Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” MATE released!

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The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” MATE Edition.

Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia MATE Edition

Linux Mint 18.3 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2021. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

New features:

This new version of Linux Mint contains many improvements.

For an overview of the new features please visit:

“What’s new in Linux Mint 18.3 MATE“.

Important info:

The release notes provide important information about known issues, as well as explanations, workarounds and solutions.

To read the release notes, please visit:

“Release Notes for Linux Mint 18.3 MATE”

System requirements:

  • 1GB RAM (2GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
  • 15GB of disk space (20GB recommended).
  • 1024×768 resolution (on lower resolutions, press ALT to drag windows with the mouse if they don’t fit in the screen).

Notes:

  • The 64-bit ISO can boot with BIOS or UEFI.
  • The 32-bit ISO can only boot with BIOS.
  • The 64-bit ISO is recommended for all modern computers (Almost all computers sold since 2007 are equipped with 64-bit processors).

Upgrade instructions:

  • If you are running the BETA, simply use the Update Manager to apply the available updates.
  • Announcements will be made shortly with instructions on how to upgrade from Linux Mint 18, 18.1 and 18.2.

Download links:

Here are the download links for the 64-bit ISO:

A 32-bit ISO image is also available at https://www.linuxmint.com/download_all.php.

Integrity and authenticity checks:

Once you have downloaded an image, please verify its integrity and authenticity.

Anyone can produce fake ISO images, it is your responsibility to check you are downloading the official ones.

Enjoy!

We look forward to receiving your feedback. Thank you for using Linux Mint and have a lot of fun with this new release!

58 comments

  4. I have been testing the beta, as a consideration to replace the KDE version of mint due to it’s end of life, and I must say I am impressed. Thank you Mint Team for a job well done.

    Reply

  6. Great work. Its perfect working on Win10 UEFI based Laptop with Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia UEFI. Not any problems so far. Dual Boot is working. Both systems no problems.

    Reply

  7. I have an older Acer Aspire laptop (netbook) on which I have been running Mint for years, Should I run (32-bit) Mate, or wait for Mint 18.3 Xfce? I don’t want use Mate ‘temporarily’.

    Reply

    2. Run Mate, Xfce consumes much more RAM. Both are pretty fast and old fashioned. Mate’s Caja has more options than Thunar for example.
      It’s not true that Xfce is the best for old hardware, please try Mate and check yourself…

    3. Hello Geeks, i did benchmark both DE and the my specs are intel core i5 5200u X4 cores 4 GB ram and 8 GB swap partition
      -ram usage using “free -m” comand
      MATE : 439 MB
      XFCE : 321 MB
      -cpu usage on both DE with the same window manager/ ” system idle ”
      MATE : core1: 0.00% /core2: 0.70% /core3: 1.5% /core4: 0.00%
      XFCE : core1: 0.00% /core2: 0.70% /core3: 0.00% /core4: 0.00%
      -Battery life plus “tlp” :
      cinniman : 4.5 Hours
      Mate : 5.9 Hours
      XFCE : 7 Hours
      -I was using cinniman first time but after the benchmark i switch to XFCE DE and i loved it
      -if like mate than just go with it because at least all those 3 DE use less ressources than windows .
      -small note windows battery life in my laptop is 1.5 Hours so shit run faster than windows in my laptop
      -you might get different results in defferente Hardware*.

    4. @Karim Inabi:
      Thanks for testing!
      Did you install the tlp package to save battery power? It helps a lot.

  9. Wow…Clem and Team,
    this new version of LinuxMint is so cool…. WhatsApp on my Desktop… Just cool…

    But one question: where do I find these System-Reports (this new too you write about?? I can’t find it in my menue at all. Do I have to install it via Synaptic or where do I find it??

    Greetings

    Reply

  10. But what I found out is, that eolie keeps crashing for me. Terminal-Output is this:

    andrea@andrea-SATELLITE-C850-1LQ ~ $ eolie
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/eolie/application.py”, line 177, in do_startup
    self.__init()
    File “/usr/lib/python3.6/site-packages/eolie/application.py”, line 375, in __init
    cssProvider.load_from_file(cssProviderFile)
    GLib.Error: gtk-css-provider-error-quark: application.css:15:14’min-height’ is not a valid property name (3)
    andrea@andrea-SATELLITE-C850-1LQ ~ $

    How to fix this???

    Greetings

    Reply

  11. Hi
    A bug still present since 18.2: when you choose a dark background in caja, the font of files and folders name stays dark, which make it quit unreadable.
    Best regards
    phcook

    Reply

  12. Congratulations Clement and all your team, I loved the update to 18.3. Receive a warm greeting from Mexico!!

    Reply

  14. Congratulations, its Perfect.
    I just upgraded from Linux Mint 18.2 to 18.3 “sylvia” .
    I just have one issue with hibernate.
    actually this issue was since the i started using Linux Mint 18.2.
    When its wakeup from Hibernate nothing happen! same as restart !
    I don’t know if it didn’t save the session or couldn’t read it when its opened !
    I hope find solution for this.
    Thanks

    Reply

    1. I have installed Mate 18.3 fresh (coming from KDE). After waking up from hibernate the screen stays blank indeed but as soon as you press any key the lock screen shows up and the machine runs fine. (Asus R704A notebook)

  16. Nice! One thing: Can I get Gnome Online Acconts for MATE? I’ve installed it manually, connected my account… But how do I enter Google Drive from files manager now?

    Reply

  18. Always the same 2 small problems in the installer :
    – If we want to change the town, it’s impossible if the keyboard is not QWERTY (but I can pick the town on the map). The installer should first ask for the keyboard and then, for the town. It shouldn’t propose to use the keyboard before configuring it.
    – When choosing the keyboard “Français”, the default keyboard is “Français (variante obsolète)”. It should be better to have the default keyboard “Français (variante)” because when I type ²³, œŒ is shown on the screen.

    Reply

  19. Great job Mint Team! I upgraded from 18.2 and everything worked exactly as advertised! Not a snag or a problem. Upgrade was seamless and fast. Mint is by far the flagship of Linux, in my opinion. It just works.

    Reply

  20. Loving the Overview Map in Xed and the enhancements to the Backup Tool – also the fact that we can now require a username in the login window. Thank you for a wonderful Mate release!

    Reply

  21. installed on my new DDR 4 comp with core 13 3.37 GHz,
    Failed to boot
    And anyway 18.2 was a crawling OS so i guess these grapes are sore too, so i am switching back to Mint mate 17.3 , the best Mint till date.

    Reply

  22. Firstly, Mint Mate Sylvia is a delight to use – so thank you to the Mint Team. Secondly, I hope that this info might help other Mint Sonya & Sylvia users too. Wireless connections out of the box, no more configuring old M$oft Windows drivers, mod-probing around, etc. etc. Simply purchase an Edimax N 150 Wireless High-Gain USB Adapter, FW-7711UAn V2 , plug it in, press the WEP key, enter the wireless key and your connected to the Internet. Cost? Circa £11.00. plus £6 vat and delivery. NB. The enclosed CD-ROM installation instructions didn’t work for me and were not needed in any case.

    Reply

    1. WEP key? Pretty dangerous! WEP can be hacked in a couple of minutes. Use WPA2-AES instead.
      Thanks for the Edimax tip. Using built in network controller now using rt2800pcidriver, wifi drops sometimes. Not a Mint problem though, happens with all distro’s.

  23. Ну наконец то что сносное. Теперь окончательно перейду на линукс. А то реппозитории подзае-ли. Теперь, в принципе, даже жена понимает, что я делаю. А то блин как хакер сидел, какая то адресная строка, терминал…

    Reply

  24. Greetings. Great job! However, after upgrade from Sofia (x64) I discovered this:

    -Timeshift (System snapshots) was not installed
    -mintreport (System/Crash Reposrts) was not installed
    -Login Windows is still the old one

    All the upgrade process was ok, no error was reported, but this new features was not installed. I managed to install them from Synaptic. Except the new login window because I don’t know the new name.

    Before the upgrade I had Redshift so I can’t tell if this feature would be installed or not. I think not.

    Besides this issues GREAT JOB!!! Congratulations and thank you.

    Reply

  26. On LinuxMint 18.2 from the System Settings > Network I could add VLAN interfaces but now I can only add them from the network manager icon down by the clock. Was this change intentional and is it possible to add the VLAN option back to the “+” button inside the System Settings > Network control panel?

    Reply

  27. As an add-on to my previous post: When VLANs are configured with virtual interfaces and I turn them off they completely disappear from the Network Control Panel and the only way to turn the interface on is to go through the network manager icon > network connections to reenable the virtual network interface. This is a huge step backwards from 18.2 where I could do all this within the Network Control Panel and I never had to the network manager icon by the clock.

    Reply

  28. Hi Mint team. Just a brief note to say that the issue with AMD APU whereby the installation failed (I was presented with just a blank screen) was worked around by using a separate graphics card. That however, defeats the objective of utilizing the on-board graphic capability of the APU. Now, I discovered, that the 18.2 and 18.3 versions of linux Mate work without any issue – the AMD APU on board graphic card works without issue. I use my PC for Office Work, viewing video clips, photography but I am not a gamer. The APU in my PC is an old A10-5800K Socket FM2. Old kit but very usable with Linux Mint Mate.

    Reply

  29. After abandoning several other KDE distro’s because of instability, I’m back again at Mint! This time with Mate. Not as modern and configurable as KDE but quite stable and fast and better included software than Xfce in my honest opinion which is too simple.
    Well done Mint team! Worth a donation. However some point of (security) critics: Why not enable the firewall by default and why not set the root password at install? A blank root password is really a bad idea.

    Reply

    1. During the installation, the root password should be set to the same one as yours. How/where did you find the blank password?

  30. In a fresh install of Mint/MATE 18.3 (64-bit) I’ve noticed a problem in “Settings/Login Window” where enabling “Draw user background” (default) does not automatically display the user selected desktop background image in the login window but instead continues to show the default Mint background (the Mint logo on a black background). I have to manually select the background image instead.

    By comparison, in Mint/Cinnamon 18.3 (64-bit) enabling “Draw user background” in “Settings/Login Window” automatically displays the user selected desktop image without having to change it manually in “Settings/Login Window”.

    Is this an actual problem? I would think that the “Login Window” settings would operate the same no matter if it’s Cinnamon, MATE, or XFce. Anyway, can anyone check this themselves and see if you can confirm this?

    Reply

  31. @Monsta – Ah, that makes sense then. I wasn’t sure if the changes were made through the “name your DE”-settings-daemon” or not. No big deal if it doesn’t happen since it’s easy to change the background manually.

    And wouldn’t it be nice to be able to “Reply” to replies?

    Reply

    1. It was so before, but the blog turned out to be too narrow for 3-4 level replies, so they were displayed like columns of text… So it was changed to have only second level. You can reply to the same first level comment to continue the discussion in another second level comment.

  34. Hi Clem,
    Mint is my favorite since many years already. Bought myself a nice small ASUS 200H netbook a few weeks ago. There is no sound possible with any Linux, with Win it works. I know this is an issue with this ASUS type of netbook. I hope you can have a look for a solution? Would be great!

    Thanks! Frits

    Reply

  35. Hallo,
    Sehr schöne neue Anwendungsverwaltung.
    Besonders gefällt mir das Flatpak-Pakete eine eigene Rubrik haben.
    Alledings wäre es gut wenn man die Flatpak-Pakete als solches eindeutiger kennzeichen würde.
    Dann würde man diese als solche auch sofort erkennen wenn man einfach nach einem Paket
    sucht…, z.b. Kalender, der wird mir dann auch als Flatpak angeboten…,
    (wenn man nicht darauf achtet z.b. unter Details…)

    Gruß,
    Andre

    Reply

  36. hi people

    I have come back here, because I found a mager problem on LinuxMint, hitting all distributions it seems. The problem is: Brasero and other burning-programms have stopped working for me and other Users as well. Brasero refuses to burn audio-CDs and even mp4-Movies on disk.

    Everytime I get “burning-process failed with internal error”.

    Then I tried out xfburn and oterhs… but nothing worked and I would need a working burning-programm for audio-CDs and video-DVDs.

    Has anybody help??

    Reply

  39. I had already tried this solution with installing brasero-cdrkit, but this did not fix it up for me and others as you can see in the launchpad-reports.

    So what can be done to get this back working??

    Reply

  40. I just tried something:

    opening brasero via Terminal and burning the disc and there it works I have my first successful Audio-CD. The question is: why is that??
    Why the hell does Brasero not work without Terminal the normal way??
    Does anybody have an answer on that??

    During the burning, the terminal gave me this:

    andrea@andrea-SATELLITE-C850-1LQ ~ $ brasero

    ** (brasero:32110): CRITICAL **: gst_ffmpeg_cfg_set_property: assertion ‘qdata->size == sizeof (gint64)’ failed

    (brasero:32110): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: attempting to add an interface (EggTreeMultiDragSource) to class (GtkFileSystemModel) after class_init

    (brasero:32110): GLib-CRITICAL **: Source ID 1113 was not found when attempting to remove it
    Gtk-Message: GtkDialog mapped without a transient parent. This is discouraged.
    Gtk-Message: GtkDialog mapped without a transient parent. This is discouraged.

    (brasero:32110): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_window_thaw_toplevel_updates: assertion ‘window->update_and_descendants_freeze_count > 0’ failed

    I hope, I can help the developers with this.

    Greetings

    Reply

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