I trust Clem and his team enough that I will definitely replace 16 with 17 when it hits the final version in a few weeks (unless warned not to by release notes). Hopefully there won’t be a problem, but if there is, I’ll just let you guys know and find another solution, preferably one involving Linux Mint.
The next few years are going to be very fruitful, it sounds like.

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fortran says:

May 14, 2014 at 12:02 pm

Linux Mint 17 “Qiana”, is a beautiful project. It’s good to LTS bases. Thanks to Clem and development team. Greetings.

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Colin Austin says:

May 14, 2014 at 12:15 pm

Thanks for all your hard work guys. As a relative newcomer to Linux I’ve tried various flavours of Ubuntu, Arch and Manjaro, along with Elementary, before settling on Mint. I think your decision to focus on LTS releases is sound and suit me to a tee.

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David says:

May 14, 2014 at 12:20 pm

Sorry, I write in spanish, my english level is very poor.

Hasta ahora había que instalar cada edición de Linux Mint (…, LM 15, LM16). Con el nuevo sistema, ¿también será necesario instalar las siguientes versiones 17.1, 17.2, etc… o se actualizaran de manera automática a partir del Linux Mint 17 original instalado?

Edit by Clem: Hola David, tengo que contestar en Ingles, mi Espano no es bueno 🙂 Upgrading from 17 to 17.x will not be automatic, it’s an opt-in. Traditionally, upgrading from Mint X to Mint X+1 was “easy” (all you have to do is switch sources and dist-upgrade), but “risky”. Upgrading from 17 to 17.x will be technically similar but it will be “safe”. That will allow us to recommend it, and to make it trivial (we can add a button in your update manager for instance, or in your software sources when 17.1 is released).

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The_Raven says:

May 14, 2014 at 12:21 pm

Looks like the RC is not a hybrid-iso right?

Edit by Clem: It is..

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Giles says:

May 14, 2014 at 12:21 pm

@21 Nick:
It took a little finding, but see here:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=all&section=all&arch=any&keywords=linux-generic-lts-&searchon=names

Assuming you are on Ubuntu 12.04 or Mint 13 you might install linux-generic-lts-trusty
That would give you 3.13.0.

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joncr says:

May 14, 2014 at 12:24 pm

Very nice RC. Live session was uneventful. The physical install (ThinkPad W530) was per normal, as were the updates and an nvidia-331 install via Device Manager. Been adding my usual tweaks and nothing has popped up to bite me yet.

I’ve been running Mate 1.8 on a barebones 14.04 in anticipation of this release. Seems a very smooth combination. Nice to see that Mozo and the user mgmt tool are working in the RC because they still don’t if you use the Mate archive.

The decision to stay on this base for some time works for me. Linux is mature enough that the most compelling reason to run the very latest releases is very often simple curiosity.

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Giles says:

May 14, 2014 at 12:31 pm

@21 Nick, again..
See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack for the Ubuntu kernel release and support schedules.

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Nick says:

May 14, 2014 at 1:01 pm

Thanks for the info. I didn’t realise it was so complicated!

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RacerBG says:

May 14, 2014 at 1:14 pm

Clem, thanks a lot for the new release system. With this finally my last “problem” with Mint is solved. New theme? I’m interested! 🙂

To sum up – thanks to everybody involved in the project!

Edit by Clem: When you boot Mint 17 you don’t really see a “new” theme. It just looks better but it still feels like Mint-X. Joseph worked really hard on it and if you compare Mint 17 and Mint 16 side by side you can see theme improvements all over the place. You can install awf also to compare gtk2 and gtk3, a lot of work went into making these two toolkits look the same.

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LMUCS says:

May 14, 2014 at 2:20 pm

Short feedback to the (not official) 17RC:
mdm chrashes (dont do anything anymore) with html-login-screens. Not by everyone but often. If it happens you have to reinstall Mint an set “automatically login”.

To “all our stats are on the raise”, I can say, we the the same in the German-Forum and many of it is because of the eol of XP.

Thanks to Clem an everyone how is involved or the new Mint!

Edit by Clem: Please try to find out why. We can’t reproduce this issue on any computer here. Note also that a new command was added to solve this situation. If you can’t log in, press CTRL+ALT+F1, log in via the console and type “mdm-recovery”.

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Jose says:

May 14, 2014 at 2:22 pm

Will Cinnamon continue to be developed for the new Ubuntu’s, supporting new GNOME’s and that, or will it only support whatever is in Mint? (a Ubuntu GNOME user who likes Cinnamon)

Edit by Clem: As much as possible we try to make Cinnamon work not only for us but for everybody else as well. Of course our focus and our requirements are on Mint. We don’t run other distributions, we don’t use systemd, we don’t use upower1, we don’t use gnome-bluetooth 3.10 and we won’t be using a new version of GTK every 6 months, so when it comes to supporting technologies we don’t use we rely on people from other distributions to step up and make things happen. Arch and Fedora for instance helped with systemd compatibility and they’re currently looking at upower1. When something isn’t working properly in their distribution they give us feedback, they troubleshoot it with us and they participate in fixing it with us. Nobody at Ubuntu focuses on Cinnamon. There are no expectations for it and there is no maintainer. It’s ok as long as Ubuntu doesn’t deviate too much from its LTS, or as long as the technology it’s using is also present in Arch and Fedora.

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Giles says:

May 14, 2014 at 2:24 pm

I’ve just been testing, and I notice the handbrake and handbrake-gtk packages conflict now that handbrake is in the Ubuntu repos. I assume it should now be possible to remove handbrake-gtk from the Mint repos, so one less thing for the Mint devs to think about in the future 😉

Edit by Clem: Removed. Thanks Giles.

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Keith says:

May 14, 2014 at 2:38 pm

I’ve just been testing Mint 17 Cinnamon and I notice that if you download the Google Chrome 64 bit deb files when you try to install it it says status 1 package needs installing libcurl3 is not installed

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Avery says:

May 14, 2014 at 2:56 pm

Clem, I LOVE what you guys are doing!

Thank you so much for getting this release out so quickly too. I start working at a summer camp early next month, so I was hoping that this would be released in time for me to upgrade before I start working. Now that you’ve gotten this released, I can upgrade now and debug as needed 😀

Thanks a lot!

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Nigel says:

May 14, 2014 at 3:01 pm

Used to run XP.

I got tired of the ever lengthening boot sequence, the blizzards of mandatory updates and then the message last month of “XP not supported after …”.

Did some research, downloaded ISO image of Mint, loaded it up, now my machine boots in seconds, switches off in seconds, and when (if) I can ever find the time it appears I could have a go and writing some software.

Thank you all who continue to contribute to Linux Mint – its really kind of you.

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Lewdsquirrel says:

May 14, 2014 at 3:39 pm

Hi,
Already installed the RC. Testing it right now in Virtualbox.
When selecting a mirror for “Base”, my host antivirus (ESET Endpoint Antivirus 5.0.2228 – Windows 7 x64) pops up a warning about “http://mirrors.arpnetworks.com/Ubuntu” access being block for security.
Is there a problem with this mirror?

Thanks.

Edit by Clem: Not that I know of. Can you give us more info about the warning?

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Marco says:

May 14, 2014 at 3:39 pm

Hi Clem, thanks for your great work on Mint 17, I’ve never seen Cinnamon so fast as now.

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Mintnix says:

May 14, 2014 at 3:52 pm

Ich freue mich auf das neue Mint 17. Endlich wieder eine LTS Version. Diese wird sicherlich 5 Jahre auf meinem Notebook verbringen.
6 Monate von Version zu Version ist zu kurz für produktives Arbeiten. Deshalb nehme ich nur noch Langzeit unterstützte Mint-Distris.

Vielen Dank schon einmal für “Quiana”.

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Lewdsquirrel says:

May 14, 2014 at 4:12 pm

In libreOffice (Writer – for example), go to “File”, “New”, “Templates” to open the “Template Manager”, the button “Get more templates for LibreOffice” at the extreme top right of the window is barely visible (and clickable), even if you resize the window.
But I guess this is LibreOffice problem, just wanted to let you know.

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Lewdsquirrel says:

May 14, 2014 at 4:16 pm

In Nemo, I select the list view (for the File System for example), the “Date Modified” column is not completely visible, and there is now horizontal scroll-bar to see the missing part of the column.

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Denis Ferraz says:

May 14, 2014 at 4:51 pm

I am Brazilian and not do not dominate the English language, and therefore I am using as a resource, Google Translate!

Dear Clem;

Here in Brazil, with the extinguishment of support for WindowsXP, from Microsoft, many machines (desktop, laptop) are lacking a secure base operating system and to survive, however, proplema is that the vast majority of machines have with chipsets from VIA and SiS brands … you can provide a sort of kernel for distros (images) and LMDE LMUE operate such equipment? For the current images (recent releases) dry boots in live mode on these machines! …

Godspeed and thank you.

***

Sou brasileiro e não não domino o idioma inglês, e, por isso, estou usando, como recurso, o Google Translate!

Caro Clem;

Aqui, no Brasil, com a extinsão de suporte para o WindowsXP, por parte da Microsoft, muitas máquinas (desktop, laptop) estão carecendo um sistema operacional básico e seguro para poder sobreviver, porém, o proplema é que a grande maioria das máquinas contam com chipsets das marcas SiS e VIA… É possível disponibilizar um tipo de kernel para que as distros (imagens) LMDE e LMUE funcionem nesses equipamentos? Pois, as imagens atuais (lançamentos recentes) seque inicializa no modo live nessas máquinas!…

Fique com Deus e obrigado.

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kbd says:

May 14, 2014 at 6:09 pm

Great to hear Mint is doing so well! I think following only LTS releases is brilliant. It is decisions like these that keep me coming back to Mint. More stability in Linux brings better user experiences and continued loyalty to the brand.
Thanks Clem!

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owne says:

May 14, 2014 at 6:26 pm

OK thanks for your reply 🙂 I just wondering do LMDE get updated often as well? In terms of kernels and software?

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Thom W says:

May 14, 2014 at 6:32 pm

@ Clem –

Does this mean that you will have to come up with three more “Q” names for the 17.1 through 17.3 releases? Or will you continue through the alphabet so that 17.1 is an “R” name and so on?

Might be tricky picking more “Q” names.

Edit by Clem: There’s a reflection going on about updates, backports, codenames, version numbers, release cycles and a lot of other things. We know what we want of course but not in the details. Most of it doesn’t matter technically though and it’s more to do with PR, marketing, perception so that didn’t need to be decided just yet. For the scope of Mint 17 the only thing we had to anticipate was whether or not we needed more repository components. As you can see in the RC we didn’t think we would. The idea of repository layers which we had thought about initially didn’t allow us to “remove” packages, so we’re going towards individual releases… which means unique codenames. Yet, the base stays the same.. other than buzz there’s no reason to go towards 18 then. So we’re likely to use 17.x… and so that would mean Qsomething, whether part of that reuses the codename “qiana” 🙂

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J.Sebastian says:

May 14, 2014 at 8:44 pm

thank you very much for your hard work in this wonderful OS , Gretings from colombia

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Bill S says:

May 14, 2014 at 10:06 pm

I’m currently using Lubuntu with Mate installed op top. But what I am really anxiously awaiting is Mint Mate 17. Will be nice to not worry for 5 years!

Thanks everyone, soon as I get caught up another donation on the way.

Bill

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Linux Mint says:

May 14, 2014 at 10:39 pm

Small feedback on a couple machines, which need in my opinion unnecessary tweaking. Tested quickly with RC Mate 64bit, as is (no avail. updates installed)

1) ACER M3-481
Bootscreen gets black (known bug)
Functionkeys not working – touchpad/mouse,light (known bug)
Bluetooth NOT working (recognizes WLAN, LAN) – needed to install blueman etc (Note: works on Ubuntu 14.04)

2) LENOVO G700
Bootscreen gets black (known bug)
LAN NOT working
WLAN (Broadcom) NOT working – Broadcom is installable offline. I find added text message confusing (please ….).
Bluetooth NOT working (not sure what fix is)

Edit by Clem: We had an issue with blueman and thus it was pulled from the RC. This will be mentioned in the release notes.

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Shawn says:

May 14, 2014 at 11:48 pm

Hey Clem I Have to let you know that i have tried many Linux distros
Fedora 20 gnome desktop The latest LMDE Mate desktop PCLinux OS MATE
Linux Mint 16 Mate all 64 bit I can’t get any sound out of them
But Linux Mint 13 The sound works just fine Here is my Specs Computer Gateway 831GM Bought In 2005 Sound Card Realtek High Definition Audio Model ALC880 The Problem seems to be that the sound card is not at all recognized Could you please add support for my sound card one thing Linux must get right in order to take the world by storm is support for as much hardware as possible if you can do that add as much support for as much hardware as possible then the masses Millions will flock to mint people are getting tired of windows one of my buddies hates windows 8 Oh I forgot one more thing my MATE versions is 1.6.1 right now i,m running Linux Mint 13 MATE 64 Bit everything works great no problems oh and if you can not support my sound card is there a workaround to get it to work under Linux Mint 16 and 17 and Linux Mint Debian latest version
those are the versions along with Fedora 20 that i have no sound with
i have tried everything to no avail to get it to work but no luck
never ever had a problem with 13 14 15 and 11 and 12
11 12 13 14 15 i use this tweak to get the sound working [SOLVED] No sound: Mint 12 on a LG M1 Express Dual laptop PC http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-mint-84/no-sound-mint-12-on-a-lg-m1-express-dual-laptop-pc-917447/
But On Fedora 20 and Linux Mint 16 and Linux mint Debian This tweak does not work at all
I just wanted to share my valuable feedback and thank you for listening to me and only upgrading OS every 2 years that is wise it will give more time to debug and make it more reliable now you know that newer is not always better what works is
Thank You Linux Mint 13 is totally awesome even my mom and dad use it to and they love it so does one of my other buddies he uses it every day i hope Linux Mint 17 will work just fine for me and my sound card i want to upgrade to it but if i can’t get sound out of it then i will have to go back to 13 my PC is over 8 years old i hope if i ever get a new one it will support Linux Mint 17 and up and i hope MATE 1.8 is backported to Linux Mint 13 just in case i can’t get 17 to work Take care Clem i hope to hear from you soon may good luck always be on your side along with time

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Anand says:

May 15, 2014 at 12:39 am

#7 (continued). Thanks for responding Clem. Yes, it sounds pragmatic to developers to buy although it does not cover cases where people are willing to donate…Anyways, whatever suits the dev team 🙂
On Nvidia Optimus, it needs some love, really. If it gets your attention, would be glad as I see many new laptops coming with such hardware. My Dell laptop lives on dying battery as I did not know about Bumblebee project earlier. It is stroke of luck that I came to know about the project. If Additional Driver manager had recommended it, would have been great. **
Anyways, I wont bother you now. You have release to take care of.

https://github.com/linuxmint/mintdrivers/issues/6

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frodopogo says:

May 15, 2014 at 2:10 am

I’ve been looking forward to this release. I’m still using Isadora! I’m happy to hear about the decision to concentrate on LTS releases, because that’s what I’m interested in… and I think other XP refugees will be too- if you look at how long people stuck with XP, it indicates that they aren’t the kind of people who want to go distro-hopping, or upgrade every 6 months… they just want something that works and doesn’t get in the way.

My wish is that you would do something for music…. I’ve looked at Ubuntu Studio and AV Linux, and I’m not that impressed. I think the key thing is that the kernel needs to be “no-latency”, and you need that thing called JACK…. which I still don’t understand!!!

I have also found that Mint works better with my sound setup than a lot of other distros… with Mint, can either use my USB interface or my add-on Ensoniq sound card- the on-board card has been disabled in the BIOS. Other distros have a hard time with the USB interface. Which is frustrating, because that’s what I want to record through!!

Anyway, with interface hardware, and recording being such an intense process that can cause things to “hang”, I think musicians need some Mint love TOO!!!

At the very least, I could see Mint becoming the go-to distribution for podcasters.

Also, a couple of days ago I downloaded the new Greenie ISO, the Slovak distro gear towards writers of e-books. The new version is basically just lubuntu with special writing packages. Somehow that seems like something Mint would be good at.

In fact that reminds me…. I tried a Fedora spin (offered on the Fedora website) aimed at music production, but it’s pretty strange compared to Mint.

Anyway, writers and musicians aren’t necessarily computer geeks, and need something that just works, like Mint!!!

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gerry says:

May 15, 2014 at 4:10 am

Clem,
I would like if the people at Linux Mint and/or the whole Linux community explain the difference between the different distros – this makes the decision to “upgrade” from windows easier. I know that Distrowatch try to explain the differences, but to a complete beginner its not very clear, in my opinion.

I like what the Raspberry PI community did – they put several distros on the one install program, making it easier for people to experiment the different distros. (http://www.raspberrypi.org/introducing-the-new-out-of-box-software-noobs/) I’m not saying you should put all 93 distros on the disk but some subset might be good.

Maybe from a Linux Mint aspect, you could provide an “easier” way to install several “flavours” at once such as XFCE, Cinnamon, KDE etc. At login make it possible for a user to experiment with the different versions. I know users can set this up themselves by installing the files through the Software Manager, but for beginners, it would be nice to have the option provided to them.

For many of us, knowing the difference in terms of the list of programs that we would have on XFCE versus KDE would be useful. So, instead of showing a screenshot, maybe a list of the programs.

Finally, shortcut keys for opening applications (CTRL+ALT +r) are easy to set up in KDE, has it got easier for Cinnamon?
Thanks to you all for the great work you are doing.

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Giles says:

May 15, 2014 at 5:31 am

@52 gerry,
Mint is fairly sane, in that the different desktops environments are packaged with (for the most part) the same desktop applications. This is not the case with Ubuntu, for instance.

Regarding which desktop environment to choose:
XFCE: lightweight, but polished. Well suited to older and slower machines
Mate: A bit heavier than XFCE, with a more fully featured file manager by default
Cinnamon: Slightly heavier again, better window management, more polished than Mate (IMHO), but you’ll need half decent graphics drivers (Intel good, nVidia bad, AMD your mileage may vary).

Mint XFCe will be released around a month after Cinnamon and Mate, so if you want to try Mint asap, your choice is a lot simpler, and probably determined by your graphics hardware.

I hope this helps!

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Markus says:

May 15, 2014 at 5:34 am

Hello Mint-People

I would like to tell you that there could be a major wifi-problem in the new release. I tried ubuntu and the other derevates. In non of the tested distros did my wlan-card work (RTL-8188ee). The only – now working – solution i could find in the web was to change the kernel to the mainline-kernel.

Maybe you are able to find another solution for mint.

Thanks for your good work. I’m using Mint since Gloria. Windows is no more an option for me.

Greetings from Austria

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Giles says:

May 15, 2014 at 5:35 am

@52 gerry,
And yes, a unified Live CD would be great. I have suggested it on github issues..

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Mihas' says:

May 15, 2014 at 6:24 am

Hello Clement and others. Thank you for making my favorite Linux distro.

I have testing a bit Mint 17 MATE 64-bit rc image in Virtualbox, and noticed some things.

1. The installation took about 2.5 hours. I don’t know why. It is extremely large amount of time, compare to Mint 16 MATE 64bit (about 10 minutes on the same virtual machine on the same host OS and hardware). Internet connection was turned off in network-manager, so it’s not because downloading packages. I can reinstall it and provide the log file to you if you say how to do it.

2. I found and fix some mistakes in belarusian translation of mint tools (slideshow-mint and mintupdate), you might want to update the translations in final release.

3. Default window border has 1 pix width, so it’s hard to change window size, because it’s hard to place the mouse in so tiny border. Why not use good looking and having normal width Spidey theme?

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Rop says:

May 15, 2014 at 6:47 am

Did you include software that support installation of common gadgets Like Modem and TV Card? Please that is what is letting us down currently.

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Coaimhin says:

May 15, 2014 at 6:55 am

Thanks for this, after testing in Virtualbox Qiana replaced my Trusty install! Great work, no problems yet!

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JK says:

May 15, 2014 at 6:58 am

I jumped off of the sinking XP ship way back with Felicia. Now I am getting comfortable with LM. Pity the LTS didn’t align with Petra as for some reason I am not too fond of the letter ‘Q’.

As always, I am getting ready to be blown away with all the work that makes LM so great. Fantastic idea not to chase our tails after Ubuntu every 6 months! A lot can be tidied up – eg custom tesselations in Cinnamon vanish after any update to the system (and no GUI place to help configure them either).

This is most likely an upstream issue, but I found updates have a strange twist (Petra 64bit Cinnamon)… I have regular logins for my kids and only my acct has ‘root’ for updates, etc. If they are logged on, and I switch user and login as myself, no update, and updates fail or are refused. If I have the child logout first and login as the _only_ user, all the updating runs perfectly.

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Baldrick says:

May 15, 2014 at 6:59 am

Hi Clem,

I’ve just installed Mint17RC Cinnamon, and I think I’ve found a major bug. When I try to add a ppa in terminal, I get this…

You are about to add the following PPA to your system:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSources/mintSources.py”, line 1251, in
add_repository_via_cli(ppa_line, codename, options.forceYes)
File “/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSources/mintSources.py”, line 45, in add_repository_via_cli
print(” %s” % (ppa_info[“description”].encode(“utf-8”) or “”))
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘encode’

If I try in Software Sources, it doesn’t add the ppa, but no explanation is given.

Any chance of a fix?

Other than that, it looks like an awesome release!

All the best, from New Zealand!

Edit by Clem: Thanks. Yes, added to the roadmap, that’s trivial to fix.

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Alf says:

May 15, 2014 at 7:36 am

Clem wrote:
“Choice is a good thing within the Linux ecosystem. There are different distributions for different people, we decided to be more like what we wanted to be and to please our core audience a little more at the cost maybe of trying to please everybody. Our goal isn’t to attract every single Linux user out there, but to do our best to reach our own standards and expectations. I think I can talk in the name of everybody involved in the development team when I say this: We’re delighted to be doing this. We’re looking at two years of pure development and we can’t wait to take advantage of it.”

This is why the Linux Mint is most used Linux out there. I am satisfied how things develop.

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Augusto says:

May 15, 2014 at 7:43 am

if i install the RC version, could i update to the final version without major problems ?

or it would be better to reinstall from the stable release ?

thx

Edit by Clem: It’s usually trivial, it really depends on the bugs which are found in the RC though. In any case, the upgrade instructions come with the stable release.

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gerry says:

May 15, 2014 at 8:12 am

@ Giles,
Thank You Giles for that.
However your answer raised another question.
That of the importance of a good graphics card.
Does everyone and their mother know what make their graphics card is and how to find out what card they have? Many people know the PC/laptop manufacturer and maybe, the model number, but beyond that…… so, expecting them to pick a distro based on their opinion of how good their graphics card is a stretch, in my opinion.
The definition of a “good” graphics card is subjective is it not?
Many people hear of good graphics card and think it refers ONLY to its ability to display good graphics on computer games. To others a good graphics card is one that can display a file manager, allow them edit a document on Libre Office, show standard definition movies on VLC, browsing the social media sites on Firefox, etc.
I’m not saying I have a solution, i have no idea how to solve it. But I do think there should be some really crude recommendation of distros to people. Is it remotely possible the community could get have a form of validating the ability of your device based on its manufacturer and model number. You would need to make simplifying assumptions of course, but that should be understandable.
The most important thing from the viewpoint of adoption of different distros I think is explaining what programs come preinstalled. Think of cable TV companies such as Sky TV selling you one TV package over another, you see a list of programs and say yes, that line-up suits me. We know there are distros for everyone, but people are lazy, and need to be spoonfed.
They want to look at a line-up to know if it is tailored for “productivity purposes” that is, targeted at users for work, or if it is targered at gamers such as Steam os etc. They are familiar with there being only one version of Windows,(of course you have different version of MS Office but most people probably aren’t aware of these – its on the PC when it was bought.) Different version is great for choice, but not if you don’t understand the reason for the choice.
Linux mint should advertise XFCE as having this line-up of programs/applications, MATE another line-up, KDE another line-up. We saw Blackberry phones and also Windows phones suffering from a perceived lack of apps, it shows that people go for platforms where they can get the basic packages. Linux Mint should note this crude analogy, and market itself accordingly as having all the basic apps for the target audience. When we visit the site, we should see, this version of Linux Mint for children, this for productivity purposes, this version with XBMC built in for media, etc.In many cases, it just repackaging the one distro, but its all about presentation.

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lee says:

May 15, 2014 at 8:28 am

go mint team! well deserved success. we’re looking with such anticipation towards QIANA..

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Michael Webster says:

May 15, 2014 at 8:35 am

@Mihas: The 1 px border issue – what type of monitor setup do you have? Just a single? Multiple? If so, what arrangement? Stretched, mirrored, etc..?

Also, does the problem persist after rebooting?

Thanks

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Monsta says:

May 15, 2014 at 9:09 am

@Baldrick: what PPA did you try to add? This info might be useful to test the fix (when the issue will be fixed).

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Nagilum says:

May 15, 2014 at 9:20 am

I wonder what happens to the flattr donations.
I have subscription based flattr donation to Linux Mint (https://flattr.com/t/40006?utm_source=email&utm_content=thing&utm_campaign=subend). Shouldn’t those be mentioned somewhere as well?

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Mihas' says:

May 15, 2014 at 9:34 am

@Michael Webster: I have a single monitor. And LM works in vbox, which have only one window. Yes, this problem persist after rebooting. And in Live mode, and just after installation too. I made a video to demonstrate what i mean: https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B2jEZlBuCTwZaUlQelpmdEx6ZTg (2.6 MB)

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Bruce R says:

May 15, 2014 at 9:35 am

Some good points by Gerry at No.64.
To which I would add that despite poor LinuxMint responses and poor health I will try to create a BrucesWay tutorial for persistant Linux on a Stick which still provides a Windows visible data use partition.

However please keep up the good work to produce Mint17, especially if it includes Groups and Users plus an Nvidia driver addition capability that fully supports sound and video plus OverScan Correction over HDMI, preferably a Lubuntu14.04-like Cinnamon version for large screen use and demonstrations etc of LinuxMint.

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Adelante says:

May 15, 2014 at 9:36 am

Re 61 Baldrick – AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘encode’

Reporting I have the same issue. Noobslab PPA installed fine, but after: the mjblenner PPA to make hal good for Amazon streaming video, the netflix-desktop PPA and the Pipelight PPA did not. I tried another I hadn’t used before to see what would come of it. Sorry I didn’t make a note of what PPA it was. I’m glad this is going to be an easy fix, because Netflix and Amazon are all the TV I have. Thank you, Clem, for another beautiful release. I support your decision to stick with LTS. It makes sense.

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Monsta says:

May 15, 2014 at 9:42 am

@Adelante: thanks, reproduced it with Pipelight PPA. This PPA has empty description and that’s what caused the issue.

Reply
Vernie says:

May 15, 2014 at 9:57 am

Just downloaded Linux Mint 17 RC today but X window failed to load on an Asus X550D laptop at bootup, a similar problem also found on Ubuntu 14.04.

Ever since I got this Asus X550D, only Pear OS 8 and Peppermint OS 4 that are all based on Ubuntu 13.04 are able to boot from live cd and successfully installed on this Asus X550D. The only kernel that I currently use on this device and also work with amd-driver-catalyst-13-4 without permanent cpu usage and temperature issues
is Linux mbox 3.8.0-35-lowlatency #27-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT Tue Dec 10 05:05:36 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux.

Other amd driver including the current release amd-driver-14.10.1006-x86.x86_64 have serious problem with programs like gala and enlightenment 0.18 that does compositing – cpu usage can rise up quickly on these programs making the system really hot around 80++ degrees Celcius.

At Linux Mint 17 RC terminal, I was able to copy some logs from /va/log/ directory to a usb drive.
Logs can be downloaded from the following link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByJjmyqEsNIEUkVzdTdobFV6ZzA/edit?usp=sharing

I hope this can be solved so that those with the same device can also upgrade.

Reply
Lewdsquirrel says:

May 15, 2014 at 10:08 am

Follow-up on #38
The details of the warning:
Details:
Web page: http://mirrors.arpnetworks.com/Ubuntu
Comment: Access to the web page was blocked by ESET Endpoint Antivirus. The web page is on the list of websites with potentially dangerous content.

But I get the same warning for the root URL “http://mirrors.arpnetworks.com”, so I guess this site has been “busted” hosting some infected or malicious files, nothing to do with the Ubuntu repo.

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Shawn says:

May 15, 2014 at 10:13 am

I have done some testing testing Linux Mint 16 and Linux Mint Debian
Latest versions 64 bit with the MATE Desktop and have no sound at all
my sound card is not detected or recognized My Sound Card Is A Realtek High Definition Audio Model ALC880 My Computer Is A Gateway 831GM
From 2005 Everything runs fine On Linux Mint 16 and Debian but there is no sound whatsoever Please Clem Or Somebody could you please fix this?
I have One More Question Will My Sound Work On Linux Mint 17 ?
Is there anything that i can try? Just So You know I,m Now Running Linux Mint 13 MATE 64 Bit and everything works fine The Sound Works Great
I Have A Standard Set Of PC Speakers connected to the middle green jack on the back of the PC
Please Get Back To Me You Can Leave A Comment On My Website on this page here http://fredtwofeathers6.wix.com/infomania#!feedback/c24vq

Reply
Jalister says:

May 15, 2014 at 10:54 am

So far I like the LTS decision. I tend to install the LTS version on anything I want Linux on anyway. The only times I might use the latest 6 month build is when I am setting up a machine for some temporary functions, and I can live without those 6 month versions. I’m anxiously waiting to install 17/MATE on 3 computers and 17/Cinnamon 2 computers. I might even be using 17/Xfce soon.

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RexCortex says:

May 15, 2014 at 11:13 am

HiDPI seems to work very well using Cinnamon 2.2 in Mint17 RC. Unfortunately the scroll bars don’t scale, is it related to the GTK theme?

Edit by Clem: MDM 1.6, Cinnamon 2.2 and GTK 3.10 support HiDPI. GTK2 does not. In which applications can you see the scrollbar issue?

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Jacob45 says:

May 15, 2014 at 11:28 am

#64 @ Gerry,

I understand your point, but like you said “Many people know the PC/laptop manufacturer and maybe, the model number, but beyond that…… so, expecting them to pick a distro based on their opinion of how good their graphics card is a stretch, in my opinion.” So I would think that if people are either too lazy or can’t find out what their graphics card is then telling those users that they need NVIDIA GTX 520m graphics card will be pointless. I do agree that LinuxMint should provide better graphics requirements, LinuxMint 16 only states that you need 800×600 pixels display capability (which means that any graphics card made probably in the past 20 years should work; maybe LinuxMint 16 does work with 20-year old cards)

There is a hardware list here on LinuxMint http://community.linuxmint.com/hardware that users post how some of the hardware performs or any tips how to get it working properly; but this also requires the new users to search for their hardware in the this database. If the new users are completely at a loss, or don’t want to deal with installing Linux, then they probably are better off paying someone else to do it or purchase a pre-installed Linux computer.

This issue is kind of like chicken & egg: Providing perfect details of System Requirements for Linux to those that only know the make&model of their PC won’t do much.

You can check the hardware list at http://community.linuxmint.com/hardware. Perhaps this link could be emphasized when users click on the ‘Download’ button.

Listing the applications would be helpful, especially the top 10 (LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC, etc); but it needs to be emphasized that there are limitless applications for Linux and all are free that can be installed from the Software Manager (similar to AppStore on cellphones). I think each of the LinuxMint variants (Cinnamon, MATE, LMDE) have the same productivity applications, KDE has slightly different applications. The major differences are in file manager, display manager, login manager, and some other technical applications; which usually normal users don’t care which login manager is running.

“…you have different version of MS Office but most people probably aren’t aware of these – its on the PC when it was bought” Again if users don’t know the different MS Office versions, they probably won’t care if Linux is running LibreOffice 4.1 or 4.2 (or OpenOffice for that matter). And for those that don’t understand different MS Office or Windows versions probably won’t be able to install Linux anyway.

I think you might be asking to provide PhD-level information to a 5th grader (they won’t know what to do with it).

I suppose one solution would be to just list:
– Office Productivity software
– DVD video player
– E-mail reader
– Internet browser
– Video chat
– etc. etc.

Those that don’t know computers don’t need more info; those that do, know how to find it.

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PB says:

May 15, 2014 at 11:32 am

Alf@62

“This is why the Linux Mint is most used Linux out there. I am satisfied how things develop.”

Perhaps I misunderstand your statement, but on the surface, that’s simply not true. I love Linux Mint, and have relied on it 99.99999% for several years now. But If you are basing this statement on the hits that Distrowatch shows, then you are drawing the wrong conclusion. That’s just a page hit rating, those numbers do not indicate actual users. There is virtually no way to tell that. We know Ubuntu is way up there, and by extension, there are a growing number of Ubuntu based distros. Of course, Linux Mint is one of them. So this conversation could go in so many directions. But you make a very large statement that you can’t prove.

Believe me, I would love for that to be true, and perhaps the day will come. But until that time, it’s counterproductive to put those statements out there.

Edit by Clem: Linux Mint and Ubuntu use the same user agent since the days of Firefox 4. Back then, Linux Mint was number #2 on the DW ranking but more importantly, in terms of traffic it was 4 times bigger than any other distro and 4 times smaller than Ubuntu. That was years ago though. Since Firefox 4, we’ve no reliable way to compare them anymore. Whether or not Linux Mint outgrew Ubuntu in terms of user base, and if so when did that happen? We’ve no way to tell. Although it’s a topic that makes everyone curious, hopeful and opinionated, it’s not actually important.

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Dan says:

May 15, 2014 at 12:28 pm

Is there a “New Features” list for LM17? I realise a lot of the changes are tweaks and under the hood so to speak But are there any new things which I could try out.

Edit by Clem: Hi Dan, yes, it’s being finalized right now.

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SImon Brown says:

May 15, 2014 at 12:50 pm

Hi

I downloaded the RC last night and ran from USB. Seems fine, no huge obvious changes but a bit more polished and refined. Now I have to install for real on my Windows 7 dual boot laptop. I imagine this is going to be a whole lot harder than upgrades from previous versions on Mint only machines where I have just backed up, wiped everything with a clean install, and then copied back what I wanted. A forum response has pointed me towards installing on USB first and then copying the partitions so as not to affect the Windows 7 side. Are there any detailed tutorials out there or will the release instructions be made more detailed ? I do find the release instructions for earlier versions fairly minimal and partial so that information has to be sought elsewhere for anything other than a standard install.

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Justin says:

May 15, 2014 at 1:01 pm

So far everything looks good. I dod notice one minor thing. I installed wallch and when I launch the program it flashes on the screen briefly and closes.

I can confirm that installing the broadcom wireless drivers work just fine offline. Many thanks for getting this working and for all of your hard work on this release!

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Todd says:

May 15, 2014 at 1:05 pm

Fantastic OS, I’m excited about the new “LTS” release so I can upgrade!
Thank you Mint team for your excellent work on this OS! I am becoming more confident that I no longer “Need” Windows to accomplish my computing requirements. I have also converted several friends over from Windows XP, which I absolutely love. (They do too!)

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Richard says:

May 15, 2014 at 1:19 pm

Bit early in trying 17. Cinnamon 64 working well in my newer laptop but the 32 freezes after a few minutes,in my older(8 years) 1 G memory desktop.16 worked well,so may reinstall and wait for final release. Thanks for your hard work in bringing us a nice OS…:)

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RodrigoDK says:

May 15, 2014 at 1:35 pm

Hi clem! Fine release this Mint 17 😀

A few things:
My Notebook has a nvidia GT640M WITHOUT intel fallback, with Core i7 3630.

Noveau didn’t started after install (live install used software renderer). X doesn’t boot.

So, in recovery mode, i’ve tried to install nvidia-current and nvidia-current-updates, without luck. dmesg complains someting about license and taints kernel.

Ubuntu Trusty Desktop installed just fine, with noveau, then installing nvidia through ubuntu control panel. Can use both without issues.

Edit by Clem: Hi. In Mint 17, please try and switch MDM to LightDM, then reboot. Also let me know if nvidia-prime was installed, and if so, how did it get there and at which stage. There definitely seems to be an issue we can fix, we’re not sure yet whether it’s related to drivers, packages or the display manager. Let us know if it works with LightDM, that would put us on the right track.

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Nick says:

May 15, 2014 at 1:49 pm

I’ve tested the Cinnamon 64bit version (live session):

There’s something very nasty happening with System Monitor. Every time it’s run, it’s extremely slow, refreshing about once every 10 seconds, and it makes the CPU use go really high – about 60%. The only way to make it normal is to change from the default ‘File Systems’ tab to the ‘Processes’ tab. After doing that, it behaves normally, irrespective of what tab is displayed.

Another problem I’ve noticed affects my ALPS touchpad. It’s much less responsive than it was in Mint 16. Tap-clicking often doesn’t work, and moving the cursor often has no effect. Changing the mouse/touchpad settings doesn’t resolve the problem.

Reply
Baldrick says:

May 15, 2014 at 3:38 pm

@Monsta,

ppa:teejee2008/ppa.

PPA for aptik & Timeshift.

Chhers.

Reply
Superfly says:

May 15, 2014 at 3:46 pm

Great work Clem and Team!

Just a thought.. maybe instead of future releases being 17.1, 17.2 etc (too Windowsy for me).. perhaps have Qiana 1, Qiana 2.. etc?

Reply
native says:

May 15, 2014 at 5:12 pm

Hi! Mint 17 Cinnamon is an absolutely great release, I love every piece of it! However I have one problem. After watching a full screen video (for example on Youtube) the panels are disappearing (the browser window hides them). How could I fix this?

Reply
LMUCS says:

May 15, 2014 at 5:28 pm

Hi Clem,
thanks for your edit in AW#32.

mdm-rcovery works. It also works STRG+ALT+F1 and then startx.
OK, maybe the problem is caused by region-settings? I think about it because many German-Users have the problem. But one user said, he had testet an installation in English and there is the same Problem.
Maybe this Informations are helpfull for you:
rosi@rosi-laptop ~ $ sudo apt-get install mutter
[sudo] password for rosi:
Paketlisten werden gelesen… Fertig
Abhängigkeitsbaum wird aufgebaut.
Statusinformationen werden eingelesen…. Fertig
Die folgenden zusätzlichen Pakete werden installiert:
gnome-themes-standard gnome-themes-standard-data libgnome-desktop-3-7
libmutter0c mutter-common
Vorgeschlagene Pakete:
gnome-control-center
Empfohlene Pakete:
gnome-accessibility-themes gnome-session x-session-manager
Die folgenden NEUEN Pakete werden installiert:
gnome-themes-standard gnome-themes-standard-data libgnome-desktop-3-7
libmutter0c mutter mutter-common
0 aktualisiert, 6 neu installiert, 0 zu entfernen und 0 nicht aktualisiert.
Es müssen 4.515 kB an Archiven heruntergeladen werden.
Nach dieser Operation werden 15,4 MB Plattenplatz zusätzlich benutzt.
Möchten Sie fortfahren? [J/n]
——————————————————————-

/etc/mdm/mdm.recovery-backup shows this:
# MDM Configuration file.
#
# This file is the appropriate place for specifying your customizations to the
# MDM configuration. If you run mdmsetup, it will automatically edit this
# file for you and will cause the daemon and any running MDM GUI programs to
# automatically update with the new configuration. Not all configuration
# options are supported by mdmsetup, so to modify some values it may be
# necessary to modify this file directly by hand.
#
# This file overrides the default configuration settings. These settings
# are stored in the MDM System Defaults configuration file, which is found
# at the following location.
#
# /usr/share/mdm/defaults.conf.
#
# Default settings are first overriden by you distribution in /usr/share/mdm/distro.conf
# and then by the settings present in this file.
#
# This file contains comments about the meaning of each configuration option,
# so is also a useful reference. In short, to hand-edit
# this file, simply add or modify the key=value combination in the
# appropriate section in the template below this comment section.
#
# For example, if you want to specify a different value for the Enable key
# in the “[debug]” section of your MDM System Defaults configuration file,
# then add “Enable=true” in the “[debug]” section of this file. If the
# key already exists in this file, then simply modify it.
#
# If you hand edit a MDM configuration file, you can run the following
# command and the MDM daemon will immediately reflect the change. Any
# running MDM GUI programs will also be notified to update with the new
# configuration.
#
# mdmflexiserver –command=”UPDATE_CONFIG ”
#
# e.g, the “Enable” key in the “[debug]” section would be “debug/Enable”.
#
# You can also run mdm-restart or mdm-safe-restart to cause MDM to restart and
# re-read the new configuration settings. You can also restart MDM by sending
# a HUP or USR1 signal to the daemon. HUP behaves like mdm-restart and causes
# any user session started by MDM to exit immediately while USR1 behaves like
# mdm-safe-restart and will wait until all users log out before restarting MDM.
#
#
# NOTE: Lines that begin with “#” are considered comments.
#
# Have fun!

[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable=false
AutomaticLogin=rosi
TimedLoginEnable=false
TimedLogin=rosi
TimedLoginDelay=10

[security]

[xdmcp]

[gui]

[greeter]

[chooser]

[debug]

# Note that to disable servers defined in the MDM System Defaults
# configuration file (such as 0=Standard, you must put a line in this file
# that says 0=inactive, as described in the Configuration section of the MDM
# documentation.
#

[servers]

# Also note, that if you redefine a [server-foo] section, then MDM will
# use the definition in this file, not the MDM System Defaults configuration
# file. It is currently not possible to disable a [server-foo] section
# defined in the MDM System Defaults configuration file.

Thanks for your work and godd luck for by bughunting! 🙂

Reply
Giles says:

May 15, 2014 at 6:04 pm

FAO: Clem and the Mint team
Where isthe best place to report bugs with the Mint 17 RC?

I can fairly reliably get Cinnamon (64-bit) to crawl or freeze when running anything that uses gksu.
Running mdmsetup (for instance) from the menu causes the system to become unresponsive (even the mouse “throbber” slows) for around ten seconds.
Attempting to remove the system-monitor@ebbes applet causes a hard freeze.
The problem seems to be caused by either the background fading to grey (a graphics driver problem?), or gksu getting upset when there is an existing ~/.gksu.lock. Running “sudo mdmsetup” works fine.

I haven’t yet got to the bottom of whether this is primarily an issue with gksu (existing ~/.gksu.lock is bad), Cinnamon or the AMD GCN drivers, but it is a nasty bug..

I’d be happy to provide logs as requested.

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Jonny says:

May 15, 2014 at 6:24 pm

LM 16 was my first Linux system. I’ve hopped around a bit, but I’m looking forward to the final Qiana release. I’m planning on an LM 17/Fedora 20 dualboot. The Mint team has done such a fantastic job. You guys really are a credit to free software. Thank you!

Reply
Goetz Kluge says:

May 15, 2014 at 6:35 pm

“Qiana” Mate 32 Bit installed on a 32G pen drive runs out of the box on my Acer PC (AMD E-450 APU with Radeon HD Graphics) and an old Eee PC 901. (The Eee PC later will get the XFCE version of “Qiana”.)

On the surface there are not too many changes between Mint 16 and Mint 17. To some that might be boring but to me that’s good. I can update PCs of my family without complaints. Think about “family admins” who administer the PCs of aged family members. There will be more situations like that in the future. I believe that being conservative with regard to the look&feel and focusing on technical improvements is the right way to go.

Great job!

Reply
Julian says:

May 15, 2014 at 7:08 pm

Installed the unofficial RC and found a few bugs:

1. In the live session, reiserfsprogs was installed and I could create reiser partitions in gparted, but in the installer, when manually assigning the partitions, the dropdown menu “use partition as” did not contain reiserfs. (Btw, it would also be really awesome if gparted was installed by default in the live session, like it was in previous versions)
Maybe not worth the trouble fixing (I guess that is also an Ubuntu bug), since nobody seems to use reiser any more.

2. Probably the same issue as reported in comment #32:
After the installed system booted and MDM came up, I clicked my username typed in the password and pressed enter… Nothing happens. Clicked OK repeatedly.. Still nothing. Pressed ESC. Nothing. MDM was not frozen however, I was still able to edit the password field, clicking the username again cleared the pw field and I tried again, same result. After some more random clicks on the background above the “window”, MDM crashed and restarted. (Still same behavior, btw.)
When I reproduce the crash, dmesg shows “mdmwebkit[PID]: segfault at 18 ip 00007fxxxxxx7d8f sp 00007fffxxxxxxx0 error 4 in libwebkitgtk-1.0.so.22.6[7fxxxxxxxx000+1dcb000]”
Reboot does not help, enabling autologin in /etc/mdm/mdm.conf (for those who do not know; add these lines below [daemon]:
“AutomaticLoginEnabled=true
AutomaticLogin=***your username***”

Non-html themes are not affected, obviously.

3. This is still happening, but I guess that’s Ubuntus job to fix: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=111527

Everything else seems to be running very smoothly so far.
Great job guys, thank you very much!

Reply
Julian says:

May 15, 2014 at 7:11 pm

That should have been: 2. […] enabling autologin […] *does. (does help)

Edit by Clem: Thanks Julian. For MDM you can simply run “mdm-recovery”.

Reply
Maren says:

May 15, 2014 at 7:23 pm

I filed a bug report for the login screen problem at launchpad – in the hopes that that was indeed the correct place (as there was no mention of where to send bug reports for bugs found in Qiana).
I also added some screenshots.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1319597

If I can help to debug, please tell me how. There are two more people subscribed to the bug and willing to help.

Reply
av8r0023 says:

May 15, 2014 at 10:25 pm

I can’t wait!

Reply
Bill says:

May 15, 2014 at 11:07 pm

Well, I’ve been testing the Mint 17 RC Mate 64 edition all day today and have been able to tweak all to my satisfaction but one thing will not work. How in the heck can I get a boot up splash screen, I am exhausted trying everything I can find online or in the forums. Anyone Please?

Reply
Monsta says:

May 16, 2014 at 2:06 am

@Bill: there IS the boot splash screen. If you don’t see it then something’s wrong with Plymouth (the software that shows this splash screen), and so it’s a bug.

Reply
Robert says:

May 16, 2014 at 3:02 am

Hallo,

it’s a good idea to use only the LTS versions of ubuntu for linux mint. Also i prefer the LTS versions. I think, they are more stable than the other versions.

Greetings,
Robert

Reply
Mihas' says:

May 16, 2014 at 3:51 am

Also I think it would be better to enable side by side tiling (window snapping) in MATE by default. It’s very valuable feature for users who switching from Windows. Disabled by default, it may become a reason to not use this particular distro.

Reply
Clem says:

May 16, 2014 at 6:05 am

Hi everybody,

We seem to have two critical bugs so far:

– The login screen freezes post-install for German speaking users. The workaround is to CTRL+ALT+F1, log in, and type “mdm-recovery”. The solution is to upgrade MDM to version 1.6.5. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1319597 for details.

– People with hybrid nVidia optimus cards are having issues. We think it’s either related to missing packages, or that it’s missing compatibility between MDM and nvidia-prime/gpu-manager. It should be easy to fix, but we don’t have enough information about the problem. If you own one of these cards, please come and chat with us on IRC (irc.spotchat.org #linuxmint-dev) so we can troubleshoot with you and make this work out of the box for everybody.

Reply
PB says:

May 16, 2014 at 9:03 am

Hi Clem,

Thanks for you edit. I will agree with you that–overall–the discussion of “top user base” is largely unimportant, and I certainly didn’t mean to assign a particular level of importance that wasn’t there. But once a topic is introduced, important in the grand scheme or not, it becomes at least important enough that we refrain from posting conclusive statements that can’t be proven. Opinions? No problem. Opinions are based on at least some level of emotion mixed in with some logic — all based on personal experience, impressions, etc. And sites like this rightly provide a wide berth for opinions.

But again, important or not, any subject matter introduced deserves and only should be supported by well established information. At the end of the day, there is no way we can totally track all the unfounded content either, it happens. I’m sure I’ve inadvertently posted content of this nature. On the other hand, I’ve drawn conclusions on this type of content before, and will probably do so in the future in the presence of topics that I’m unfamiliar with, even though I’d like to think I’ve learned from the experience.

Bottom line, I suppose I’ve grown sensitive to it with my own bad experiences in both directions. I realize the impact that any conclusive statement not conclusively supported can have. The outcome is almost never positive.

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john says:

May 16, 2014 at 11:12 am

Will it be in sync with LTS release e.g. when 14.04.2 comes out then linux mint 17.2 comes out as well?

Edit by Clem: Hi John, no, I doubt it, if it did it would be by coincidence. Mint 17.2 will be out either because it makes sense (to release a new set of features), or simply to continue with the Mint release cycle (May-November).

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GrandPaVangogh says:

May 16, 2014 at 1:48 pm

After installing Mint 17 RC Cinnamon I enable “Hot Corners”, both Icon and Hover. When I moved mouse over hot corner the computer locked. After power cycle the issue was resolved.

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LMUCS says:

May 16, 2014 at 3:28 pm

Hi Clem,

the mdm-Update works fine. On PC and Laptop the login now works normal.
Now I will test it with Cinnamon.

Thanks!

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LMUCS says:

May 16, 2014 at 4:20 pm

mdm-Update works well with Cinnamon too.

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Rikhard says:

May 16, 2014 at 9:17 pm

Will lmde get more love?

For instance a new desktop manager, lighter like lxqt?

Thanks good work!

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kenden says:

May 17, 2014 at 6:15 am

I’m a bit confused by this post.
First: “Yeah! More funding!”
Second: “Now we’re doing a less up to date distro to save on development time.”
With more funding I would expect the opposite?

Ubuntu was created in the first place because Debian was not updated often enough, so doing less updates concerns me a little.
Two years is a long time to wait for a potential update of a a software I need.
I like having the option to update every 6 months and get a newer kernel with better drivers, a new version of Libre Office, Git or Blender.
I can stay on LTS it I want to. I’m just not “forced” too.
I fear this will cause a lot of .ppa to be created… causing possibly more instability?

A couple of quotes:
“Release early, release often”.
“If it aint broke, don’t fix it”.

That said, the last 3 versions of Mint have been awesome and I am looking forward to Mint 17.
Thanks to you and the dev team for your efforts!

I just hope to be as excited by the following versions!

Reply
robert says:

May 17, 2014 at 7:22 pm

Hi

Just wondering have you fixed that steam bug where message would appear behind cinnamon task bar? Thanks

Reply
Cliff says:

May 17, 2014 at 10:11 pm

Thanks for RC version 17.

My first problem after installing Mint Cinnamon replacing OpenSuse was that it didn’t create a menu recognizing Windows 8.1 as Suse had done. It did recognize Suse so I thought all was well. However it took up nearly all of the 1 TB HD and may have deleted Windows 8.1 At any rate I have no way to start 8.1. even it it still exists.

After setting up Mint 17 the way I like it I tried to add sound to the Caps Key as my keyboard is wireless and has no indicator light. This not only didn’t work but crashed Cinnamon. Although a restore Cinnamon message came on it ran in a endless loop and didn’t allow for the software alternative. Shutting down and restarting the computer also had no effect. Finally I had to reinstall Mint 17.

Reply
Royce Kindlimann says:

May 18, 2014 at 3:24 am

Hey there, You have done a fantastic job. I’ll certainly digg it and for my part suggest to my friends. I am confident they’ll be benefited from this site.|

Reply
Bamm says:

May 18, 2014 at 8:53 am

Ubuntu gives kernel upgrades (not just updates) to the LTS via the LTS Enablement Stack. That’s why there were releases named 12.04, 12.04.1, 12.04.2, etc. The new 14.04 will also have 14.04.1, 14.04.2, etc.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack

Will Linux Mint 17.1, 17.2 also include kernel upgrades via the LTS Enablement Stack or will it stick to the minor kernel updates given in original LTS release?

Reply
Hearthstone says:

May 18, 2014 at 6:41 pm

Hello,

There is no way to make the Hearthstone game work in mint 17 using any wine version nor in a virtual machine running mint 17.

Thank you,

Reply
Dana says:

May 18, 2014 at 6:47 pm

Serbian language package is missing. Serbian language package includes Serbian Cyrillic Alphabet and Serbian Latin Alphabet keyboard inputs.

I am willing to help with professional translations if needed.

Reply
Grizwald says:

May 18, 2014 at 7:31 pm

Hi Guys, Great work by the way – I’m a very happy camper..

A couple of observations though…
Synaptic package Manager… After installing a package, the list of programs change to unwanted ones unless the cursor is in the right place.

Gnome Subtitle Editor & similar others.
When listing the subtitles to be edited, cannot load the video file correctly, only get the audio track – not the video too.
May not be a Mint problem but had to ask.

Using Samsung Laptop R519.

Reply
Grizwald says:

May 18, 2014 at 7:32 pm

Re: Msg 114… Using Mint 17 RC Cinnamon.

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Grizwald says:

May 18, 2014 at 7:36 pm

Re: Msg 114 and 64 bit… been out of bed too long.

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DaveW says:

May 19, 2014 at 12:25 am

I installed Mint 17 Mate RC and notice that the scrollbars do not have the right/left and up/down arrow buttons. I believe the problem is system wide, because I see it in LibreOffice Calc and pluma.

Reply
rob says:

May 19, 2014 at 1:53 am

So how do we fix the netflix ppa on mint 17 RC cinnamon x64? I used this code: $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio

and got this output

You are about to add the following PPA to your system:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSources/mintSources.py”, line 1251, in
add_repository_via_cli(ppa_line, codename, options.forceYes)
File “/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSources/mintSources.py”, line 45, in add_repository_via_cli
print(” %s” % (ppa_info[“description”].encode(“utf-8”) or “”))
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘encode’

cheerz

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Monsta says:

May 19, 2014 at 7:47 am

@rob: the latest update of mintsources should’ve fixed that bug.

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BrendanC says:

May 20, 2014 at 10:25 pm

I seem to have run into a problem installing git on Mint17 64 bit/Cinnamon). Somewhat surprised this was not previously reported/discussed. AFAIK installation of git fails due to a libperl error.

Perhaps someone else can confirm my observations here.

Regards,
BrendanC

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michael e austin says:

May 21, 2014 at 1:10 am

As long as Mint uses ubuntu base, i’ll stick with my trusty DEBIAN installs!!!

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DaveW says:

May 21, 2014 at 10:42 am

@119 DaveW Referring to my previous post, the problem lies with the appearance preferences. Specifically, select the Mint-X theme, click Customize. In the Controls tab, if Mint-X is selected, there are no arrow buttons. If Mist is selected, there are arrow buttons.

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Yves Lortie says:

May 21, 2014 at 4:39 pm

The Update Manager indicates there is an update for Mintinstall (level 1). When I click to install it, it says there is an errot, it can’t find it.

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Monsta says:

May 22, 2014 at 1:22 am

@DaveW: Mint-X theme indeed lost these arrows in Mint 17. If you wish to get them back, either file a bug report at:

https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/issues

or report it to the developers at IRC (irc.spotchat.org #linuxmint-dev)

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DaveW says:

May 23, 2014 at 11:51 pm

There seems to be a problem with cron in Mint 17 Mate. This entry in crontab works:
#*/1 * * * * dave export DISPLAY=:0.0 && matedialog –info –text=dave

This entry does not:
#*/1 * * * * root export DISPLAY=:0.0 && matedialog –info –text=root

The root version works in Mint 13 Mate and Mint 15 Mate, but also fails in Mint 16 Mate.

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DaveW says:

May 23, 2014 at 11:59 pm

@127: The crontab entries were actually:

*/1 * * * * dave export DISPLAY=:0.0 && matedialog –info –text=dave
*/1 * * * * root export DISPLAY=:0.0 && matedialog –info –text=root

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FBC says:

May 24, 2014 at 10:07 am

Monitor freeze/scramble/crash after just a few minutes. Changed driver in Driver Manager to NVIDIA which was tagged ‘Recommended’ but not activated by the installation.
Some program settings not persistent. Have to make some settings that are not desired, attempt to save them, change settings to what’s desired then save.
Chrome browser won’t recognize Flash Player.
Xscreensaver not initiating correctly at startup nor running after initialization.

emachine EL1352G-41w
SYSTEM INFORMATION
Running LinuxMint Linux, the LinuxMint 17 (qiana) release.
GNOME: 3.8.4 (Ubuntu 2014-03-17)
Kernel version: 3.13.0-24-generic (#46-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 10 19:11:08 UTC 2014)
GCC: 4.8 (x86_64-linux-gnu)
Xorg: 1.15.1 (16 April 2014 01:36:29PM) (16 April 2014 01:36:29PM)

CPU INFORMATION
AuthenticAMD, AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 220 Processor
Number of CPUs: 2
CPU clock currently at 2100.000 MHz with 512 KB cache
Numbering: family(16) model(6) stepping(3)
Bogomips: 5626.01
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt hw_pstate npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save

HARDWARE INFORMATION
MOTHERBOARD
Host bridge
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 10h Processor Link Control
PCI bridge(s)
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI bridge (rev a1) (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode])
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI bridge (rev a1) (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode])
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
ISA bridge
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 LPC Bridge (rev a2)
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0394
IDE interface
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2) (prog-if 85 [Master SecO PriO])
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0394

GRAPHIC CARD
VGA controller
NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0394

SOUND CARD
Multimedia controller
NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 0394

NVIDIA GRAPHIC CARD INFORMATION
Model name: unknown
Card Type: unknown
Video RAM: 512 MB
GPU Frequency: unknown
Driver version: NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 304.117 Tue Nov 26 21:25:36 PST 2013

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peter says:

May 24, 2014 at 10:20 am

Google Earth crashes on startup

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raymond says:

May 25, 2014 at 5:45 am

Hi,
I have got a question. Nowadays, Cinnamon is build on GTK libraries, do you thought to going to QT in the future?

Regards,
raymond

Edit by Clem: We did talk about it a few times. Users come first, they would suffer if we were to rewrite the DE from scratch on another toolkit. There’s no issue in Linux Mint because we froze our favourite toolkit for the next 2 to 5 years and we patched the [few] regressions in it to make it fit our needs. It’s too soon to talk about LMDE but it makes sense there also to focus on quality and to step back from the exciting yet risky spheres of using bleeding edge upstream components, so it’s very possible we’ll be working with a stable GTK in the near future which doesn’t change much [or even at all] underneath us.

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Monsta says:

May 25, 2014 at 6:19 am

Please report Mint 17 bugs in other blog posts:

MATE edition: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2616
Cinnamon edition: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2615

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The Linux Mint Blog

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Monthly News – April 2014

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