Linux Mint 8 x64 released!

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The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 8 x64 “Helena”.

Quick steps:

Introduction to Linux Mint 8 x64:

This x64 edition of Linux Mint 8 is almost identical to the Main Edition but compiled for 64 bit processors (Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad, AMD Athlon X2 64 and all x86-64 compliant processors). It comes with all the improvements featured in Linux Mint 8 Helena Main Edition.

System requirements:

An X86_64 64 bit processor (Intel Core 2, AMD X2 64, etc…) .

A minimum of 512MB of RAM is recommended. Once installed the system works fine with as low as 256MB RAM. The installation process deals with 2.5GB of data compressed on a 700MB CD and it can hang or fail on systems with less than 512MB RAM. If you have between 256MB and 512MB RAM you may have to try to install several times.

Important information and known issues:

For a complete list of known issues read the Release Notes.

Download Linux Mint 8 x64:

You can download Linux Mint 8 x64 via torrent or via HTTP:

Size: 686MB LiveCD
MD5Sum: 7320db360aae3d2e119f4eeb6ca893bf

Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.com/torrent/LinuxMint-8-x64.iso.torrent
 HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=46

Asia:

Europe:

Northern America:

Rest of the World:

Upgrade instructions:

If you are running Linux Mint 8 x64 RC1 you do not need to upgrade. The system you installed went gold and was chosen for this stable release, i.e. the ISO images for both the RC1 and stable releases are the same.

An upgrade path for Linux Mint 7 “Gloria” x64 users will be published this week.

Enjoy!

Have a lot of fun with this 64 bit version of “Helena” and let us know what you think. Reviews will be answered and your feedback will be used to improve the distribution before the next release. We hope you enjoy this release as much as we enjoyed making it and we wish you a very nice experience with Linux Mint.

113 comments

  8. Thanks to the team.

    After downloading Helena x64 on Friday night, I waited for this announcement. Now deluge is running and I’m seeding. Helena x64 is great. But is it really the same as the RC1? For me the RC1 had some kinks, so I’ve gone back to Gloria. But Helena x64 it’s running smoothly.

    Thanks again for the Hilarious Helena and keep up the good work.

    H.

    Reply
  9. Pingback: Linux Mint 8 x64 released! | TuxWire : The Linux Blog

  10. This has got to be one of the best Christmas presents I’m going to get this year, Thank you very very much guys! As Gustav said “Christmas comes early this year”! I’m so so happy Helena is finally available in x64..

    Reply

  15. It will be great if SMPlayer could be included as a default video player so that users could play their VCD (with DAT format).

    Reply

  20. I have been using Mint-8-64 RC1 for about a week. Excellent as usual. Thanks to Clem and the team. Have a happy holiday and enjoy a wee break.

    Reply
  22. Pingback: Linux Mint 8 x64 released! « AccessTech News
  24. Pingback: Linux Mint 8 x64 released! « The BAT Channel

  27. Muchas gracias por hacer cada dia mas facil utilizar linux, algún dia si vosotros quereis podreis hacer un linux igual de facil que windows

    Reply

  28. I installed the RC1 and it is still running fine. Good to hear it is “golden”. I really love switching to linux, a pity windows waited with a usable release till the same day i quit. Using 2 displays.

    Reply
  29. Pingback: Mint-Italia » Blog Archive » Rilasciata LinuxMint 8 “Helena” x64

  31. The tap is on and Deluge is working hard on Linux Mint 8 64 bit. It will be nice not to be having half the CPU flapping around doing nothing!!

    Well done guys.

    Reply

  32. Linux Mint, excellent I have converted 3 of my home network 4 machines (1 Windows, 2 Mint 64 bit 1 updated now and the second I will wait for the “upgrade path”, and 1 Mint 32 bit)
    Fabulous thank you!
    Truly a well worthwhile experience.

    Reply

  33. Oh Jesus what a nice end of the year 😉
    Helena works fine on my Desktop PC, and now i can install the x64 Helena of my HP Laptop. I’m so happy ! Thank you so mutch Clem and the Team behind you. I must be a good Boy this year so the Christmas day with great Christmas gifts come this year before 24.12.09 ;-))))))

    Thank you again and a nice and peacefull Christmas !

    Uwe

    Reply

  37. Many thanks Clem. I installed yesterday, and was happy to wipe my Mintified Karmic Koala x64 in favour of the real deal.

    Reply

  38. Hi! I was excited when I saw the new and I downloaded and install mint. It looks great, even better than it looks like in the screenshots, but I’m getting too many problems with it. Firefox get closed when I try to see a video in youtube, ando I have problems to play mp3s, they hang on after a while in several players… Of course I downloaded the 64bit edition and I have an amd64bits

    Reply

  40. Cool, going to give it a go, though I think I’ll be using ext3 instead of ext4 until the large file issue is worked out. All these positive comments have me kind of excited to get it installed, with any luck I’ll get a compatible WiFi stick for Xmas. (currently stuck with Rtl8187b on my Toshiba A215-7462, Going to check the Ubuntu forums to see if there’s a simple fix yet, I hope so, the other methods were kind of involved, so I never got it right. It was the only thing that didn’t work with Gloria main edition. Ethernet works fine though if you don’t mind a 90′ cable.) Kind of excited to see how my laptop will work with a 64bit OS as opposed to a 32bit vista sp2 install (it had a 55G footprint when it finally updated to SP2 with nothing but firefox installed, yikes!)

    Reply
  43. Pingback: 12/15/2009 Update « Go Code

  45. I ran burned your ISO and ran it last night on my Acer 64-bit laptop from 2005. It ran beautifully. I am intrigued with your OS. The idea is EXCELLENT: drive Linux usage up by making it fast, fun and easy.

    Reply
  48. Pingback: Linux Mint 8 Helena x64 Edition Released

  49. From “27. ivan Says:Muchas gracias por hacer cada dia mas facil utilizar linux, algún dia si vosotros quereis podreis hacer un linux igual de facil que windows”…

    ¿Qué habéis dicho, Ivan? ¿Habéis instalado, acaso, Slackware u Open Suse, por ejemplo? Eso sí es frustrante, hasta la paranoia… ¡LinuxMint es una fiesta! ¡Diviértete!

    Reply

  50. An addition to my original post. The only caveat (for me so far) is that the problem of Firefox arbitrarily shutting down when (trying) to play Flash still exists on 64 bit but not on 32 bit.

    Reply

  51. Agh, at least I am not the only one with this bug, but I think the mint guys should fix it, it is a critical problem if we assumed that normal people use firefox to see youtube, etc.

    PLC: and do you have any problems playing mp3s?

    Except these issues, linux mint is really nice

    Regards

    Reply

  52. After getting 32-bit Helena set up as a persistent ‘8GB’ stick that even has no problem with FireFox 3.5.5 playing YouTube videos, as briefly described in http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&p=217055&sid=b7538e4417cb111a32ea1dd074886ce8#p217055, I then saw the new definitive x64 news, downloaded it and have just completed a fresh install, complete with proprietary Restricted driver for even better video playback. The first really useful ‘Linux on a stick’ is going to make for some great Christmas gadgets, so thank you Clem and the team and have a well-deserved rest over the Yuletide, as you have achieved a another breakthrough for Linux !
    (Tip for FireFox, use Package Manager to Add ubuntu-restricted-extras and then after the Error message, Remove the offending ttf-mscorefonts-installer and Flash/Java etc will be fine.)

    Reply

  54. Thank you so much. Good work ! By from Hungary.
    (Köszönet. Ez nagyon szép munka. Üdv Magyarországról 😉

    BJ

    Reply

  56. Silence, maybe this is the wrong place to discuss: but MP3’s? Not really except for a slight “stutter” on the first track when using aTunes.. as you say except for that (and it is a BIG that) a very sound implementation.
    Bruce R tried that, not a solution, so far!

    Reply

  59. Helena,,,,,I love it from first sight,youtube no problem -instal adobe soft .I was a windows user.AND I CAN CHANGE NOW GREATE.THx for new suris……….Skype doesnt work

    Reply

  60. Sorry to bug you every now and then, but… will the KDE version based on Ubuntu 9.10 finally arrive before Ubuntu 10.4 is around? My desktop is WAAAAAAIIITING and even my netbook told me it can’t wait no longer 😀

    Reply

  61. congratulations, clem and the team! just upgraded today to 64-bit helena from 32-bit gloria, and it works perfectly.

    any chance that you’ll try making a distribution for mac ppc any time soon? would love to see apple have some competition from linuxmint. i’ve been using ubuntu 8.04 for ppc on a partition of my 6 year old imac g5 running panther but it lacks the codecs and has never run very well.

    Reply

  63. i have an hp pavillion dv9000 currently running Xp media addition which unfortunatly is only a 32 bit os i would like to install linux mit 64 bit and was wondering if anyone could tell me how compatable it is with my laptop, for drivers. if i’m underestimating the linux mint os i appoligize but this would be my first time trying a open source os. Also if anyone can give me a download link for a live cd it would be much apretiated.

    Reply

  64. Noaten:

    as a big defender of freedom of speech , human rights and net neutrality I can see your concern.

    But to see such a statesmen is ridiculous esp when Mint comes with no suggested censorship list but leaves that responsibility on the user to decide what to censor.

    Also all routers have the ability to block websites by ip domain name and topic yet we cant argue the importance of them since with out them the internet would not exist nor networking in general.

    So long as Mint does not come with a preselected one size fit all list I will be ok with it. Some people just do not want to expose their kids to myspace and that ok with me, and trust me your talking to the most liberal person in the world no hardcore homeschool republican or anything of that sort.

    Instead of you focusing your attention and anger towards Mint focus your attention on ISP that will redirect a bad request towards their search engines because thats more dangerous to the internet than anything the mint developers could ever do

    Hugo

    Reply

  66. Hey, I love Mint and have it installed on my computer at home (32bit), and recently convinced my friend to make the switch. But after what seemed like a clean install, upon boot i get a flickering text screen asking for login instead of a login screen. But when I type in the login info it says login failed. Anybody else have this problem? Or can anyone help?

    Reply

  67. Linux Mint is the only acceptable Linux in my internet cafe, I replaced one computer with Linux Mint and it is popular & rock stable!

    Reply

  72. Austin, this is a 64 bit edition and AMD Athlon64 are 64 bit processors, it should work just fine with your 3000+!

    Reply

  73. @logan: Any Linux Mint CD/DVD can be used as a live CD/DVD. Don’t worry about that. Simply download the chosen Linux Mint ISO and burn it on a disk. Your processor is 64-bit capable so you can use any Mint version – the 32-bit or the 64-bit. The download links are already in this blog post, so grab it, test it as a live environment and if you like what you see… you got what you need. Good luck! 🙂

    Reply

  75. HI

    I BOOTING LINUXMINT8. BUT AFTER COMPLIANT BOOTING IT IS NOT RESPOND MY SYSTEM WITH OUT BOOT CD SO PLEASE SUGGEST TO ME HOW I INSTALLATION MINT8 INTO MY SYSTEM PLESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

    Reply

  77. @crondon: I have the same problem. Upon boot I get the same login screen and the same message “login failed”, when I type in my login info. I have no idea what the reason is. Does anybody else what is wrong?

    Reply
  78. Pingback: Linux Mint 8 x64 released! « Linux-frysk.org
  80. Pingback: Linux Mint Helena: C’est fantastique! | The Linux Experiment

  81. I have installed Linus Mint 8 x64 on Acer Ferrari 5000 laptop with AMD Turion x64 2 processor, and immediately it’s working fine. It’s recognize all the hardware. Very good!
    Linus Mint 8 doesn’t work fine on HP Compaq presario CQ60 with AMD Athlon processor. The wireless lan card doesn’t work.

    Reply
  82. Pingback: Linux Mint 8 x64 “Helena” « Lothars Blog

  83. As i already had the Linux Mint 8 x64 RC1 “Helena” installed, system
    up to date and it’s running flawless, i am ok.
    This x64 is my favourite Linux Mint Gnome Edition.

    Thanks to the team! Keep up the good work.

    BTW: the party for gnome editions 32-x64 aren’t over yet and i know that but i hope we have a Mint KDE 8 edition soon.
    Now awaaaaaaating for Mint KDE 8 “Helena”.

    Reply

  84. The only thing I found missing was Clearlooks GTK Engine for Desktop Themes. Easy enough to replace using Synaptic. I dimmed all my shadow effects to make the line disappear on my hidden panel and things are as sharp as ever. Speed is outstanding with three GiB RAM on my Dell 1545. Thanks guys, great work.

    Reply

  85. Have Mint 8 x32 installed on my Dell Precision m6300 laptop with everything working just as it should. However I prefer running a 64bit OS on that machine, so with Mint 8 x64 now available I’ll do a fresh install tomorrow. Looking forward to experiencing the best of the best with my new 64bit Mint 8 desktop! A huge thank you to Clem and the Mint team for their hard work as they consistently put out the best of the best of all the Linux desktop distros available today!

    Reply

  90. The other problem STILL seems to be a “sticky: taskbar; if set to autohide it needs resetting several times during the day…. seems to be if a window opens over it it loses the autohide setting. Minor point but annoying as the same happened in Gloria.

    Reply

  91. forgiveness for the local language school is conducted by pyGtranslator. I have a problem when creating a mobile Internet connection, the modem is a Huawei E176 with a memory card slot. http://www.huawei.com/mobileweb/en/products/view . do? id = 2020 http://www.entelpcs.cl/modEquipos/ficha.iws?id_equipo=52203 the problem is that when a new connection crer me for a password again and again, also not stable, with the I also memory card but I do not recognize an sd card. is quite annoying to me for the password each time. MedAsia was improved support for 3G Sodem. linuxmint was more simple with 7 64-bit.

    Reply

  93. I am a very convinced amateur user of Mint 7 in both x64 and 32 bit incarnations on three privately networked PCs. One being a dual AMD processor with 4GB of ram.

    Upgrading to Mint 8 Helena in both modes reveals a common problem for me. Both install as expected and allow me to browse with Firefox via an ADSL router. BUT . . .
    Though (for example) the upgrade padlock informs me after ~ 15 mins. that there are 94 upgrades available and lists them ready to execute, they will not download and either the message is “can’t find server” or “can’t download safety list” or to that effect.

    There are various other cases where downloading stops because a server cannot be located however on reverting, the behaviour is flawless in both versions of Gloria.

    I have only installed Helena x64 from CD while Mint 7 x64 continues to work well, but the 32bit versions have been installed with grub infront andt the problem remains.

    I like Mint and I am beginning to tear my hair out because with this problem I am unable to convince others that this is the way forward. Once it is solved I hope that Opera 10.10 Beta will be downloadable as that is my preferred browser.

    So please you clever and dedicated creators of Linux Mint, what is the problem? am I the only one experiencing this?

    Rick

    Reply

  94. I downloaded the torrent (usually I download the .iso, because I think it’s safer, but it took over 4 hours for that one so then I decided to download the torrent instead), successfully verified the MD5 and then burned it to CD-R at the lowest possible speed. I noticed something odd after I had burned the CD and then put it in the DVD-ROM drive. In my previous experiences with Linux Mint, a pop-up window would usually appear, asking whether I would like to install Mint in Windows and stuff. This time, however, no pop-up window appeared, no matter how many times I took the CD out of the DVD-ROM drive and put it in again. Am I correct in assuming there is no auto-run thingy incorporated for the .iso of the 64-bit release of Mint 8?

    After that, I rebooted my computer. I’d hoped a menu would appear with the option where one can check the integrity of the burned CD (like I was able to do with the CD I burned for Xubuntu 9.10), but alas, it seems that option is not included for the 64-bit release of Linux Mint 8. 🙁

    Instead, another odd thing happened. First the screen with a countdown for automatic boot appeared, then a black/white screen which mentioned something about a casper thingy, then the Linux Mint logo appeared for a few minutes and then a black/white screen appeared which listed a whole lot of things that I didn’t have any further knowledge about. So far, so good. Only, after that screen disappeared, my screen remained black for several minutes. The green light of my DVD-ROM drive would blink briefly every few seconds or so, but nothing happened. I laid my hand on my case and could feel that the CD was no longer spinning in the DVD-ROM drive. I thought that was odd, but still waited a few more minutes. After that, I rebooted the computer.

    After the reboot, the Linux Mint setup once again went through the whole process that I just described, but this time everything went smoothly: where previously my screen had stayed black, now the rest of the setup appeared. That was a relief, but I have no idea whether it had to do with my burned copy of Linux Mint 8 or whether my own computer was at fault (my computer is just a few months old, in case you’re wondering).

    Or maybe a part of the setup just failed to load the first time. The first time, I had briefly read in that long black/white screen something like “Eed: no such file”, but I didn’t see it (or it was there again and I just missed it) the second time around. I don’t know if that was at least partially responsible for the problem, but well – it’s the only thing that was seemingly out-of-place that I had noticed. 🙂

    Either way, the rest of the installation went smoothly and Mint 8 seems to be running stable so far now, and I hope that that will remain that way. I’m very content with some of the improvements, such as better support for my keyboard (with Mint 7, I kept getting odd characters for the ‘ and ” , no matter what language I selected) and the ability to boost the sound over 100% (because the sound was lower in Mint 7 than it ever was for me in Windows XP). Now I truly have a reason to stick with Mint for good, because the previous issues with Mint 7 had led me to a brief but even more disappointing adventure with Xubuntu 9.10.

    Thank you for this wonderful distribution. The only slight disappointment that I have with it is that the login screen is not as beautiful as it was in Mint 7. Having to log in is always a chore, but in Mint 7, it was a nice chore to do because the log-in screen was among the most beautiful that I’d ever seen. The log-in screen for Mint 8 is far from beautiful or polished, but it seems that it has to do with the change to GRUB 2 or Ext 4 or something. I hope that Mint 9 will have a log-in screen similar to that of Mint 7 – once that’s fixed, Mint will be absolutely perfect for me. 🙂

    Once again, thank you and please keep the good work up! I know it’s a bit early still, but I wish everyone on the Linux Mint team a merry Christmas: may it be blessed and good fun with all your friends and family. 🙂

    Reply

  97. I installed it to my notebook yesterday, the cpu of my notebook is Amd Turion 64 , it worked brilliantly ,except there was no sound. my sound card which is integrated in the motherboard ,could not be detected and its driver was not loaded. don’t know how to do.

    Reply

  99. Hello!I’ve searched for the “menu.lst” in Mint Linux8,but failed. I hope to know where it is, or “how to tweak the grub menu”. thanks. sorry for my terrible english :p

    Reply
  100. Pingback: The Linux Mint Blog » Blog Archive » The Mint Newsletter – issue 97
  101. Pingback: The Mint Newsletter – issue 98 | TuxWire : The Linux Blog

  103. Not gonna lie, I’m not liking where the mint style is going. I loved the way old mint seemed, um… by comparison to the new, inverted… (dark bg, bright controls.)

    I know the Gloria/Helena style dark themes are “in” now, to be fair I feel we’re already getting that from Ubuntu. But more to the point it’s just very plain in general. The taskbar doesn’t even have a distinguished border or any form of gradient or pattern. One big grey box.

    I would like to see something that mimics the mint website design scheme. That would be sweet.

    Don’t get me wrong, as a linux newbie mint will be my disto of choice for some time yet… but I just don’t like where it’s going.

    Reply

  104. Is there a projected availability date for “An upgrade path for Linux Mint 7 “Gloria” x64 users will be published this week.” I assume that there were problems since “this week” didn’t happen.

    Thank you for your efforts – I far prefer to be 64-bit and utilize my 8Gb of RAM.

    Reply

  105. So, I installed the LinuxMint-8-x64 on my Home unit. I am liking it very much. I figured out how to get my webcam to work but have not tried it yet. I can’t seem to get Skype to work. I need this to keep in touch with my baby brother in Korea. However I haven’t given up yet I haven’t tried all my resources yet. If some one has a suggestion let me know. I found it (Skype) in my software Manager but when I go to install it the installer does not come up. I am going to Skype website for a download….

    Reply

  107. Why oh why cannot upgrading Mint be as simple as installing a Windows service pack? Sorry but a SP can be installed in 10-20 minutes and leave your settings (with minor exceptions) as they were, but it takes hours, days even to re-trim Mint to what you laboured long and hard to tweak to. Is there no way I can copy my system configuration and settings across in a simple operation?

    Reply

  108. “An upgrade path for Linux Mint 7 “Gloria” x64 users will be published this week.” (14.12.2009)…

    Any progress?

    Reply

  109. @101: use Backup! No problem…
    U know the difference of a service pack and an New Release Upgrade?
    If u break it down to SP, Linux and the package system is much more better than getting an SP once a year. No matter, keep useing Linux!

    @Mint: Thx, great work. Waiting for upgrade path from 7 to 8 (64-bit)

    Reply

  110. when will we be seeing the upgrade path to mint 8 x64 from 7 ??? i would rather not have to format and go through all the settings again.

    Reply

  111. “An upgrade path for Linux Mint 7 “Gloria” x64 users will be published this week.”

    OK, it’s been more than a week and I am anxiously awaiting.

    Reply

  112. Waiting for the upgrade path from Gloria X64 to Helena x64, the was a blurb in the release notes about an upgrade path to be released last week still haven’t seen it.

    I am using 32 bit on my laptop but would like to upgrade the workstation soon, I know patience is a virtue but I am excited by the 32 bit version on my laptop and want the same on my workstation. I have too many things set the way I like them not to upgrade. peace.

    Reply

  113. I upgraded from Mint 7, which in turn was upgraded from Mint 6. I immediadetly saw a significant drop in power usage on my laptop with Helena, good stuff 🙂

    Reply

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