Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” Xfce – BETA Release

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This is the BETA release for Linux Mint 18.3 “Sylvia” Xfce Edition.

Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia Xfce 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 Xfce“.

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 Xfce”

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:

  • This BETA release might contain critical bugs, please only use it for testing purposes and to help the Linux Mint team fix issues prior to the stable release.
  • It will be possible to upgrade from this BETA to the stable release.
  • It will also be possible to upgrade from Linux Mint 18.2. Upgrade instructions will be published after the stable release of Linux Mint 18.3.

Bug reports:

  • Please report bugs below in the comment section of this blog.
  • When reporting bugs, please be as accurate as possible and include any information that might help developers reproduce the issue or understand the cause of the issue:
    • Bugs we can reproduce, or which cause we understand are usually fixed very easily.
    • It is important to mention whether a bug happens “always”, or “sometimes”, and what triggers it.
    • If a bug happens but didn’t happen before, or doesn’t happen in another distribution, or doesn’t happen in a different environment, please mention it and try to pinpoint the differences at play.
    • If we can’t reproduce a particular bug and we don’t understand its cause, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to fix it.
  • Please visit https://github.com/linuxmint/Roadmap to follow the progress of the development team between the BETA and the stable release.

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. Many thanks in advance for testing the BETA!

82 comments

  4. hello , im so excited about this and my main problem are :
    1/ when i run the the live image everything is working fine but when the LM is installed to my laptop hard drive i can’t get wifi working so i need to get a “wifi usb” and then download the drivers .
    2/ i play game a lot so i need to download wine to play windows games and because am little bit newbie i never got games working on linux i found it to be hard to install game using wine .
    3/ when i keep using “LM XFCE 18.2 ” in my laptop at a certain time my computer freez like nothing is working exept the mouse that move slowly – like opening firefox “57.0” 7 tabs and a music program and then it freez , so im forced to make physical shutdown i don’t know why – 4 GB RAM
    4/ i think that “TLP” should be preinstalled by default it show me 2,5 hours under the battery icon but when i start “TLP” it goes up to 7 hours – this is why i love LM ( windows show me 2 hours so no need to run windows for my case )
    5/ for me as a newbie i think that making “Swap partition” is hard i have a 8 GB swap partition but never got it to work i don’t really know what’s happening.
    – Running LM 18.2 XFCE 64 bit
    -My specs are a laptop cpu Intel i5-5200u X4 cores , 4GB RAM 8 GB swap partition , 500 GB hard drive and a broadcom “BCM43142 bgn Wi-Fi M.2 Adapter” that don’t well compaired to windows drivers
    – I wont to say a big thaks to all the Linux Mint developers and all the people that want to make this project a good one .

    Reply

    2. 3 – Could you try the same with the Opera browser? (at opera.com)
      With me, I’ve noticed that Firefox (even the new version) considerably slows down my computer, which is far inferior to yours (except I have 8 GB of RAM)

    3. hello again , i’ve test “firefox, opera and chrome ” and the same problem is applied to all of them , for me i have 4 GB RAM i think the problem is the swap partition it’s not being used at all i don’t know why , i’ve opened the system monitor and i’ve opened a lot of programes and hit the 4GB RAM maximum but the swap partition it’s not being used .
      – i really need help because this problem is making me angry like really bad .
      – im forced to make physical shutdown like 8 time per day , which is not good because it might leed to some hardware failure .
      – i really hope someone fix this problem .
      Thank you .

    4. With 4 GB RAM the system shouldn’t normally need to swap. I have run Linux Mint XFCE on systems with far less RAM and still didn’t need too much swap space. I have no idea why your system keeps freezing when you only run Firefox and a music program but I can’t imagine it’s because of a problem with the swap partition.

    5. Karim, suggest you use the LM forums for such requests for assistance otherwise the blog will quickly become swamped.

  6. Further refinements and improvements to an already fine Mint Xfce. Thanks for your efforts!
    Mint Xfce is an essential member of the Mint family: people who need a lightweight distro, can remain in the Mint ecosystem.

    Reply

  7. This problem is present on all versions of LInuxMint xfce I’ve tried (18.1, 18.2, and now 18.3). But I just finally found out what causes the problem and how to work around it! If a Mac keyboard is selected during system installation it is not possible to use “X -configure” to get a working xorg.conf file that can be used to modify monitor resolutions that weren’t probed by X. The command will abort with an incomplete xorg.conf file created. If one selects a standard keyboard (US) during system install this doesn’t happen. The difference is the Mac keyboard causes X to use the fbdevhw driver, whereas the standard keyboard will use the vesa driver – at least on my system. Selecting the Mac keyboard during install and attempting to switch to a standard keyboard after installation and then trying the “X -configure” produces the same failures. One has to select a standard keyboard during installation to be able to do lower level X configurations. FWIW my monitor doesn’t probe correctly (the EDID seems bogus) although I’ve probed it with other tools and verified it’s correct. Tried using the UseEDID option in the Device section of xorg.conf but I’ve never gotten X to use it correctly, so I just end up having to add the Modelines to the Monitor section manually to get resolutions working correctly. Hope this tip helps someone else.

    Reply

  8. Looking forward to this release, and hopefully the flatpak support in mintinstall will be included.
    A possible reason for going ‘flatpak’ rather than snapd was mentioned on another site. Reportedly the snap server side code isn’t available and/or won’t let anyone outside of Canonical create snap repositories !!
    @Clem, care to comment?
    TIA! Mike

    Reply

  9. I love XFCE have a awesome desktop which I’d be glad to pDG if you wish. I like the simple interface and by adding some KDE stuff have the best off all worlds. This was an experiment as I was a troubleshooter for the county school district for 10 years and thought that with windows 10, I had enough MS nonsense. Now after a year without windows a=other then what my job required , I am happy at home. What a pleasure to update all my programs at once without separate updaters.

    Reply

  10. Mint 17.3 Xfce was proclaimed–in some quarters, admittedly, and deservedly–the best Xfce distribution in the world.
    History would dictate a similar fate for 18.3 Xfce.

    Reply

  11. Thanks for the amazing work and making Linux accessible to people who otherwise may not have ever found or switched to Linux. Xfce is indispensable!

    Two issues:

    When I suspend the system, and re-login, my networking is disabled, and the network icon doesn’t respond when I click the icon and click “Enable Networking” (which I never unchecked myself).

    I have addressed this issue on the forum, but the mint-x-dark icon theme is missing the tiny lock icon over the wifi bars icon showing users at-a-glance whether they are connected to VPN.

    Reply

    1. “When I suspend the system, and re-login, my networking is disabled, and the network icon doesn’t respond when I click the icon and click “Enable Networking” (which I never unchecked myself).”

      That also happens with 18.2. I can’t see wifi networks, disabling wifi/networking doesn’t fix, only a restart does.
      Maybe a newer version of network-manager could be used in 18.3?

    2. the same problem with me when i suspend my laptop and re login the wifi just dosen’t work so i need to save my files and restart the computer all over, i hope the LM TEAM fix it

    4. @clem

      There was an update to the network manager last week/a few days ago.
      To me, it seemed to have fixed the issue after waking up from suspend, when it did not show WiFi networks. But if I click on disable wif or networking and then re-enable, then the same issue comes back. No wifi networks are detected (it auto-connects to the previous network fine) and the networking window that shows up in the taskbar is very small and with scrolling options.Sometimes it shows a wired icon when I am connected to a WiFi network and sometimes it shows the WiFi icon as if I had no network signal (a gray icon instead of one with white filling)

  12. The Mint-Y “minimize, maximize and close” buttons don’t change. They are still – + X no matter what I do.

    Reply

  13. 1) the network manager applet pop up window from the indicator plugin is very small, uncomfortable.

    2) Power Manager / Screensaver /Locker

    With the default configuration, after the inactivity time, the screen blanks. Ok. But after “Delay locking after screensaver for” time expires, the screen turns on again on the lightdm login screen, and remains on.

    3 Appearance issues- Mint-X, Mint-Y, themes & icons-

    The Mint-X, Mint-Y themes are not entirely suitable for XFCE. This has nothing to do with this release, it comes from far.

    3.1-Thunar
    In thunar it is not perceived in which part of the window the focus will be when moving with the Tab key between the main box, the sidebar and the upper toolbar.

    In this subject, though not beauty, I think Clearlooks (to mention one that comes installed by default) is better, as well as greybird (in the repositories).

    3.2 Whisker Menu
    The same, with Mint-X and Mint-Y, on Whisker Menu, when moving through the categories with the keyboard, it is not perceived in which category the focus is. It makes you think the feature does not work. But it does work, Again, with Clearlooks this is clear :-).

    3.3 Xfce4-Panel
    Mint-Y theme does not suit well with the Mint-Y icons in the XFCE panel. Mint-Y has a dark panel but there is no “dark” variant of Mint-Y icons for the network and volume icons and the power manager (they are dark on a dark panel – that is, they are barely visible). We need “Mint-Y dark” variant icons, At least for the indicator plugin icons.

    The contrast of the fonts in window-buttons with the Mint-Y theme is not good. Lack clarity
    In general to the subject Mint-Y I find little clarity in the contrast, also in Cinnamon. Many gray letters on gray background.

    4) Compiz:

    With Compiz as window manager, whisker menu does not get focus when launched with shortcut if there are other open windows not minimized.

    To solve it, in CCSM>General>General Options>focus & raise behaviour i had to add:
     & title = “Whisker Menu”

    ¿Why not set this as the default CCSM configuration?

    Specs: $ inxi
    CPU~Dual core Pentium T4200 (-MCP-) speed~2000 MHz (max) Kernel~4.10.0-38-generic x86_64 Up~1:55 Mem~1270.0/1929.5MB HDD~160.0GB(66.7% used) Procs~182 Client~Shell inxi~2.2.35

    Reply

    1. 1) nm-applet plugin window looks fine now. It is correctly expanded.

      2 )The only real issue i’ve found is #2, the behavior of the screen-saver/ locker. Tried it live on different hardware (Intel Celeron) and the behavior is the same. the screensaver activates, the screen turns off for 5 seconds and then it turns on at the login screen of lightdm. So, no screen-saving at all.

      The system works very nice in general. Great job with the software manager

      I’ve noticed that after some time of work (with about 5 firefox tabs, 1 libreoffice, dropbox, thunar), used RAM is at about 80% (i have 2 GB total) and the system gets sluggish. I’ve installed the 64 bit version. Perhaps i should try the 32 bit version.

    2. Well, fortunately, i find that screen saving is working, though it does not work at the expected times.
      if you wait enough after the post-blank-login-screen appears, 10 minutes maybe the screen blanks again, as it should-

  15. Thank you very much for this new release.
    I’ve had a problem in Mint 18.1 and Mint 18.2: The icon of Pinta don’t apperars correctly in the taskbar. I only see a white and blue rectangle. Does not matter the icon theme. This did not happen in Mint 17.3
    I had regret another times to not say this problem in the beta release, so I told you now. I haven’t tested this version yet.

    Thank you very much.
    Muchas gracias.

    Reply

  16. Nice, guys! A lot of good stuff.

    Driver Manager does not appear different from the previous 18.x versions. For cpu I’m getting the default device icon with “unknown device” although it does(and has) listed my amd64-microcode package properly that runs fine. I’m just saying I don’t see it “presented in a more meaningful way”.

    I assume this is the same as github issue #35(and closed issue #39), and what was intended for presenting in a more meaningful way.

    I’ll be glad to do anything I can to help for it, let me know if I can here or irc or forum.

    Reply

  17. Does Nvidia X Server Settings still have the bug where it doesn’t keep the settings after you quit? It still happens on 18.3. Thanks.

    Reply

    3. Cool. Thanks bill skiles. It actually does save without running it as an administrator but the Quality sliders change to either the extreme left for High Quality or extreme right for Performance. Its doesn’t stay on where you left it on the slider when you exit. Weird.

  18. I am wishing for a little addition to the Mint Application Menu. It would be nice if Xed, the Text Editor, and the Calculator could be added to the Favorites category of the Application Menu. I belive the text editor disappeared when it was renamed to Xed. I use the LiveDVD version quite often, so these kinds of shortcuts are very useful.
    Others may weigh in on wich additions should be made to the menu, but I believe that the text editor should be mandatory. There is plenty of room available for atleast 3 more shortcuts and, for consistency, the Text Editor, Calculator and System Monitor are also present in the Mint Application Menu in MATE:
    https://www.linuxmint.com/pictures/screenshots/rosa/mintmenu.png
    Anyway, thank you so much for all your hard work.

    Reply

    1. Right-click the items in your favorites menu (or any other menu). You can add and remove items to favorites at will. It’s not up to the Mint team which programs stay on the Favorites menu. It’s your choice!

  19. Very, very nice version. Thank you very much. Compliments! Fast and stable. No issues at all.

    I use the beta version of XFCE 18.3. I hope by just continue updating the beta version, I will get the final version.

    Reply

  21. Install doesn’t connect automatically, or at all, to my wired DHCP network. No other OS has this problem. Just a regular user not a network engineer so a plain-language (jargonless) guide might help unlike the network applications with legions of barely understandable tables to complete (how? with what?). Not at all like previous releases.

    Reply

    1. I still didn’t install LM Xfce 18.3 (though it’s probably my favorite edition)… yet I know that the new kernel might not work properly, or not work at all, with some computers (old or new), so I wonder if you had such problem with the previous releases of version 18 (18/18.1/18.2), or is it a problem with version 18.3 only…?

      I had problems on few laptops with version 18.x where I decided to continue to use version 17.3 instead.

  22. Xed is not tiling properly.
    Only tile to the top and to the bottom.
    Not to the right nor left. Neither corners.

    Reply

    1. Hi Laurentius,

      Increase your resolution, or hide the sidebar and/or the minimap in Xed. Tiling won’t work in corners/sides past a certain window-width/resolution ratio.

    2. Thanks for the reply. I’m using 1280 x 800 resolution, the highest available at my laptop. No side panel nor minimap on xed.
      Currently using mousepad, which tiles fine.

  23. If my laptop turns off because the battery dies (or even if it goes into standby for any reason), there is no waking it back up. It’s still powered on, the fan is spinning and the power LED is on, but the screen stays off and the PC doesn’t respond to commands.

    This just happened and I had to restart the system twice before the trackpad would work again. I can’t explain the relationship between the laptop entering standby (or does it hibernate when the battery dies? this time my session was restored after restarting) and the trackpad not working upon restart. It’s the first time this has happened.

    Reply

  24. Thanks, Shian – only 18.3. It doesn’t find RTL8201CL any longer. I cannot find a driver, but that wouldn’t help either because (compiling- shock horror?!) installing it is well beyond my horizon. Just got to rely on Clem & co. on this one. Would be close to disaster if I have to abandon Mint this late in my ops.

    Reply

    1. https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_sylvia_xfce_whatsnew.php
      “Linux Mint 18.3 features Xfce 4.12, a Linux kernel 4.10 and an Ubuntu 16.04 package base.”

      https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_sonya_xfce_whatsnew.php
      “Linux Mint 18.2 features Xfce 4.12, a Linux kernel 4.8 and an Ubuntu 16.04 package base.”

      As you can see Linux Mint 18.2 is using kernel 4.8, while Linux Mint 18.3 is using kernel 4.10.
      If this is the problem, try to install Linux Mint 18.2 (with kernel 4.8) and then upgrade to Linux Mint 18.3 – but don’t install the new kernel (4.10).

      Or try even to upgrade from Linux Mint 18.1 which is using kernel 4.4:
      https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_serena_xfce_whatsnew.php
      “Linux Mint 18.1 features Xfce 4.12, MDM 2.0, a Linux kernel 4.4 and an Ubuntu 16.04 package base.”

  25. Magic! thanks. Already running 18.2 everywhere which has been incrementally upgraded from 18.1, so the solution you suggest should work fine. Will switch off upgrade options apart from ‘don’t break my system’. Wonder what other gotchas await.

    Reply

    1. See ‘How to upgrade to Linux Mint 18.3’:
      “Although Linux Mint 18.3 features a newer kernel, this upgrade does not change the kernel on your behalf. This is a decision only you should take.”
      “Same goes for the choice of display manager or the software selection. Applications won’t be removed or switched on your behalf. You can decide to make these changes, but you certainly don’t have to.”
      See also Update Manager->Help->Contents->Kernel updates: you can always remove wrong kernel by pressing Left-Shift or Esc key on reboot.

  26. hello, nice job but there’s still some bugs,
    – shutdown, reboot, log out are impossible for me until i do them manually,
    – wireless connection is unstable at some times
    – nvidia graphic drivers freeze when you try to set it into economy mode and when you try to reboot it you got the killer black prompt screen and the system crash.
    that’s all for me.
    my laptop is a msi 73 vr 7rf intel 10 core i7 7th gen, geforce gtx 1060, killer double shot pro (ath 10 k based ?) 8 go ram, 512 go sdd disk

    Reply

  27. The LM 18 / Ubuntu 16.04 installer bug in Virtualbox IS BACK !!
    Even in compatibility mode the display becomes garbled. There was some magic keystroke combo that may clear it, but I lost the process :-(. Using EFI mode is Not acceptable as I wish to emulate my hardware environment.
    OEM installation mode seems to have been successful.
    Mike

    Reply

  28. hello everyone , does someone have a specific LM 18.3 XFCE stable release date , because i did converte some of my friends from windows to LM and i want to known a specific launch date to download an iso image and installed to my friends laptop , thank you .

    Reply

    1. If patterns are worth anything, then it shouldn’t be too much longer. Another week, tops. I’m waiting, too.

    2. hello , i think that all the stable releases took about 2 weeks to be realesed is this true ?

    3. Linuxmint is not a date driven release usually the beta testing phase lasts 2 weeks
      then when it passes Quality Assurance then it is released as stable
      it has been almost 2 weeks already i figure no earlier than the 14th of December
      then it may take 2 or 3 days at the most for it to be available in the update manager
      so current users already running mint will be able to upgrade to 18.3
      hope this helps i have been using mint since 2012

  29. hello guys , i will get a new laptop from my uncle the date is Decembre/11/2017 and don’t known the laptop specs and will immediately install LM on it , so waht i want is to know how to reporte bugs to LM developpers ?
    ” i don’t think that reporting bugs in this page is legat or profesionnal “

    Reply

    1. This blog is the right place to report bugs. Please read at the top of this page, the section “Bug reports”.

  30. So far I have found only one major bug. Mint Backup crashes when trying to save to another drive other then the home drive. It will get to 13% and crash every time. If you save it to the home drive it works fine. Also software backup only allows things to be saved to the home drive and no options to save it any where else. It’s not the best idea to save emergency backups to the home drive because it that drive crashes you backups crash too. To top is off you can not copy the backup of software to another drive do to the size of the compressed file.

    Reply

    1. Hi Jim. I wanted to test this, and found that I have not had any problem with it.

      I was able to select “Other…” in the initial directory drop-down selector, or also directly select any of my secondary drive partitions there. The other drive has ext4 partitions, and I did open Thunar first and touch one of those partitions to make sure it was mounted and working properly. Also to mention, I have different versions of mint installed onto both drives, and from either installation I am able to easily open each other drive and get to any partitions and read/write correctly.

      Also, just to really test, I saved a few files from drive A system to a non-system partition on drive B and was able to restore them correctly. So then I copied the backup to drive A, and then booted into the install on drive B and also was able to restore the backup from A into the B system!

      So, it was all working very nicely.

      I don’t know if there is a problem with partition type, or available space, or encryption, or something else, but it seems the program should work well.

    2. ZCOT thank you, your information was correct. I checked my second internal drive and didn’t realize that is was still a Fat32 partition. Once I repartitioned it and set the permissions it worked just fine. I still would like to see a way to set both backup modes to send the backups to what ever drive. Thanks once again for the information.

    3. Hi Jim,

      We can’t reproduce this issue. Saving to external drives works fine here. Can you get the stack trace from mintreport, give more details about the drive/filesystem you’re saving to, and open an issue on github.com/linuxmint/mintbackup?

  32. When running liveCD, selection of invalid display resolution does not automatically revert to default if ‘accept’ is selected, 10s. elapses, whatever. Unable to recover default via CNTRL-ALT-BCKSPCE, either – Mint/ENTER returns to invalid display. Only recourse is hard reset.

    Reply

  33. Good morning.
    Off topic a bit, but what are your plans for Chromium now that it is no longer supported in Jessie?
    (lots of security holes are being patched, but just in Stretch and D9 testing)

    Reply

  34. Mint XFCE 18.3. beta: The new mintinstall is a step backward. Confusing and not as good to handle as before.
    There is an old rule: Never change a running system. I guess this is valid for software either.
    However I use Mint XFCE since a long time and it is my favourite Linux-Version ans so was the old mintinstall!

    Reply

  35. 1 ) Sometimes Power manager is asking for authentication to perform automatic suspend.
    When idle for the suspend-time, i find the login window, then log in, then i see this window:

    Authentication is required to place the system in suspend or hibernate mode

    An aplication is attempting to perform an action that requires privileges.
    Authentication as one of the users below is required to perform this action.
    if i give the password then it suspends.

    2) Sometimes, suspend shortcut stops working. If i restart session, it works again.

    3) Sometimes nm-applet shows wrong status and options are not available, though wifi is woriking. Restarting nm-applet solves this for some time. BDCM wifi. Recomended driver in use.

    Reply

  36. Generally it is the best !!! Thanks !
    No icons preview in thunar !!!! (tumbler is installed)
    There is no way to control the height of my country flag (language indicator) – it seems huge !!!

    Reply

  37. Starting XFCE 18.3 in VMware results in a desktop with the mounted installer disk, but once started the installer, a login and password field appear (after language selection) which is denying any given name/password combo, stalling the installation process.
    Now what?

    Reply

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