Linux Mint 18.2 “Sonya” KDE – BETA Release

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This is the BETA release for Linux Mint 18.2 “Sonya” KDE Edition.

Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya KDE Edition

Linux Mint 18.2 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2021. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

New features:

This new version of Linux Mint contains many improvements.

For an overview of the new features please visit:

“What’s new in Linux Mint 18.2 KDE“.

Important info:

The release notes provide important information about known issues, as well as explanations, workarounds and solutions.

To read the release notes, please visit:

“Release Notes for Linux Mint 18.2 KDE”

System requirements:

  • 2GB RAM.
  • 10GB of disk space (20GB recommended).
  • 1024×768 resolution (on lower resolutions, press ALT to drag windows with the mouse if they don’t fit in the screen).

Notes:

  • The 64-bit ISO can boot with BIOS or UEFI.
  • The 32-bit ISO can only boot with BIOS.
  • The 64-bit ISO is recommend for all modern computers (Almost all computers sold since 2007 are equipped with 64-bit processors).

Upgrade instructions:

  • This BETA release might contain critical bugs, please only use it for testing purposes and to help the Linux Mint team fix issues prior to the stable release.
  • It will be possible to upgrade from this BETA to the stable release.
  • It will also be possible to upgrade from Linux Mint 18.1. Upgrade instructions will be published after the stable release of Linux Mint 18.2.

Bug reports:

  • Please report bugs below in the comment section of this blog.
  • When reporting bugs, please be as accurate as possible and include any information that might help developers reproduce the issue or understand the cause of the issue:
    • Bugs we can reproduce, or which cause we understand are usually fixed very easily.
    • It is important to mention whether a bug happens “always”, or “sometimes”, and what triggers it.
    • If a bug happens but didn’t happen before, or doesn’t happen in another distribution, or doesn’t happen in a different environment, please mention it and try to pinpoint the differences at play.
    • If we can’t reproduce a particular bug and we don’t understand its cause, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to fix it.
  • Please visit https://github.com/linuxmint/Roadmap to follow the progress of the development team between the BETA and the stable release.

Download links:

Here are the download links for the 64-bit ISO:

A 32-bit ISO image is also available at https://www.linuxmint.com/download_all.php.

Integrity and authenticity checks:

Once you have downloaded an image, please verify its integrity and authenticity.

Anyone can produce fake ISO images, it is your responsibility to check you are downloading the official ones.

Enjoy!

We look forward to receiving your feedback. Many thanks in advance for testing the BETA!

64 comments

  1. Nice news! But will there be dedicated graphics-tablet(Wacom, etc.) panel? 😮 It wasn’t included in Mint 18 series so far… :(((

    Reply

  3. when I try to drag and drop files to samba shares in dolphin i got an error message:

    Access denied.
    Could not write to .

    also copy and paste doesn’t work

    Reply

  6. like @Drayldan I would also like a wacom panel.

    But for now one can still use the panel from KDE4:

    qdbus org.kde.kded /kded loadModule wacomtablet
    kcmshell4 kcm_wacomtablet

    it works well for me (including keyboard shortcuts)

    Reply

  12. Awesome! I am seriously considering to switch to the KDE edition (currently using Cinnamon) for my workstation. Too bad the KDE-PPA is still on Plasma 5.8. Plasma 5.10 on KDE Neon has some very, very great Improvements that I can’t hardly wait to see in Mint KDE.

    @cusa: You have to use Kernel 4.11 in order to get audio on Ryzen systems to work (e.g. with UKUU).

    Reply

  13. There seems to be a bug in Desktop Settings > Wallpaper: when you scroll down the list of images, the cursor jumps back up on its own.

    Reply

  15. The default desktop layout should be “Folder view” like in the latest version of KDE.
    This allows new users of Linux and KDE DE to quickly create folders and files on the desktop without having to figure out that they need to change a setting for this to be possible.
    The window with wireless networks, that appears when you click on the network icon in systray, should be taller, so you don’t have to scroll so much if there are many networks around you.
    Bluetooth start as turned on on my laptop (Acer 6935G), even though I don’t need/use it.
    Cannot create file or folder where you right-click on the desktop.
    The new item is always auto-arranged/aligned and I can’t find a way to turn this off and create them wherever I want them to be.
    Browsing to a common data partition (NTFS type) and trying to open a image shows a popup error windows with the title: “Ambiguous S… -Gwenview ?” and the content: “There are two actions (Cut, Delete) that want to use the same shortcut (Shift+Del).
    This is most probably a bug.
    Please report it in
    bugs.kde.org”
    The window is not resizable so I can’t see the full title, it looks to me that is truncated because of the”…”.
    Acknowledging the error by pressing the OK button shows the image normally.
    Connecting to a password protected wireless network, asks you twice for the password, once on the field below when you click on the connect button on the list of networks and the second time on a popup window with the title “password dialog – KDE Daemon”
    MP3 files cannot be played, Amarok (or how the default music player is called on KDE) doesn’t work, it requires multimedia plugins, which I couldn’t install.
    Ticking the checkboxes on the install column in the “Install multimedia plugins?” window and pressing the install button does nothing and reports nothing.

    Gparted and VLC not installed.

    Gparted was replaced by KDE partition manager, as far as I can tell.
    Working with partitions is extremely dangerous and I don’t trust anything else other than Gparted.
    I don’t get why should I use a program developed over a few weeks compared to years of development and bug fixing that Gparted has?

    VLC was replaces by Dragon Player for video files and Amarok for audio files.
    Both cannot play any media file without multimedia plugins (which cannot be installed) and both suck.
    I’m sorry to say this but this edition of Linux Mint gives me the biggest disappointment of them all.
    KDE is nice, it gives you a lot of customization options, but this selection of poorly developed programs that it comes with, instead of the more and better developed programs, just because of the not invented here syndrome, gives an awful default experience.

    BTW,there’s no virtual (on-screen) keyboard available and it’s very hard to write something when you have keys missing on you laptop’s keyboard, like I have.
    Thank you!

    Reply

  16. @sanette – thanks for tips, it works in general, but only temporarly (need to be called from terminal every time I want to change something). Wacom Tablet is not present in “devices” tab, anyway. 🙁
    I don’t why devs removed graphics-panel from MINT 18, but it is BIG mistake.

    BTW. “linuxwacom” project @sourceforge cannot be compiled and run under MINT18.x unfortunately…

    Reply

  17. Fastest little beta I’ve used. Boots in seconds in compatibility mode. Some difficulties with the upgrade process. I tried a multi-boot disk partition using mint-Sandra18.0 on /sda1(16GB) & mint-Sonya-18.2 on /sda2 (14GB). The partition mgr became confused and couldn’t find any OS. I think because I split the disk & the partition table became corrupted however, The installer bricked my PC, so I could not finish with any “Other install” i.e. something else. I had to reboot and create a single partition. If I can figure out where in the upgrade process it went wrong I will file a bug report later. I also had the Dolphin (no copy/paste) on Mint-Sandra 18.0 after I updated the software. I think it’s a QT issue since software-mgr didn’t really update Dolphin-pkgs it just broke. Be careful if your using file-mgrs to copy data files, better to use the backup/restore files tool. P.S. thanks for all the hard work your doing! Looking good.

    Reply

  18. @Drayldan: exactly, I also think this is a big mistake to remove the
    tablet config module. I don’t know why they did this.

    Reply

  19. Can’t install when select Serbian “Српски” language…
    So, I installed english variant and after I tried following:

    sudo apt install language-pack-kde-sr

    and I got the following (the same error when I tried to install with Serbian language):
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    /var/cache/apt/archives/kde-l10n-sr_4%3a16.04.3-0ubuntu1~ubuntu16.04~ppa2_all.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

    This started with last update for 18.1 (Plasma 5.8.7), where package ‘plasma-desktop-data’ could not be installed.
    For this I found workaround:

    sudo dpkg -i –force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/plasma-desktop-data_4%3a5.8.7.1-0ubuntu1~ubuntu16.04~ppa1_all.deb
    sudo apt-get install -f

    Best Regards

    Reply

  20. I have tried this out extensively now and I really don’t like it. The screencapping program that it comes with by default makes screencapping a very tedious and difficult process and I replaced it with gnome-screenshot and hotkeys. There are weird glitches with the desktop where folder view isn’t compatible with anything but an image or image slideshow background, the other stuff doesn’t work. There are very nice cursors and I don’t have to install inxi or add anything extra to make Krita to work but overall this sucks. I switched from Cinnamon because of the memory leaks but I find KDE unuseable. I also have some weird glitch where the audio is either on at 100% or off, anything from 1% to 100% on the scale doesn’t make a difference to the audio level.

    There are my specs:

    System: Host: fringe-XPS-7760-AIO Kernel: 4.8.0-53-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.4.0)
    Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.8.7 (Qt 5.6.1) dm: sddm,sddm Distro: Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya
    Machine: System: Dell product: XPS 7760 AIO Chassis: type: 13
    Mobo: Dell model: 0P3KGF v: A01 Bios: Dell v: 1.0.2 date: 12/08/2016
    CPU: Quad core Intel Core i7-6700 (-HT-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB
    flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 27264
    clock speeds: min/max: 800/4000 MHz 1: 2553 MHz 2: 2548 MHz 3: 2590 MHz 4: 2565 MHz 5: 2588 MHz
    6: 2581 MHz 7: 2562 MHz 8: 2577 MHz
    Graphics: Card-1: Intel Sky Lake Integrated Graphics bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:1912
    Card-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Bonaire XT [Radeon R9 M280X]
    bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:6646
    Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: ati,radeon,intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
    Resolution: 3840×2160@60.00hz
    GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 530 (Skylake GT2)
    GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 12.0.6 Direct Rendering: Yes
    Audio: Card Intel Sunrise Point-H HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:a170
    Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.8.0-53-generic
    Network: Card-1: Intel Ethernet Connection (2) I219-LM
    driver: e1000e v: 3.2.6-k bus-ID: 00:1f.6 chip-ID: 8086:15b7
    IF: enp0s31f6 state: down mac: 14:b3:1f:0e:11:df
    Card-2: Intel Wireless 3165 driver: iwlwifi bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:3165
    IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: 70:1c:e7:e5:52:ae
    Drives: HDD Total Size: 4000.8GB (0.6% used)
    ID-1: USB /dev/sda model: My_Passport_25E2 size: 4000.8GB serial: 575841314536363234394B5A-0:0
    Partition: ID-1: / size: 3.6T used: 8.8G (1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
    ID-2: swap-1 size: 17.02GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
    RAID: System: supported: N/A
    No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
    Unused Devices: none
    Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 61.0C mobo: 27.8C gpu: 51.0
    Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
    Info: Processes: 262 Uptime: 3:11 Memory: 4823.3/15899.3MB
    Init: systemd v: 229 runlevel: 5 default: 2 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
    Client: Shell (bash 4.3.481 running in konsole) inxi: 2.2.35

    Reply

  22. Here are two glitches I’m getting on a consistent basis:

    1. When bringing up a context menu on the desktop and choosing “Configure Desktop”, KDE brings up a dialog named “Folder View Settings.” When using that dialog to switch from Folder View layout to Desktop layout (and pressing the Apply button), or vice versa, the dialog box disappears. I have to bring it up again to use it.

    (Note: This is the same dialog that has the wallpaper thumbnails in it. However, the cursor is _not_ “jumping around” when I use it, unlike @13’s complaint above. 🙂

    2. When installing multimedia codecs, I reliably get a dialog box at the end that reads:

    “W: Can’t drop privileges for downloading as file ‘/var/cache/apt/archives/partial/libvo-aacenc0_0.1.3-1_amd64.deb’ couldn’t be accessed by user ‘_apt’. – pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied)”

    (This is running from a USB thumbdrive.)

    Your KDE releases are always a class act. Keep up the good work.

    Reply

  23. Performed a fresh install, replacing Mint 18.1 KDE. I have not experienced any of the glitches or errors mentioned above. It is running steady and smoothly for me so far.

    Reply

  24. sonya with kde not boot SATA(SOLIS STAT Internal Drive).
    Linux Mint 18.1 SATA(SOLID STAT DRIVE.Booooooooooooooot.

    Reply

  25. Nice!

    Not a crash yet!
    Think i might like it better than Cinnamon!

    Dual boot with Windows 10 on SSD.

    Reply

  26. I’m a little disappointed that this is still KDE 5.8 – I mean, we already had it in 18.1 and KDE 5.11 will be released soon.

    Reply

  27. I just installed Linux Mint 18.2 KDE-Beta on an acer laptop, dual-booting with the OEM Windows 10 and have worked out an relatively easy method that may help anyone else trying to do this.

    1) In Windows press the [Win+R] keys and type diskmgmt.msc in the Run Open box. (Ensure you’re logged on as a user with administrative privileges.) Right click on C: partition and select Shrink Volume in order to resize the partition, use a value best-suited for you, depending on your HDD size, on the amount of space to shrink MB field (minimum 20000 MB recommended) and hit Shrink button to start the process of resizing the partition. When the process finishes a new unallocated space will appear on the hard drive. Exit disk management. (H/T Tecmint) I used half the disk space allocated to the main Windows partition, as I have a large HDD.

    2) Right-click on the Start button and choose Command Prompt (Admin) from the pop-up menu. If you are prompted by the User Account Control asking if you want to allow this program to make changes to your computer, click Yes to proceed. In the Command Prompt window, type powercfg.exe /hibernate off and press the Enter key. Exit the Command Prompt window. (H/T Cnet) This will allow access to your unencrypted NTFS partition(s).

    3) Insert your Linux installation media and reboot your system, you may have to press F12, or the corresponding function key that allows you to choose where to boot from (F2, F10 depending on your board) in UEFI, choose your boot medium and then *Start Linux Mint…”.

    4) Once Linux Mint has loaded, click on the Install Linux Mint icon and follow the guided instructions until you get to “Installation Type” (partition editor) and choose “Do something else”, in the free space partition set a swap partition to be at the end of the free space at twice the size of your ram and then choose the remaining free space to install your ext4 partition and set the mount point to “/”. Then set the Device for Bootloader Installation to the partition labeled “efi” and continue with the installation.

    5) When the installation finishes and you go to reboot, you’ll need to access your BIOS, and in the case of my Acer, I had to set up an administrator password and reboot again before it would allow me to have it search for a new bootloader, Once I selected the linux bootloader (grub) I had to set it in the boot order ahead of the windows bootloader and reboot. These steps will be different on various machines so I’m just giving you the gist of it. Once it was all done and rebooted, the Grub bootloader came up and listed both the Linux Mint installation, as well as my Windows 10 OS in the boot menu, and both systems boot without any problems.

    I had to do a bit of research to work all of this out, as various posts gave a gamut of variations, some extremely difficult command line instructions, but I managed to piece together the above simplified, method, and it worked flawlessly for me.

    I hope this is helpful.

    Reply

  28. Sonya KDE is freezing 20 sec. after boot. Testing it in LIVE mode all was fine network including. When I decided to installed it network stopped working and freezing started. Wondering Why ?

    Reply

  29. i tried mint 18.1 kde stable release but i could not connect to my hidden ssid wifi network on a live session i hope you fix this in the new release

    Reply

  30. just an noobish idea possibly
    mint so far always is the distro I fall back onto
    is there a chance of a “rolling arch based mint version”
    I really like the arch way, they already run the KDE 5.10
    and the pacman is awsome.
    only you need to know so many stuff before you can actually run enjoy arch
    but mint always does a great job on all these obsticals for us “normal” users
    So what’s up guys you can probably do it for us
    get a linux mint based on arch repos
    and tomorrow we sit in the first row

    🙂

    Reply

  32. @Daniel. KDE Partition Manager was not developed over a few weeks. It is now 8 years old. Yes, it is slightly younger than GParted 12 years but not a few weeks vs a decade.

    Reply

  33. It would be nice if blootooth devices discovery got fixed 🙂
    It’s not working in the current release either.

    Reply

  34. I’m live session user (I ran it on my usb)
    In my opinion, It’s the nice interface, I love it. However, some apps is not good at working.
    Such as:
    – Winzip or winrar were not work when I opened my rar or zip files
    – It is very inconvenient and has to update some apps for wacthing some general videos(mp4)
    – The new one did not find my printer but the old one(18.1) did.

    Would the linuxmint upgrade this cases for the LIVE SEESION USER, please.

    Edit by Clem: We try to stick to upstream as much as possible with this edition. Unfortunately Plasma integrates much better with SDDM than with LightDM so we ship with it.

    Reply

  38. Hi,

    I would like to know if this release of Mint already have native built in support for Displaylink USB3 in it?
    Last time I’ve tried I couldn’t get dual display to work properly with my Displaylink USB3 dock station. 🙁

    Best Regards

    Reply

  39. What’s wrong with Linuxmint 18.x?
    I am using Lm 17.3 with KDE, it works relatively well (bluetooth does not work well, KDE Connect does not work well, etc), however the kernel is very obsolete; I would like to use LM 18.x with KDE, but the desktop flickers when I change the desktop by sliding or using the cube.
    I have tested kubuntu 17.04 and the desktop does not flicker; only it shows some bugs, even so, bluetooh works fine, KDE Connect works fine.
    I have a laptop with hybrid video card AMD (onboard and discreet)
    My hardware: HP pavilion g4-1316br, with Quad-core AMD A6-3420M, Radeon HD 6520M / 7400M graphics cards

    Reply

  40. Currently using Mint 17.3 on a Lenovo t520/t410. Seems to work pretty good the t410 with docking station. The previous release 18.1 had problems with network manager and other things I don’t remember.

    Reply

  41. By far the best desktop linux distro I’ve ever used. I’m still partial to slack for server duty and never thought desktop distros to be of much use to me for day to day ops. 18.1 changed my mind and 18.2 is even better.

    Triple boot SurfacePro4/i5/8/256 – no issues on recompiled custom 4.9LTS save for cams not working (not your issue I know).

    Brilliant!

    Reply

  42. I would like to see rollback feature on Update Manager so if a package i updated happens to break something, i can rollback to previous known working version.

    On Software Manager, i would like to see list of installed apps feature so I can click View > Installed Apps for example to view all installed apps and packages and option to uninstall apps and packages from the list. 🙂

    Edit by Clem: That’s very hard to do… first because it’s not a feature handled by APT and second because the old version of a package no longer exists in the repositories when it is overridden by a new one, so that would mean making backup copies of each package, and all the information related to it (dependencies etc..). It’s very complex to be honest and it’s much more interesting to think of this problem globally (at FS level) rather than specifically for packages.

    Reply

  46. It continually interrupts the Wi-Fi connection. My Wi-Fi card: Ralink RT3290 802.11bgn Wi-Fi Adapter. I greet and look forward to fixing this error.

    Reply

  47. Being impatient and not too risk averse, I started using the kubuntu ci stable repository to update mint 18.1, so now run plasma 5.10.2 and frameworks 5.36, along with kernel 4.11.x. Not to encourage anyone to do this, it works great. What a relief to leave behind plasma 5.8…

    I suspect that trying to upgrade to mint 18.2 might not be straightforward in these conditions. Are any 18.2 components upgradable independently ? Or will the upgrade skip replacing newer packages?
    Thanks,
    ms

    Reply

  48. The flicker problem I reported in comment #39, I resolved by disabling tearing prevention in:System settings> Hardware> Display and Monitor>
    Compositor> Tearing Prevention (“vsync”)> NEVER.

    Reply

  49. Usually I appreciate lightweight solutions (i.e. Mint Xfce), but the developers of KDE are pushing the pace, offering a very nice, modern, efficient and stable desktop experience. The RAM-usage of KDE is also getting lower and lower with every release.

    Team Mint is making this even better. Mint plus KDE is pure joy (Mint Cinnamon as well, it is just a matter of taste). Thanks for the work.

    Would be great to get Plasma 5.10 soon via the regular Mint updater.

    Reply

  50. No longer able to see files on my cell phone, worked in 18.1

    LG K8 us375

    was trying to get pictures off my phone, I am however able to get Pictures off my digital Camera

    Reply

  52. Hello,

    Can not download a file from Firefox (or Chromium) on a NAS (with mount point).
    Problem GTK3?

    Thank you.

    Reply

  53. @all, we looked into Wacom support and I’ve got bad news.. it’s just not there upstream in Plasma 5.

    To make it easier, we added the kde-config-tablet package into the 18.2 repositories and added a section in the release notes to explain how to install and launch that KCM module.

    Reply

  54. Fresh install on a quite new small laptop (only 2GB RAM). During the flawless install I have not seen the typical pictures of the Mint presentation slideshow. Anyway, heavy stress test afterwards with lots of downloads and Dolphin usage. Very smooth performance even with this kind of laptop. Could not be happier. Mint rules and KDE is getting better.

    I know that KDE-enthusiasts are impatiently waiting for Plasma 5.10, but we should keep in mind that 5.8 is the stable LTS right now and this is in the sense of Mint’s prioritization of stability. 5.10 can be upgraded via Kubuntu repos right now and will come to Mint as well when considered to be almost bug-free.

    Reply

  55. @clem:
    I was trying to post a “new idea” for mint, then i followed the link from the “welcome screen” on linux mint cinamond 18.1 serena, that took me to the web site, then to “https://blueprints.launchpad.net/linuxmint” where i was inable to post nothing… is it me or the idea posting is not working…

    – i wanted to sugest a new funcion to mint:
    mouse right click / print option, to print files without entering to a program, lets say, print a pdf directly to the predefined sistem printer.

    – also should be nice a easier way to post ideas 🙁

    best regards and looking for new relase. 😀

    fer

    Reply

  57. I was wondering if Linux Mint automatically trims SSD’s? Would​ be great if it does as it increases SSD’s life.

    Reply

  60. 18.2 has guest logins enabled (it came back into fashion?)…

    In the light of some recent exploits (all Linuxii) that need a local login, is a guest account a good idea?

    http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2012/May/45

    Does the above apply?

    Edit by Clem: Guest sessions are sandboxed in 18.2, for instance a guest cannot list the content of your home folder. Also, we didn’t just ship LightDM we developed the greeter further and implemented a UI to configure it. As part of that configuration you can disable guest sessions with a click of the mouse.

    Reply

  61. I would like in KDE the floating dialog that appears in Cinnamon when copying files, not the notification one we have in KDE. Also I like that in Cinnamon that dialog shows a queue of copying tasks and only first one is running by default and the others are paused. That is great in Cinnamon and I miss it.

    Another thing I would like in KDE is a way to know if one of my partitions is mounted. In Cinnamon you see it in nemo because an arrow appears to unmount the partition. But in Dolphin it doesn’t say if the partition is mounted or not. I also would like to the partitions to appear in the desktop as I had in Cinnamon, a icon of a disk appeared so I knew it is mounted without having to look in nemo.

    Reply

  62. Installed on my best development desktop “Optimus Prime” and everything I use seems to be working OK. It’s been a long time since I tried using KDE (KDE 4) and this seems to be fine for my needs. I’ve been using it for a few hours and have no major complaints, thanks! -JeZxLee

    Reply

  63. Having trouble with audio! I just bought my new pc and I decided to run serena, and now switching to sonya, Im getting no response audio wise, I cant choose anything in device settings in “sound”, in the testing version of serena i could hear the sound out of youtube but not out of my music(something wrong with permissions). now there is no audio and the permisions are fine, I used to have ubuntu and it was worse, no audio and no internet…Please fix this! AUDIO is very important! Music is everything!

    Reply

  64. @Alejandro Try to use another kernel (in update manager -> menu). Maybe it is driver’s trouble.

    Reply

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