Qiana “v2” ISO respins

The ISO images for the Cinnamon and MATE editions of Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” were updated and labelled “v2”. All the links were updated on the website and in the announcements to point to the new ISOs.

If you’re already running Linux Mint 17, you don’t need to reinstall.

The new ISO images provide fixes for the following issues:

MDM crash with non-xrandr compatible GPUs

On SIS cards or cards which were not compatible with xrandr, mdm crashed when scanning the available monitors and booting Linux Mint 17 resulted in a black screen.

Dangerously ambiguous label could lead people to mistakenly wipe their hard drive

In the installer, when other operating systems were detected, the option to wipe the hard drive was ambiguously labelled “Replace $OS and install Linux Mint”. Although this option warned about removing data, it led people to believe it would only delete partitions and data associated with the mentioned operating system.

Driver Manager didn’t handle missing firmwares correctly

The driver manager incorrectly assumed the user was running a manually installed driver when in presence of a device which required the installation of “linux-firmware-nonfree”.

Corrupted APT sources when / partition wasn’t formatted

In the case where Linux Mint was installed over an existing / partition and this partition was not formatted, the installer used to call apt-clone and this resulted in corrupting the APT sources.

Skype and some WINE or Steam games didn’t work well out of the box

Better out of the box experience for Steam, Wine, Skype, LibreOffice-base 

A few additional packages were selected and installed by default, such as ia32-libs, libgl1-mesa-dri/glx,  libreoffice-sdbc-hsqldb, to make it easier to run Steam or Wine games in 64-bit, to get better support in 32-bit applications such as Skype or to provide better support for LibreOffice Base.

All level 1 updates were added

All the level 1 updates and bug fixes published since the official release a month ago were added to the new ISO images.

Note to existing users

Although all these changes provide a smoother experience to newcomers. If you already installed Linux Mint and applied all level 1 updates, you do not need to reinstall it.

Note also that the KDE and Xfce editions won’t get respins as these issues either do not apply to them or were already fixed in time for their stable releases.

28 comments

  1. “The ISO images for the Cinnamon and MATE editions of Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” were updated and labelled “v2″. All the links were updated on the website and in the announcements to point to the new ISOs.”

    The experience I am getting is that the V2’s are available but clicking download links still results in the old ISO. Tried a number of worldwide sites and also torrents.

  2. Yes, thanks for the “Dangerously ambiguous label could lead people to mistakenly wipe their hard drive” — that’s exactly what it did to mine (and I’ve been a Unix/Linux sysadmin for almost 30 years, and a Linux Mint user since “Elyssa”). I didn’t report the install behavior because I couldn’t believe that it was a “bug” (but it’s one helluva way to force users to perform “clean” installations). I reinstalled “Katya”, and that’s where I’m staying.

  3. PS: It only “led us to believe” because that was the default behavior through all prior versions of the OS installation. That is, replacing an existing installation of the OS gave us the option to reuse/modify the current partitioning scheme; this version of the OS installation jumped right in to full-scale disk repartitioning.

    Edit by Clem: It’s a very nasty bug indeed and one that made it necessary for us to organize these respins. It was actually introduced in Ubuntu 13.10, and so it affected both Linux Mint 16 and 17. You can get more information on it at https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1325786 and for Ubuntu 14.04 at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1265192. Note that we’re leaving the warning in the release notes for a little while, in case magazines or websites point or ship the previous ISOs. Also note that this issue still affects Ubuntu 14.04 and its derivatives, so be careful not to choose “Replace $OS..” in these other OSes as it will also result in data loss.

  4. Things seem to have caught up. v2 is now being offered.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Trapper, sorry there’s a slight delay with the announcement. Torrents aren’t seeding full speed either but everything should be in place in the next few minutes.

  5. How I wish Mint team had the bandwidth to generate respins in a manner where user does not have to download MB’s of updates after installation. When I recommend / set up Mint 13 on my friends PC’s they have to sacrifice lot of their bandwidth. I can understand that with release cycles being so often and with lot of development work this will be a big challenge for the team. But LTS could have updated respins every six months or so? Not sure, in the new LTS strategy if this will be handled bit differently.
    http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=148248 > My old post here…

    Another thought, this could be a stupid idea, but will suggest it anyways…Can the ISO’s have all relevant deb files (say updates from ubuntu repos) inside the ISO file itself and copy to /cache/apt/archive and update as part of installation process. Am thinking if they reside inside a compressed file then it would some space? I could be wrong here.

  6. Yeah, that “dangerously ambiguous label” came straight from Ubuntu – I should know, because it burned me bad when trying to dual boot Ubuntu 14.04 with a Windows 8 partition (I already had Mint 16 with Win 8, and of course assumed that Ubuntu would ONLY replace Mint. OOPS!)

    Although I lost a few documents, it did push me to get rid of Windows altogether, so I got that going for me 😀

  7. Where exactly are the V2 iso.s for download? I downloaded via torrent a 32 bit Live Disk on Friday 27 June but have not installed it yet. Am I right in thinking I need to download the V2 and install that instead?

    Edit by Clem: linuxmint.com/download.php, yes the filename should contain “v2” for the MATE/Cinnamon editions.

  8. Not one Mint distro contains the driver for my USB wireless modem to connect to the router and thus to the internet. The installation program assumes every PC is connected via Ethernet.

  9. It is a shame some other packages were not updated when the iso was
    re-spun to save people installing updates for example

    Firefox 30.0
    Mesa 10.2.2
    vlc 2.1.4
    Kernel 3.15.2 (not upgradeable on usb persistent install as it breaks the boot)

    and There will be a load of other things like gstreamer and so on that will need updating

    Edit by Clem: That would have required a new RC and a brand new release.

  10. I have just spotted a large bug in the Synaptic Package Manager version
    0.81.2-3 that was not in 0.81.2-2 and the bug is..

    when you right click on a package that is marked as upgradeable the Option “Mark for Upgrade” is Missing from the right click menu to fix this issue i have to select the synaptic package then select from the package menu force version and select 0.81.1 and apply then i closed and re launched the Synaptic Package Manager and the “Mark for Upgrade” option came back

  11. Thanks to Monsta for more info about my comment number 10 if thats the case that Clem removed the option then i am seriously thinking about switching to Ubuntu 14.10 as i never use the mint updater and i like to upgrade packages on there own in the package manager as i install it to a small but fast 2gb usb stick and packages in Ubuntu are slightly newer that Mint

  12. @Keith: if you insist on using the buggy update feature in Synaptic instead of normally working mintUpdate, fine, we won’t stop you 🙂

  13. @Ian D. Samson: if all drivers for all hardware is included in an ISO (if possible) it would result in a system even more bloated than Windows. I suggest you visit the Mint Forums for assistance.

  14. @Keith (12) – Just curious. How can the packages in Ubuntu be slightly newer than in Mint when Mint makes use of the exact same Ubuntu repositories?

  15. Clem:

    I want to install Linux Mint MATE someday to replace my 5-year-old
    installation of Ubuntu 9.10 (2009 October, Karmic Koala) with its
    wonderful Gnome 2.2.28 desktop with Nautilus 2.2.28 file manager.

    I love the ‘lightness’ of using the top panel of Gnome 2. I don’t
    use the ‘Applications’ and ‘System’ pull-downs from the top panel
    very much — but I use the ‘Places’ option (with lots of added
    directories to the ‘Bookmarks’) every day. It’s a wonderful way to
    quickly get to my Tcl-Tk script development directories, and directories
    of image files, and directories of documents, etc. etc.

    When I first started using Gnome 2 (after coming from the MS Windows
    ‘classic’ environment), I did not think I would like to give up
    screen space to that top panel. But I soon found out why it was there.
    It is a light-weight, rapid way to get to either ‘Applications’ OR
    ‘Places’ OR ‘System’ options — AND there are the handy ‘Network Manager’
    and ‘Speaker Volume’ and ‘Shutdown’ apps there for quickly shutting
    off my internet connection, or adjusting speaker volume, or logging off.
    Within a couple of months, I learned that the ‘top panel’ of Gnome 2
    was a marvel of Darwinian-like computer evolution.

    So, Clem, I know why you decided to develop your big Apps-Places-System
    menu that you start up by a click on the lower-left-hand corner of
    the desktop. You probably did not like giving up that space at the top of the
    screen — and you probably wanted to make the user experience friendly
    to Windows users who were used to using a ‘Start’ button at the
    lower-left corner of the screen.

    BUT … in comparison to the Gnome 2 top panel, the ‘Mint Menu’ feels
    like a slow, heavy-handed, walking-through-sticky-mud-with-big-boots-on
    way of getting to the ‘Places’ that I can get to so quickly with
    the Gnome 2 top panel ‘Places > Bookmarks’ option.

    So I would like to make a request. Add to the release notes
    (on this blog or wherever) for each MATE release the instructions
    on how to get the top-panel back in a MATE release.

    Even better yet, provide an icon on the desktop of each Mint-MATE release,
    an icon titled something like ‘TopPanel’, such that if the user clicks on it,
    he/she is advised that if they click the ‘OK’ button, the ‘classic’
    top panel will be immediately installed at the top of the screen.

    Best wishes for better and better releases — and for take-up of
    the OEM versions of Linux Mint by PC manufacturers.

  16. Where are the Md5 sums for these respins?
    I’m asking because I downloaded 32 bit Qiana Mate and got a different Md5.
    It’s possible I have to redownload, but I thought it unlikely:
    the release notes are for the original release, so I would expect the Md5 to be for that release too.

    But all the download sites for e.g. Mate silently give you v2 instead. I’m suspecting there’s a discrepancy there.

  17. No reply, so I re-downloaded Mint Qiana Mate 32-bit v2 from another mirror at linuxmint.com
    (artfiles.org instead of http://ftp.nluug.nl).
    Got the same Md5 in K3b CD/DVD Kreator: d633dc744959bd63939946bad3b1edaf
    Also used md5sum to make sure. Same Md5 again.
    As far as I’m concerned this proves that the cheksum on the linuxmint.com download page is INCORRECT
    Would be nice if someone would add the correct Md5’s or at least delete the incorrect ones.

  18. @Monsta: sorry, the moment I post my second comment I see you replied. Don’t know what happened there!
    I still think the Md5’s are incorrect though. But I can certainly understand about the release notes: quite a serious issue…

  19. @Patrick: my comment contains more than one link, so it got stuck in pre-moderation limbo until Clem approved it later. Anti-spam measures…

    Well, http://artfiles.org/linuxmint.com/linuxmint.com//stable/17/md5sum.txt states that md5sum for that ISO is the same as on Linux Mint edition page.

    Out of curiosity, I’ve downloaded that ISO from artfiles.org mirror, and md5sum turned out to be correct. So it’s something that breaks when you’re downloading… Try different tools for that. For example, I use wget:

    $ wget -c -np http://…iso

  20. Trying to rescue a perfectly-fine laptop: how do I actually get an ISO file to rip the guts out of Win XP? No executable files?

  21. @Monsta: thanks! Using wget I got the correct checksum.
    But it really baffles me that JDownloader (installed in Ubuntu 12.04 from the ppa) somehow CONSISTENTLY modifies an iso. Seems like I must change my download manager …

  22. Hi. What about the fact that it has been impossible (to me at least) to perform a UEFI install so far ? Ubuntu internaional is the only one to come through as of yet which kind of pisses me off since I’d rather run Qiana…

    Edit by Clem: Why not? What happens? Are you using secureboot? Please give us more info, EFI has been supported for a while and it’s part of our QA.

  23. might be a secure boot issue but I seem to recall that I had deactivated it before my last try. Will make sure before coming back with a full report.

  24. Always get the grub command line and nothing else. cannot figure out why. with Ubuntu trusty, it went like a dream under the very same conditions…

    Edit by Clem: Afaik, Ubuntu sign their kernel with a signature purchased from Microsoft and that consequently makes Ubuntu compatible with “Secure Boot”. Linux Mint doesn’t and we recommend users to disable secure boot. Of course in practice the implementation of these technologies is down to the manufacturers so mileage may vary. Officially though, we don’t support secure boot.

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