Many thanks to all of you, for your donations and for your support.
I hope you had a great summer (or winter if you live in the South hemisphere). Here we’re eager to get into September, with LMDE 3 and Mint 19 behind us, we’re ready to get started on some of the big projects.
LMDE
LMDE 3 was released today. I’d like to thank all the people involved in the project and also all the people who reported issues to us and who helped us fix bugs during the BETA.
The upgrade path for the Cinnamon edition was also opened. Timeshift, Slick Greeter and mintupgrade were backported towards LMDE 2 to facilitate the upgrade and the switch from MDM with sysvinit to LightDM with Systemd.
If you are running LMDE 2 Cinnamon, please upgrade before the end of the year. We’ll continue to support LMDE 2 until the 1st of January 2019.
The LMDE 2 MATE edition cannot be upgraded (Debian’s version of MATE is only 1.16 and this edition is no longer present in LMDE 3), we recommend users perform data and software backups and upgrade their OS via fresh installations. MATE packages in LMDE 2 will also be supported until the 1st of the January 2019.
Software Sources
The Software Sources tool was given a new look. Similar to the welcome screen, it’s now using an Xapp sidebar and a headerbar.
The optional sources section was also simplified and we’re planning to add a new option to make it easy to add debug repositories (to adapt to Debian’s decision to move debug symbols to dbgsym packages/repositories).
Mint-Y theme contrast
Within the feedback we received during the release of Linux Mint 19 it was highlighted that the Mint-Y theme didn’t have enough contrast and that some labels were hard to read.
Work started on improving the theme’s contrast.
Here’s a picture of Timeshift as it appears in Mint 19:
And here’s a picture of it with the contrast improvements:
The foreground colors were darkened (this is particularly visible here in the symbolic toolbar icons). The titlebar label is more pronounced as well, and the frame and contour of some of the widgets appear more clearly within the user interface.
Sponsorships:
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Congratulations on getting 2 successful releases this summer. I’ve always admired the Mint team for their dedication to their distro(s) and users. And that’s coming from a grumpy old tech-head of yesteryear who’s been using Mint since version 3 or so.
And it’s good to see the contrast in Mint Y being improved as it’s somewhat hard on the eyes as it is. Currently, in Themes I set “Windows Borders” and “Icons” to Mint Y but I have to set “Controls” to Mint X in order to increase the overall contrast. It also sharpens the fonts up a bit.
Question: Are these improvements mentioned in the post going to be available as updates when they’re ready or are you folks going to wait until 19.1 to release them?
Hi Kirk,
They’re still being worked on, they’re on a branch at https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/commits/contrast-improvements. Assets haven’t been modified yet and there are other aspect of the artwork we want to improve as well.
About theme contrast : that’s a bit better but please note that is it very important to have a different background color for the window title bar when the window is focused versus not focused. People with not so good vision cannot presently see any difference. The difference must be obvious. Thank you.
Hi,
Can you show examples of themes doing this properly? We did it in Mint-X but we were able to do it by making inactive titlebars flat… here the theme is already flat.
We’re also planning to consider moving towards GTK titlebars. This should improve the consistency between different applications and provide us with better shadows.
That last time you could easily tell the difference between the currently focused window and the others, was Felicia:
https://www.linuxmint.com/pictures/screenshots/felicia/xfce/mintInstall.png
That’s something I missed in a long time and it still bugs me to this day that the default theme settings don’t take this into consideration.
Thanks Kneekoo.
@Clem,
I’ve been also complaining to myself about this very same difficulty about having a hard time distinguishing immediately between the active window and the other ones.
What I use now on LMDE2 (both MATE and Cinnamon) and couldn’t do on Mint19 (Cinnamon) is having the Clearlooks-Phenix theme for window contour and MintX acqua for icons and controls. Pretty much the classic way of old Windows XP. Simple, ergonomic and immediately visible.
Honestly and with all due respect and consideration for your hard work, I don’t like this new GUI design trends and I just can’t ‘eat’ Mint’s default look to the point I rejected Mint19 because I couldn’t get it ‘un-uglied’. Back in the days when graphic cards had Ks of RAM everything was already done the right way. Now graphic cards have gigs of RAM and countless processing power, but things just aren’t the same: buttons that seem like web links or do not have text or descriptions on it (and I’m left guessing what is what), saturated primary colors like we were children on LSD, general lack of contrast and confusion between active and inactive windows, imitating the awfulness of the MacOS’ GUI, Evince not matching the system color’s bar and so on. Evince is a good example of this mess (the look and feel, not the practicality of the tool).
Please Clem and team, pay good attention to this critical aesthetic issue. How big is it for me? Big enough I’m still on LMDE2 and since I couldn’t configure Mint19 to my likings, I’m not using it.
Once again, thanks for your hard work and respect to you and the whole team.
Since we’re on the topic of contrast and visibility, there is another element of window decorator that I feel needs also improvement : the horizontal and vertical scroll-bars.
On the integrated applications (e.g. Nemo, xed) they appear when you move the mouse which is great. However they are still no so visible and so thin that you miss them if you do not make very precise movements. They could be more contrasted/colored and thicker.
On other applications (e.g. Firefox, LibreOffice) they are always visible, but with the Mint-X control theme it’s hard to see the part that moves (FR : ascenseur) because of lack of contrast/color (Mint-Y is better here, but I’m not found of those new flat icons).
Would be nice if it were possible to improve this too.
By the way it seems that Humanity is the only icon theme offered that shows a noticeable difference between the ‘Desktop’ and the ‘File manager’ shortcut icons. Please do not deprecate it ! (Another item to improve in the other themes).
Thank you for the hard work. I try to make people switch to Lint Mint. Visibility improvements can help…
I agree with this comment about the title bar and also with the one below about scroll bars. It would be nice to have a little more contrast (without being garish).
Many thanks for the continued excellence in your releases.
hey guys i’m not a designer but i’ve edited the contrast modified image with the title bar different
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ul2xLgIqEZonIDcU6rXWu-ntCVF3pWsJ/view?usp=sharing
For those wishing to change the visibility settings, if using Cinnamon, you can alter the color values in the metacity-theme-3.xml file under the heading “meaningfull constants”. I just did and it works great. These values can be represented in hex or rgba format
Nostalgia.
Nostalgia is just not what it used to be.
I am an older linux user started out with redhat, in those days no matter what distro you used, it used to take a week trolling the internet for hardware issue workarounds, to get the distro to work. Went to Mint about 10year ago. These days I say people have nothing to complain about from a FREE distro, just download install and go. I have a small issue with Korganiser on Mint 19 but can live with that, as Mint has given me freedom from Windows for many years. Very much a thank you to the Mint Team. (Aussie User)
Amen
Today I downloaded LMDE3, wiped DE2,resized and installed DE3. It sort of stuck on restart (Dell Precision T3400) but a manual power off, booted into it (3 OS box). Looks great.
Thank you for the hard work and many OS’s to keep my busy. My hat is off to all the crew! Mike
I have been Running Linux Mint 19 On my Desktop Computer since it came out. I can say without a doubt, this OS can run Circles around Windows 10 and never get tiered doing it. I have been Looking for new Laptop, since the one you must obey ran a vacuum over the Keyboard, and there is Guy here in town who sells used computer and I have asked him if a laptop he is selling with Windows 8.1, erase Windows and Install Linux Mint 19 and he refuse because he hates Linux Mint. Go figure that one out
You can buy the laptop and install Mint yourself… Am i missing something?
I’m using LMDE MATE from several years with pleasure and stability on a “normal” machine” without high specifications and this machine is shared with others users in the famiily. I’m not the only one in this case as you can see in the recent articles mentionning that LMDE 3 will only support Cinnamon flavour.
Could you please consider a way to provide a very usefull dedicated page to explain how some users could migrate from their LMDE MATE to standard LINUX MINT MATE distribution in order to continue the adventure with the LINUX MINT Team ! 🙂 but preserving their favorite environment without doing a fresh install and adding software, reconfigure all users preferences,…..
Thanks in advance considering this request.
Hello,
You couldn’t. The changes Ubuntu make to Debian break compatibility with it. As a result, Mint cannot be compatible with LMDE. Trying to upgrade one towards another would result in a broken system at best. If you have a dedicated /home partition you can try to wipe / with a fresh install and retain /home (i.e. mount it to /home without formatting it). If you don’t, you can use tools like mintbackup to make a backup of your data and hidden folders (that’s where your personal configuration is located) as well as your software selection.
IMHO, nothing beats a fresh install.
BUT, if you do really do not feel like doing that, my reccomendation, is:
-Set a / partition with 20 GB
-Set /home with the rest
After that you can even distro-hop by just formating / and mounting /home, keeping all your data.
Hi!
Thanks for your job! Linux Mint is well crafted, it is actually one of my favorite distro! But I don’t like too much its olivine-green color… So please if you could consider implementing some color variations in mint-y theme for next release (window + window decorator & button), it would be perfect!
Keep going on!
As has been mentioned several times, color variations are planned. I just didn’t want to tackle that until I felt like we had a nice solid Mint-Y to build on. Mint19 was the first release with it as the new default and I knew we would get a good bit of feedback from users.
@Palladini, just get the guy to sell you a Windows 8.1 laptop. Take it home and Mint it yourself! 🙂 Some people just love Windows to where they have to hate on freedom or even the hint of freedom.
On Linux Mint 18.3 I was using the Atlanta windows borders, as they provided an easily noticeable active window header and big clickable window buttons. Sadly this theme is not supported anymore. On Mint 19 I am using the mintX window borders and buttons as I like my buttons to actually look like buttons. I switched to the mintY icons though as I think they are are visually more consistent to each other than the old MintX ones.
A user on the Mint forums supplies updated versions of many of those old window border themes that work in Cinnamon3.8. You can find them here: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=208&t=272414&p=1516757
Since Mint now has a complete support of Flatpak by default, it think it would be a good idea to add a new functionality in Software Source that let’s you manage (add, remove, etc.) Flatpak remotes too.
Is it tested on AMD B450 motherboards?
You can be the very first to test LMDE3 on an AMD B450 motherboard. You can do it! DIY.
Sure Heedermann, if You show me how to put kernel v.4.17 or greater on LMDE3
(this is so far I investigated on this issue)
🙁
By what metric does LM today not work as well as it did 5 years ago? I’d be very interested in seeing your proof. Assuming it’s not just a load of anecdotal experience.
Your unhinged anti-millennial rant on the end there doesn’t lend much credibility to your claims, nor is your argument very clear. Is it bad that LM 19 uses the newest Ubuntu base or something? Which, you know, massively aids hardware compatibility for a start.
“The LMDE 2 MATE edition cannot be upgraded.” That’s bad news. I don’t want a switch or fresh installation at all. What would happen after you discontinue the support for LMDE 2? I will still be able to use my system right? Except I do not have mint repository any more, right?
Hi,
We don’t delete repositories when we reach EOL, they go on for years. You also have the possibility to mirror them locally and to make your own copies. The most significant change is that you will no longer receive updates. What we can do when we reach EOL is drop some of the packages we maintained so that you end up with their equivalent from Debian Jessie. This would basically ensure you continue to receive security updates until Debian Jessie itself EOLs.
@Clem: thanks for your answer.
Just a precision about your suggestion: I suppose, doing a fresh install, adding software and then upgrading the new /home using the precedent backup one: is there a case where a conflict (precedent configuration file) can be appear using this procedure?
In theory yes, in practice it’s very rare. Software is designed to upgrade itself so it’s usually well able to cope with data and configuration coming from past versions. The potential issue here is that MATE is older in LMDE 3 (because it’s maintained by Debian) than in LMDE 2. It’s unlikely to cause problems though.
In a usual setup, if you recreate / then all of /etc will be recreated including /etc/passwd and /etc/fstab so if you have multiple users configured you must recreate them in the order in which they were created, so that UID & GID’s match your expectations. Note that your crontabs are stored in /var together with possibly your mail. There may be other stuff to recreate too – your root system does contain some essential configuration data.
I would take a file-level backup of / before you reinstall anything.
Don’t forget LMDE2 & LMDE3 use totally different init systems. 😉
Thanks for this precision, but all this debate shows how LMDE Mate was really appreciate and users are trying to continue the adventure with the Linux Mint Team but trying to find a way to keep all their configurations elaborate since several years…… have a look at : https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3635#comment-145304
OK Robert, listen. We don’t know why you’re so angry, inappropriate, personal with me, why you hate systemd (looking at your past comments) or why you promote MX Linux on our blog. None of that is relevant, constructive or welcome here though. Please respect this space and our work. We take great pride in what we do and great pleasure to show it, deliver it and talk about it with our users. You really don’t need to make anyone else miserable here.
I have six requests for improvements to LMDE 3, and also one question:
1. I installed LMDE 3 on a new HP laptop with a Realtek Device c821 wireless card. It took a couple of days of research and experimentation to get this card to work properly with the rtl8821ce driver, which I had to download from here:
https://github.com/endlessm/linux/tree/master/drivers/net/wireless/rtl8821ce
This is still problematic, because every update to the Linux kernel requires the driver to be recompiled and reinstalled.
Please make wireless cards using this driver work out of the box with LMDE 3.
2. Please make all of the different colors that are available for the Mint-X themes and the Mint-Y icons themes also available for the Mint-Y window borders themes and the Mint-Y controls themes.
3. When using LibreOffice programs, if the height of a menu is too large, the top of the menu is positioned above where it should be, which is directly below the word in the menu bar that was clicked to make the menu appear. This occurs, for example, when clicking Insert in the menu bar in LibreOffice Writer, on a laptop with 15-inch screen. Please fix this.
4. When viewing font selection menus, in LibreOffice Writer for example, the menus are cluttered with a large number of fonts for scripts that are not used by the language currently selected for the system. Please either have these fonts not installed by default, or make it so they don’t appear in font selection menus if they are installed.
5. When hovering over some applications in the taskbar, like gnome-calculator, the window preview thumbnail image is surrounded by a border of garbled visual noise. Please fix this.
6. The touchpad behavior seems like it has regressed since LMDE 2. It’s harder to put the pointer on a particular spot. It feels like the pointer is moving on ice, with it often slipping and sliding past the intended target. Also, I often have to tap a particular object two or three times, instead of just once, to make it activate. Please restore the touchpad performance to what it was in LMDE 2.
Question:
I know that there were some performance issues with Firefox 61 on Linux Mint and LMDE, as discussed in this thread on the Linux Mint Forums:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=272691
I assume that this was the reason for the switch to Firefox ESR.
Will Linux Mint and LMDE be switching from the ESR back to the standard release when Firefox 62 comes out?
Hello,
For me, the main reason to work in Linux is performance and resources consumption.
How does LMDE compares to Linux Mint 19.0 performance wise?
What about resources, which consumes more?
Do you check those parameters for new releases?
Thank You.
Giving LMDE 3 a try. Works great!
Hello,
Just a suggestion to to have an idea of resources consumption and reactivity:
– create some virtual machines in VirtualBox (Linux Mint 19, LMDE 2 Mate, LMDE 3 Cinnamon,……):
– in each:
– Mesure the time to boot the machine from Grub to the desktop completely charged.
– Launch System Monitor to have a view of memory and cpu consumption.
– Launch Firefox and mesure the time to launch it and take a look at System Monitor.
– Do the same, lauching LibreOffice, and some other pieces of software.
– Compare the results from the virtual machines
Many thanks to Clem and your team.
You are best! LM19 and LMDE3 are the most stable and correct distributions.
Thank you very much for your work.
Good luck to you, health to you and your children!
Thank you for all your hard work on Linux Mint 19. I’m really getting to like it. I really appreciate your attention to contrast issues as described above. I’ve had the same problems others described, and I’m really glad I can look forward to improvements! (I’ve been happily using Linux Mint MATE since Maya.)
Any ETA on 19.1?
It should come out about 1-2 months after Ubuntu 18.10, but Mint does work work with fixed schedules. Instead they release when ready.
Unless they changed their method…
I think I remember 8.04 or 12.04 working really well for me, but those distros had issues. I was probably really lucky as I had to use a lot of proprietary drivers back then. I just happened to have the right hardware and I used the right packages at the time that I didn’t run into many issues. There is a lot of new software coming out every year and it takes time to get the bugs out. Older distros are sometimes better like the Debian Old Stable or Centos but not always depending on you what you’re running. I think the LTS releases are a good overall compromise between old and new software and overall the quality is pretty good.
Hi Clem!
Would you kindly ask Tony George to remove the “Donation” button from the main bar of Timeshift?
Why? Because it’s very GAUCHE!
Thanks
Hi Max,
A few applications do that. There’s a donation button in Gufw also afaik. I understand it’s not elegant and it breaks with the notion of a consistent desktop experience and a unified desktop operating system… that said, what you’re running is a collection of software applications which are developed by very different projects. Some are successful at funding themselves (Mint, GNOME, Mozilla, etc..), but for other it’s very difficult. We sent a donation to Tony when integrating Timeshift into Linux Mint but that was a one-off, it doesn’t help long term to fund his activity.
You can create an issue on Github and ask Tony whether he’d be Ok with removing the button if a particular funding milestone was reached maybe. Then if he’s happy with the idea, people can gather and sponsor him.
I couldn’t even recall seeing this button you were talking about. A gauche button somewhere requesting donations must be very awkward looking and really stand out. I wondered how on earth I missed seeing that.
I totally agree with you though, all gauche donation buttons should be removed, this one just isn’t. It is however gauche to yell to get your point across in social settings, even in postings by using all caps.
Great work Clem and the mint team! I recently installed LM19 and like it a lot. Not related to LMDE, I got a feature request for future releases: please add an audio equalizer to the system. Pulse audio doesn’t work well with LM19. I know if you guys develop one, it would be of good quality. Cheers
LM19, LMDE3 it is necessary to add the list – LMDS (Linux Mint Debian Server).
I am sure that LMDS will be successful.
Dear Klem!
Think about the server application.
I’m sure LMDS (Linux Mint Debian Server) will be the best server application.
And do not get involved in a squabble with “trolls,” they take time, spoil the mood. “Small” people.
Your team is the best.
Excuse me. Typo. It is necessary to read – Dear Clem.
LM is one of the best distros (best for me, by the way) out there and noone has the right to be rude.
Of course each distro has its cons, but if you like it you use it or you can use any other distro.
Best wishes for the team, for all the supporters and for you Clem. I really, but really, love to use LM.
Appart from Debian, or Enterprise Distros like RHEL/CentOS, i can’t think of a distro that can be considered more stable and works better than Linux Mint.
If you actually experience bugs or issues, feel free to at least point them out.
For instance:
I complained about not being able to distiguish subtile icons from video icons in the BETA and it was fixed before the final release!…
I didn’t even open a BUG report.
How cool is this?
Can you name any other distro that is so focused towards it’s users?
Hi!
When can we expect Cinnamon 4.0? In LM 19.1 or maybe earlier?
Well done with LMDE3 Cindy , Cinnamon running well now on my Mint Box 1
Hello,
For the themes contrast, you could perhaps contact Maurice SVAY : http://svay.com/about/
He made the logo of our LUG (http://www.graoulug.org) a long time ago, he’s a very good designer in UI. He could give you his point of view if he’s not too hurry.
I’m using Linux Mint MATE since 4-5 years and each version is more and more fast and beautiful. What you are doing is very impressive, thank you very much.
What advantages does LMDE 3 offer over the current version of pure Debian? A couple of years ago, before LMDE 2, Debian used the ESR (and therefore often out-of-date) Firefox and awful Gnome 3, without the options for desktop interface that it now has. These advantages of LMDE now seem to be gone.
Thanks.
Thanks for your reply, I look forward to use natively integrated colors variation in mint-y theme!
Regarding Robertservice comments of “Why are ‘improvements’ in most Linux distributions these days indistinguishable from regressions” I have found each release gets better and better overall. I agree that if one installs a version as soon as it comes out there can sometimes be issues, but they get very swiftly sorted by the team. If that is a problem maybe wait til a point release before upgrading? As an example, Mint 18 on my hardware had sound issues, which were fixed in later point releases. As a (retired) software tester, no matter how much testing is done, once software is released into the wild issues will always occur. It is impossible to cater for every conceivable combination of hardware and software (apple have an advantage here because they know exactly what hardware is out there, and even then they sometimes mess it up). I think Clem and the team do an amazing job and for most people it just works, and I, for one, am very grateful for all the hard work they put in
I have tried to get older hardware resurrect on linux years ago. Ended up frustrated back then.
Now I was given an old HP Laptop originally on Vista64 before someone bruteforced XP32 on it.
It was running but became sluggish and had more and more issues on firefox. Gave it a go…
I had no issues at all, downloading LM19 Mate64, flash it on USB, bull-doze HD and install it.
It ran on first attempt and the Laptop became useful again!
I must say: it helps if you read some useful tips in advance, including what Distro to use…
Thanks to all LM team for their marvelous work! Thanks for creating an OS that copes with the newest
Websites and tools out there, yet with slightly dusted hardware, and is still intuitive like in good old XP days.
And without the need of daylong debugging hardware like in earlier Linux days. Great Work !!!
Thank you! Great work!
Why don’t you implement in Xreader the function send-to , to send the file as attachment to email ?
Would be perfect!
Dear Linux Mint Community,
Thanks for many years with Linux Mint. I have really enjoyed the work with that system. Since you decided not to support KDE anymore, which is my favored desktop, I need to seek for another distribution which uses KDE.
So anyway, I wish your distro success and many many users. Mint is great, no doubt about it.
Thanks again and bye bye