Monthly News – September 2016

Many thanks to you all for your help, support and donations. This month has been very exciting for us because the release cycle was over, the base jump to the new LTS base was achieved, we had plenty of ideas to implement, nothing got in our way and we could focus on development. Not only that but the development budget was high, and that’s thanks to you, and it tightens the bonds a little more between us. It makes everybody happy, some developers start looking for a new laptop, others use the money to relax. No matter how it’s used, it always helps, and because it helps them, it helps us.

Another team was set up recently to gather artists and web designers who are interested in improving our websites. This is a new team, with 9 members who just started to get to know each others. It’s hard to predict how the team will evolve, or if it will be successful. It’s hard to know also who in this team might end up being central to our designs and maybe not only to our websites but also to our software, our user interfaces.

Within this team, Carlos Fernandez and Eran Gilo started working on the Cinnamon Spices website. Here’s is an overview of Eran’s design:

spices1And another page:

spices3

Cinnamon now supports vertical panels. You were numerous to ask for this feature and I know it’s been requested for a very long time. It will be part of Cinnamon 3.2 in Linux Mint 18.1:

vertical-panels

If you want more information about vertical panels, please read http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2016/09/vertical-panels/, where Simon Brown explains how vertical panels work a little more in detail.

Improved support for accelerometers also landed in Cinnamon. These little sensors allow your desktop to automatically rotate based on the orientation of the screen. If you rotate the laptop, or the screen, Cinnamon rotates with it. It’s particularly handy when showing something to a person in front of you, or when watching a movie with the lid titled at 270 degrees, or even when using a laptop in tablet-mode for hot-seat games with the lid flat on its back at 360 degrees. Many thanks to Bastien Nocera for his amazing work on iio-sensors-proxy, and its integration into GNOME, and to Jakub Adam for porting this support into Cinnamon.

I’d like to thank Peter Hutterer also for bringing libinput support to Cinnamon in a way that kept full compatibility with Synaptics.

Many other little features and improvements got into Cinnamon this month.. Bumblebee users can now use the menu to launch applications using optirun, the show desktop applet now also lets you peek at the desktop etc etc.. I’m not mentioning the most important improvements here, some are quite technical, but the ones that might be the most visible to users.

There are also two big improvements to talk about… Joseph Mccullar’s improvements on backgrounds handling, and Michael Webster’s amazing new screensaver. I won’t spoil these here though. I’ll let Joseph and Michael talk about them instead.

Moving on to the XApps; It’s always really exciting for me to work on them because each little improvement has such a big repercussion. Each new feature we develop in an XApp not only lands in Cinnamon, but also in MATE and Xfce. And I know some of you are using some XApps in KDE, and people are also using them in other distributions. So, without further due, here’s what we improved so far.

For people without accelerometers, or for people like me who always seem to shoot videos with their phone turned the wrong way, the Xplayer rotation plugin is now enabled by default. This functionality has been there for a long time, but many people didn’t know about it. It is now enabled by default, so you’ll now see “View -> Rotate” options in the menubar.

For similar reasons, the subtitles downloader plugin is now enabled by default. If you’re watching a movie, you can now just press “View -> Subtitles -> Download subtitles”.

If you have more than one monitor, Xplayer is now able to blank other monitors when playing videos in full-screen.

blank

This ability to blank other monitors can be useful in other XApps (Xreader, Xviewer, Pix for instance) but also for other software applications. With this in mind, it was developed within a new library called libxapp which will be available to all developers within the Linux community.

For more information on screen blanking and the new libxapp library, please read this article: http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2016/09/libxapp-and-blanking-other-monitors/

In Xed, the search dialog which obstructed the text editor was replaced by a brand new search bar inspired by Sublime and similar to Firefox:

xed-search

To know more about Xed and its new searchbar, you can read this article: http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2016/09/sublime-like-search-bar-in-xed/

Xed was also given a distinctive red bar when running as root which looks just the same as in Nemo.

We’re now right in the middle of our development cycle, and as you can see we’re having a lot of fun developing very different aspects of the system 🙂

As always we look forward to reading your feedback. Many many thanks for your support and funding, and for those who want to get involved, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Platinum Sponsors:
Private Internet Access
Gold Sponsors:
Linux VPS Hosting
Silver Sponsors:

Sucuri
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
7L Networks Toronto Colocation *
BGASoft Inc
David Salvo
Milton Security Group
Sysnova Information Systems
Francois Edelin
Community Sponsors:

Donations in August:

A total of $12402 was raised thanks to the generous contributions of 558 donors:

$140, Elmar R.
$108 (3rd donation), Marco L. aka “MAR9000
$108, Udo J.
$108, Stefan S.
$108, Olivier F.
$108, Fabio R.
$108, Christopher H.
$108, Andreas H.
$108, Hendrik S.
$108, Achim K.
$108, Michael J.
$101, Steph B. aka “64bitguy”
$100 (12th donation), Anonymous
$100 (5th donation), Jack W. S. aka “kundalinijack”
$100 (5th donation), Alfred H. aka “Varmint Al
$100 (4th donation), Robert S.
$100 (2nd donation), Colin S.
$100 (2nd donation), Sean O.
$100, Larry P.
$100, Didier C.
$100, Pasi K.
$100, Holten C.
$100, Douglas C. aka “ibDoug”
$100, Simon S.
$100, Ronald B.
$100, Charles B.
$100, J L
$100, Jean-paul G.
$100, Raphael S.
$75 (3rd donation), Danny L.
$75, Balaji A. R.
$65 (2nd donation), Yvonne S. B.
$57, Andre L.
$54 (2nd donation), Soren ONeill
$54 (2nd donation), VerbBusters
$54, Ian S.
$54, Kurt L.
$54, Sergio R.
$54, Wolfgang S.
$54, Manuel F. A. aka “alfema
$54, Peter H.
$54, Roland H.
$54, Alain V. L.
$50 (71th donation), Matthew M.
$50 (15th donation), Philippe W.
$50 (4th donation), Robert B.
$50 (4th donation), Jeffrey M. T. aka “JayBird707 thanks Clem & “roblm””
$50 (4th donation), George H.
$50 (3rd donation), Arnaud L.
$50 (2nd donation), Ellen R.
$50 (2nd donation), Christopher D.
$50 (2nd donation), Harjit T.
$50, Gene B.
$50, Donald B.
$50, John R.
$50, Wade T.
$50, Edward W.
$50, Matt S.
$50, Cody W. H.
$50, Michael D.
$50, Nicholas P. G.
$50, Frederick M.
$50, Craig B.
$50, Kevin O.
$50, Lynn H.
$50, Mohammed A.
$50, Nick J.
$50, Keith M.
$50, Garrett S.
$50, Kenneth B.
$50, Derek L.
$50, Piotr O. aka “p107r0”
$50, Doug Rohm aka “drohm”
$50, Sherwood R.
$50, Paul S.
$50, David M.
$50, Frederic H.
$50, Phillippe M.
$50, Cory T.
$50, Bruce B.
$50, Fernando G.
$48, Doris F.
$45, Luigi D. S.
$43, Tom V. D.
$43, Theodoros H.
$40, Perry M.
$40, Edward H.
$38, Adam S.
$33, The Good Gears
$32 (78th donation), Olli K.
$32 (27th donation), Mark W.
$32 (3rd donation), Iain S.
$32, Andrea D.
$32, Matthias Grune
$32, Nemanja K.
$30 (2nd donation), Fernando G. S.
$30 (2nd donation), Nektarios K.
$30, Claude M.
$30, Chris G.
$30, Michael K.
$30, Felipe Ceccarelli aka “Ck”
$30, Michael M.
$30, Mark S.
$30, James A.
$27 (7th donation), John K. aka “jbrucek”
$27 (3rd donation), Rüdiger K.
$27 (2nd donation), Johan M.
$27 (2nd donation), Frank S.
$27 (2nd donation), Nadim K.
$27 (2nd donation), Helmut S.
$27, Lutz L.
$27, Bob H.
$27, Stephen K.
$27, Malcolm C.
$27, Tony L.
$27, J. B., MES-Alsfeld
$27, Cornelis H.
$27, Harald K.
$27, Klaus N.
$27, Claus O.
$25 (61th donation), Ronald W.
$25 (15th donation), Peter D.
$25 (11th donation), Scott L.
$25 (9th donation), Kwan L.
$25 (7th donation), Ric G. aka “Ric”
$25 (6th donation), Ron D.
$25 (3rd donation), George P.
$25 (3rd donation), Terry Phillips aka “Terryphi”
$25 (2nd donation), Carl B.
$25 (2nd donation), Andrew Gouw
$25 (2nd donation), William N.
$25 (2nd donation), Malcolm P.
$25 (2nd donation), Wyatt B.
$25, Hector A.
$25, Raymond O.
$25, Craig K.
$25, Ian M.
$25, Romeet
$25, Rafael D.
$25, William C.
$25, Joseph S.
$25, William B.
$25, Jordan H.
$25, Bruce E.
$25, anon
$25, James M. J.
$25, Casper M.
$25, Joris D. R.
$25, Gary B. P.
$25, Daniel T.
$25, Computers Reborn of SC
$25, Andrey I.
$25, Stan K.
$25, Christopher D.
$25, Steven B.
$25, Talysman Software LLC
$25, Merle S.
$25, Nathan G.
$25, Norman E.
$25, Arch_Enemy aka “JJ”
$25, Michael R.
$25, Papa’s Voice Audio LLC
$25, John W.
$25, Thomas M.
$25, Carol S.
$25, Markus A.
$22.6, Julio F.
$22 (10th donation), Andreas S.
$22 (6th donation), Anthony M.
$22 (5th donation), Gabriele G.
$22 (3rd donation), Steverj aka “Somerset Scrumpy”
$22 (2nd donation), Tomas S.
$22 (2nd donation), Jacques S.
$22 (2nd donation), Gabriele G.
$22, Valentin K.
$22, Marcin G.
$22, Stefan K.
$22, Reimund M.
$22, Hans-joerg D.
$22, Mathieu S.
$22, Jürgen H.
$22, Ulrich A.
$22, Cedric B.
$22, Risikolebensversicherung-Vergleich
$22, Paul B.
$22, Csaba D. E.
$22, Florian N.
$22, Jürgen H.
$22, Domagoj P.
$22, Eddy B.
$22, Benedikt N.
$22, Jaime M.
$22, Hannes R.
$22, Georg N.
$22, Coman D.
$22, Ewen B.G
$22, Hans J. W.
$22, Derek R.
$21, Serge L.
$20 (10th donation), Julie H. aka “Kjokkenutstyr
$20 (9th donation), Matsufuji H.
$20 (9th donation), Dave I.
$20 (8th donation), Andjelko Stojsin aka “Andjelko S.
$20 (6th donation), Ian B.
$20 (4th donation), Widar H.
$20 (4th donation), James T.
$20 (3rd donation), Greg W.
$20 (3rd donation), Matej V.
$20 (3rd donation), Erich K.
$20 (3rd donation), Stuart H.
$20 (3rd donation), Sheila S.
$20 (2nd donation), Gary P. S.
$20 (2nd donation), Joe H.
$20 (2nd donation), Greg W.
$20 (2nd donation), Sandy B.
$20 (2nd donation), Edward L.
$20 (2nd donation), John C.
$20 (2nd donation), Norman C.
$20 (2nd donation), Marc B. aka “WhiskyManII”
$20, Anton K.
$20, Charles T.
$20, Roy W. W.
$20, Egidio C. G.
$20, Lars M. R.
$20, Jim C.
$20, Adam B.
$20, Personal E.
$20, David T.
$20, Kyle B.
$20, Thomas M.
$20, Alan W.
$20, Jennapher L.
$20, James W.
$20, Robert D.
$20, a donor
$20, bobinkc
$20, Richard G. aka “Rick”
$20, Philip S. aka “Smithereens”
$20, Thomas B.
$20, Terry J.
$20, Dave H.
$20, Matthew W.
$20, Mark E. F.
$20, Kristen W.
$20, Hines Computer Services LLC
$20, Yoan
$20, Jean-hugues D.
$20, George K. aka “geodinok”
$20, Fabrice D.
$20, Stephane T.
$20, Louis S.
$20, Dennis M.
$20, Angus J. S.
$20, Ian S.
$20, Jozsef B.
$20, Владимир Я.
$20, Richard H.
$20, Computer Solutions
$19 (2nd donation), Martin I.
$19 (2nd donation), Thomas K.
$18 (8th donation), Ke C.
$16 (8th donation), Rufus
$16 (5th donation), Stoyan N.
$16 (5th donation), Peter Chivers
$16 (4th donation), Datei
$16 (2nd donation), Jorgen H.
$16 (2nd donation), Thomas N.
$16, Sven B.
$16, David V. B.
$16, Frank G.
$16, Neeraj N.
$16, Jakub K.
$16, Lars L.
$16, Guido G. S.
$16, Daniel M.
$16, Ruslan S.
$16, Pierre T.
$16, Markus H.
$15 (24th donation), Carlos W.
$15 (2nd donation), Richard F.
$15, Francois C.
$15, Khalid A.
$15, Mr S. J. S.
$15, Arumugam R.
$14.21 (2nd donation), Daniel G.
$14 (7th donation), Ib O. J.
$14 (5th donation), Martin C.
$13.13 (3rd donation), Stephen G.
$13 (4th donation), Anonymous
$13 (2nd donation), Geoff M.
$12 (65th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
$12 (2nd donation), Enrico L.
$12, 斎藤 隆信
$12, Laszlo F.
$11 (4th donation), Gerryt M.
$11 (4th donation), Tomas S.
$11 (4th donation), Frederik M.
$11 (3rd donation), Ernst-otto M.
$11 (3rd donation), Soutarson P.
$11 (3rd donation), Rwhl W.
$11 (3rd donation), Bartosz W.
$11 (2nd donation), Thomas Z.
$11 (2nd donation), Sabine L.
$11 (2nd donation), Oprea M.
$11 (2nd donation), Tangi M.
$11 (2nd donation), Lothar G.
$11 (2nd donation), Giovanni M. aka “gmaggior”
$11 (2nd donation), Rade
$11 (2nd donation), Florian R.
$11 (2nd donation), Menno Bakker
$11, Satisfied User
$11, Ralf T.
$11, Marco G.
$11, Daniele B.
$11, Guillaume R.
$11, Arvis S.
$11, Willem H. A. V. D. W.
$11, Alrik S.
$11, Alan R.
$11, Mario A.
$11, Walter A.
$11, Claus-ulrich L.
$11, Michal J.
$11, Paolo P.
$11, Eurl E.
$11, Beat Z.
$11, Thomas N.
$11, Nauzet M.
$11, Steffen S.
$11, Leonard H.
$11, Armin V.
$11, Cornelius B.
$11, Tomasz E.
$11, Paul D.
$11, Claus I.
$11, Philippe T.
$11, Dmitry T.
$11, Julio A. G. C.
$11, Mihkel T.
$11, Felix C.
$11, Patrice M.
$11, Steven S.
$11, Fabian K.
$11, Bruno C.
$11, David J.
$11, Adelmo F. G. D. S.
$10 (55th donation), Tsuguo S.
$10 (11th donation), Jobs Near Me
$10 (11th donation), Christopher R.
$10 (10th donation), Henry W.
$10 (9th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (9th donation), Uncle Geek
$10 (7th donation), Antoine T.
$10 (5th donation), Rolf V.
$10 (5th donation), Paul V.
$10 (4th donation), Tomi K.
$10 (3rd donation), Carl J.
$10 (3rd donation), Edson P.
$10 (2nd donation), Jim C.
$10 (2nd donation), Edsil W.
$10 (2nd donation), Kyle B.
$10 (2nd donation), Egil J.
$10 (2nd donation), Joseph L.
$10 (2nd donation), Michael S.
$10 (2nd donation), Frank K.
$10 (2nd donation), Gary H.
$10 (2nd donation), Larry H.
$10 (2nd donation), Declan T.
$10, Darryl M.
$10, Maurizio A.
$10, Meirion L. J.
$10, Linda K.
$10, Derek P.
$10, Miha G.
$10, Gary G.
$10, Gyorgy C.
$10, Frank K.
$10, Crossword Guru
$10, Pavel V.
$10, CV Smith
$10, Ashutosh L.
$10, Зарембо С.
$10, Odd H.
$10, Peter M.
$10, James O.
$10, Matthew S.
$10, dk
$10, Dean D.
$10, Flemming M.
$10, Dariusz C.
$10, Doyle B.
$10, Robin O.
$10, Earnest M.
$10, Слученко В.
$10, Paul O.
$10, Tom S.
$10, Sreenath M. G.
$10, Caio A.
$10, Terrel A.
$10, Georg G.
$10, Jose C. Z.
$10, James P.
$10, Arjen D.
$10, Neil S.
$10, Chris M.
$10, Mathieu O.
$10, Pieter L.
$10, Faris
$10, Richard L. S.
$10, Eric D. F. D. O.
$10, Angel K.
$10, Hitendra M.
$10, Christopher N.
$10, Benjamin J. B. S.
$10, Fermin C.
$10, Martin F.
$9.99, @ndaidong
$9, Didier S.
$9, Valerio B.
$8, Biao Li
$8, William H.
$8, Raymond H. aka “Rosko”
$8, Josef H. R. H.
$7 (2nd donation), Bradley S.
$7 (2nd donation), CV Smith
$6 (5th donation), David B.
$6, Christian S.
$5.5, Chandrashekhar M.
$5 (21st donation), Kouji K. aka “杉林晃治
$5 (9th donation), Artur T.
$5 (8th donation), Artur T.
$5 (7th donation), Todd A aka “thobin”
$5 (6th donation), Guillaume G. aka “Tidusrose”
$5 (6th donation), Eugene T.
$5 (5th donation), Datei
$5 (5th donation), Christian L.
$5 (4th donation), Alfons B.
$5 (4th donation), Arturo S. G.
$5 (4th donation), Wei-ju Wu
$5 (4th donation), Eugene M.
$5 (4th donation), Felippe H D de Castro
$5 (3rd donation), Arturo S. G.
$5 (3rd donation), Arno S.
$5 (3rd donation), SEO Las Vegas
$5 (2nd donation), Marko J.
$5 (2nd donation), Michal W.
$5 (2nd donation), Yakovlev P.
$5 (2nd donation), Miguel D. R. M.
$5 (2nd donation), Volodymyr D.
$5 (2nd donation), Carl W.
$5 (2nd donation), TrustedSkinSource.com
$5 (2nd donation), Gary V.
$5, Thomas G.
$5, Andris K.
$5, Mark D.
$5, New Computer Systems
$5, Avadhoot B.
$5, Weronika W.
$5, Luxbet
$5, BookOkay.com
$5, Massimo M.
$5, Barry R.
$5, David G.
$5, Mauro B.
$5, Ruy Sabino aka “ruysabino
$5, Wiesław M.
$5, Petri M.
$5, Tjaart D. B.
$5, François-xavier S.
$5, Ion M. aka “nelu.ipx”
$5, GTuxTV
$5, Eriks Ozolins aka “Big-Bro”
$5, Andjelko K.
$5, Ioan M. aka “hirjonica”
$5, Adrian G.
$5, Natural E.
$5, Milla I.
$5, Suleyman K.
$5, Karol K.
$5, Mobile Casino
$5, Filip N.
$5, Chandrashekhar M.
$5, Andrei S.
$5, Thomas L.
$5, James B.
$5, M. R.
$5, Meister-Familienbetrieb Gensmantel KG
$5, Pavol Vesely aka “sandisxxx
$5, Jared SEO Brisbane
$5, Joshua L.
$5, Sripadharaj P.
$5, Philipp B.
$5, Gabriele S.
$5, James P.
$5, Lukáš F.
$5, Silvestar F.
$5, Kenneth L.
$5, Jonathan D.
$5, Garry B.
$5, Blazej P. aka “bleyzer”
$5, Leslie S.
$5, Antonius S. W.
$4 (2nd donation), Carsten K.
$4, AllBloggingTips.com
$4, Martin C.
$4, Ajani
$3.59, Matt M.
$3.5 (2nd donation), rootreport.com
$3.5, Sil. D. aka “Busce
$3.5, Jeremy S.
$3 (2nd donation), Aliaksandr C.
$3, Marco P.
$3, DEL TA
$3, Mark R.
$3, rootreport.com
$3, Anurag P.
$3, Techspectacle.com
$2.6 (2nd donation), Ajani
$2.5, David E.
$2.5, Kevin S.
$50.12 from 38 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

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102 comments

  1. Guys, if you implementing vertical pannels, please ad also “undecorate maximized windows” option to settings, and include GlobalAppMenu applet to Cinnamon.
    https://github.com/lestcape/Global-AppMenu

    All togather they will provide Unity-like experiance for users who love it.
    MATE team did this by placing Munity mode to MATE tweaks.

    Why not to do this in Cinnamon?

    P.S. cinnamon-maximus applet doesn’t work since mint 17, maximus doesn’t work correctly too.

    Edit by Clem: Most developers aren’t interested in these features. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be added. I’m just trying to explain why we don’t focus on them. There’s a demand for them, but it’s small. That being said, you highlighted the fact that Lescape already did the ground work, so maybe it’s just a matter of looking into it. I’ll add this to the roadmap and I’ll see what I can do.

  2. I know nothing about the Skylake chipset but I do agree, fresh ISOs for LMDE would be great. Initial update after install is getting to be a burden for us without super fast connections.

    Edit by Clem: Cinnamon 3.2, MATE 1.16, the new XApps and all the changes we’re preparing for Mint 18.1 should also get into LMDE. I’ll make sure we refresh the ISOs as part of the release cycle and after everything is in.

  3. Clem, please, if the Mint team has enough time, please try to focus on some very useful things that are important for Mint 18.1 usability:

    – Add in Cinnamon version 3.2 a possibility to lock the places of applets and desklets. In the actual versions of Mint this very often the user observes accidental moves of the desklets and applets and has no possibility to disable this! After such an event, the only thing which remains to user is to reconfigure the positions of these items, which is very cumbersome!
    I like very much Cinnamon editions and I believe that small things would promote better Mint to Windows users!

    – I commented on the blogs previously during beta testing time, but I am not sure if Clem or other testers regarding LM18 Cinnamon version have seen my post:

    I discovered that after choosing Windows borders other than default Mint-X options (on Themes/Windows borders) the following 3 applications (Calculator and Disks from Accessories) and Simple Scan (from Graphics) do not change their windows borders according to the new chosen option (they remain unchanged into Mint-X).

    I checked this bug on 2 cases, one in a LM18 virtual machine and the other as live CD.

    This doesn’t happen in Mint 17.3 Rosa.

    I’ve seen many bugs were solved. I am looking forward to see these remained things solved to allow me to switch from LM17.3 to LM18.1!

  4. With the vertical panel option being developed, is there any hope for a native Windows List With App Grouping applet? Both third party applets of a kind are buggy (unable to pin most programs – try GIMP for example, simply will not stick) The original developers have dropped working on ’em, it seems. With small screens it is the only productive and space saving option. Yes, I can add Plank, but that renders the point of having taskbar altogether pretty much moot. Hence my humble request to add the feature.
    Oh, and a big thank you to all the Mint team for all the great work you do!

  5. Looks great! Are there really 500k+ global downloads? Wow!

    Keep up the amazing work, I get compliments on my desktop wallpaper all the time!

    Edit by Clem: No, these pages aren’t real. The text could be made of “Lorem Ipsum”, this is just a design (a drawing if you prefer). The number would be quite high if it only counted downloads from the website itself, but ridiculously low otherwise. We don’t count downloads so it won’t appear on the actual website anyhow.

  6. To the developers 17.1 to 18.1 Cinamon

    Great job and understand stress, time, money, pressure to code details
    rtc. dedicated donations….

    There is a continuous problem and severe restrictions to upgrading from a DUAL BOOT W7/LINUX MINT17.3 using AMD/ATI RICHLAND radeon hd 8700HD graphics processors and AMD FM2 series chip set driven brand new ASROCK mother boards… We crashed 10 brand new ASROCK mother boards driven by AMD FM2 series chip set..

    All 10 mother boards are operating today using Windows 7 as is
    dual boot loaded GRUB2.2 driving HDMI new Samsung 52 inch HD TV screen…There is no problem with LINUX MINT 1`7.3 HDMI graphics display using AMD Catalyist software and proprietark fxd drivers….

    Now when we try to upgrade to Linux Mint18 the only information available is sudo terminal commands that crash the entire SSD drive and we must re clone the NEW SSD drive to get back Linux17.3

    There was a lot of talk about a simple 18. upgrade and a lot of people are still waiting for a simple solution…

    The people waiting in line would prefer switching to Linux Mint using automatic simple upgrade from older Linux seriies 17…

    The 500,000 downloads would multiply exponentially and encourage happy Dollar money donations once the Linux experience is made simple to switch Operating Systems and simple to use Software Upgrades Manager to change Linux Mint older versions

    I we understand you hate AMD/ATI graphics how ever please remember
    that brand new mother boards are being designed and sold for example by ASUS and not by the graphics company NVIDIA so supporting, hacking, re-designing software proprietary drivers should be a
    universal across AMD/INTEL chip set boards

    Standing by for simple 17.3 to 18.1 upgrade and ready with donations
    Cheers

  7. Hello Mint Team/Clem,

    I have been using Mint Cinnamon 18 since the day it was launched, it has been rock stable and amazingly cool. I runs very smoothly on my 6 year old laptop. When I show off the new dark theme with amazing performance my friends are totally impressed.

    Thank you very much for bringing out Linuxmint to all us users.

  8. You guys seem to be going on a excellent direction, love the art on the new site you that you are showing here.
    I read from the first post that the new bar looks like Unity and that is good, well I have a different opinion, Unity isn’t good at all, in fact I know that it’s the worst thing ever, we like on Unity and we get a search bar and 4 or 5 options bellow, music, apps, videos and the sort. Now lets say I want to go to apps, I click on apps and I get the apps organised by recent, all the apps (but I have to click on a button to see them all) and store apps that they recommend. Now lets count how many clicks it take to get to all the apps…3 clicks to get to all the apps, it’s ridiculous, please don’t follow that path, the current menu is great, it does need a new look and the new one looks great.
    Thanks for reading this.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Ricardo. It’s not my role to comment on Unity and I don’t see why people need to criticize it so much. Surely we can talk about vertical panels without talking about Unity. The people who asked for Cinnamon to support this feature aren’t interested in duplicating Unity, they’re interested in something that has been in GNOME 2 more than 10 years ago, something they were used to have with GNOME 2, and then with MATE, and which they want to see in Cinnamon. I don’t use vertical panels personally, it’s never been a priority within the development of Cinnamon, but I’m very happy nonetheless to be able to please these people today.

  9. You guys have done a great job. Have you considered doing a version for tablets? Take for example the fire tablets from amazon. The individual platforms are usually produced for a year or more and they are cheap and powerful. I think it would be hard to Produce a generic tablet OS right now, but focusing on a specific brand and models could work. You could do the whole line with minimal tweaking between models. Think about it, Mint could be the first Linux offered to the general public for a tablet line. Ps. Should be an installed version and live version you can boot from a USB. Think about it.

    Edit by Clem: No, I think it’s important to stick to what you’re good at and to focus as much as you can. Tablets and mobile phones aren’t our domain and there are other solutions out there which are much better adapted to these devices. That said, we’re seeing more and more computers and laptops taking advantage of touch monitors, or touch screens and so it’s important we support them. Basically that means we need to support gestures, multi-touch etc… but in the scope of computers. We don’t need to think of Mint running within a tiny mobile phone for instance, where widgets and buttons need to be huge to accommodate how much space the user’s fingers take in proportion to the phone’s screen.

  10. I want to start by saying great job on Mint. It’s still the distro I fully recommend to anyone looking to get started in Linux or for a plain solid distro. However, I must ask, are there any plans to start a CVE tracker? There are some hardcore users on some communities that decry Mint because of the lack of CVEs.

    Edit by Clem: You should name and shame, because this isn’t about one particular issue. I’ve talked with Glaubitz. He’s the Debian developer which is making the most accusations about Linux Mint. He doesn’t look like he knows what we’re doing (to him we’re basically just Cinnamon and a few extra bits) and he’s got a big issue with Linux Mint’s popularity. He feels like we don’t give enough credit to Debian, we work against it, and he’d rather see us be part of Debian instead of existing as a distribution. He thinks my job is to work on Cinnamon and I don’t think he’s got a clue about what I do on a daily basis. Many of his points are incorrect and some are frankly ridiculous. The reason people spread his FUD is because it’s technical and it has Debian written on it. A Debian Developer said so, so it must be true. It’s not just the lack of CVE Glaubitz is after, it’s everything we are, everything we do, anything he can think of to throw at us… the attacks on our servers, the banshee income, the fact that we’re not at FOSDEM, the fact that Xed was initially called Xedit on github, MDM’s package name, the CVE, the fact that he thinks we import binaries from Debian and Ubuntu which aren’t compatible and that we mask updates to workaround our FrankenDebian monstrosity, our update policy and update manager, the fact that we don’t tell people we’re based on Ubuntu/Debian (according to him we’re selling their work as our own), the fact that we think we’re popular, the useless Xapps, the fact that we don’t have the manpower Debian has therefore we cannot possibly maintain a distribution.. and I think that’s it? Next time we hit a bug you’ll probably see it added to his list. We’ve been doing this since 2006 Edward. Debian has been around for much longer than that. When Ubuntu arrived in 2004 and became popular, they had to answer the same animosity. What do you think changed recently? Why is it that Debian doesn’t like Linux Mint all of sudden? And I’m sorry I’m saying “Debian”, that project is amazing and full of talented people, but the reason this is spreading isn’t because everybody knows “Glaubitz”, who and how brilliant he is, and what he develops. No, it’s because everybody can see he’s a “Debian Developer” and everybody knows and respects that great project which is Debian, and which reputation is getting seriously harmed right now, just as badly as ours. Also Glaubitz isn’t on his own on this, he’s just the most motivated among the people who really don’t like to see us succeed. Now, to go back to your question, we’re not being decried because of the CVE, it’s just one issue among so many. The problem is us, our distribution as a whole and the fact that it succeeds. Among the accusations which fuel that, there are a few valid yet unimportant points. I can take the example of the CVE for instance, or the package name for MDM. There is no demand for these at the moment. It would take a single Mint user asking for this for us to do it. If somebody came to us and said “heh, I can’t find the mdm tools anymore, I’d like to use them”, we’d switch the DM to mdm-display-manager. Nothing’s easier. If somebody said “heh, I read USN and I know there’s probably less than 1 or 2 security updates coming from you in a given year, but can you make an ML and a CVE all the same, it would help me personally?”, same thing, done. I work to make Linux Mint better, not to make Debian developers happy, especially when their criticism simply hides a much deeper issue, one we can’t help them with.

    2nd edit by Clem: By the way Edward, in your question you didn’t really say whether you needed that CVE tracker yourself. I assumed you were only wondering about the critics. If you do however, we can consider one which covers the packages we maintain. Don’t hesitate to mention your experience with past Mint updates, and particular cases where it would have helped.

  11. Clem:

    I agree about the calendar stuff, i use it a lot in my office work, some kind of user customization options for example incresing the size of the calendar would be grate for me… (at my 37 year some days i forgot my glasses and tiny letters are such a pain) :D:D:D: — i tryed ubuntu with unity (i wont be crytic, but… the only think i liked was the overall font size, unity seams to use a general big font size… that could be a good idea in cinnamond to)(i know that it can changed, i did it, but maybe as deffault option one or to point bigger would look nicer and friendler)

    thanks and thanks again…

    best regards from mexico

    fer

  12. I agree with berg, a feature I think we all miss in Cinnamon is a desktop grid for icons, really hope to see it fixed in future releases!

    https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues/108

    But great job so far! I’ve had lots of issues with Ubuntu in the past, but everything works smoothly and fast in Linux Mint! 🙂

    Best regards,
    Angelo

    Edit by Clem: Hi Angelo. Mtwebster is aware of it and he’s leading the efforts for this to happen. Now that the vertical panels are in, the desktop grid is getting closer to the top of requested features. It’s a well-known issue/request on github 🙂

  13. Thank you very much for working very hard to develop the new version and new features, but some function users may not be used,But increase the system load, how more new users to join, how to make the computer quickly respond to the user To be the focus, used Linux Mint 18 but later changed back Linux Mint 17.2,Perhaps your team can be listed on the Internet version of the last 5 years to allow users to circle the best out,So your team can understand the user’s most want to … …

  14. Great work team. Always gets exciting once the base upgrade is over and the new toys are being worked on.

    I also second #6 comment; a native Windows List With App Grouping applet would be brilliant.

  15. Responding to your response, Clem: No, I see no need for a CVE tracker at this time. I know of no security vulnerabilities with the packages in the Mint repos. I’ve also never had Mint updates that borked my entire system. That alone was the reason I switched to Mint from Ubuntu when I was a Linux newbie, because my Ubuntu installations would always self-destruct. My Mint installs somehow do not, and I never could figure out why.

    As for our mutual friend, he jumps onto every Mint post on /r/Linux. I was only asking about the critics. As I mentioned before, I have not had problems with Mint packages that would require a CVE tracker. Every Mint update has been a breeze, aside from some level 4/5 updates that would replace some value from “Linux Mint 17.3” to “Ubuntu 14.04” in some file. That was ages ago, and I can’t recall what it was. It didn’t seem to make my system unstable, though, so no harm, no foul.

    But keep up the good work, you and your team.

    Edit by Clem: Thanks Edward. About the updates, go to http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/l/linux/linux_4.4.0-21.37/changelog and search for “regression”. As you can see they’re very common, and that’s alright, they’re inherent to development. All developers create regressions, I showed you the kernel here but I could have shown you our own Cinnamon changelog, we create regressions too. The job of the update manager isn’t to protect you from all regressions, it’s to isolate packages which affect critical parts of your system, where a potential regression would leave novice users in a serious situation, or to red-flag particular updates where the regression is both critical and known. These are rare. Here’s an example: We know the kernel 4.4.0-38 update broke the detection of scanners for one of our users, but that doesn’t mean it affects all scanners, and this update doesn’t just break something, it also fixes other things and included in that are security issues. As you can see, it’s not simple. Ubuntu doesn’t “self-destruct”, in a way, it’s you who “self-destructs” by applying all updates blindly and not knowing how to revert them. The updates in Ubuntu and in Mint are exactly the same, they’re just presented to you differently. That’s what we’re trying to address with the Update Manager, to give you more information, make you hesitate a little more, take your updates in isolation, make you read how to downgrade kernels etc etc.

  16. Many thanks to Clem and all the amazing dev team members for putting together such a usable and good looking OS. I have installed Mint on various systems ranging from Netbooks to Dell Workstations and enjoyed every minute of using them 🙂

  17. Clem, Thanks for all these!

    I would like to voice my vote for improving the calendar app too. Recently, Windows released an update where the calendar in the panel syncs with the main desktop calendar app. Basically, you see all your events just by clicking on the date & time on the panel. I think this implementation makes so much sense. Is it possible to have a look at that?

  18. So… when will we be able to move the notification? It’s in the WRONG corner. I’ve only seen hacks to move it and they’re clunky and get overwritten with update. Seriously. That corner sucks. No customization sucks.

  19. Hello Clem, many thanks for your incredible work in developing Linux Mint – I love it from the first moment. I have question concerning clock displaying/setting. I had dualboot installed (Windows 7 and LM 18), and I noticed, that there is a 2 hours difference between clock, displayed in Linux Mint 18 and Windows 7. When I reinstalled dualboot with Windows 7 and LM 17.3, everything is OK – clock is displaying the same time on both systems. What´s wrong?

    Edit by Clem: Hi Denny, that looks like a wrong timezone. You can adjust that in the Date and Time settings.

  20. Denny: This seems to be because of systemd in the newer Ubuntu-based linux distros. You can set the BIOS clock to local time instead of UTC via the command: # timedatectl set-local-rtc 1
    This will fix the 2 hour time difference between Windows and Linux. At least that’s what works for me.

  21. Clem… I am a previous Windows user who migrated to Linux Mint 2 And now 3… Thanks for creating it… I am very comfortable with it… I tried the live version of 18 and can not use it… I do not have the eye sight I used to have to be able to use it…

  22. Why do libreoffice especially writer hangs when open pages with pictures? This has been happen for a number of versions.

  23. If you save an email from Thunderbird to the Desktop and it has the subject line:
    Re: Test message
    It fails to save because it has a colon, but there is no message saying that it did not save.

    Suggestions:
    1. Please advise, say by a message box, if there is a file can not be saved; and
    2. If possible, save the file with reserved characters removed.

    Thank you

  24. Hi Clem,
    I have been using LM 18 since it came out, just to see if it was anything better than 17. Perhaps going from 32 to 64 bits made some difference, but what I found much better was Pix, as opposed to Gthumb.
    The digital pictures are much clearer and the program itself is snappier. Definitely LM 18 is a step ahead from its predecessor and it’s a keeper. The only thing I noticed (is it a bug?) is the automatic login that doesn’t work all the time. Maybe 5 time out of 10 it asks me to digit my name and password. Will this be rectified in one of the future updates?
    Anyway, thanks a lot for the great operating system. I know you made the large Linux community very happy!

    1. Hi Giorgio,

      We’re aware of it. It’s a race condition and it’s a regression which occurred when switching LTS bases. I can’t say for sure if it’s related to systemd or not and we don’t know the exact cause yet so at the moment we’re unable to fix it.

  25. Great work, cannot wait for the update to arrive. Most important are vertical panels. I can see a comment that people don’t use them. I started with a vertical panel on Windows XX years ago ever since I got my first 21″ wide screen. It makes more sense to me, I need the space from left to bottom free to read what’t in my application, the bottom panel just kept getting in the way. I also login to work, so my Linux panel is on the left, my work PC panel is on the right, so I can navigate to my apps in a distinguished way.

    I really just stopped by to say how great Mint is! I even got used to Cinnamon after moving from KDE, which is an incredible performance boost. KDE is too overloaded and has become sluggish, especially on older machines. I’ve been on Mint since mid August and I find the system update app far more well organized and much readable than Ubuntu’s Muon (what a ricilous name BTW). Despite the occasional “your desktop has crashed and needs a restart” – very rare, the system seems very very stable, and that is what I need. Albeit I am looking at a long term stability, expecially when updates tend to be the main culplrits with systems rendered unusable. MS with their Windows seems to be suffering similar problems, can’t get this right can they?

    The installation is the EASIEST thing in the world to do. Thank you.

    All the best.
    Rich

  26. Dear Clem,

    Here a few suggestions for Cinnamon (maybe they are already present in your other editions):

    1. Please enable opening a template file using the mouse right-click.

    For example, a LibreOffice Calc template file has a ots extension.

    When mouse right-click, the first item is:
    Open With LibreOffice 5.2 Calc

    Would this be renamed to:
    New with LibreOffice 5.2 Calc
    as it creates a new spreadsheet based upon the template

    2. Would another item be added to the mouse right-click called:
    Open with LibreOffice 5.2 Calc
    that would open the template file so it can be edited.

    3. Would the default behaviour, eg. double left-click on a file, be shown in bold typeface in the right-click menu.

    Thank you

  27. Would you please implement the facility for notification in the panel when a new email is received in Thunderbird? Thank you

    Edit by Clem: Thunderbird has a system tray. I’ve used it myself. I can’t remember whether it’s just an option you enable or an extension you install, but it definitely has that already.

  28. Just like to say Thank you all for your hard work not just now but over the years.

    I have been using LM18 since about it came out on my main PC love it everything about it really. Bye bye win7.

  29. Linux Mint Cinnamon is by far my favorite O/S. Only thing I would like to see is independent zoom sliders in Nemo dual-pane view that remembers my settings. KDE dolphin has this feature. Also IMHO Pix should be should just be a picture app. I don’t see a the point of media options. (I accidentally played an mp3 at high volume while people where sleeping because I didn’t know.)

    -Thanks Clem and team

  30. As a Windows refugee and a newbie to Linux…Linux Mint Cinnamon is fantastic! Very easy to install and understand. TONS of software, games and with Play on Linux/WINE most of my Windows programs work just fine(and those that don’t I’ve found similar items in the software center) so great work!!

  31. One of my favorite things about Mint is playing Gnome Sudoku. But when I upgraded to Mint 18, the really cool features of the game disappeared. Is there any way to get those features to work again?

  32. Hi Clem ;

    Thanks to you and all team for your long and constant work in Linux Mint.

    I have a newbie question : did you consider to propose an non-custom version of Firefox, which stick in real time to Mozilla Update ?

    I mean for now there is a delay between new version of Firefox and the arrival in Mint. And we cannot change easily the default search engine. I know that you need money for Mint survive, but are your ad partnership and tweak in firefox necessary ?

    Thanks again for your work ;

    Ben

    Edit by Clem: Hi Ben. You can download Firefox straight from mozilla.org.

  33. Hi Clem, Thanks for giving us Linux Mint, it’s the best Linux distribution, period! Btw,I wish the importing of openvpn configuration via network manager will be fixed on this release. This has been broken for so long now. TIA, more power!

  34. It seems there is always an invitation from Mint team to get involved, give feedback, report bugs etc. Well I have reported 3 bugs, have commented on 3 others, submitted one blueprint and added some translations. Almost a year later my bug importance is still undecided and status is new. Having no feedback from developers kind of defeats the will to report and get involved. Not even to mention that I still have problems with all the bugs I reported. So far getting involved has been just a waste of time for me. Perhaps someone can explain to me what is the point of getting involved if no feedback or fixes are provided?

    Edit by Clem: This is a number’s game. There are millions of users (granted not everybody reports bugs) and some do get ignored, every day. Others get their reports fixed, every day also. Reports also get processed by very different people depending on where you post them, when you post them and how precise the information you give is. Team members also operate differently and are more or less active on different projects. I can’t tell you how many new post or reports didn’t get read today, but I know I’ve spent my day reading ideas and fixing bugs and I know many in my team make a difference on a daily basis. There isn’t a single day where we don’t make Linux Mint better, and although some of these ideas and reports get ignored, if it wasn’t for them we’d find it much harder to do that. I’m sorry you feel like your contributions were useless and if they weren’t processed, maybe they were. But don’t think for a second that feedback in general is useless to us.

  35. linux is something different …. something powerful … something great ….linux is perfect. gud luck developers

  36. Thank you Cosmo for your post
    http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3094#comment-133029

    Kdocker
    http://kdocker.sourceforge.net/
    “Works for all NET WM compliant window managers – that includes KDE, GNOME, Xfce, Fluxbox and many more.”
    Does not seem to support Cinnamon?

    HOWTO Better Integrate Thunderbird With Cinnamon
    https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2222
    “Until recently, Thunderbird didn’t play nice with Cinnamon’s panel: it didn’t show any icon there, not even when a new mail has arrived. This is supposed to be fixed in Cinnamon 2.8”
    Does not seem to be fixed in Cinnamon found in Linux Mint 18?

    Would be nice if Cinnamon Mint could show notifications of new emails in the panel and play a sound by default.

    Thank you

  37. Regarding post #52.
    Did I understand correctly what you are saying, that Mint team is basically understaffed to process all reports submitted in Launchpad in a timely manner?
    And that some reports will never be processed just because it would take too many resources to do that (for example fix a bug affecting just a single user)?

    Edit by Clem: I don’t think you realize how big and active a community is. Some emails do not get answers, neither do some forums posts, suggestions, bug reports, issues, business proposals, general queries, press queries, etc etc. What gets answered and acted upon fast is what is spot on, what lands in the right place at the right time, what is shown to the right people, what brings clear information which can be used as it is to make a difference. It has nothing to do with who is sending it to us or whether or not it only affects one single user. You mentioned a few reports here for instance, I’m here and you have my attention.. I don’t have links to look at them. If we set for all Launchpad bugs to be triaged (it’s called checking the box by the way, it starts with autopruning, nothing glorious in that), we focus on crunching numbers, on processing reports as they come in instead of working on issues which are already described, for which we can already make an immediate difference. I don’t think there’s any FOSS project out there which isn’t full of ideas, known issues and which ran out of feedback. Look at this month’s newsletter… vertical panels landed. How long do you think that’s been requested? We react on fresh feedback all the time, but we also have a huge backlog of ideas and issues to work with on a daily basis. Processing feedback is important because it’s a mean to an end, but not a goal in itself. Our team is already quite large and very well funded, but if I have 10 more developers tomorrow morning, I know exactly what they would be doing. They wouldn’t be answering LP reports one by one, they’d be joining the other 15 devs and doubling on what they’re already doing, working on that backlog and making room when something new and precise comes up.

    2nd Edit: It’s not directly related to your query but it will help a lot going forward. We started improving many aspects related to Mint lately. On the development side of things we’ve had discussions about code styling and pull requests, and these are now captured into developer guidelines. Next we’re trying to specify how to credit and include information about bugs and contributors when porting fixes and improvements coming from upstream. On the email side of things, we’re just after reviewing the information that leads to how people contact us, and I’ve spent a huge amount of efforts lately into getting our email comm to be much more reactive. I won’t give you numbers but it’s night and day. If I look at https://linuxmint.com/getinvolved.php, it’s clear to me this needs to be reviewed as well. I don’t want bug reports per se, I want information I can use to improve Linux Mint. If somebody just observes something and doesn’t really know why it happens, it’s valuable.. but somebody finds the cause and thinks of a solution, that has to be processed in priority and we need to be able to act on reports like these immediately and without them getting lost in the middle of other reports. It’s our responsibility to tell people what we expect, how to troubleshoot, how to present information, what’s valuable and what’s not, where something is being worked on (for instance if you show me an issue with one of our tools, one of our devs will work on it, and probably on github), if it’s something to do with GNOME or Ubuntu, then it’s very different because the first thing we wonder is whether the issue is known upstream. In brief, we need to help you help us better. That page just blindly tells you to write reports on LP, and that’s wrong. It should tell you when, why, how, where and especially what information to report. This isn’t the only area of improvements which is peripheral to the development of Linux Mint, but we’ll work on that too, I’ll prioritize it and make sure it happens during this cycle.

  38. @ #54 Óvári

    There’s an AddOn for Thunderbird called FireTray.
    It shows notifications of new emails in the panel.

    For the sound you have to set a custom defined sound in the settings of Thunderbird. (The systemsound for new messages doesn’t work.)

  39. I am having trouble with the screensaver and video playback on all media. All approaches to turning off fails ( 10 minutes).
    Is there any way to eliminate the screensaver completely. Maybe even take it out of the basic system install.

  40. Regarding #56.
    OK, now you made me feel sorry that you took so much effort in detailed explanations. 🙂
    Anyway I wish you success in whatever it is you are developing.
    Linux Mint is one of the best OS ever (just my opinion) and I will keep using it, recommend it to others and get involved as much as I can, even if I can’t see any direct benefit from my involvement.
    Perhaps I will donate again.
    Peace!

  41. Does anyone knows how to fix the “save session” feature in KDE 18? Assigned keyboard shortcuts only work for the current session.
    Kwin crashes from time to time.
    I think Plasma still needs a lot work, this is not my favorite mint.

  42. @ #57 NikoKrause
    Thank you for your post.
    http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3094#comment-133042

    FireTray 0.6.1
    “THIS PROJECT IS DISCONTINUED”
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firetray/

    “It would be nice if all tray icon addons could unite to build a definitive, most powerful, unique tray icon addon.”
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firetray/developers
    Perhaps the tray icon could be in the default Desktop Environment (eg. Cinnamon) instead of an add-on. Thunderbird for Windows has the tray icon by default.

  43. Awesome job with Mint 18 Cinnamon!

    I upgraded from 17.3 but chose to do a clean install, because (based primarily on my experience with Microsoft products) you almost always get a better result that way, and I was not disappointed!

    During the install, twice while navigating around the “something else” choices the computer froze. Third time was a charm, but then at first reboot the computer froze at the login screen. Rebooted then immediately installed the Nvidia driver and it hasn’t frozen since.

    I installed grub, root, and home on my 120gb SSD then easily moved (created symlinks) for some of the home subdirectories to my 2TB spinner with just a few mouseclicks. Didn’t have to edit fstab or anything geeky, the OS did the work for me! Persistent mount point created too!

    I am delighted to report that file copying/moving speeds have increased dramatically with the new version of nemo/cinnamon. I’m speaking of internal disk operations from one internal drive to another (I have three) also internal drives to and from usb flash drives or usb hard drives Much much faster, and that annoying nemo thumbnail error has been fixed too!

    Working with symlinks no longer causes nemo to crash but I am still able to get nemo/cinnamon to crash when working with files/folders who had their permissions downgraded from root to regular user recently. Also if you use nemo to search for a file and terminate the search prematurely using the red X or the X in the upper right corner, nemo/cinnamon will crash and all the icons on your desktop will disappear. Annoying, but not a dealbreaker. Just open another nemo window and your icons reappear.

    Weird item – I have an icon named 2.0tb drive on my desktop, but when I launch gparted (as root) the icon’s name is replaced by the drive’s UUID. When I close gparted, the icon’s name returns to normal.

    Anybody know why the original Supertux was removed from the repos? Do hope it’s just an oversight rather than a dependency problem. I prefer the classic version, and the version in the repos is named Supertux but in reality it’s not, it’s Supertux2.

    I know SFLphone has been abandoned by it’s developers, but I find it preferable to Ekiga and other alternatives. Would be nice to have SFLphone packaged up all fancy and ready to go in the repos. I ended up having to track down multiple .deb components and install them in a specific sequence, but now I have a working VOIP client, yippee!

    I would also like to see a Mint specific version of Armory added to the repos. The generic 94.1 found on the developer’s website won’t download the entire blockchain giving the appearance of lost coin (and yes, I told it to download the blockchain to my 2tb spinner rather than the 120gb ssd).

    I also had issues sharing my Mint 18 printer with Windows 7 and a different Mint 18 machine on the home network. Major debianfoo later I was able to fix it. But what’s weird, the Mint 17 desktop and Mint 17 laptop on my home network saw the printer and added it automatically.

    Another frustration I’m having is with my sync/backup client, SpiderOakONE. There seems to be some sort of incompatibility that causes the app to freeze for hours while using 100% or more of one or more of my CPU cores. I have been working with their support engineers for 6 weeks now without success and it’s to the point where I’m looking for a comparable cloud based sync/backup service with Linux support. I think two or three of these issues might relate to python versions being upgraded from 17.3 to 18. I’m not an expert on that but you’d expect a new version of anything software to at least be backwards compatible with the prior version. Maybe that’s not the case with python? Ida know.

    Anybody?

  44. Hello, Clem.
    Mint is awesome and I use it on my workstation. But there is a bug in xviewer. I often work in LibreOffice half-screen and pdf-viewer half-screen, export document to pdf ans see how it looks after remarks.

    It seems that evidence works fine and dynamically refresh the pdf if it was edited while xviewer crashes time to time in this situation.

    I could write more extented issue on github, if you want.

    Edit by Clem: Please do. Describe it the best you can so we can reproduce it.

  45. Óvári @ #54 & #61

    I use a TB add-on called Enhanced Desktop Notifications to get the notifications of new mail in Thunderbird (running Mint 17.3 Cinnamon). Not perfect, sometimes get multiple notifications of the same e-mail(s), but at least I know when mail is received.

  46. I am very disappointed by Mint KDE 18.
    I have installed it on VM et play with it until I find how to customize the splash screen and the SDDM. There is a problem to change the icons, the update manager widget don’t work. I’ll stay with Mint 17.3 for now.

  47. Hey Clem, will plasma 5.8 LTS be on KDE 18.1?

    Edit by Cle: Hi Alex, we’ll use the version available in Kubuntu Backports.

  48. Awesome job so far. Please add the functionality to add the graphic firmware through driver manager. Its sometimes gets tedious for a noob like me to get around this issue.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Jimit, which firmware do you mean? what package/version and for which chipset?

  49. Please can someone explain what the third entry is in the extended Grub menu on Mint 18 Mate? What is it’s purpose? Normal boot, new strange undocumented boot, and traditional safe boot.

    Thanks so much for an otherwise great distro.

  50. PS- in above post 69, I did try already emailing Clem and asking in the Mint forums but no one seems to know.

  51. Mint is geweldig, vooral omdat de Windows bestanden benaderbaar zijn vanuit Mint. De snelheid is een verademing ten opzichte van Windows 10

  52. Hello. Nice to see so much improvements. How i can help with new site? I work web developer many years and can be useful for Carlos Fernandez. New site have any github repo? Or maybe something else? Thank you.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Denis, thanks for helping out. Contact us by email (root@linuxmint.com), we’ve set up a design team and I’d be happy to send you an invite.

  53. Bonjour Clem,
    As of now the 4.7 and later stable kernels won’t boot on Mint 17.3.Do you recommend backing from 4.6.7 to the 4.4 LTS?
    Thanks,
    matthew

    Edit by Clem: Hi Matthew. Well, it depends on you and your needs, and your skill level and experience. Without knowing all that, I would definitely recommend to stick with the 4.4 LTS kernels. If you’re OK with handling kernels on your own, you can switch to a mainline kernel http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/. Choose a version and check the BUILT file to see which toolchain it relates to. I’d assume anything prior to Xenial is fine here (from Trusty all the way to Wily).

  54. Thanks Clem. I know that answering this stuff is NOT your job, so I’m grateful that you replied at all. If anyone on the Mint team has more recent mainline kernels compiled for mint17 that would be great to know. But not your job (or the right venue) but….The details:

    Mint17 with kde4 is more stable and useful to me than Mint18 with kde5 at this point, but 17 is stuck with a dead end 4.6.7 kernel while 18 runs fine with mainline including 4.8.x. The Mint 17.3 system seems to run better in 4.6.7 than in the latest 4.4LTS kernel, and my only real concern is kernel security…

    The ubuntu ppa kernels starting with 4.7 don’t boot because they’re compiled without setting CONFIG_UEVENT_HELPER=y (crash screen quoted below). The boot process fails with a hung screen that needs a hard reboot; likely the toolchain is xenial.

    My needs and skill level are middling–I know my way around dpkg and compiled the 4.7.x kernel… once. It booted but did not run perfectly and I decided to let it go.

    “/scripts/init-top/udev: line 14: can’t create /sys/kernel/uevent-helper: Permission denied.

    – Missing modules (cat /proc/modules, ls /dev) ALERT!
    /dev/disk/by-uuid/6f… does not exist. Dropping to a shell.
    BusyBox v1.12.1 (Ubuntu 1:1.21.0-iubuntu1) built-in shell (bash) Enter ‘help’ for a list a built-in commands (initramfs)…”

    Edit by Clem: Well there are two issues here. Updates and compatibility. If you want updates to be provided to you, you obviously need to stick to what is being provided, and that means 4.4 LTS. If you’re happy with providing your own updates, then you can go ahead and prepare your own kernels. Up to 4.6 you can use mainline Ubuntu kernels which toolchain is anterior to Xenial. Past that point you’ll need to stop using mainline and make your own kernels yourself.

  55. Thank you to all those clever creative people for the development and testing work on Linux Mint. It’s a stable and user friendly O.S.

    With all the Android phones around these days, and people’s desire to root phones and connect to their Linux PC, I would like to see better support for ADB and Wireless ADB. ADB exists in the software repository, but the version does not support disable_verity command , which I think assists with gaining access to write to /system folder.

    Please can the version of ADB within the software repository support disable_verity and enable_verity? Please can you also provide a version of wireless ADB ?

    Whilst things like vertical toolbars might excite some users, I believe that Linux Mint development should be trying to entice more users to use Linux, by providing better support for peripherals. I have two Dell printers that I simply cannot get to work on Linux, whatever I try. I’m sure there must be equivalent lexmark drivers somewhere that would work, but I can’t find any information anywhere.

    As a result of this, I’m forced to dual boot with Windows7, purely in order to be able to print. It’s so frustrating !

    I find that the recommended support resources aren’t particularly useful. There are great holes in support for certain printers, and whilst the manufacturers refuse to support Linux, it seems there is no easy solution. If only Linux developers were able to provide a one-stop tool that could take care of printer driver downloads and installation, even if the tool couldn’t find a perfect match, but was able to find a basic driver to get a user up and running with basic printing capability, that would be so invaluable to the linux community 🙂

    If users find Linux user friendly and supportive of their existing peripherals, they are likely to stick with it, and the user base will grow – the donations will grow – the development will prosper, and the positive effects will snowball, making Linux Mint a serious contender / competitor to Windows. Printer manufacturers will then start taking Linux user seriously and will create Linux drivers by default, instead of cobbling something together as an afterthought.

    Let’s get Linux listed as a supported operating system on the side of all new printer packaging ! At present it is not easy to determine whether a new device will support Linux, which makes buying a printer a bit of a lottery.

    Edit by Clem: Hi, you can use https://community.linuxmint.com/hardware to look for printers. It’s not ideal, but it should help a bit. About ADB, please specify the versions at play, how to reproduce the issue (for instance which phone you’re connecting to, how the new version helps, what procedure to follow to test the problem..etc.). Regarding the consumer market, as a Linux user, you’re part of a minority, and not ever manufacturer out there cares about our community. You’re right when you’re saying that they would if our community was larger, but this isn’t the case and in the meantime you can’t reasonably expect developers to poke at hardware devices and reverse engineer devices which specs aren’t open and which manufacturers don’t provide drivers for. In the end of the day, you’re the one who decides what you buy. If you buy something that is only designed to work in Windows, then it might only work in Windows. It’s funny, you mentioned Lexmark here. I remember years ago throwing a Lexmark printer in the bin. Without its Windows driver it wasn’t a printer at all. Looking at the hardware database it doesn’t look like Lexmark got any better since, so that’s typically a brand I would avoid. Contrast that with the work being done on HPLIP.

  56. Hi Clem,

    I’ve been using Linux Mint 18 MATE since beta and it’s good and stable. However, I keep an installation of 17.3 running because of the problem with GIMP in LM 18.

    The GIMP Cage Transform tool does not work in the LM 18 distribution. It does work in the 17.3 distribution. This is not the fault of the Linux Mint team since you depend on Ubuntu repositories for GIMP. According to the forums I’ve read, it’s to do with Debian updating a library but not telling the GIMP people about it. Who knows ….?

    Could you and the Ubuntu and Debian and GIMP people have a chat with each other and please try to get a fully working version of GIMP in the upcoming 18.1 release? I can keep on using 17.3 but it seems a shame not to have GIMP working properly.

    Edit by Clem: Do you have a link to a bug report for this? Is it a known issue upstream?

  57. re. 69 @Robert re. vertical panel in MATE:

    MATE already has vertical panels, for at least the past four years. Right click on the system panel, select New Panel; you get a new panel and can right click on it, select Properties and then choose its orientation.

    I have panels on each edge of my screen. The bottom one is the system panel and the others are autohiding ‘pop out’ panels with application icons and folder location icons on them:

  58. @Clem- I recently upgraded to mainline kernel 4.8.1 and it gave me error as missing skl_dmc_ver1_26 & skl_guc_ver6_1 firmware. I downloaded it from intel website. Can you please include this in the update manager or driver manager?

  59. Is http://packages.linuxmint.com/ down? I did a fresh install on a machine yesterday and when I update through the tray app I get an error on this one repository timing out. Same error 24 hours later.

    Hopefully the server is just slammed because of how popular Mint is. 🙂

  60. The only printer manufacture that seems to to try to support linux seems to be hp. therefore my recommendations to everyone windows or linux is to buy an hp printer. Support those that support our community. Every hp I have has had no issues in connecting to linux distros. especially mint

    Edit by Clem: There are great printers from other manufacturers, and some features in some HP printers are hard to get working or might not work at all, but when it comes to just printing and you don’t have time to check compatibility, yes, I would definitely recommend HP. It’s the safest option out there.

  61. Mint is really leading from the front – great to see !!!

    Just a quick question, because the same package base is going to be implemented when 18.1 comes around and you are already using 18, will it be easy enough to upgrade to 81.1 rather then doing a fresh re-install ?

    Edit by Clem: Yes.

  62. Dear Clem
    I have an old laptop Acer Extensa 5220 intel Celeron 560 2,13 Ghz 1 Gb RAM 160 Gb HDD with a Mobile Intel Graphics media accelerator X3100, my monitor has 1280×800 resolution can i run mint 18 mate 32 bit?

  63. Regarding printers – I used to feel strongly about HP. Not so much now. I’ve been buying Brother for both home and work with good success. The Brother web site has excellent instructions for Linux support. I’ve not had any issues with installing them in Mint.

  64. GEORGE PON #84
    http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3094#comment-133093

    Kyocera printers also work very well on Linux Mint
    http://www.kyoceradocumentsolutions.com.au/products/Pages/productCategory.aspx
    They are also excellent value for the consumer/business owner and for the environment.

    The also have Linux device drivers (in addition to Windows and Mac), eg
    http://www.kyoceradocumentsolutions.com.au/support/Pages/DownloadCentre.aspx?category=&product=ECOSYS+FS-1030MFP

  65. @merriander #65
    http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3094#comment-133057

    Thunderbird email notification could be added to Linux Mint’s notifications. Notifications are shown when documents are printed. I noticed the other day that it even showed a Thunderbird notification when an email account could not be accessed. Please could this be extended to notifications when emails are received? Thank you

  66. @peter e
    That source location is still down but I took your suggestion and a different source works fine.

    Thank you 🙂

  67. @86 johnx
    Your Acer Extensa 5220 should work fine with Linux Mint 18 MATE.
    The system requirements are listed here:
    http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3052

    Also read the note, that the 64bit version is recommended for all modern Computer (i.e. when the computer is 10 years or younger it’s modern enough). Your Acer came out 2008, so the 64bit version should work also.

    The easiest way to find out is to create a bootable USB or CD and start Linux Mint 18. You can try it out before installing. When everything works fine you can install it on your Acer. When it doesn’t boot, use the 32bit version.

  68. re. 86 @johnx

    I have a thirteen year old Acer Travelmate 8005, Pentium-M 1.8GHz, 1.5G RAM, 1400×1050 Radeon ATI graphics.

    It runs Mint 18 MATE 32-bit just fine but is a bit slow in response compared to my main desktop (of course). Sadly, I couldn’t get the WiFi working so I use a network cable. At idle, it uses 400MB of RAM. Firefox (with lots of plugins) pushes that up to 800MB with very heavy CPU usage. The Palemoon browser has less RAM usage. It would be a good idea to add some more RAM if you can. The XFCE (or maybe LXDE) desktop would be less of a load.

    Also, I fitted a 32GB PATA SSD which is a great help for boot and application launch response; you can find them on e-bay. The root, /home and swap partitions use up only 14GB and are about 60% full. The rest of the drive is my DATA partition.

    GIMP runs very slowly and is more or less unusable but browser and Office applications run well, as do music and video playing.

    When installing, you have to press the TAB key during the early start up screen to get the advanced options list so you can select to install the 32-bit version. This can be quite confusing (it was for me) but keep trying it. It’s free to try and use 🙂

  69. Mint KDE 18 still have Plasma 5.6, and since some days, there is a LTS edition (5.8.1) which is much better than 5.6.
    Kubuntu 16.10 has 5.7.5 which is also better than 5.6.
    The thing with “old software is stable” was something many years ago, but not today.
    I think it was not a good decision to go together with Kubuntu(repos), because Neon it’s a better alternative. Who wants to use older software has this possibility, but who wants something new have to wait many months, in best cases.

  70. Clem Cinnamon necesita un refuerzo en applets, no sólo es una distribucion para navegar o ver videos, tambien sirve para trabajar y se echa en falta aplicaciones como un calendario con alarma que sea funciona para recordar los eventos (hasta ahora no he conseguido uno que funcione) tampoco estaría mal mejores widgets de monitorizacion para los ordenadores gamer (temeperaturas, espacio en disco duro y estas cosas…)
    Otra cosa que me olvidaba comentar, el tema Mint Y está muy bien, pero se echa de menos 2 cosas, por un lado poder poner mas colores a las carpetas como en el tema Mint X y por otro lado en los temas de escritorio viene bien un tema blanco que sea completamente “blanco” y no con tonalidades grises aligeradas… hasta ahora el unico tema blanco es el “tangerine” y para eso no está demasiado hermoso que digamos, una cosa es blanco y otra cosa es gris suave Un saludo a todos y gracias por vuestra gran labor. Para mi sois la distro referencia por encima incluso de Ubuntu.

  71. #35

    Perhaps this can help:

    ‘################################################################
    ‘This function cleans the e-mail subject of invalid or
    ‘undesirable characters
    ‘Source: http://www.outlookcode.com/codedetail_print.aspx?id=827
    ‘################################################################
    Function CleanString(strData)
    ‘Replace invalid strings.

    strData = Replace(strData, “´”, “‘”)
    strData = Replace(strData, “`”, “‘”)
    strData = Replace(strData, “{“, “(“)
    strData = Replace(strData, “[“, “(“)
    strData = Replace(strData, “]”, “)”)
    strData = Replace(strData, “}”, “)”)
    strData = Replace(strData, ” “, ” “) ‘Replace two spaces with one space
    strData = Replace(strData, ” “, ” “) ‘Replace three spaces with one space
    ‘Cut out invalid signs.
    strData = Replace(strData, “: “, “_”) ‘Colan followded by a space
    strData = Replace(strData, “:”, “_”) ‘Colan with no space
    strData = Replace(strData, “/”, “_”)
    strData = Replace(strData, “\”, “_”)
    strData = Replace(strData, “*”, “_”)
    strData = Replace(strData, “?”, “_”)
    strData = Replace(strData, “”””, “‘”)
    strData = Replace(strData, “”, “_”)
    strData = Replace(strData, “|”, “_”)
    CleanString = Trim(strData)
    End Function

    source: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/scriptcenter/en-US/268ae2aa-2f34-4ec3-a8f0-8b763230dfd0/want-vbscript-program-to-copy-outlook-email-items-to-external-folder

  72. Clement can you please leave some apps out in order for users to manually install them as they wish, Libreoffice, Xreader, Pidgin, Hexchat, Pix, Gimp, Tomboy Notes, for now those are the ones I think most ppl have an alternative or other options. I am only talking about XFCE I do not use any other flavour.
    Ari

  73. Clem there is a problem with xplayer on my system a dell optiplex 760sff running Linuxmint 18 XFCE edition 64 bit
    to reproduce go to the edit menu click on preferences click the display tab put a checkbox where it says show visual effects when an audio file is played and choose any type of visualization i like GOOM
    no matter which one you choose none will display while playing audio files like they should and like they did in totem in linuxmint 17.3
    can you fix this please and another problem phatch will not load properly it only displays a logo and nothing more i have a fix for phatch and i got it to work properly again here is the fix for phatch

    In the file usr/share/phatch/phatch/lib/pyWx/wxPil.py I changed the
    words “fromstring” and “tostring” to “frombytes” and “tobytes”. Now
    Phatch seems to work with the latest python-imaging and python-pil
    libraries in Sid.

    please include this fix in the update manager
    also in the update manager help about menu there is no version number so no way of knowing what version of the update manager you are running
    i told you about these bugs before and nothing has happened very disaapointed

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