News will be very short this month because we’re just about to release the RC for Linux Mint 17.2.
A huge thank you to all the developers and all the people who worked with us to make this happen, within Linux Mint but also in the Cinnamon and MATE projects. Many thanks also to the moderation team and to all the people who fund us (donors, sponsors, partners): If it wasn’t for you we couldn’t focus on the development as much as we do.
Linux Mint 17.2 introduces exciting improvements to the MDM display manager, the update manager, the configuration of locales, software sources and PPA, the formatting of USB sticks and the creation of live USB devices, and on the system: bash and apt. The desktop environments, Cinnamon 2.6 and MATE 1.10 also bring a lot of new features. LibreOffice 4.4.3, HPLIP 3.15 and a 3.16 kernel were also selected.
I was tempted to give you a quick overview of the new features, but since we’re so closed to the release you’ll have to wait for the announcements 🙂
Improved PPA handling in Software Sources
Thanks in advance to all the people who will test this RC. We hope you’ll have fun with it. We look forward to receiving your feedback so we can fix as many bugs as possible before the stable release.
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I had problems installing Mint 17/17.1 on my system with a Nvidia 960GTX running. I needed to install the newest nvidia driver from the manufacturer.
Is my hardware supported with 17.2 / Kernel 3.16 framework, or are nvidia-packages updated?
thanks
Hi Simon, you’d still have to get nvidia-346 from the nvidia website (version 331 is in our repositories still). I’ll add this to the roadmap and see if we can backport it.
If I upgrade from 17.1, will packages that I uninstalled (like Eye of GNOME, just for example) come back?
Thanks.
It depends on the packages, and it depends on how you upgrade. If you perform a manual upgrade yourself using apt, then no. If you perform one with the Update Manager, it will require the presence of mint meta packages and that can reinstall dependencies.
Given that this is a LTS branch, when can we expect to see newer versions of packages?
Specifically Java 1.8; If we don’t see Java 1.8 in Rafaela, can we expect to see it in the November release, or after that?
Hi Leo, can I ask why Java 1.8 is important? Is it to use particular software? Or are you asking this for development purpose? (our Java development stack is pretty old, Java devs usually go ahead and get their JDK/Eclipse-IDE straight from upstream). We can look into upgrading it, but I’d like to understand why.
Also, are you talking about openjdk or the Oracle VM here? And just the JRE, or also the JDK and/or the web plugin?
On Linux Mint 17.1, I used nvidia-346. I think it is used again. I am downloading Mate. Thanks to all the team.
Thank you for all your work! I’ll give it a try on my play computer, but I will hold off until the final release on my Linux work computer. Having such a smooth transition of LTS versions makes life easy.
I am now a “veteran” of Linux Mint (over 1 year – started with 13 XFCE) and it is so great to have such a great OS for everyone. Since I am not very computer literate, I cannot say how exciting or useful Linux Mint is for hardcore computer people, but for casual users (and especially Windows XP refugees) like me it is just perfect – I’ve installed it on the computers of 4 older people that have always been afraid of computers and all of them are using it without any problems. I tell everyone about it and on Sunday I met a friend’s son that also uses Linux and guess what he uses?
Will the “announcements” include instructions on how to obtain the RC? I’d like to test it, if it will be helpful.
Edit by Clem: Hi Brad, yes.
Will there be a Linux Mint 17.2 Xfce 4.12 ?
Edit by Clem: Yes, it’s planned.
Posting from within the beast. Happy to say it looks very good, excluding the ghastly window shadow effect — that sort of nonsense should never happen to Mate, please stop going in that direction immediately. (Turns off via Windows Prefs > untoggle ‘Enable software compositing window manager’.) Save that badly alarming start, everything I’ve opened up seems fine so I’ve calmed down quite a bit. This is the Mate I’ve grown to love and this RC seems ready to be the Final. Well done folks.
Hello, what’s the situation with KDE. Does 17.2 get kde plasma 5 ?
Edit by Clem: No it’s likely to stay with KDE 4.
Clem,
Thanks for the new 17.2; I’ve already seen an improvement in CPU usage. For example, under 17.2 the 1/5/15min load averages while playing a video in Chrome where 1.5/2/1.6, whereas under 17.1 the averages were 2.54/2.4/1.84. Using Cinnamon 64-bit.
Not a big issue, but I was hoping 17.2 would solve a specific freezing issue for me. Under all 17/17.1/17.2 Cinnamon 64-bit when I close the laptop lid and use an external monitor the laptop freezes for 1 second every 30 seconds and I see a spike on one of the CPU cores. I just leave the lid open, so it’s not a big issue for me.
Thanks.
Edit by Clem: Hi Jacob, can you see what process is causing that activity (check the system monitor or the top command)? Regarding Cinnamon 2.6, yes, we’ve drastically reduced CPU usage. We didn’t achieve all the goals I wanted to reach in terms of performance gains, we can probably still do better, but the result is much better than in previous Cinnamon iterations already.
When is scheduled for release 17.2 mint? Thanks
Edit by Clem: The RC should be out today.
hi Clem,
I have my first try with LMDE2. So far ist runs better for me than the ubuntu-based version does. I love the debian-based version.
One question to your announcment of a soon release of LinuxMint 17.2: will the users of LMDE2 “Betsy” also see new features?? And what I would wish is, that the debian-based Version could import the packages of the Vibrancy-colors-icons as well as the Rave-X-Colors Gtk-theme into the debian-Repos??
This would be really nice because I love these icons.
Greetings
Andrea
Edit by Clem: Hi Andrea. Yes, except for Mint-specific features (such as the new PPA improvements in mintsources for instance), all other features and improvements will also go into Betsy. The reason they’re not there yet is because they’re quite new and we’re going through RC feedback in Mint anyway, so we’re expecting people to find bugs and their versions to change often in the coming days. Once everything stabilizes, you’ll see all of that in LMDE 2 Betsy as well, either shortly after the stable release, or even shortly before (depending on how much time we have on our hands). Regarding color variations, any icon theme can provide them and that is compatible with both the Nemo and the Caja folder color selection extensions. We won’t import that in the repositories directly but they should work fine cross distribution. The new features regarding foreign packages in mintsources can also help here to try foreign packages with less risks involved (since it’s now easier to clean up afterwards).
The ubuntu-based version of these Reave-X-Colors gtk-theme and the Vibrancy-Colors Icons you can find here:
http://www.noobslab.com/2014/11/a-new-icon-theme-vibrancy-colors.html
and here:
http://www.noobslab.com/2014/08/rave-x-colors-gtk-themes-and-icons.html
Then I would also wish, that the Ravefinitiy-Icons would be importet into the debian-repos. You can find the ubuntu-based ppa-repo here:
http://www.noobslab.com/2014/07/ravefinity-x-icons-available-in.html
And could we also get the zoncolors-Icons into the debian-repos please??
http://www.noobslab.com/2013/06/zoncolor-themes-and-icons-package-for.html
Thank you in advance!!
Greetings
Andrea
what about Linux Mint XFCE edition? what is new about it?
Edit by Clem: We’re planning to upgrade to 4.12. Many of the improvements in 17.2 are also DE-agnostic (mintupdate, mintlocale, mintsources, MDM..etc.. all received a lot of new features).
Hi Clem
Looking forward to the 17.2 release. Will Mint 17.2 use Mesa 10.3 or Mesa 10.1 from Ubuntu 14.04? Also, will llvm be updated in these 6 monthly releases?
Only reason I ask is that for AMD users, the more updated Mesa and llvm packages are required to get a good out of the box experience with newer hardware.
Hope I will get a bit of time to test the RC later this week. Thanks for your hard work.
Gabriel
Edit by Clem: Hi Gabriel, kernel 3.19 was left out due to open bugs with HDMI sound output and conflicts with proprietary drivers. The Mesa/Xorg Utopic stack was also left out as it still conflicts with some dev packages in the trusty package base. We also noticed it took Canonical 4 months to make it possible for nvidia-331 to be installed alongside it and there’s still no support upstream for components such as virtualbox-guest-x11. With all that in mind, it’s ok for users to upgrade to if they don’t mind these limitations, but it’s not something we wanted to use by default.
I’ve experienced memory leaks from Cinnamon for Mint 17/17.1 and it has become standard procedure for me to restart Cinnamon after changing themes/icons. Hopefully these memory leaks will be fixed with ver 2.6. I’m looking forward to an updated Xfce as well… Among my wishes though is when running Linuxmint installer for full disk encryption, to have more options for users (ie option to reduce swap size).
Edit by Clem: 2.6 improves CPU usage significantly. When it comes to icon themes, it preloads them now as well (that only affects your first login though) and many file monitors were removed within the St layer (the toolkit Cinnamon uses).
I’ve been using Linux mint (along side opensuse/debian) since linuxmint 6.0 (linuxmint 6, linuxmint 10, currently linuxmint 13) – the sudden size increase of mint distribution without increase in number/size of packages is weird. It will be better if linuxmint included more packages like c++, gtk2 and gtk3 dev files (inclusive of mesa dev, x dev, etc.) and it would be the best if the original compression is used (extreme compression) – to reduce the size.
The package inclusion request is – so that a development machine could be setup in a single step – useful for people/organizations having multiple computers too.
Can’t wait to try the new toy! 🙂
Clem,
I never even knew a All-in_One disk existed for Linux Mint
http://linuxpitstop.com/linux-aio-project/
“We download Linux Mint ISO and when booted, here is what we see on very first screen. Amazing, it has all available desktop environments for Linux Mint distribution.”
This is a good way for me to try out the different DEs to find which works best for my hardware. I know i had problems with LMDE 2 and Nvidia drivers, but no such problems with MATE.
Thank you to the Mint team or whoever is responsible for this All-in-one disk. 🙂
Edit by Clem: Hi Gerry, it’s an independent project (nothing to do with us). We’ve seen magazines do similar things also, where they would usually group a few distributions together into one live DVD. It can introduce specific bugs with installers (I don’t know how well this works in the case of AIO) but it’s a great way to have a quick overview of the various desktops 🙂
hi clem and the linux mint team, i just want to say thankyou so much for all your hardwork on linux mint i am looking forward to linux mint 17.2 especially xfce edition. You guys do such a great job and its greatly appreciated your team is brilliant!! keep up the good work! your the best you make us all very happy!!
Edit by Clem: Hi, many thanks for your support. It’s a real pleasure to be working on it and seeing happy users like that 🙂
Question, Why no bluetoon support in Mate with A2DP? A2DP works great in Cinn but has never been in Mate
Clem,
Under 17.2 the process that spikes during the freeze is migration/#, where # is a core number.
Under 17.1, gnome-system-monitor, cinnamon, and migration/# would have spikes; but migration/# would be the highest spike.
I think the issue is related to the touchpad, when the lid is closed I get a screen notification that the touchpad is turned off. The laptop also has a touchscreen; I’ve disabled both, touchpad & touchscreen, using xinput –disable command, but that did not help.
The issue is under Cinnamon, MATE has no freezes.
Thanks
Hi Clem and Team…
congratulations on another fine release.
Keep up the good work!
No blueberry yet, eh?
So still using blueman.
Maybe for 17.3?
Edit by Clem: Sorry, blueberry is a frontend to gnome-bluetooth 3.14. As such it can’t work in Mint yet, only in LMDE2.
Hi Clem,
Do I need to reinstall Mint when the final 17.2 is released.
Or can I continue to run Mint and 17.2-RC will be just updated to the final release via the update manager.
Thanks,
Jan
Edit by Clem: Hi Jan, no, you can continue to run the RC and update with the update manager.
Please give us Plasma 5 for the KDE edition.
Or at least make an alternative sub-distribution for it.
Porque o Mint 17-Rebecca-KDE-64 Bits as Miniaturas só funciona o áudio.O vídeo fica sempre congelado.
Will you add support for intel hd graphic cards (mainly for the intel nuc computers)?
Nuc is increasingly growing more popular 🙂
Just have to thank you all for the great work on linux mint distros, windows is now gone..
Until now I didn’t succeed in make working my Canon scanner CanoScan 4400F under 17.1 cinnamon
Is this hardware supported with the new 17.2?
I have have been testing Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon 2.6 out as I made a fresh install. I began to install the fglrx drivers for my AMD card and had crashed into fallback mode several times with no graphics drivers installed.
I searched to make sure the previous drivers where uninstalled properly, which they where not. It appears when installing any other drivers through driver manager and synaptic’s where not being uninstalled automatically as they normally should be when installing other drivers.
I already had fglrx drivers installed when I did a search for “Xserver-xorg-video-ati”, I then had uninstalled the driver from Synaptic’s and then restart cinnamon,
log back in and open terminal type this command in terminal “sudo aticonfig –initial” (without quotation marks), then install the packages below:
fglrx-updates
fglrx-amdcccle-updates
fglrx-pxpress
fglrx-updates-core”
restart cinnamon
all works well now.
I second Leo. It would be great to have more up-to-date Java. Especially the OpenJDK. I write some applications myself, and prefer using the latest versions. But deploying is much easier if my fellow Mint users have an up-to-date JRE installed by default too, or easily installable.
Hi Clam, my “thank-you” was no Spam. The link showed a nice (and quite green) desktop with LinuxMint.
Sorry, I menat “Clem”.
Hi Goetz,
I can’t find it in the spam box. Was it posted a while ago? Maybe it was deleted by the akismet anti-spam filter?
I have been using linux mint 17.1 (17 prior to the upgrade, which went smoothly, but I usually go with clean installs for trouble-problem-free upgrades) and I must say, while somethings aren’t perfect, it gets what I need to get done, quickly and efficiently. I haven’t even looked back at windows.
Anyways, my link is the youtube channel I post to. Keep up the great work. 😀
PS. I’ll be glad to upgrade to 17.2 once it’s pushed out officially over a clean install, plus the update-manager reflects what’s shown already in the screenshot. AWESOME!!