Monthly News – November 2017

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Many thanks for your donations. Your help and support is greatly appreciated. It empowers us of course but it’s also a huge boost in confidence and motivation. Many thanks to all of you who help our project.

Linux Mint 18.3 BETA

The BETA for the Cinnamon and the MATE editions will be released this week.

We hope you’ll enjoy them and we look forward to receiving your feedback. We’ll announce their official release in a couple of days.

Last minute changes

Some improvements got into Linux Mint 18.3 at the last minute. These include:

  • Better out of the box support for spell-checking and synonyms in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian.
  • Easy installation of Skype, Google Earth and WhatsApp in the Software Manager
  • In MATE’s mintmenu: Recently used apps

There are also a couple of changes in Xfce and KDE, but it’s a bit too early to report on them (we’ll release these editions after Cinnamon and MATE).

Read the Docs

We’re happy to announce we’ll be porting our documentation to a promising service called “Read the Docs“.

Our Linux Mint User Guide helped us for years. It was updated continuously and translated in more than 20 languages. It’s been a great resources for new users. Although the LibreOffice format in which it was written made it easy for anyone to review it or translate it, it’s also become an issue which made its maintenance and development harder than it should have been. Changes are hard to keep track of and the various documents available in each different language are becoming more and more different.

If we were to rewrite a paragraph, that effort would only benefit one language in the short term, and likely only a select few long term.

The structure of the user guide is also problematic. It’s a big document which covers many different aspects. It tries to do to much, and doesn’t necessarily do it very well. It goes too much in the details for some of the topics but also lacks important information on others.

During the Linux Mint 19 development cycle we’ll write small guides, each dedicated to their own topic. In particular, we’ll write:

  • An installation guide
  • A developer guide
  • A troubleshooting/bug-reporting guide
  • A getting-started guide with an overview of the Mint project and its community

Read the Docs was chosen primarily because it separates content and layout and because it allows us to simply write content and have it automatically translated, built and hosted into documentation you can read online (in HTML) or offline (in PDF/ePUB).

The documentation will be written in reStructuredText (RST) and version-controlled on Github. We’ll be using Gettext to generate translations templates which will be imported into Launchpad. In other words, we’ll have the documentation written and translated the same way we already write and translate our software projects. Read the Docs will then continuously update the hosted documentation. Whenever it changes, it will automatically be rebuilt.

Note: Flatpak is already using Read the Docs. Don’t hesitate to visit http://flatpak.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ to see how it looks. Their documentation is available in English, French and Spanish. We’ll need some time to write our guides, but from experience and knowing how amazing the translation teams are on Launchpad (the pace at which they translate our code is quite humbling… in a matter of days we’re usually ready to ship any new features, translated in all major languages), we’re quite confident we’ll have documentation in more than 20 languages pretty fast.

 

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Donations in October:

A total of $8,998 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 483 donors:

$200, Luc S.
$131, Mark W.
$109 (5th donation), Sten L.
$109 (3rd donation), Frank B.
$109 (2nd donation), Jean-yves B.
$109, Detlef S.
$109, Tom S.
$100 (4th donation), Markus S.
$100 (3rd donation), Steve D. aka “taosld”
$100 (3rd donation), Gary M.
$100, Flemming M.
$100, Steven J.
$100, Per H. L.
$100, Andrew S.
$100, Dindar N.
$65 (3rd donation), Ion L. I.
$60 (3rd donation), Martin R.
$60, Wayne R.
$54 (8th donation), Claude M.
$54 (7th donation), Volker P.
$54 (2nd donation), Christian T.
$54, Barretteau M.
$54, Kevin D.
$54, Hans J. L.
$54, Rafael S. A.
$54, Krol S.
$54, Andreas A.
$54, Philipp R.
$54, Jacek S.
$54, Frederick K.
$50 (21st donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (5th donation), Thomas T. aka “FullTimer1489”
$50 (4th donation), Kenneth P.
$50 (4th donation), Douglas J.
$50 (4th donation), Cody W. H.
$50 (4th donation), JimM
$50 (3rd donation), Michael S.
$50 (2nd donation), Zhatkin A.
$50 (2nd donation), Fred W.
$50, Mark T.
$50, John C.
$50, Michael P.
$50, Odd I.
$50, K-Fi D Marketing Communications
$50, Mark H.
$50, Brian R.
$50, Graeme L.
$50, Henry S.
$50, Richard O.
$50, Michael C.
$49 (34th donation), Mark W.
$44, Jakob V.
$44, Olivier H. W. aka “Kuripot”
$40, John B.
$40, John W.
$40, Lance W. G.
$40, Josip B.
$40, Erik C.
$38 (2nd donation), Wolfgang CP Gensch
$36, JBHoren
$35 (5th donation), Jeff S.
$35, Charles A.
$35, Jeffrey K.
$33 (92th donation), Olli K.
$33 (8th donation), Julian M.
$33 (4th donation), John H.
$33, Jean-pierre J.
$33, Carl A.
$30, Rex H.
$30, Mickael D.
$27 (13th donation), Ky LMDE
$27 (6th donation), Jon Marks aka “ESL Materials Writer”
$27 (4th donation), Jan B.
$27 (3rd donation), Martin W.
$27, Antonio aka “pengu73”
$27, Bernd J.
$27, David W.
$27, Brian L.
$27, Günter S.
$25 (75th donation), Ronald W.
$25 (31st donation), Curt Vaughan aka “curtvaughan ”
$25 (6th donation), Eric W. aka “powerwagon75”
$25 (6th donation), Michael Welch aka “Dr. Mike”
$25 (5th donation), Bill R.
$25 (3rd donation), James M.
$25 (3rd donation), Dennis B.
$25 (3rd donation), J. C. .
$25 (3rd donation), Roberto O. L.
$25 (2nd donation), Gary B.
$25, Joe K.
$25, Earl P.
$25, Ted S.
$25, Robert F.
$25, Tatesawa O.
$25, Bruce R.
$25, Jim H.
$25, Marco C.
$25, Rogulin P.
$25, Andrew S.
$25, Nathaniel V.
$25, Stephen P.
$25, PCSW Inc
$25, Morten K.
$22 (10th donation), Ross M aka “ro55mo”
$22 (9th donation), Johann J.
$22 (4th donation), Malte J.
$22 (3rd donation), nobody
$22 (3rd donation), Andreas R.
$22 (3rd donation), CySoTec
$22 (3rd donation), nobody
$22 (3rd donation), Tom B.
$22 (2nd donation), Thomas L.
$22 (2nd donation), Florent G.
$22 (2nd donation), Michael T.
$22 (2nd donation), Wolfgang B. aka “Bösi”
$22 (2nd donation), Jean-philippe P.
$22 (2nd donation), jacobsen.biz
$22 (2nd donation), Eric V. C.
$22, Der S.
$22, Jean R.
$22, Baptiste Z.
$22, Peter P.
$22, Wim W.
$22, Hannu K.
$22, Jean-pierre G.
$22, Ciprian T.
$22, Pavel K.
$22, nordtapete
$22, Olivier R.
$22, Gabriel G.
$22, Francis N.
$22, Ronald M.
$22, Lars H.
$22, Christophe B.
$22, Siegmar H.
$22, Linda R.
$22, Derek R.
$21 (5th donation), T. P. .
$20 (31st donation), Curt Vaughan aka “curtvaughan ”
$20 (13th donation), Jeffery J.
$20 (6th donation), Hubert Banas
$20 (5th donation), Samarth M.
$20 (5th donation), Arrowhead Computer Consulting, LLC aka “Jim (JR)”
$20 (5th donation), Lars Händler
$20 (2nd donation), Duncan M.
$20 (2nd donation), Peter G.
$20 (2nd donation), Vitali V.
$20 (2nd donation), Miguel G.
$20 (2nd donation), Kleiner Funk-Electronic
$20 (2nd donation), Bezantnet, L.
$20 (2nd donation), Daniel H.
$20, Eleanor L.
$20, Renan D.
$20, David S.
$20, Dominic P.
$20, David P.
$20, Yamamoto T.
$20, Vincenzo S.
$20, Edward H.
$20, Thomas J. M.
$20, Adam C.
$20, Stephen S.
$20, Ireneusz D.
$20, Alain S.
$20, John S.
$20, John M.
$20, Leopold D.
$20, Luiz N.
$20, Hallvard P.
$20, Dani Metzger
$20, Maurice S.
$20, Griffin C.
$20, Patrick K.
$18 (13th donation), Dominik K. aka “doko”
$16 (11th donation), Ib O. J.
$16 (7th donation), Peter B.
$16 (3rd donation), Marc S.
$16 (2nd donation), Stefan P.
$16 (2nd donation), Sebastian B.
$16 (2nd donation), Francesca S. S.
$16 (2nd donation), Vadim G.
$16, Juan P. M. C.
$16, Laurent D.
$16, Gal J.
$16, Montefusco E.
$16, Bruno S.
$16, Marcin S. aka “senkal”
$16, Oliver S.
$15 (8th donation), Lance M.
$15 (4th donation), Robert D. aka “Wilbobob”
$15 (2nd donation), Benjamin P.
$15 (2nd donation), Susanne E. W.
$15, Kenneth W.
$15, Keven W.
$15, Mark W.
$15, PagesAtHome
$15, Constantin M.
$15, Greg S.
$15, Philip K.
$15, David K.
$13 (18th donation), Anonymous
$13, John B.
$12 (79th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
$12 (25th donation), JobsHiringnearMe
$12, Liu Y.
$12, Stonecot
$12, Тягливый А.
$11 (6th donation), Tom M.
$11 (5th donation), Michal W.
$11 (5th donation), Francois B. aka “Makoto”
$11 (4th donation), Florian U.
$11 (4th donation), Andrew V.
$11 (4th donation), François L.
$11 (4th donation), Jacques S.
$11 (4th donation), Sachindra Prosad Saha aka “Love you grand dad”
$11 (4th donation), Joss S.
$11 (3rd donation), Rick H aka “tinyworlds”
$11 (3rd donation), Emanuele Proietti aka “Manuermejo”
$11 (3rd donation), Birger T.
$11 (2nd donation), Finn H.
$11 (2nd donation), Giorgio O.
$11 (2nd donation), Martin H.
$11 (2nd donation), Łukasz S.
$11 (2nd donation), Eskild T.
$11 (2nd donation), Hans-detlef D.
$11 (2nd donation), Philipp H.
$11 (2nd donation), Christian F.
$11 (2nd donation), C. F. .
$11, Grzegorz K.
$11, Jochen S.
$11, Hans-werner H.
$11, Arturo S.
$11, Theodoros K.
$11, Richard S.
$11, Matthias O.
$11, Gunars A.
$11, PROBETECH
$11, Hubert R.
$11, Ingo B.
$11, Gerhard H.
$11, Martin W.
$11, Irk D. F.
$11, Matthias G.
$11, Thomas P.
$11, Alfred S. aka “Fredo”
$11, Enrico B.
$11, Roland H.
$11, Miroslav Š.
$11, Massimo T.
$11, Thibaut M.
$11, Pavel Hrnčíř aka “Milhouse”
$11, Mark Stuart aka “codeasone”
$11, Clive D.
$11, Gabor P.
$11, Spiridon T.
$11, viktor
$11, Gary W.
$11, Alexis M.
$11, Kevin C.
$11, Maciej T.
$11, Lorenz S.
$11, Zoran G.
$11, Herberth M.
$11, Frank G.
$11, Gilles D.
$11, Michael L.
$11, Dias J.
$10 (23rd donation), Thomas C.
$10 (15th donation), Julie H. aka “Kjokkenutstyr”
$10 (14th donation), Frank K.
$10 (14th donation), Paul O.
$10 (10th donation), Dinu P.
$10 (9th donation), 杉林晃治
$10 (9th donation), Dinu P.
$10 (8th donation), Masaomi Yoshida
$10 (6th donation), Agenor Marrero
$10 (6th donation), Kristian O.
$10 (6th donation), Andreas S.
$10 (4th donation), Ray M.
$10 (3rd donation), David W.
$10 (3rd donation), Michael P. K.
$10 (3rd donation), Andy McBride
$10 (2nd donation), Sourav B. aka “rmad17”
$10 (2nd donation), Daniel G. Marconi aka “DarkSatan”
$10 (2nd donation), Sebastian D. L. aka “Sebadamus”
$10 (2nd donation), Waybackdownloader
$10 (2nd donation), Jordon B.
$10 (2nd donation), CW P.
$10 (2nd donation), Ian C.
$10 (2nd donation), Clint M.
$10 (2nd donation), Jayadevan C. R.
$10 (2nd donation), George C.
$10, Demetrios C. A.
$10, shuhari aka “shuhari”
$10, Mark H.
$10, Jose Luis Gonzalez Becerril aka “Mint Friend Forever”
$10, Justin M.
$10, Eugene C.
$10, Nikolas K.
$10, Jack H.
$10, mvpngn.com
$10, Sergey Z.
$10, P R.
$10, Sahil Ahuja aka “GMETRI”
$10, Øyvind K.
$10, Robert H.
$10, merimaat
$10, Ruston R.
$10, George C.
$10, Aaron S.
$10, Arthur L.
$10, Gordon E.
$10, Daniel-Teodor S.
$10, Abdulaziz A.
$10, Derek H.
$10, Hamilton Southern Holdings LLC
$10, Dario C.
$10, Andrew J.
$10, Anand S.
$10, Ricky G.
$10, Jairo C.
$10, Greg R.
$10, Divya S.
$10, Jan G.
$10, Abdul K.
$10, Jerry P.
$10, How W.
$10, Humberto A. S.
$10, Stephen W.
$10, Jonathan M.
$10, Kit S. H.
$10, Andrew M.
$10, Dusan T.
$10, Colin H.
$10, Alexander H.
$10, Chris K.
$10, William B. aka “TheMesquito”
$8.44, Rare Earth Computing
$8 (2nd donation), Josef H. R. H.
$8, Wilfred F.
$8, Yannick S.
$7 (15th donation), CV Smith
$7 (2nd donation), Erwin B. S. M. aka “The Teacher”
$6 (4th donation), aka “AsciiWolf”
$6 (2nd donation), Krzysztof D.
$5 (17th donation), Eugene T.
$5 (14th donation), Todd A aka “thobin”
$5 (13th donation), Kjell O. B. aka “kob”
$5 (11th donation), Jim A.
$5 (9th donation), Bhavinder Jassar
$5 (6th donation), Blazej P. aka “bleyzer”
$5 (6th donation), J. S. .
$5 (6th donation), Vyacheslav K. aka “veZuk”
$5 (5th donation), NAGY Attila aka “GuBo”
$5 (4th donation), GaryD
$5 (4th donation), Jonathan Gaddi Giomini aka “JonnyBarbun87”
$5 (4th donation), Clinton Aarts
$5 (4th donation), John M.
$5 (3rd donation), Arkadiusz T.
$5 (3rd donation), Jeroen V. D. B.
$5 (3rd donation), John M.
$5 (3rd donation), Ellert H.
$5 (2nd donation), Piotr S.
$5 (2nd donation), Ovidiu I. D.
$5 (2nd donation), Patrick M.
$5 (2nd donation), Adrian N.
$5 (2nd donation), Laura NL aka “lauranl”
$5 (2nd donation), Andre B.
$5 (2nd donation), Athol P.
$5 (2nd donation), Ondrej D. B.
$5 (2nd donation), Alexey K.
$5 (2nd donation), rptev
$5, Doug K.
$5, hostflash.de
$5, Dino Brugnolaro aka “brgdni”
$5, Paweł B.
$5, Robert G.
$5, Simon S.
$5, Liu J.
$5, Arkādijs S.
$5, James B.
$5, Murray Y.
$5, Mark H.
$5, Samuel G.
$5, Ivan H.
$5, Conrad T.
$5, Udo W.
$5, Mario Filho
$5, David B.
$5, Nicholas J.
$5, David M.
$5, Susanne K.
$5, Robert W.
$5, Nikolay aka “niketechno”
$5, Alessandro M.
$5, Simo P.
$5, Jochen W.
$5, Коробейников А.
$5, Binyamin B. E.
$5, Christian U. aka “Jowe1999”
$5, Tree Service Kansas City
$5, Giorgi M.
$5, Benjamin S.
$5, Robert T.
$5, PDFsam
$5, Eigenhaushalt.de
$5, Marco S.
$5, Union Hills Software
$5, Pan W. aka “Clay”
$5, Peter R.
$5, Adam B.
$5, Agri Shop 2000
$5, Pierre E.
$5, Žarko J.
$5, Daniel K.
$5, Matthias K.
$5, Brent F.
$5, Иван Ложкин aka “Berry”
$5, Michael D.
$5, Rodney F.
$5, Iliyan P.
$5, Pierre B.
$5, Iacopo B.
$4 (9th donation), Alessandro S.
$4, Harm R.
$4, Marcelo T.
$4, Ljubiša P.
$3.43, Ethan L.
$3 (4th donation), Micoworker – Diseño de Páginas Web
$3 (3rd donation), Karl H.
$3 (3rd donation), Nuno F.
$3 (3rd donation), cheval a vendre
$3 (3rd donation), Cassio Raposa aka “Zadig”
$3 (2nd donation), 정우 이
$3 (2nd donation), Octavain B.
$3 (2nd donation), Erich G.
$3 (2nd donation), Matteo P.
$3 (2nd donation), Adrien L.
$3, Flavio L. Cavalcante
$3, Yassin A.
$3, Ariel R.
$3, Wellness Geeky
$3, Timo P.
$3, Mateus M.
$2 (13th donation), Terry Poe aka “Exclusive”
$2 (6th donation), Илья Кругликов aka “Ilis”
$2 (4th donation), Maxime H.
$2 (4th donation), Alfred Tan aka “pinuno”
$2 (2nd donation), Marco B.
$2 (2nd donation), Denis C.
$2 (2nd donation), Star Tipster
$2 (2nd donation), 정우 이
$2, Ernesto N. A. G.
$2, Stefano B. aka “StefanoB26”
$2, Ryszard J.
$2, Cuauhtemoc U. aka “regicide”
$2, 合同会社hartanah
$26.75 from 26 smaller donations

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

Rankings:

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59 comments

  2. Excellent news regarding the documentation. Whilst good, there’s a temptation with the current scheme to print the whole PDF. The readthedocs approach is much easier to navigate and read on a screen, nice professional solution. Great to see 18.3 is imminent – well done, looking forward 🙂

    Reply

  3. Hey you super people, you are the best!

    Can you please make version of Linux mint (like LMDE 3) without systemd? Please make it based on Devuan.

    There are a lot of us who would be eager to stick to LMDE 3 /Devuan for a long time. I have a bunch of money waiting for that.

    So please Clem and others, you would make many of us happy, yours truly, -vilsu-

    Reply

    1. I’m sorry, we’ve no plans to remove Systemd. If it’s any consolation we do continue to support Consolekit and init.d in projects we develop.

  4. Any possibility of adding split view capability to xed? I installed Kate in Mint Mate for that reason. It works, but it’s not really a good fit. Besides, I just like xed better.

    Reply

    2. The GeditSplitView plugin doesn’t work with xed. I can get xed to recognize the plugin, but can see no evidence that any of the code is ever executed. Any other suggestions? I did leave an issue request on GitHub, but since the last activity there was almost four years ago, I don’t have much hope for a response.

  5. Will it be possible to upgrade to 18.3 beta from 18.2 and then smoothly make transition to 18.3 final? or should I just wait for final release?

    Reply

    1. Hi Saif,

      The BETA is released for testing purposes, to help and fix bugs before the stable release. We’ll open up the upgrade path after the stable release.

  6. Hola, lo que alcanzo a comprender, es tener un sistema estable, y eso me agrada, sobre la suite de ofimática porque no dar oportunidad a OpenOffice?, (Si es cierto es viejo pero firme), sobre la aplicación de Whatsapp no me preocupa, el navegador Opera se encarga de eso y de otras cosas.

    Reply

  8. I have a question, can shiki-wise GTK2 theme from the old Mint 8 Helena can be ported the GTK3 for the upcoming Linux MATE version?

    Reply

    1. It’s possible but it’s a lot of work and it’s not something we’re planning to do. You would need to write a new GTK3 theme and try to make it look as close to the GTK2 theme as possible. The code that makes the GTK2 theme cannot be ported.

  9. Good to see that documentation will be made translatable on Launchpad. Please also make the help files for the x-apps available for translation. I don’t think anything has happened to them since the x-apps were forked.

    Reply

  10. Color scheme in MATE DESKTOP Why you can not change amymore colors for windows and buttons. Since they advanced or move to GTK3 everything was screwed… The most basic action to change the color of a window

    Reply

  11. Il y a quelque temps, j’ai abandonné Ubuntu pour Mint à cause d’Unity
    J’ai eu du bonheur avec MATE jusqu’à Sarah, Mint18.
    Ensuite, voyant la continuelle dégradation de l’interface, j’ai changé pour un bureau XFCE, plus conviviale mais il prend le même chemin : obligé de changer xed pour mousepad, et tout un tas de petites applications indispensables dont l’interface n’est plus configurable pour retrouver le menu bien visible des versions précédentes.
    Sans compter LibreOffice qui plante constamment dès qu’un classeur est un peu lourd, alors qu’il n’a aucun souci avec les versions Mint 17 ! (Idem Ubuntu, donc…)
    Les améliorations de confort promises je les cherche encore, pour moi c’est tout l’inverse !
    Je suis très âgé, les personnes comme moi dont les facultés visuelles ne sont plus ce qu’elles étaient doivent elles ne plus utiliser LinuxMint ? Je ne suis pourtant pas encore au niveau d’être réduit à l’utilisation d’un chromebook !
    Les icônes sont plates, sans couleurs, minuscules, on les confond, elles ne sont pas redimensionnables, les applications par défaut n’obéissent plus au thème choisi, les thèmes ne sont plus paramétrables, trop clairs ou trop foncés, donc fatigants visuellement, et mal pris en compte par les boites de dialogue des navigateurs pour les thèmes foncés. Obligé d’en trouver ailleurs mais qui ne répondent pas à tous les besoins.

    Souvenez-vous que c’est en premier l’accessibilité (la vraie, pas les gadgets proposés qui sont pires que tout) d’un environnement de bureau qui séduit dans une distribution. Et je ne parle pas d’esthétisme mais d’ergonomie.

    Tout le monde n’est pas jeune avec une vue parfaite !

    J’ai déjà écrit tout ça, mais apparemment c’est le même rapport Linux/Microsoft
    Ici, vieux malvoyant/jeunes qui voient bien !
    C’est sûr qu’ à 80 ans, on est plus assez nombreux à passer une bonne partie de son temps devant un ordinateur pour émouvoir les dev’ !

    Reply

  12. I installed LM18.3 beta.
    I cannot install steam from Software Manager. after I enter the password, steam does not get installed (the progress bar move to the end)

    If I run mintinstall from command line.

    load_cache took 499.210 ms
    add_categories took 4.383 ms
    build_matched_packages took 0.185 ms
    add_packages took 2326.075 ms
    process_matching_packages took 2.262 ms
    add_reviews took 674.151 ms
    Downloading new reviews

    (mintinstall.py:11497): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_box_pack: assertion ‘_gtk_widget_get_parent (child) == NULL’ failed
    __init__ took 3812.634 ms
    update_reviews took 1305.929 ms
    add_flatpaks took 3650.536 ms
    show_search_results took 122.557 ms
    Synced flathub
    sync_flatpaks_into_appstream took 3543.132 ms
    show_package took 131.069 ms

    Reply

  13. Thanks for the “early edition” November Newsletter. Wow … These are certainly exciting times for the Linux Mint community! So many changes; so many new things! The new ‘Read the Docs’ service DOES look promising. I’m looking forward to the ‘small guides’ you’ll be writing for the LM 19 development cycle; I’m hoping they can help me better share the “Linux Mint Experience” with people in my local community.

    With all that’s happening right now in the LM community, there’s bound to be a lot of questions. Here are a few of mine:

    One: The big, new release of Firefox 57 is due out this week. Will the Linux Mint 18.3 Beta editions include it? Will the LM 18.3 Final Release editions?

    It’s important to have this most up-to-date version of Firefox on the Final Release ISOs, because many users will need to carry their personalized LM systems & data with them as live USB flashdrive installations with persistence (created after the manner described in the LM Forum Tutorial: “Live usb with persistence over 4GB” – https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=229086 – for example).

    Two: CompuLab recently published a new product announcement for the “immediate availability of fitlet2” (https://fit-iot.com/web/products/fitlet2/); and the announcement included an image of not one but TWO variations on a MintBox-Mini-like case design (VERY exciting!). Will a new MintBox Mini “2” be available soon? How soon? Will there be more than one model? What will be their specs? Their price-points? Their availability — and their ability to remain “In-Stock” long enough to get one (or more)?

    I know and trust that you’ll make an announcement when the time is right; but I also know that interest in these remarkable, fanless, Mint-loaded mini-PCs will run high; and, so, on behalf of the many who will want to know, I just had to ask. (Please don’t be upset with me.)

    The “In-Stock” part of the availability question is of particular concern and is one I hope you will be able to answer. Since its introduction, the MintBox Mini Pro has been “Out-Of-Stock” more often than not, making it hard enough to maintain my own interest in the product, let alone to spark an interest in others in my local community. It would be helpful to have some advance awareness of just how “production-limited” the new MintBox Mini “2” model(s) might be. (Perhaps you could convey this concern to CompuLab? Just a thought … )

    Reply

    1. Hi John,

      We’re in touch with CompuLab but I can’t talk about this just yet.

      Regarding Firefox, the BETA is shipping with version 56, the stable release should ship with version 57.

    2. Will FF 56 still be available? There have been many reports of popular plugins not porting to the new API. This could cause many some turmoil if there isn’t a stop-gap solution. A sudden loss of most plugins, especially popular ad-blockers, could reak havoc. Supposedly there will be an update to no-script today, but I’m still waiting.

    1. Why would you want to do that?
      Backup your data to an external hard drive.
      Format and install new version.
      Restore data.

      Easy, simple, and you end up with a much faster system.

  16. I found a torrent named Linuxmint 18.3 Cinnamon beta. Maybe it wasn’t an official release but I tried it in live mode and it was amazing how fast it loaded and how well it worked. Looking forward to the official release.

    Reply

  17. Is it possible to browse and install older versions of apps in Software Manager?
    For example i install Firefox 57 and i don’t like it so i uninstall it and now i want to install Firefox 56 again.
    Hopefully installing older versions of apps is possible with Flatpak.

    Reply

    1. No, that’s not possible with either APT or Flatpak. That said, Timeshift does exactly that… you can restore system snapshots of the operating system (and it doesn’t impact your personal data), thus going back in time as far the system is concerned and effectively revert upgrades you applied to it.

    2. So, this could be a big problem for some. Older installers are available on other platforms. Maybe we should grab the latest FF 56 deb binary today or from the Beta and hope it still installs manually if it comes to that. I found a regression is a very popular application last month and was surprised to find all the pre-compiled binaries for older releases were gone for Linux (due to our repository schemes). Had to do a messy recompile from a github source release point. Don’t want to do that again.

    3. You’ll still have access to FF 52 ESR for a little while.. but that won’t last forever. You could stick to FF 56 of course, block FF updates and not have it updated, but that is short term as well, eventually we’ll hit a critical security issue and the only way to have it patched (other than you personally backporting the fix to v56) will be to accept updates or switch to ESR.

    4. By the way… regarding the ability to go back to previous releases. Again, I would insist on using Timeshift going forward. It’s perfect for rewinding time. You can go back to the OS you had before it got hit by the regression, block the particular update and re-apply all the other ones.

    5. Using TimeShift for going back to older release every time would be inconvenient.
      This problem i think can be easily solved if developers of apps released older releases as .flatpak on their website so we users can simply download .flatpak package from websites and install it.

    7. Thanks for the headups Monsta.
      bleeding edge has it’s drawbacks…
      I routinely backup the entire .mozilla folder (COPY to a separate drive/partition) That is a wise thing to do, unless you don’t care about bookmarks and settings.
      Personally I stay with the ESR. I assume when current 52.4.0 ESR gets updated there will be a new Stable ESR.
      (also backup the .thunderbird folder)

  18. Hi Clem.. Been using the cinnamon 18.3 beta for last 24 hours, no issues so far. The missing fonts problem has always been an issue for me, since day 1, using intel hd4000 integrated graphics.
    https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/3442
    https://askubuntu.com/questions/584922/how-do-i-fix-fonts-not-rendering-and-missing-letters
    However, despite numerous suspends, this issue doesn’t appear to have raised it’s head.
    Just wondering if you could confirm whether or not it’s been addressed?
    Great work by the way.

    Reply

    1. Hi Wayne, this looks like a GPU/driver/3D/acceleration rendering issue. Relevant components would be the GPU drivers, the kernel, MESA, Xorg.

      We’ve removed a couple of text-shadows in Cinnamon, but although this might help, it’s not a solution to your problem. Something is wrong in the way your GPU renders what the software tells it to.

  19. I’d like to ask about the longterm kernels. Currently from longterm 4.4.x , 4.9.x and 4.14.x only 4.4 is available in the Update Manager. Please could you include the longterm 4.14 in the final release of the 18.3?

    Reply

    1. The kernels are the same as in Ubuntu 16.04. There are two kernel series supported at any given time: LTS (which is currently 4.4 and this shouldn’t change) and HWE (which is currently 4.10 and which will eventually point to 18.04’s LTS).

  21. Cinnamon32 18.3beta
    :first run firefox crash, stable on subsequent runs
    :unable to load UK keyboard, seems US is default and only one?

    Reply

  22. Great News!

    I hope to see 18.3 is faster and leaner than 18.2.
    Keep Mint with speed as its main priority.

    Moreover, it would be great if you supported latest version of ReText.

    Thank You.

    Reply

  25. Llevo usando linux , cinco años y nuca he podido instalar itunes ni office de microsoft. He intentado con wine y con playonlinux y en las dos salen errores. Creo que es tiempo de pasar a Mac.

    Reply

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