Linux Mint 17 codenamed “Qiana”

Linux Mint 17 will be named “Qiana” and should be available at the end of May 2014.

Qiana is pronounced kee-AHN-ah. It was the name of a fashion silk-like material, introduced in the 1970s and popular in the disco-era, when it was made into loud, shiny shirts with pointy collars.  The feminine name is of American origin, and its meaning is “silky”.

In some languages Qiana also means ‘singers’, ‘light’ or ‘deity’.

Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” will feature the following editions:

  • Cinnamon
  • MATE
  • KDE
  • Xfce

More so than a vibrant and extravagant style of the 1970s, we’ll be aiming for a silky smooth release.

145 comments

  1. And Linux Mint 17 (“Qiana”) will also be a Long-Term Support (LTS) release, right?

    PS: I had a shirt made of Qiana, in the late-1970s… but now, now I’m just stayin’ alive (stayin’ alive!)

    1. Yes, it’s an LTS release (we’re also considering basing the 3 releases after than on the very same LTS base).

  2. @ Clem 3.
    So does that basically mean 1 new release in 2 years, or would there be a difference between Mint 18 and an updated install of Mint 17?

    Edit by Clem: No, we’d still release every 6 months, it would mean 1 new base every 2 years.

  3. @Clem: Do you intend to pass by Ubuntu’s next three normal releases, i.e. to drop their base because they are far too short to be supported effectively?

    Edit by Clem: The decision wasn’t made yet, and after/if it is made we can always adapt it based on how things go. The length of the support is an element but it’s not the most important one at play. There’s also an element of quality and a wish to run mature and proven software rather than to jump on brand new frameworks, techs and toolkits every 6 months. And then there’s the fact that we want to develop more. We want to push innovation on Cinnamon, be more active in the development of MATE, better support Mint tools and engage in projects we’ve postponed for years. So the idea is to boost all that by only adapting to new bases once every 2 years, to better commit to that one base shared by all releases and to better support it, and to have our hands freed to do exciting stuff. Note that all will become important post-Qiana though, around November 2014.

  4. @ Clem “we’re also considering basing the 3 releases after than on the very same LTS base” That would be awesome man!!

  5. @ Brahim 12.
    But what happens if someone uses new hardware that is not supported by kernel version 3.13? Does he/she have to wait until 2016 to use Linux Mint again?

  6. I think they will include the latest kernel version with each release just like ubuntu does with its LTS respins; take Ubuntu 14.04.4 for example, It includes the same kernel version of Ubuntu 13.10!!

  7. Hi Clem

    I think there will need to be an easy way to upgrade kernel and graphics stack to newer version if the base is going to remain the same for two years. Something in the update manager perhaps to offer the newer kernel and graphics but with a warning to outline the potential risks.

    Anyway, can’t wait for Mint 17…no more catalyst driver for me. 🙂

    Edit by Clem: That’s planned for Mint 17 already actually. I can’t say too much though, I hate to talk about things which aren’t ready, in case we need to drop them before the release.

  8. please fix the looks of Linux Mint software manager! It looks out of date!check Windows 8 and Ubuntu software center and see the difference! I suggest you make it colorful and bright!

  9. @ Clem

    I will be patient and wait for the news on Mint 17. Keep up the awesome work. I’m sure you guys have some great stuff lined up for the release.

  10. Great news and just in time. My sister-in-law asked me to upgrade her netbook. She was using Mint 7!! Said it ran great but new Firefox didn’t act right. I very much appreciate the work you do. Ill stress to her the importance of donating some moolah.

  11. Interesting name. :-)Awaiting the silky release, keen to see some cool themes. And some of your comments are very encouraging, Clem. As a noob user, i used to wonder why some developers are so crazy to bring newer tech. stuff just for minor enhancements. Of course, some people want to live on bleeding edge, but for stable desktop it may do some harm to stability. Plus, glad to hear that my favorite desktop Cinnamon is going to get focus. Would be great if some new applets / desklets (dictionary, search, etc) are built by Mint team.

  12. You guys should eventually consider making LMDE your mainline Distro and free yourselves from the shackles of Ubuntu (Canonical’s grasp). You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble in the future as it looks like Canonical is looking to screw over any successful Ubuntu derivative.

  13. I am happy to hear you are considering making room for increased Mint development Clem. The directional gap between Mint and Ubuntu keeps widening. More specific development of Mint items and less time dealing with 6 month Ubuntu releases will only make Mint even better. JMO

  14. I hope that this next version of Linux Mint will have bugfixes and many improvements. When will an Lxde-version of Linux Mint be released, or a version with Fluxbox or IceWM? These kinds of distros are very lightweight, for example Antix.

  15. Interesting

    “we’re also considering basing the 3 releases after than on the very same LTS base.”

    This sounds like the beginning of moving away from the Ubuntu base.
    I hope you guys go through with it & it works well.

  16. Nice trend: LTS-only releases of the ubuntu branch (no reinstall from one to the next?). Hope this could lead to dedicate more effort to LMDE.

  17. @Sumantha (26) – There’s never any “set-in-stone” release date for Linux Mint. Also, only RCs are ever released to the public, just so you know. That being said, since Clem has already stated that Linux Mint 17 will be released near the end of May we should probably see the first RC release sometime within the first week of May or so. This depends solely on whether or not the Mint testing team feels the RC is ready to be released or not.

    Keep an eye on the following page for updates on LM 17 testing (when testing actually starts, that is):

    http://community.linuxmint.com/iso

  18. Sounds good. [“There’s also an element of quality and a wish to run mature and proven software rather than to jump on brand new frameworks, techs and toolkits every 6 months. And then there’s the fact that we want to develop more. We want to push innovation on Cinnamon, be more active in the development of MATE, better support Mint tools and engage in projects we’ve postponed for years. So the idea is to boost all that by only adapting to new bases once every 2 years, to better commit to that one base shared by all releases and to better support it, and to have our hands freed to do exciting stuff. Note that all will become important post-Qiana though, around November 2014.”]

  19. I hope that this release of Linux Mint, will be supporting uefi secureboot machines. Currently only ubuntu supports uefi secure boot.

    Edit by Clem: No, it won’t support secureBoot.

  20. @13, I don’t think the kernel version will be a problem for new hardware. For example NVIDIA’s newest 331.49 driver works on Linux Kernel as old as 2.6.18. In comparison, Mint 9 LTS (from 2010) used kernel version 2.6.32. Thus Mint 9 and newer can handle NVIDIA. I’m sure any Linux-compatible hardware released in 2015 will work with Mint 17.

  21. I really hope the accessibility zoom issues will be resolved by then. Similarly, I hope that copying data to USB flash drives will be a lot more reliable and less prone to corruption.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Roj, I see you before every single release. We’ve your issues at heart but it’s hard for us to always know what they are or to identify regressions. Join us on irc (irc.spotchat.org #linuxmint-dev) when you get a chance and don’t hesitate to get involved. You can make a difference on accessibility in the Cinnamon dev team. Regarding mintstick I don’t think it’s an issue, but if I’m wrong I’d be happy to chat about this as well.

  22. how can i get the beta now …?

    also can we get the totally drm free
    and drm as well as codex versions preinstalled(ie the new gl for amd legacy agp hd 2000-4000 series) for gaming/mutilmedia hpmedia pc

  23. Hi Clem and Team Mint.

    Looking forward!
    Wondering if you’ll implement a 32bit non-PAE compatible version of Mint17, having in mind that a major OS is going to be discontinued and unsupported next month and a lot of older hardware will be vulnerable for security threats consequently and likely be looking for new OS’es?

    Br. Mikael

    Edit by Clem: Hi. I’d like to, I cherish the idea of 32-bit being universally compatible. We did it for Mint 13 and LMDE, I’d like it to happen for Mint 17. I can’t guarantee it though, it’s not only a question of producing the kernel for the release but also to maintain it or at least to provide an upgrade path going forward.

  24. Mint 16 cinnamon didn´t have the keyboard layout swither if I remember correctly (lxde had it).
    We must have that 🙂

    And please put more gtk themes on the cinnamon iso for 17.
    And window borders. Some cool funky modern ones 🙂

    Cheers and thanks for all the good work.

  25. I hope this next LTS will support my Kodak aio Hero 9.1. The printer works fine but not the scanner. It actually works on LM Petra. Any suggestions? Thanks 🙂

  26. @Clem (37)

    Never done IRC before – this will be a new experience (I tended to stay off online interactive other than forums and boards). Lemme see if I can figure it out…

  27. I didn’t use the previous LTS version for some reason and i don’t like the name ‘maya’ too, but qiana sounds good. I am looking forward to this version.

  28. Clem, nice name for Mint 17, also like the idea of the LTS basing. Would this also help you and the team with LMDE?
    Keep up the good work, what ever you decide.

  29. Finally It’s Official – Well what d’ya know ? – LinuxMint was a Diety all along . Huh!
    #Deism

  30. Looking forward to this. Hopefully there will be support for the new nVidia “Maxwell” GTX 750 series GPU’s in this release. Probably an upstream kernel/Nouveau issue but when trying to boot the Mint 16 Live image, the GPU would just display scrolling lines of gibberish because the OS was trying to use the (now outdated) version of Nouveau that shipped with Mint 16. I was forced to remove the GPU and drive my monitor from the Core i3-4340’s iGPU just to get to the desktop to find a solution. This was a new PC I built and Mint 16 was the 1st OS I tried to boot on it. You can imagine my frustration!

    Basically I had to reinstall the GPU, immediately past the BIOS hit CTRL+ALT+F1 to boot into Recovery mode and proceed to the desktop. Go to Terminal and proceed with the instructions on this website:

    http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2014/03/install-nvidia-driver-334-21-ubuntu-linux/

    Is there any way at the beginning of the boot process to offer the user (in a low graphics environment) a choice to continue the boot with either Nouveau or the nVidia driver? I understand this problem occurred because the Maxwell cards came out in February (Mint 16 released in November 2013) but let’s make sure Mint 17 provides a seamless boot experience for those of us using these GPU’s. Besides, more Maxwell cards are coming. Mint needs to be ready for them.

  31. @ 34:

    Jacob, nVidia’s newest driver is 334.21, not 331.49. Again, see above about the GTX 750 series. We HAVE to have support “out of the box” in Qiana for these new Maxwell GPU’s. I won’t have a problem booting now that I know how to do it, but it sure would be nice if a user didn’t have to jump through the hoops I did just to boot the brand new PC they’ve just assembled.

  32. @ robert post 50, i too struggled on this after a bunch of hair pulling i added an option to the boot command nomodeset then everything worked.
    after installing the nvidia drivers( another pita) i had to add it to the grub.conf to make it boot right.

  33. Dear Clem

    Qiana (kyānā) is an ancient Persian name. It means Nature. (or one of the four elements of nature) Originally it is from ancient Syria.
    So don’t think about 1970s. Think about 1000 years before Christ.

    You can find it in these persian sites:
    http://www.babynames.ir/girls/%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%A7.html
    http://dic.abadis.net/Word/FaToFa/%DA%A9%DB%8C%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%A7/

    I am a big fan of Linux Mint. Stability is my major priority. But I also like Gnome 3. Do your team have a plan for this environment in future?

  34. Clem says: “Yes, it’s an LTS release (we’re also considering basing the 3 releases after than on the very same LTS base).”

    So updated releases to the LTS, until the next LTS (2 Years)…hmmmm, I like it, more stability. I am in. Plus I am sure it will free up more time for working on LM tools, Cinnamon, Mate (where needed), etc.

    @Clem, Shall each updated release to the LTS base, have a newer kernel (more hardware support) and new graphics cards updates?

    @Clem (again) In the current release LM 16, I noticed what appears to be a bug. This is when waiting for the prompt, to enter password (updates, etc.), the prompt is very slow, 1 minute or more to appear, instead it should be 3-5 seconds, right? **Post here if you need more info.

    Thank you. 🙂

  35. Please use the best possible compression available to reduce the size of Linux Mint distribution (as it used to be). Most people install it rather than use it in live mode – so highest compression and smallest possible size is good IMHO.

    Moreover Linux Mint could increase some base packages like adding g++ and a few important dev packages (xorg dev for example) to the default list. (I hope that Linux Mint could in its original (unmodified/untouched) distribution wold be able to act as a host system for LFS – http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/prologue/hostreqs.html)

  36. BTW forgot – Linux Mint is the cleanest (simplicity) possible distribution I’ve used – ever.

  37. @Clem (37)

    Got into IRC using Chat and joined that particular channel last night. Saw a message that the next meeting is Monday. Is that the only time folks are in that channel?

    Edit by Clem: No, we’re on it all the time, not necessarily always in front of the screen though.

  38. Been so pleased with the last LTS which is still my main distro. XFCE is my choice. How is support for AMD chipsets now? had to resort to ‘nomodeset’

    Looking forward to the release.

  39. Looking forward to see Mint 17 as well.
    Will there be any improvements in Cinnamon? For example the in “Desklet” and “Applets”GUI it would be great to add the informations which additional packages are required to run the applet/desklet or the version they are created for.
    Some Desklets cause Cinnamon to start / run. For Newbies this is a big problem to get cinnamon back to work…
    (Sorry for my english)

  40. I would certainly welcome a more stable and longer supported system based off an Ubuntu LTS. Clearly it makes more sense to focus on improving mint components without the constant push to get another release out every 6 months. The net benefit will be a better mint release.

  41. Please fix the installer to allow people who choose to encrypt their system to create and size file systems as they see fit.

  42. hello
    clem linuxmint 16 mate is the best; very good work i hope for the next

    -lxde + razor-qt/lxde qt port i saw
    maybe another version but in the future

    -mintconstructor?

    -a light installation version of linux mint mate? no plymouth-text boot ,no pulseadio-but alsa- no 3d, no effects for old pc 32/64 bit?

    best regards marks

  43. I thought the new LTS release was planned for 2017. Now I read that it will be Mint17.
    Mint13 “Maya” will be supported until April 2017. Do I miss something?

  44. I want to applaud loudly but heartily to Mint17 developer group.
    One thing if I can wish to the group, I would like to ask
    to make the default color of file renaming space from total black
    to white letters with black background or some other combination of
    colors so that I can see what I am typing in for renaming.
    Again, thank you so much for your hard work to make this OS
    so amicable.

  45. i am just asking for bradcom support natively…! i mean…. all the computers that i have and i´ve had..has broadcom wireless and bluetooth, but linux hasn´t the support even in live sesion or at least booting….so my question is: linux`ll have support for brodccom and i can installit as nothing happen until i install the privative drivers and these would work fine and i can get wireless in the laptop and won´t be “surprises” like “no device detected” or “something-initframs problem” or device not supported?

  46. @Aks69cw: LTS releases are issued every 2 years (2012, 2014, 2016…) but are supported for 5 years each. So at some moment, there will be several LTS releases supported simultaneously.

  47. Great news, hope that May is coming soon 🙂
    Also hope that gnucash ist working again with my bank. Have LM13, LM15 and LM16 running on different PCs. LM13 and LM15 work, LM16 doesn’t.

    Besides that – thanks for the great work, I love LM espacially for the cinnamon desktop and easy install so it works out of the box for daily work.

  48. Clem, congrats to you and the team for the Mint 17. Just wanted to point out that on past releases, I have experienced these problems (and have reported them) and hoping that PERHAPS Qiana will not have them. Mint 16-set screen brightness and when you turn off and and restart your computer, the brightness level defaults to full brightness-everytime. Somehow, the settings are never saved (on both desktop and laptop). Starting with LTS(13)-Gparted is always contained in the ISO. When you install Mint from the ISO, Gparted is NEVER included on the installation. You always have to go in and install (re-install) from the repositories. Kudos to you and the team and will look forward to give Qiana a test drive once she is “officially born!”

  49. I just installed Mint 16 and love it. When 17 comes out do I have to wipe my HDD and do a fresh install, or will it install itself in the partition I allocated for Mint 17. I’m not running a dual boot system now. Pleas go easy on me I’m new to this. Thanks AD

  50. Clem:

    So is this going to dance fever edition, do we need to recruit John Travolta(Saturday night fever & swordfish) to be our spokesperson? I guess, since it is the LTS release we could assume to be dancing for a long time either using 32 bit or the high squeal sound of 64 bit. I must admit that LM 16 shines a bright light on the crystal ball of a few upstream fish that don’t want to be gobbled up by a young raging trout.

  51. I love the idea of using LTS base. Yes, Please.
    I think the idea of the LM Team spending more time on improvements over converting is awesome.

    Hmm, I wonder if it might be a good idea for the (6 month) releases in the LTS to be rolling. This would make the re-installs every 2 years instead of every six months. I think that would make the community pretty happy too.

  52. Will mint 17 LTS work with
    Processor: AMD Trinity APU A8-4555M 1.6 – 2.4 GHz processor
    Graphic: AMD Radeon
    Chipset: AMD A70M chipset?

    I just got a notebook from Asus with this specification and I try to install Linux mint 15 cinnamon and 16 cinnamon but installation failded.
    Thanks…

  53. Dropping down from *buntu and staying only with LMDE – making it rolling distro – will be great great great idea!

  54. Sticking with LTS and reinstalling the OS every five years doens’t seem a bad idea or hard work. My experience with LMDE hasn’t been that good and I understood what the term “expect rough edges” means…I never had any problem with Linux Mint, it always worked perfectly out of the box.

  55. This is appealing to me. If I understand you correctly, Clem, after LM 17 Qiana is released and installed, you will not be required to do re-install until est. May 2016 and still be current at that point with all the other updated “releases” to the base. Closer to a rolling release, correct?

    2 other things:

    1.) @Clem and LM Team are there plans to do a upgrade path from LTS to LTS, without doing a re-install, similar to Ubuntu (but better and smoother I hope.)?

    2.)@Clem and LM Team, anything in the works for going mobile with LM, for phones and tablets?

    Thanks and have a great week. Ahoy!

  56. I’m really excited by the proposed “LTS Base” idea. I was pretty steamed when Ubuntu cut interim release support in half. Yes, interim releases are not as stable or predictable as LTS releases, generally speaking, but who wants to wade into the mire that is updating your entire system every nine months?

    Using only LTS releases as a base lets Mint focus on other things. I think it’s also a nice compromise between trying to keep up with the big U or dumping it and moving Mint to Debian. To all those wondering, you still get kernel updates on LTS installations if you enable Level 5 updates, so you have the option of keeping or upgrading. Ubuntu just slaps the update in whether you want it or not.

    As an aside, trying not to throw stones here, but am kind of annoyed at all the “Will Mint support my hardware?” questions. Learn how Linux works, please. Your hardware works through a combination of kernel drivers, firmware packages, and for some graphics cards, binary drivers released by the manufacturers. The kernel team is headed by Torvalds, and they have a website detailing what works and what is coming. If you have missing firmware files, they can often be found in Synaptic, and I believe Mint ships with them installed by default, so if your hardware is still non-functional, that becomes an upstream Ubuntu/Debian issue.

    Because Mint, as awesome as it is, isn’t a stand-alone project like Windows or Mac OS. The bits and pieces come from all over the place. What I’m essentially saying is, do some research into the various projects that create Linux, and you’ll find where that hardware support is coming from.

  57. If Linux Mint sticks to 14.04 as a base how will it handle package updating?

    One of the most annoying things about Ubuntu is the slow package maintenance with updates and such. For example, my app is uGet Download Manager and was ridiculously out of date until 13.10 but even then Canonical ignored our requests to fix the package that they incorrectly built for the USC.

    Finally, 14.04 will have a functional and up to date version of uGet in 1.10.4 after a lot of effort to get it updated. Which will be out of date again this summer.

    If Linux Mint stays with LTS but also stays with LTS packages it means that packages will suffer the same fate that elementary OS packages suffer which is they will eventually be up to 2 years old.

    If Linux Mint stays with 14.04 as a base but updates packages in your own repo or through backports then that would be quite good as the base is LTS solid but also packages don’t become stale.

  58. Continuation of comment #87 ( http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2594&cpage=2#comment-105869 )

    With uGet, we currently have to recommend to people that they not use the Ubuntu Software Center or Linux Mint’s Software Manager until 14.04 / 17 as nothing else is up to date but if Linux Mint doesn’t compensate for the stale packages then we will be forced to do exactly what we are forced to do with elementary which is to recommend no one ever install our app from their official base repo.

  59. @82. Douglas Kweku Nyamekye Gaisie: Nice rig you got there, I like the specs. To your situation, “I just got a notebook from Asus with this specification and I try to install Linux mint 15 cinnamon and 16 cinnamon but installation failed.”, you might want to post your situation on the forum, with more information of what is going on.

    When you say “failed”, is it dual boot set up, complete wipe of HDD, do you have UEFI, etc? Also, at what point did the install fail?

    I hope you get a helpful answer to your situation and then have a successful install. Cheers. 🙂

  60. Coole Idee … Als regelmäßiger Mint Unterstützer könntet Ihr Euch mehr auf das Entwickeln als auf das Fixieren konzentrieren.

    Cool Idea … as a regular Mint supporter I like you to be able to conecentrate more on developement than fixing shortcoming of short-term releases.

  61. I hope the newer versions will have better out of the box/iso hardware support for all macbooks.. presently it’s a lot of a drudgery installing mose drivers manually.. even the ones for trackpad & it’s caliberation on macbooks..
    Will there be no LMDE release concurrently? I hope Linux Mint will gradually shift to just LMDE in the future.. Debian’s so much better!
    looking forward to it nonetheless!!

  62. Hi Clem,

    I’m wondering too… Will LM 17 work with ATI Radeon cards?
    There’s a LOT of people having a few years old laptops with Radeon cards, unable to install LM 16…

    Keep the mighty Mint working!
    D

  63. @ clem,

    was wondering if live CD will have Hardinfo included?
    It is a very small but useful tool.

    Thanks 4 all the great Mints
    wally

  64. I can’t wait, I didn’t read the entire thread because my eyes hurt so [please bear with me, when I ask this, is Mint 17 going to be based off of Ubuntu or are you guys making this one your own operating system?

  65. @94. wolfen says “is Mint 17 going to be based off of Ubuntu or are you guys making this one your own operating system?” Reference post 3 from Clem:

    “Clem Says:
    March 21st, 2014 at 8:51 am

    Yes, it’s an LTS release (we’re also considering basing the 3 releases after than on the very same LTS base).”

    To be clear, yes that is the Ubuntu LTS (14.04). Cheers. 🙂

  66. I too like the Debian base better than Ubuntu. However, I am not necessarily a fan of the rolling updates system. After a number of update packs, the system feels better with a clean reinstall anyway.

  67. Hi, I’m not a Mint user, but I love Cinnamon. If Cinnamon is developed against Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, what happens to Cinnamon on other distros that move ahead, such as Arch?

    Edit by Clem: It really depends on how much interest/efforts these distros put in Cinnamon. Obviously the Mint team would be focused on GTK 3.10, but if we get bug reports or pull requests for 3.12, 3.14 we’ll consider them seriously as well. Note also that LMDE would roll to some extent although much slower than Arch. This happened in the past when Mint used GTK 3.6 and Fedora/Arch were on 3.8, at the time we were blind to 3.8 regressions but with the help of these distros we managed to make things work. I wouldn’t worry too much about Arch and Fedora, not only are they involved in the development of Cinnamon (we get a lot of help from them in feedback and pull requests) but they’re also efficient at patching Cinnamon for their specific needs. If we stick to the same base for 2 years we obviously won’t be confronted to the issues the guys at Fedora and Arch will face, so they’ll have more work and less help as bugs won’t be solved without them playing a central role. I know the persons in question though, their competence and their knowledge of Cinnamon, we’ve also good relationships and communication with them and I’m confident about the quality of Cinnamon in these two distros.

  68. Every release based on LTS is really great, all new releases will be thus supported till 2019.
    This is really something that people need. There were major security updates recently in our Mint updaters by the way (GNU tls, and I’ve seen openssl, openssh and certificates stuff)

  69. Hi LM team,
    I use this distro from few years and the only thing that I really don’t like is how becomes the upgrades between the next versions. Can you make a tool that can make it without downloading and make a new flash usb and so….

  70. IMHO the plan of use LTS and freeze this base for 2 years is optimal, Clem. Mark is hurrying with Ubuntu through a strange territory with some serious risky standpoints. No reason to follow him. I only regret misconceptional and dying LMDE branch… What costs switching to Debian generally with all releases when Ubuntu seems a bit risky?

  71. Will there be support in Mint 17 for Radion Video cards as used in Laptops from 3 or 4 years back [Samsung NP305]? I cannot use anything later than Mint 13 and have installed the supplementary drivers OK. Later versions just vanish during software loading [no video support] so cannot proceed. Something generic would be nice – so better drivers can be added after install?

    Thanks,

    G.

  72. To #58, CinnamomnBun

    “@Clem, Shall each updated release to the LTS base, have a newer kernel (more hardware support) and new graphics cards updates?”

    There are kernel and xorg server packages for Ubuntu 12.04 that install support from one of the follow-up six monthes versions. They are backports, and are called LTS Enablement Stack by Ubuntu.

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

    So, most of the work is done by Ubuntu, and I even had installed the raring (Ubuntu 13.04) backports on Mint 13 Mate. That worked, I then had a more recent nouveau driver.

    That Mint 13 installation ended up a bit tired through modification, leftover traces from experimentations (like trying OSS, Ltsp), daemons and leftover gnome 3 components.

  73. And if its not to late to suggest expanded controls for window decorations in Cinnamon to allow control over window borders,drop shadows and title bar widths. Would make users feel they have a little more control over appearance (So long as it doesn’t cause any bloat). Added themes are limited to Cinnamon defaults and only do a little to improve user control.

  74. Thanks for all the excellence of Linux Mint.

    I run a small computer biz. I have many clients still running Win XP. With low budgets, setting up Linux Mint with XP theming is a pretty perfect migration path for them. Deep Linux folks may laugh at the XP theming, but for everyday folks it’s a life-saver. Familiarity is a wondrous thing.

    My one request in that regard: come up with a way to make the Menu in Cinnamon amenable to theming so that it can look like an XP Start menu.

  75. @52, Robert,

    I was under the impression that 334.xx branch was short-term/beta driver. And the 331.yy is the long-term/stable, that’s why I only mention the 331.49. But even 334.21 supposed to work on kernels as old as 2.6.18.

    You’ve mentioned Nouveau drivers, that’s another variable in the system. I’m glad you’ve got it working. Did your GTX750 work ‘out-of-the box’ with other Linux distributions? If it did, then yes there’s an issue with LM16. But if it didn’t, then the issue is probably with the Nouveau driver or at the kernel level.

    I have NVIDIA GT520, and LM13 LTS. I’m using the built-in driver NVIDIA 331.20. I didn’t have issues, but decided to update the drivers to 331.49 d/l from NVIDIA. After installing it (mostly by the same steps as in the link you’ve provided), LM13 told me that ‘no monitors’ were found and I was dropped to text-mode. There was tip on the web how to fix the ‘no monitors’ error, but it didn’t work for me; so I went back to the built-in 331.20 version.

  76. @52, Robert,

    Ohh, I just checked NVIDIA site and when I selected my 500 series; 334.21 driver does not show up. It has 334.16 Beta; and the other 331.xx branch. But no 334.21.

    But the 334.21 in its supported hardware list does list my card. So now how am I supposed to know that to get 334.21 drivers for my GT500 series I need to select a different card (i.e. the GTX750).

  77. @Jacob45

    I tried Ubuntu 13.10 and same problem…scrolling gibberish of white text. Not many distros have released new versions in the last month and even if they’re using the latest stable 3.13.7 kernel, Nouveau will not support Maxwell until at least kernel 3.15 according to Phoronix:
    http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_700_nouveau&num=1

    Meaning, the OS will not boot to even get to a point where a user can choose the binary blob vs. Nouveau if that’s the driver they want to use. UNACCEPTABLE! This is 2014, not 1998.

    Since I got the 334.21 blob working I’ve had no trouble and really, with the new Maxwell architecture coming in between major distro/kernel releases I guess it’s not unexpected for “early adopters” to have these types of problems. But before the next architecture is released nVidia SERIOUSLY needs to do whatever work with the Nouveau team it needs to do to ensure on release day their new GPU’s will be supported on Linux systems.

  78. That’s great news Clem! I have LM16 on an SSD drive and my /home and /swap on a HDD drive. So all I need to do is install the new OS and have it not format my /home and /swap on the HDD.Then I’ll be set for 2 years!Plus I have a daily backup I run of /home to another HDD just in case something goes wrong with a new install. You guys and gals did a wonderful job on 16,everything works and looks classier than any OS I ever had! I can’t wait to see what 17 brings.

  79. OK, to Jacob45, Clem and the rest of Team Mint. I just downloaded and installed Ubuntu 14.04 Beta 2 http://releases.ubuntu.com/trusty/ to my USB thumb drive and am typing this from the live session. My only purpose was to see if the OS would boot with my monitor plugged in to my GTX 750 GPU.

    As previously noted, Mint MATE 16 64 bit WOULD NOT boot into a graphical interface with this GPU but Ubuntu 14.04 Beta 2 does. Seems like they’ve gotten something to work with Nouveau and the 3.13 kernel to enable Maxwell support during the boot process.

    I’m hoping for a similarly painless experience for Mint 17.

  80. @Clem:
    Few of us asked the same question, but we didn’t got the answer:
    Will LM17 support Radeon video cards?

  81. Clem said: “That means that Linux Mint 17, 18, 19 and 20 might all use Ubuntu 14.04 LTS as a base instead of being based on newer Ubuntu releases. If that happens, Linux Mint would have a more stable base and it would allow the Mint team to “push innovation on Cinnamon, be more active in the development of MATE, better support Mint tools and engage in projects we’ve postponed for years”.

    Extremely reasonable. I congratulate Clem and the developers team. Greetings.

  82. I had issue with software manager freezing at welcome screen in LM15 after i install nvidia driver. Thats why i temporarily used lubuntu. Ill switch back again in LM17 rather than upgrading to lubuntu 14.04. Is that software manager freezing with nvdia driver issue fixed in LM17?

  83. HOLA!!!! HABER SI9 ME PUEDEN AYUDAR CON EL LINUX MINT 16.. ME SALE CUANDO QUIERO ACTUALIZAR ESTO: QUE NO PUEDE BAJAR LOS REPOSITORES???

  84. Something I have noticed with the Live CD installer for the past several releases of (64-bit) LM Cinnamon (and also LM KDE) is that when the installer is finished and the DVD ejects, pressing Enter does nothing – it should reboot the computer. I know the Ubuntu installer works correctly in this regard.

    Sure its not a disaster, people can just press the reset button or hold down the power button to reboot, but it could put new users off and mislead them into thinking the installer had failed.

  85. Hi!

    First of all: THANK YOU! LinuxMint is a great OS!

    Is it possible to add the function to auto-install all update?
    I support many computers of normal users and they often forget to update their system.

    A batch with “sudo apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade” is not very beautiful. 😉

    Greetings

    Tom

  86. Is OpenDNS still included on Mint?

    I know its only a fallback and can be disabled, but I think it should not be on by default. I consider it a privacy risk and causes problems with apps that need NXDOMAIN to work and with apps and websites that use DNS based CDNs.

    I would think that OpenDNS providing a revenue stream for the project, but I would ask you to consider before adding privacy reducing features like OpenDNS.

    Edit by Clem: Hi, concern was voiced a release ago and DNS fallback was removed in Mint 16 already. It was implemented to make people life’s easier though, not as a revenue stream. Note that we’re not in partnership with OpenDNS, that we have no commercial ties with them and that this implementation never generated any income for us. We didn’t switch to another service but simply removed the DNS fallback as it wasn’t just the way OpenDNS handles non-existing domains which was a concern but the resolvconf tail implementation proved to be unsatisfactory.

  87. What’s about Adobe Flash for older computers without sse2 processor support?
    Now I am using a very out of date plug-in: mint flash plug-in: 10.3.180.65 (12 April 2011)
    (Linux Mint Maya Mate 13 (LTS) – 32 bit)
    some websites I can’t use because flash does not work properly
    Is there an solution developed for Qiana?
    I hope so!

  88. Will installing Linux Mint 17 from the LiveCD suffer from the same unacceptable problems as previous editions? LM 16 (Mate, 32-bit) is impossible on older hardware (PIII w/Rage128 graphics) — no matter what variations I make/add to the commands, I still get either a black screen, or multiple 1/20th-size “desktops”. I did manage to get to a Ctl-Alt-F1 prompt, where I used telinit to change the runlevel, then ran Xorg -configure and copied the resulting Xorg.conf.new to /etc/X11; however, neither startx nor startx failsafe give me a workable desktop from which to install. With Linux Mint 13, wasn’t it an issue with having to remove mint-ubiquity-slideshow and then manually invoking ubiquity? This is, plainly, unworkable… and I’m a Unix/Linux sysadmin with 23 years on-the-job experience. Where are the fixes in the ISO images? Where is a “grand”, single sticky with all the “gotchas” and their fixes, in the Linux Mint user forum? I’m downloading, as I type this, LMDE-201403-mate-dvd-32bit.iso (and I know, full-well, that I’m going to have to install the linux-headers-686-pae and linux-image-686-pae packages, before it’ll recognize (hopefully) my dual PIII cpus. I only hope the LMDE LiveCD has a text-mode installer, like “real” Debian.

  89. I love Linux Mint 16! Will Mint 17 install over 16 and keep all files, photos etc? Will 17 operate the same as 16? I have a HP Pavilion with 600 gig on two hard drives. Mint on one and W-7 on the other. Mint is definitely faster than W-7 and has no issues on my machine. I hope 17 is just as good! PJ

    Edit by Clem: If you give /home a dedicated partition then yes, you can wipe / and keep /home intact, thus keeping all your files. You can also use mintbackup to save your software selection and easily reinstall software on your new system.

  90. Since no one else mentioned it, I throw my support for Mint 17 KDE. Having subsequent 6 month releases based on the LTS is a great idea. I’ve ignored the in between releases since Mint 13 LTS (currently have Mint 13 KDE with the kubuntu backports to get KDE 4.12.3).

    I’d like to request to please include the language packs in the Mint 17 KDE ISO this time. I hate having to download those each time (slow connection) I install Mint KDE on a different computer. (At least with the updates, I can download them once, grab them from /var/cache/apt/archives, and copy them to the other computers.)

  91. Two issues I have:

    1. Catalyst legacy drivers – they simply don’t work with newer Xorg versions, and I need the proprietary drivers for applications like Second Life, as the open source ones are sluggish.

    2. Multiarch support in 64-bit distros.

    Can we hope for these things to be fixed? Thank you.

  92. I’ve got latest Dell Inspiron 17R laptop. I have been Mint fan for several years now. I’ve been using LMDE mostly but recently switched to Ubuntu 12.04 because my laptop’s graphics card doesn’t work will kernel version > 3.2. Only distros with kernel >= 3.2 work. I don’t know why. When I try latest LDME, Mint 16, or any other distribution, I get purple-green colours and all content is very blurry.

    I want to return to using Mint but all recent distributions work poorly with my graphics card. In my current Ubuntu 12.04 I have normal colours and resolution, but I have not control over graphics card driver (i.e. change brightness, refresh mode (it says 0Hz for refresh mode)).

    When I type lspci | grep VGA I get this printout:

    VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)

    I hope that Mint team would be able to make Mint 17 Dell Inspirion – friendly 🙂 I also don’t mind testing Mint 17 on my laptop to see if it would work with my laptop’s graphics card.

  93. Qiana is a Dupont registered trademark. You better check before you use Qiana that you have permission to use it or the trademark has expired.

    Edit by Clem: Thanks Mark. It’s been a firstname for a while so I don’t think that’s an issue. We also operate in a completely different market/activity than Dupont and the trademark has expired a long time ago. Afaik it was re-filed in 2006 and is now abandoned.

  94. Some requests to Clem & team, so I can come back to Mint:

    1) get rid of that *buntu base toddler Linux

    2) focus on rolling release
    2a) … but please not Debian, pretty pleez. All those development freezes make even Debian unstable a totally outdated distro

    3) maybe work your Minty magic on an Arch base … ooops, that would be Manjaro 😉

    4) merge with Manjaro team! Win win, profit for all! =^.^=

    5) the name for Mint 17 is already right to the point. We need more *DISCO* in our Linux!!!

  95. … ugh, forgot some things:

    6) get rid of Xfce (nothing new since 22 mths), Cinnamon and all the other incomplete, inconsistant DEs
    6a) okok, you can do a KDE version if you insist. KDE has had its time and is pretty much unacceptable nowadays but I gather there is some sort of a fanbase for it. But then, if I want KDE I can always go to openSUSE since that is where KDE belongs

    7) concentrate fully on Mate since it’s the only DE which offers everything and which has a real future

    8) pls stay clear off mobile crappola! There is always *buntu, Android, Chrome and all that stuff for the playkiddies

    In other words: FOCUS ON YOUR CORE COMPETENCE and give us one (1) super nice rolling desktop! Spank you very much 🙂

    =^.^=

    Edit by Clem: We like Ubuntu, we like Debian, we like Xfce, KDE, Cinnamon and MATE.. we’re pretty happy with what we’re doing and we don’t plan on changing too much 🙂

  96. Have loved Mint Cinnamon since it’s early days and look forward to another LTS.One little thing I would love to see is editable panels a bit like Xfce so the length and placement can be changed to top or side.It gets a bit annoying when you go to close a window on fullscreen and the panels keeps popping up,a few friends have the same issue.This is my only complaint about Mint really.Pleeeeease and keep up the great work Clem.

  97. why there is no lxde desktop? I’m used to using the lxde desktop. it’s better and faster to old computers than xfce.

  98. @Victor: you can use kernel 3.2 (from Debian Wheezy) in LMDE. Just install it from Wheezy repositories.

  99. Pliz consider the case of date. After installing Mint 16, the date(calender) doesn’t match with my selected language. This is an error i have seen in Linux Mint for the first time!!

  100. There should be a program to enable timezone changes in Mint xfce live mode.

    By default it is in UTC time.

    Just a suggestion.

    Cheers.

  101. any chance of including boot disc repair? mint 17. like some other distros.
    Worth it with all the dual boots of windows 8. Unless the grub issue will be fixed?

  102. Will Wayland be implemented in this release? This is a HUGE deal.

    Edit by Clem: No. Why is it a HUGE deal?

Leave a Reply to Jahid Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *