Monthly News – March 2019

Many thanks for your support and donations and also for your feedback and ideas. Today we’ll talk a little bit about some of the negative aspects of Free Software development, but before we do, I want to emphasize how lucky we are here at Linux Mint to have this community and this level of support. It’s not always easy to achieve what we want, sometimes it’s not even easy to define what we want to achieve. We can have doubts, we can work really hard on something for a while and then question it so much, we’re not even sure we’ll ship it. We can get demotivated, uncertain, depressed even by negative reactions or interactions, and it can lead to developers stepping away from the project, taking a break or even leaving for good. And then sometimes simply seeing people enjoy what we did can boost an entire team, whether it’s seeing happiness in an email/comment or getting a feeling of satisfaction after a constructive interaction which leads to a fix or an implementation.

I personally haven’t enjoyed this development cycle so far. 2 of our most talented developers have been away. Boosting performance in the Muffin window manager hasn’t been, and still isn’t, straight forward. Feedback on the new website and logo brought a huge amount of incertitude. We’ll still have a great release in the end and we’ll still achieve plenty of improvements (we did already to a certain extent), but we need to be strong and remain confident and it’s not easy when so much time is invested into something and then a month later it’s not ready, or it causes other issues, or it might please some people but not others. For a team to work, developers need to feel like heroes. They want the same things as users, they are users, they were “only” users to start with. At some stage they decide to get involved and they start investing time, efforts and emotions into improving our project. What they’re looking for the most is support and happiness. They need feedback and information to understand bugs or feature requests and when they’re done implementing something, they need to feel like heroes, they literally do, that’s part of the reason they’re here really.

I can show them 500 people donated money last month, I can forward emails to the team where people tell me how much they love Linux Mint, I can tell them they’re making a difference but there’s nothing like interacting directly with a happy user, seeing first-hand somebody be delighted with what you worked on. How our community interacts with our developers is key, to their work, to their happiness and to their motivation.

On his blog, Georges Stavracas talked about his experience:

On Being a Free Software Maintainer

This is something we read within the team and of course I think most Free Software developers can relate to. What I really enjoyed in Georges’ blog post is that he illustrated how from being a user, he became a contributor, and from there how he eventually became a developer.

We sometimes feel a divide between “users” and “developers”, as if they were different people, as if users weren’t developers and developers weren’t users and that’s ridiculous.

The notion that an empowered developer can’t understand something that is clear for everyone else is something we see in the streets, in politics. It’s a populist notion where empowerment is corrupt and the street knows best. That’s not how it works here, there’s no difference between a user and a developer other than their level of investment within the project. Anybody can and should contribute to the best of their ability to tackling the problems they have knowledge of.

I think I have a tough skin and it is my role also to protect this project, the people I work with and the community around us. We can have so much fun working together, I think it’s important we nurture these relationships and ensure the interactions remain as positive and constructive as possible.

Feedback is something we should love, not something we should fear. It’s what fuels our project and our development. When developers do things right, the changes they commit result in users being even more happy. When users do things right, the feedback they give results in developers being even more motivated.

We’re very careful not to frustrate users with (sometimes necessary) code changes. It is important for our community to not demotivate those who within itself stepped forward to become the so-called developers.

Before I move on to the next topic, I’d like to say thanks to Georges Stavracas for his work on GNOME Calendar. It’s a great application and we were delighted to add it to Linux Mint 19.

I hope that didn’t sound like a moralizing rant. Things are going very well. Georges’ post brought the topic up and I think it’s good for us as a community to touch on the topic as well. I also feel the need to clarify my position on this as I’m involved in moderating this blog, I’m often looking for quality feedback, detailed information that can help us do better and keeping motivation and fun as high as I can for everybody involved.

Website and logo design

The feedback on the new website design left us perplex. First of all, I’d like to thank all the people who gave us feedback on this. It wasn’t what I expected, but it does always help.

I think we already knew that our community is split between people who embrace the new trends (flat style, no gradients, simple lines/shapes…etc) and people who don’t enjoy them. We have that in mind when developing software (we use new widgets here and there but not as liberally as in say GNOME) and themes (such as Mint-Y and Mint-X). We want to look modern but not avant-garde, and we want to keep support for what people loved in the past and continue to enjoy. I didn’t think so many people enjoyed our current website, and that really surprised me. It does make sense though, the trend nowadays on the Web is for websites to look flat, they all do, and failing that they look old, and that’s the problem we’re trying to tackle: Our website looks really outdated.

Within the feedback, and putting the dislike for the new trends aside, I noted that the new design was a bit generic and didn’t convey enough identity. It’s a good point and it’s something we need to work on.

I also gathered similar feedback on the icon. I’d like to thank Grady and SebastJava for their work within the design team. I’m not sure we’ll push the change during this cycle, it will depend on how other things go I think, but the more we’re looking at it the more we feel the need for versatility, even at the cost of looking unique. That leaf shape, and its border in particular, is restricting us in many ways and preventing us from producing crisp visuals in some areas of the operating system. The simpler the logo is the more shapes/buttons/backgrounds it can adapt to. We’ll document that as we go along. For now, just like the website, this is still pretty much a work in progress.

Themes improvements

A project was started to improve the artwork for Linux Mint 19.2. It’s available as a milestone and you can follow its progress on Github at https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/milestone/1.

Some of the work items in this project were implemented.

Some reviews of Linux Mint 19 and 19.1 criticized the quality of the fonts and the overall contrast. These two aspects were looked at in detail.

The fonts were switched to the Ubuntu fonts. They look slightly nicer and removing the Noto fonts (fonts-noto, fonts-noto-hinted and fonts-noto-unhinted) also allowed us to fix a bug which caused stuttering in Chromium. The work done on this is available at https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/issues/200.

The theme contrast in Mint-Y went under heavy scrutiny. We did improve it twice after all, and if we were still getting negative feedback, so it was time to really analyze this, write down anything that could be wrong with it, fix it and stand our ground once the job was done. This is available at https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/issues/198. One of the key things in there were the missing improvements in GTK2, this is fixed now.

Last but not least, we looked at fullcolor action icons. This is probably the biggest improvement in terms of contrast. The issue and its solution are described at https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/issues/197.

Cinnamon improvements

It’s all about Muffin at the moment. We’re trying to make it smoother, to make the windows feel lighter… radical changes and refactoring occurred, it’s eating a lot of time and we’re chasing regressions left, right and center. This is documented at https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/8454. It’s a really tough exercise, it creates tensions within the team but the potential is there, if we can make our WM snappier it’s worth the hassle.

The ability to switch VSYNC on or off no longer requires restarting Cinnamon and we’re adding a combo in the preferences to be able to choose the VSYNC method. It’s a bit technical… there are 3 VSYNC techniques if I may say so, we were always using the same one. We’re now letting users switch to the other two so that we’re able to gather feedback and get a better idea of their pros and cons on various hardware and conditions.

A printer applet, based on the printers@linux-man, will be added to the core project and loaded in Cinnamon by default.

Downtime on multiple servers

You may have noticed some of our servers went down lately. This has happened three times so far and it’s due to a power issue in one of the data centers we’re using. We were promised the issue would soon be resolved permanently. We’re keeping an eye on this and we would like to apologize for the inconvenience.

Linux Mint 19.2 codenamed

We want our next release to be “simply the best”, and so its codename will be “Tina” 🙂

It will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit and in three editions: Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce. Its base will continue to be Ubuntu 18.04, it will supported until April 2023 and upgrading to it will be safe and easy.

Alpha Testing

We’re currently working on making it possible to “Alpha-test” Linux Mint. A “Daily Build” PPA is available at https://launchpad.net/~linuxmint-daily-build-team/+archive/ubuntu/daily-builds.

This PPA gathers the latest code changes for the software we work on (Mint tools, Xapps, Cinnamon etc..), builds packages on a daily base and provides software updates.

Be warned, daily builds are unstable by definition and translations aren’t complete until we get close to BETA. We’ll soon document how to use this PPA and how to report regressions to the team within the Developer Guide.

We’re hoping to have more eyes and more feedback as we go along, within the development cycle, to identify regressions sooner than later and make the BETA phase a little less intense than it currently is.

Other improvements

The Update Manager received a huge number of improvements (again). We’ll go through this in detail, with screenshots, in the next blog post.

The Blueberry systray menu now lets you connect or disconnect paired devices with a click of the mouse.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Platinum Sponsors:
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Donations in February:

A total of $11,225 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 485 donors:

$1337 (4th donation), Shawn C aka “citypw
$218 (6th donation), Jan S.
$200, Peter K.
$150, Fabio D. M. Q. G.
$136 (2nd donation), Michael J.
$109, Regine C.
$109, Riemer T.
$101 (4th donation), Carl J.
$100 (7th donation), Jack W. S. aka “kundalinijack”
$100 (6th donation), Nasser Bader aka “VIRUS
$100 (5th donation), Mountain Computers, Inc
$100 (5th donation), Mimi
$100 (2nd donation), William R.
$100 (2nd donation), W G. M.
$100, John H.
$100, Eric J.
$100, MageMojo Magento Hosting
$100, Philip W.
$100, Michael T.
$100, Andrew J.
$82 (2nd donation), W. S. .
$65, David L.
$65, Steen B.
$60 (3rd donation), Barbara B.
$54 (4th donation), Naoise G.
$54, Norbert M.
$54, Louis R.
$54, Agitos GmbH
$54, JG
$54, Luis R.
$54, Karl-günter N.
$50 (32nd donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (17th donation), Robert D B.
$50 (8th donation), Michael C.
$50 (5th donation), Philip G. aka “-PGG-”
$50 (4th donation), Greg C.
$50 (3rd donation), John Mrochek aka “pcwabbits”
$50 (3rd donation), Terrence P.
$50 (3rd donation), Carlos H. G. C.
$50 (2nd donation), Grady V. aka “Donate!
$50, Beatrice G.
$50, Robert H. M.
$50, Bert N.
$50, Philip Goehle Parker aka “OhioEagle”
$50, Kevin M.
$50, Simple ASIC, LLC
$50, Michael B.
$50, James C.
$50, Charles R.
$50, Christopher K.
$50, Paul Y.
$50, David H.
$50, Ron M.
$50, Greg M.
$50, Miguel F. D. C. M.
$50, Pat S.
$46, Armin F.
$44 (2nd donation), Michael D.
$44 (2nd donation), Anna U.
$40, Troy O.
$40, Gary R.
$40, Jon B.
$33 (107th donation), Olli K.
$33 (5th donation), Stephen M.
$33, Jorge M.
$33, Bryan L.
$33, Carlos F.
$33, Maik K.
$33, Sigurður E.
$33, Francois X. G.
$33, Fabrice D.
$33, Daniel H.
$33, Steven C.
$33, Arto V.
$33, Andrej S.
$30 (3rd donation), Anthony C.
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$30 (2nd donation), Glen K.
$30 (2nd donation), Martin C. C. aka “Jesus Way Truth Life
$30, Daniel A.
$30, Joseph G.
$30, KENAX
$30, Lawrence N.
$30, Sean F.
$30, Monty W.
$30, Kaushik V.
$30, Troy B.
$29 (16th donation), Ky LMDE
$28 (13th donation), Geoff P
$27 (5th donation), Heiko P. aka “CyCroN
$27 (2nd donation), Gerhard H.
$27 (2nd donation), Wilfried J.
$27, Martina C.
$27, John L. aka “John Appalling”
$27, Matthieu L.
$27, Jordi G.
$27, Dusko L.
$27, Be G.
$27, Daniel F.
$27, Jens M.
$26, Simeon I.
$25 (90th donation), Ronald W.
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$25 (6th donation), Kirill C.
$25 (5th donation), Frederick M.
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$25 (4th donation), David L.
$25 (4th donation), Scott O.
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$25 (2nd donation), Nikola N.
$25 (2nd donation), ZS
$25 (2nd donation), Kenny Schiff
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$25, Anthony G.
$25, Jeff P.
$25, Daniel P.
$25, Phil Landmeier Business Services
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$25, James K.
$25, Evan R.
$25, Jonas Ö.
$25, Bret A. B.
$25, Keith V.
$25, Kåre Högberg
$25, Raymond J.
$25, Roger S.
$25, Steven P.
$25, Allen C. W.
$25, Jake C.
$25, John C.
$25, Lennart Ö.
$24, Paul F.
$24, Simeon I.
$22 (24th donation), Derek R.
$22 (11th donation), Per J.
$22 (10th donation), David M.
$22 (7th donation), Henrik H.
$22 (6th donation), Florent G.
$22 (5th donation), Maurice G.
$22 (3rd donation), Arvi O.
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$22 (2nd donation), Maciej T.
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$22, Michael S.
$22, Eric U.
$22, James T.
$22, Jarmo K.
$22, Oliver R.
$22, Patrick V.
$22, José A. M.
$22, Iain C.
$22, Cortellazzi G.
$22, Carlo V.
$22, Adrian O.
$22, Evangelos G.
$22, Wouter W.
$22, Kai W.
$21.1 (2nd donation), Bro2
$21.1 (2nd donation), Bro1
$20 (20th donation), Peter D.
$20 (15th donation), Lance M.
$20 (8th donation), John D.
$20 (8th donation), Donald M.
$20 (5th donation), Peter R.
$20 (5th donation), Timothy C.
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$20 (3rd donation), Tony C.
$20 (3rd donation), Kai-ming L.
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$20 (2nd donation), Robert M. J.
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$20 (2nd donation), Edmund S.
$20 (2nd donation), aka “StBeesMan”
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$20 (2nd donation), Lal C.
$20, Thomas S.
$20, Sonoda H.
$20, John Lavelle (Visual Accounts)
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$20, Raza H.
$20, Andrew H.
$20, Marsha D.
$20, Larry S.
$20, Radim J.
$20, Laurence M.
$20, Carried Away Crafts
$20, Terry F.
$20, Jeff B.
$20, Jacques F.
$20, Rickey P.
$20, Daniel T.
$20, Richard S.
$20, Richard H.
$20, Peter D.
$20, Paul-andré R.
$19, Dmitry Kuznetsov
$17 (26th donation), Johann J.
$16 (25th donation), Andreas S.
$16 (4th donation), Krister R.
$16 (3rd donation), Franklin P.
$16 (2nd donation), Nick M. aka “manikos
$16, Miguel A. C. L.
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$16, Guido R.
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$16, Mario G.
$15 (8th donation), Juergen G.
$15 (5th donation), Kiyokawa E.
$15 (3rd donation), Lindsey H.
$15 (2nd donation), John C.
$15 (2nd donation), Larry U.
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$15, Patrick K.
$15, Walter C. M.
$15, DannoB
$15, taco train aka “tacotrains2”
$15, Цацорин Е.
$15, Frederick M.
$15, Tessa G.
$15, Marcel K.
$14 (8th donation), Marcin Ziółkowski aka Mario Nesta
$13, Martin P.
$12 (95th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
$12, Iñigo G. C.
$11 (30th donation), Frank K.
$11 (27th donation), Paul O.
$11 (12th donation), Eskild T
$11 (7th donation), Michiel B. aka “Fairyland Ironwolves
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$11 (5th donation), Thomas Klang
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$11 (3rd donation), Kostas K.
$11 (2nd donation), Alf J.
$11 (2nd donation), Macario S. C. T.
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$11 (2nd donation), Franck G.
$11, Page4U
$11, Holger M.
$11, Philippe C.
$11, Luigi C.
$11, Ioan G.
$11, Jón Ragnarsson
$11, Attila Á.
$11, Francisco C.
$11, Ant
$11, Hannu S.
$11, Kepa K. D. B.
$11, Markus C.
$11, Picot G.
$11, Mario H.
$11, Leon T.
$11, Bill K.
$11, Hans S.
$11, Hannes H.
$11, Titus F.
$11, Michael S.
$11, Alfonso M. O.
$11, Maurice F.
$11, Oscar J. M.
$11, Kevin C.
$11, Georgios K.
$10 (39th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (24th donation), Jim A.
$10 (16th donation), Terrance G.
$10 (16th donation), Rick R.
$10 (12th donation), Hemant Patel
$10 (11th donation), Elsukov V.
$10 (10th donation), Laura NL aka “lauranl
$10 (7th donation), Rodolfo De Nadai aka “rdenadai
$10 (7th donation), Jan P. aka “plavcik”
$10 (6th donation), AJ Gringo
$10 (5th donation), Andrew C.
$10 (4th donation), Anatolii B.
$10 (4th donation), Michael Chen
$10 (3rd donation), Modesto P. V.
$10 (3rd donation), Nedeljko Visnjic
$10 (3rd donation), Alfred H.
$10 (3rd donation), Adrian S.
$10 (3rd donation), Dja aka “linuxmint.com.ru
$10 (3rd donation), Eitan R.
$10 (2nd donation), Phillip F.
$10 (2nd donation), Arsen S. aka “arsen-s”
$10 (2nd donation), Ian K.
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$10 (2nd donation), Donghyun KIM
$10 (2nd donation), Anonymous
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$10 (2nd donation), Roger H. aka “MarbeauDC”
$10 (2nd donation), Harry S.
$10, Richard L.
$10, Eric K.
$10, Allan B.
$10, Kobkitti A.
$10, Daniel F.
$10, Qwerty IT Services Limited
$10, Lyalin V.
$10, Felix Honer
$10, Timothy J. S.
$10, Vineeth M.
$10, Roman W.
$10, Matthias R.
$10, Willson D.
$10, Sean M.
$10, Joel C.
$10, Matt E.
$10, John M. aka “Opu$”
$10, Igor S.
$10, Gordon M.
$10, Gregory B.
$10, Jürgen B.
$10, K S.
$10, Chau N.
$10, footballbettingguide.co.ke
$10, Jeremy B.
$10, Steve S.
$10, John S.
$10, David H.
$10, Jonathan P.
$10, Shubham V.
$10, Pengfei W.
$10, Timothy W.
$10, Nicholas C.
$10, Зотов А.
$10, Nicholas L.
$10, Shahram V.
$10, Aliaksandr B.
$9 (2nd donation), Christian F.
$8, Оленев А.
$7, Simone G.
$6 (11th donation), gmq
$6, Alessandro R. (2nd donation)
$5 (33rd donation), Eugene T.
$5 (24th donation), Todd A aka “thobin”
$5 (24th donation), Bhavinder Jassar
$5 (15th donation), Arvis Lacis aka “arvislacis
$5 (14th donation), Olaf B.
$5 (13th donation), Lumacad Coupon Advertising
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$5 (10th donation), Jan Miszura
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$5 (4th donation), Dirk S.
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$5 (3rd donation), P. S. aka “Mosqueteroweb
$5 (3rd donation), Dmitry N. aka “Dimex”
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$5 (2nd donation), Raphael M. S.
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$5, Nicholas K.
$5, Ruben R.
$5, Miguel P. H.
$5, joffito
$5, Tom D.
$5, Paolo J.
$5, James C.
$5, Donald K.
$5, Ingo H.
$5, Patrick S.
$5, Terrence T.
$5, Conrad W.
$5, Ben G
$5, Saša V.
$5, Denis C.
$5, Dario F.
$5, Daniel O.
$5, 東田 幸夫
$5, Sharvonne B.
$5, Linux Mint
$5, Peter Dave Hello
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$5, Igor F.
$5, Dellenentfernung M. L.
$5, Markus S.
$5, Cristian S. R.
$5, Florian B.
$5, Michael R.
$5, Veselin I.
$5, Owen L.
$5, Hugo V. S.
$5, Glenda O.
$5, Stephen Phillips
$5, Asutosh B.
$5, Dražen Lazarević
$5, Stefan O.
$5, Carsten P.
$5, Cheryl G.
$5, Bosyy O.
$5, Jaco L.
$4.1, Denise H.
$3 (32nd donation), Kouji Sugibayashi
$3 (31st donation), Kouji Sugibayashi
$3, Lydia W.
$3, Melanie G.
$3, Giorgio C.
$3, Andrea V.
$3, Дмитро Р.
$3, Abolghasem M.
$3, András N.
$3, Markus V. S.
$3, Robert R.
$2.77 (2nd donation), Trina Z.
$2.5, Jordan A.
$75.53 from 55 smaller donations

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504 comments

  1. I really don’t see why there were so many “negative” comments. For example, I think that the contrast is great. Some might be sending feedback for older versions of Mint… Keep up the good work. Linux Mint has definitely improved since I started using it (Mint 11). I think some users just do not understand how difficult making an OS is (not that I understand completely). There are those guys who start saying how bad Android is for example… And how they don’t like it. And how “everyone” agrees with them 🙂 They don’t even say why it is bad. They should maybe start a competitor XD

    1. First time I have made any comment on here, having been a Linux Mint convert for two years. I think it is the best OS I have used and would like to thank developers and contributors for the work they do.

    2. Thank you guys so much for what you do! I switched to Mint about a year and half ago and it’s been an absolute revolution for me. I reached my frustration limit with everything about Windows, and wanted to regain actual ownership of my computer. I tried a ton of Linux distros and Mint is by far the most polished and functional. I can tell it has really been a labor of love. I’ve been using Mint as my daily driver for everything but gaming since then and it’s been incredible. I finally feel like I own my own computer again. I haven’t enjoyed the day to day use of my computer as much as this since I was a kid using my first PC. Free software is what will save us from the technological dystopia we are marching into year by year. The 1% of negative people will always have louder voices than the 99% who are just using this wonderful creation in their daily lives. It’s good to listen to feedback, but know that there are 100x more people who love you and what you’re doing. You guys really are absolute fucking heroes, and I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate everything you do.

    3. Intelligent and hard to fool, fools easier, but it’s not…that we’d be smarter.

    4. Hello All, I just wanted to tell you how much of a big FAN I am of Linux Mint. I have literally shown this to so many people in my University and at my work and people have been surprised that this is Linux.
      So please keep up the good work; we are really proud of you guys and the exceptional skills you have.

    5. I have used Linux mint from when it first appeared and have been using it ever since. Prior to that i was mostly a Windows user. On this laptop and my PC I usually dual boot with Windows. On this laptop I have now deleted Windows 10 because every time I boot into it want to do various updates and takes many minutes before it becomes responsive. So now Im have just installed Linux Mint 19.1 and it looks and runs fine ( as it always has ).
      The only real problems Im having right now is trying to scan documents to my two multi-function printers, an Epson and a laser Brother. Had to use the Brother to scan to email, a bit fiddly. I prefer drivers that are in deb format not those horrible zip files that require lots of command line typing

  2. What bothers me personally is the manipulated Firefox. I do not like these presets at all. I also know that there are users who do not use Linux Mint for that. It is not enough in the user directory to delete the folder with the settings from Firefox to restore the location settings of Firefox.

    1. I find it sad that people want Google by default. Then again, people want Windows as well so.. Anyway, the logic behind this is also commercial, not only in Mint but everywhere you see a web browser, it’s documented, explained and it only affects the default. It takes a few clicks of the mouse to change that default to whatever you prefer and then you’re done for life.

    2. The home does not bother. This can easily be changed. But the detour to add a search engine (Google) is very special.

      Who has the hang of it for that is no obstacle at all.

      As average user one assumes that if one deletes in the home directory the folder with the settings of Firefox one restores it thus on the standard attitudes. But that’s not the case with Linux Mint. Firefox offers the possibility to add a search engine in the settings. this has been changed in the version for Linux Mint and made more cumbersome.

    3. I’ve been trying to work with Duckduckgo or Bing for a long time. But at the latest after two weeks I had enough from these search engines. There were just too many things that were (for whatever reason) not in the front search result. And I know how to use meaningful keywords for the search engine. What I mean by that, the partly bad search results of the alternative search engines were not due to the words I used for the search.

    4. Devil,

      You can’t beat personalized results. It’s called bubbling. Google doesn’t show you real results, it shows you what you want to find. When you type Egypt, you don’t see the top results for “Egypt”, you see YOUR top results for Egypt, these are different for everyone else. If I’m into politics I get political results, if I’m into holidays I’ll get resorts. This is your bubble, we all have our own. In our bubble, results are perfect because they’re fine-tuned (via our previous searches, but also our browsing history, our purchases, our microphones, our geolocation etc..) exactly for us. If I search for “python”, I get programming results, because that’s what I want and Google knows that. If I get snakes instead, I know I’m not tracked but I don’t get what I want.

      The more we use these services the better they get. The more we use Google the better it gets at knowing us more than we know ourselves and thus at bubbling us and serving us exactly what we want. That kind of service is perfect for comfort and to find things we already know about or might be interested in and hiding away what we don’t know or aren’t likely to have an interest in. It makes the Web smaller for us but more easily reachable.

      The more we use DuckDuckGo, StartPage etc.. the better they get also. That kind of service won’t/can’t bubble us because they don’t collect information on us, and so it’s perfect to get a clear view of the Web.

      As you can see both have pros and cons. It’s important to understand that Google isn’t just the best because they’re the best at doing it, they’re not providing the same service. When you’re comparing Google to DuckDuckGo based on how good they are providing personalized results you’re comparing pears to apples.. DuckDuckGo doesn’t provide that service.

    5. I agree with the current policy of Linux Mint on Firefox default search engine. DuckDuckGo should continue to be the default search engine. Usually when I use a search engine it is to find answers to knowledge based questions on a wide range of topics, including tech related qustions on how to solve problems in Linux. Thank God there is a search engine that provides answers on such questions without spamming me with ads on products. If I want to buy something, I would go to an online webshop and search for the product there.

      On very rare occasions, I would use Google to search for info, but only if I could not find the answer by searching with DuckDuckGo.

      I know that Linux Mint used to like Yahoo (and still does?), but I rarely use Yahoo. I also rarely use StartPage or Ixquick.

      Other “search engines” I like is YouTube, Imdb and Wikipedia.

      I have added those to Firefox browsers. But for me DuckDuckGO is the default search enging in Firefox.
      To me there is simply general purpose search engine that even comes close. Thanks to Mr Gabriel Weinberg for DuckDuckGO!

      Speaking of browsers, I also like the Chromium browser (available from LM official repository and Opera Browser (I think Opera should be available from the LM official repository as well!).

      One thing Opera Browser can do which the other two can not do is to save a web document as a PDF docuement (and it does this with correct formatting).

    6. Sorry to many spelling errors in my last post. I have corrected that last part and I post it again here:

      I have added those to Firefox browsers. But for me DuckDuckGO is the default search engine in Firefox.
      To me there is simply no other general purpose search engine that even comes close. Thanks to Mr Gabriel Weinberg for DuckDuckGO!

      Speaking of browsers, I also like the Chromium browser (available from LM official repository and Opera Browser (I think Opera should be available from the LM official repository as well!).

      One thing Opera Browser can do which the other two can not do is to save a web document as a PDF document (and it does this with correct formatting).

    7. I’m happy with both Firefox and DuckDuckGo.
      I rarely need to use Google’s search engine and i really don’t like Chrome at all.

    8. I found this in a search result for Mint search engines(although too it’s available directly in the Firefox search engine stuff): https://www.linuxmint.com/searchengines.php

      I would not really think deleting some files in user space would restore something different because from my experience every time, for any program, when you do that, then you get the previous defaults that come from files that are based from some file configurations in system space. So I guess the approach would be to go cooking around in the system files(yikes). But just using the normal given Firefox settings feature, that’s easy.

      Ok, so, Ixquick and Startpage are exactly google results( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage.com ), minus the google cookie scheme, cool. And they do help to support the Mint project in a small financial way so that’s an easy way to say thanks -if you will, for those of us who aren’t able or willing to just flatly send money. But it’s also mentioned in that searchengines document about “Privacy” and “Non-commercial” of which either point might be an important option for some, and at least there are options in the world of “Free Beer” – “Free Software”.

      From my perception, the largest part of “manipulation” has to do with the branding involved to get it nicely integrated into the Mint environment, that’s probably a lot of work, I don’t really know though, but you can do google default though it does show that option.

    9. I would like to add one more vote in favor of the current policy of Mint on Firefox. DDG is what i use by default anyway and i absolutely agree on the bubble situation. Google give you what google thinks you want and often they are right. But it is still bias results. They are handy but i want to unbiased results as a default and if i want to exploit the google bias i want to actively seek it.

    10. I agree completely with Clem about what he says about the personalised search results of Google. That is one of the reasons I avoid using Google when I’m searching for data as I want all data not a narrowed view on the data.
      Regarding Linux Mint, I fully understand that it is very hard at times to find the motivation to continue working on your project, even it is a project where put your heart and soul in. I compare with a manic depression. There are times you can move mountains, while at the same time the slightest complaint of one of the users of your distribution can trigger a feeling of “I have had it ungrateful one, I quit”. People are herd animals that stick in a very narrow view. That means everyone wants innovation, but no one accepts it as it means a change and change is what no one wants. That is a paradox that seams unsolvable. Therefore people like you and your development team are needed as the guides that show new roads. Never forget that the first one that goes on exploration in the jungle needs a machete to make himself a way. Your users are your jungle.
      Keep up the good work. I really enjoy using Linux Mint. The first distribution I ever used was Yggdrasil. Since then I have worked with numerous distributions. The one I landed on several years ago was Linux Mint 14 and I was hooked to Linux Mint. I really love Cinnamon. My two favourite teas, mint and cinnamon. Look at the health benefits of e.g. cinnamon, that is what Linux Cinnamon means for my computer needs.

    11. Generally I do not like branding, but I’m glad if LinuxMint does not set Google by default. It’s the first thing I change after a clean install…

    12. I spent most of my career in product development and it was never easy to please everybody, even some of the time. Everyone has different ideas what things should be like
      On one occasion marketing wanted to change the specification in a big way halfway through development and still expected the same launch date.
      I have been using LM for nearly 10years and I have LM on something like 12 computers using the MATE desktop and find it the best there is. You and your team are doing a great job.

  3. “[A]nd that’s the problem we’re trying to tackle: Our website looks really outdated.”

    Literature is full of relevant aphorisms: “Don’t judge a book by its cover” being the most-often quoted, among many, many others. Corny? You bet. So what? Please don’t let Linux Mint confuse the website appearance with its functionality. Ask yourselves how many users turn off animations and similar “eye-candy”; even better, ask US! Post a survey… a poll… asking how many users opt for the MATE editions, rather than Cinnamon… and why. Perhaps more important is the question of how often (and why) users access the website — I’d wager that, once an initial installation has successfully completed, few users return there (which might not be the case with the User Forum). The look-and-feel for this website (The Linux Mint Blog) is appealing, but there’s a limit to the appeal of “flat”, and a no-go to the “circular” logo that’s been proposed. Please… don’t focus so much on the externalities of a website; do continue focusing on the internals of the product. I know… YMMV (and this, from a car-free bicycle rider).

    DISCLAIMER: I’ve been running Linux Mint, solely, since Elyssa (Summer of 2008).

    1. I think flat themes can be done well… or completely messed up… Sadly, most implementations are messed up and not artistic. The circular mint Icon is a bit strange … Maybe it could have a circular border only on the website and have the regular one everywhere else… Or the logo could be tweaked to look more like a leaf (It took me years to realize it was a leaf)

    2. I agree with the notion of focusing on the inside rather than on the outside, but just as well, I think if they choose to change something, it’s ultimately up to them. In the case of the logo and the website, it’s not detrimental towards my utility of the distro/OS. I fancy LM Cinnamon for its superior usability over others. I only hope it improves over time. Incidentally, I find nothing wrong with the current site layout/design. It may not be “modern” in terms of graphics, but it was designed so well in its time that IMO, it’s aged very well. I never get confused on where to go or what to look at. In essence, a true follow of the KISS principle.

  4. hey i am new fans linux mint. first, thank you for still provides 32 bit linux mint!

    however I feel cinnamon needs to reduce CPU usage when idle. using a old 2007 processor the fan kept loud hard

    1. Hi,

      We developed a tool to measure that. It’s part of mint-dev-tools (available in the repositories) and it’s called cinnamon-stats-tracker. We’re paying close attention to this and trying our best to use as little resources as possible. I didn’t run benchmarks on master vs 4.0 yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if RAM/CPU consumption had gone down.

    2. I was very surprised that cinnamon at 32bit only ate 330 ram, I thought cinnamon would be as heavy as gnomes 3. and well maybe that was just the most important feedback from me. thank you

    3. 250MB here after several days (64-bit).. it largely depends on your drivers though, this is with Intel. RAM goes down also post 4.0, we reduced it during this cycle. I’m running master right now (the version you see on github or in the PPA).

    4. Is there a particular reason you’re using 32bit rather than 64bit? AFAICT all Intel and AMD CPUs released in 2007 supported 64bit (AMD since late 2003, Intel since mid 2006), and the first generation Intel Atom (which was 32bit only) didn’t release until 2008…

    5. Hi NM64

      I have 2 older laptops, around 2011, they have 64 bit processors, but 32 bit chipsets……. so I need 32 bit linux too

    6. binocry, You hit the nail on the head! I use to love Firefox, but now all it is a memory hog! It uses so much ram that it is always freezing up pages. I love Archive.org! when I scroll through their video pages it takes forever to load the next set of videos. Same way when I go to a picture search, be it on Yahoo or Msn, always takes an act of congress to get the next set of pictures! Another thing I hate about Firefox is all the turn on and off switches, like for tracking, history, and so on, but sadly it is all an illusion! Because, they don’t stop anyone from tracking you, nor do they turn off Your history. I love their About:Config! You can go in there and see, that everything I mentioned above is correct. They word things so as it looks like they are doing what they say, then You look elsewhere in there and You will see that they twist words so in what they are saying, or doing in this case is the exact opposite of what you think it is. I see people on here complaining about Google, and they like Firefox instead of Goggle, I find it funny that they don’t realize Firefox is nothing more then a Glorified Google Browser! Firefox, like I said was once a great little browser, it was till they fell into bed with Google, and that is when it went downhill. It is all about spying on “We The People” That is why Firefox uses so much Ram/Memory, and Google is the same way. Another thing I hate about Firefox, is You can’t watch a Youtube Video in 1080p anymore, sure the audio plays just fine, but the video just sets at a still frame. After awhile the pooch moves a little and You think the video is going to play, but grandpa was just turning over in bed. LOL! I love Linux Mint, it has come along ways, and I am very proud of the developers, and I give them a big thanks! But it would be nice if they would give us a better selection of web browsers to pick from, instead of shoving Firefox down are bellies! Because frankly the only good thing about Firefox is it’s Add on Apps, and that is it! I would love to have Opera, or some other browser, that was not such an Ram/Memory Hog! but as I said, anything Google and it’s Spy ring has their hands in is going to suck the live out of a laptops Ram/Memory! I’m through venting now! Linux Mint Developers! Thank You Again for everything, You Guys are the best! Regards!

  5. The Mint team is doing a great job, and you guys are definitely my heroes! 🙂

    The problem is, that a negative reaction tends to weigh so much heavier than a positive one. And there will always be negative reactions, no matter how perfect your code is….

    It’s unavoidable: complaints, abuse and rants will always exist. The only thing to do, is to weigh those against the (hopefully more numerous) positive reactions. For we must take human nature as it is.

    1. Hi Pjotr,

      Absolutely. I think it’s good though to talk about it. Negative/hurtful comments aren’t always made to hurt, it’s sometimes just that somebody’s been used to commercial relationship or hasn’t really thought about who was developing the software and what that meant for them. Talking about it also allows us to clarify policies and introduce moderation, what we seek, the kind of interactions we value, the kind we don’t want, etc..

    2. Just wanted to insert that I’m completely happy about the Mint project.

      I suppose many users might be like myself and just tend to quietly enjoy the fruits of all the work -for what it is, as opposed to the opposite extreme of users who will definitely get right onto IRC or the forums and lay out a ring of fire.

      It’s not like there’s a github section for the opposite of “issues”. 😀

      Anyway, I suspect there’s a lot of appreciation that goes untold!

      I just want to say out loud, I’m thankful.

    3. I fully agree with Pjotr and Zcot: I am very pleased with Mint and therefor a happy user. Thank you Clem and other developers for the great works !

  6. Personally for me i think Mint site but also various UI elements of the OS it self is in need of a fresh new coat of paint. Might draw in a new crowd as well, the old site design to me looks like something that should have been taken out back and put down years ago. Don’t be afraid to push into the future, i would hate to see Mint get stuck in the past.

    1. This is absolutely true. Although I don’t think it’s a goal for Linux Mint to become commercial, it’s vital for the long-term success, the growth of its user base and therefore by extension the quality of the project that it is able to reach a large audience, that it looks slick and that it’s intuitive to use. Personally I’m not even 25 and wow, if an OS shines through its design that is SO important. Let’s keep modern! Let’s realise that all the people saying “I’ve been using Mint since 1934 and I never had a problem with an old-school website, I know what I am looking for” is valid, but it’s not the way forward. How will you excite people that are just starting out, that go to the website to consider if they will even give it a try?
      I’m very happy with Mint and have been for about 4 years now, by the way Clem! Never posted a comment but I think the product is so professional and I love it. And I fully rely on it being easy to use, too. Thanks!

  7. Maybe for a slightly different perspective on the user feedback part from this developer:

    Naturally we’re all human, so positive reactions always feel good, no doubt about it. But I’ve got many years of experience both with the Internet and with putting my software projects out there for public scrutiny. You won’t faze me with negativity. In fact from a development point of view the well thought out critical feedback is what I enjoy most. In particular when somebody manages to point me to a consideration that I hadn’t already thought about myself. I’m not doing this for the laudations, I also don’t need to feel like a hero, I’m simply enjoying doing it. It is I who has to enjoy what I am doing – what everybody else thinks is very secondary. And I believe that is how it should be. This is not a job, I am not getting paid. I enjoy creating, so I create.

    The only thing I ask for is that you treat the people creating free software for you with respect, no matter whether you like what they are doing or not. The end result may not always be how you imagined it, in fact it’s not even always how I would like it to be, but there are more opinions and considerations at play than yours and mine and it all has to be balanced. If you don’t like where it’s going, get involved and try to make it better. That’s why we’re all here, after all.

    1. Soy un usuario de linux mint, nuevo e inexperto, pero me encanta este sistema operativo. Deje windows atras, sinque saberque nada dede informática, no uso aun la terminal, veo el escudo en lala barra de tareas y si hay actualización, actualizo y listo.
      Muy pocos en México, saben de lo genial que esno Linux mint, en las escuelas públicas solode medio enseñande a usarla la.ofimatica de. Windows, en maquinas con Windows piratas.
      Me gustaría poder donar, pero no se como hacerlo no tengo tarjeta de credito.

  8. All I ask from a website, or a distro, is that it not harm my vision with low contrast fonts or vast fields of retina-scorching whitespace, not make me search endlessly for undifferentiated hyperlinks, not bury needed links in endless sub-sub-sub-menus, not jettison time-honored and useful visual design cues, and not follow unhelpful trends just because other companies do. And of course, I always appreciate having options, Mate over Cinnamon, dark over light, etc. I’ve been a happy user of Linux Mint for several years now, because you’ve been doing it right. Thanks!

  9. That about 1/3 of the people disagree/react negatively is a number that shows up consistently with large groups no matter the project or group. It is often a surprise when a long standing project that starts out with such a positive vibe seems to go south. The truth is it always appears that way, it is inevitable, it’ll be about 33% once you have success.
    Once you make peace with that, become adept at sorting through the feed back with a sharper eye, it becomes all good. If you want to read tons of positive feed back large groups provide a bigger hit.
    You guys earn ten fold the positive feedback that you get. Just keep a sharp eye for the quality criticism.

    1. Appealing and true. You(team) cannot make people happy whose salvation can never be achieved what ever you do for them. I love Linux and using since 2011. I am user and always made my family and friends use mint and till date 1 turned out of 23.

      I agree with Kurt, but we are happy to have it in free. Even nature nothing gives in free. They are in abundance but we learnt to use and feel they are free.

      Please let share what best we can do to keep this project long going. I have been able to donate less amount but with small amount will continue to do so and always praise for what best among we got…

      Thank you so much and keep it up, we(family and friends) are with you(team).

  10. I’m using Linux Mint Cinnamon from 17 version, and this great system. Today I use 19.1 and it very stable system, without serious problem. You just need free volunteer command, which will be testing new version of OS in backstage, before it been represent widely society.

    1. Hi Pavel,

      Yes. Our BETA phase is extremely important and it plays a huge role in the quality of our software and our distribution, not only for Linux Mint, but also for cross-distribution projects such as Cinnamon, which are deployed elsewhere. It’s during BETA that we identify most of the bugs unknown to the team and it’s during BETA that we also fix most critical bugs (it’s quite rare in fact, and quite infuriating to see a critical bug get through BETA and affect the stable release). With ALPHA testing we’re hoping to catch regressions much earlier.

  11. I am not a programmer. I am a Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 user. I enjoy what I have available to me. I use to have windows 10 but I got hacked more than once and that doesn’t sit well with me. I am happy to have found LMDE 3. It helps with everything I do. I don’t use much from what there is provided, I just use what I know that I can. I use to be with Ubuntu, but I also been hacked through there too. Debian Edition is very protected and I like that. I am on disability where I don’t make much. I am hoping this will help to understand there are people like me that must do the same. I like the platform of Linux. You guys are doing great. I can tell through the updates that my computer gets. Now if you can make a Cellphone type, I would use it on my cellphone too. That is if my cell company would contribute.

    1. Thanks John,

      Apple and Google dominate all aspect of that market (in terms of money, user base, information, services and product quality). I don’t think we would do better, and I’m not even sure we would even do well. That’s a completely different activity in my opinion and a completely different market. It would make no sense for us to lose focus like that. The only reason we would do this would be too boost our brand recognition. We’re not selling anything though on commercial markets so boosting our brand recognition could not matter more than the distribution itself.

      I can’t comment on Windows. I know for a fact though that Debian is not more secure than Ubuntu. The very same way you got hacked in Ubuntu, you could get hacked in Debian. I’d add that both of these OS (I’m even tempted to add Windows in the lot) are very secure provided you use them safely. I wish we had a security guide, it’s one of these projects that’s on our roadmap and that we haven’t done yet. With a bit of knowledge and good practice you can be much safer on the Internet, it usually isn’t the OS which is vulnerable, but the way we use it.

  12. I think the flat design of Mint is well implemented. Accent color control would be a very handy addition to Cinnamon by the way. Instead if having 20 themes to choose from, there could be a common color variable that changes the colors of the current theme.

  13. Just wanted to add my two cents. The post is a necessary emotional outburst of some sorts. I say ‘necessary’ because that’s exactly what it is. I think we tend to forget that the developers are the first users of the software and the first members of the community itself.

    We as users should realise that the team’s motivation lies in user satisfaction. Period. But they obviously cannot satisfy all users all the time. It’s nearly impossible. Personally, I might find a few choices of the team that may not be the best for me. But I will still stick with the product, because it’s not just that I love Mint, but I also admire and respect the fact the team does so much to build excellent software. I have learnt to trust them with their decisions. For me, that trust is what takes precedence over my one hundred percent satisfaction when I use the software. Building that trust in the developer team takes time, but it’s absolutely worth it. Sure, I understand that this may not be the approach for a lot of us. I too have had a constant need to find the perfect OS. But I realised that instead of hopping from product to product, I’d rather build confidence in one or two product teams.

    Just want to thank the Linux Mint team for the great work they have done. I not only love the product, but it’s also a key part of my success as a software developer. Thank you.

    1. I agree! Feedback is necessary (both ways) but it’s also important to remember these guys aren’t a company like MS.

  14. Hello Linux Mint!

    There is a problem I reported in this blog two months ago. I didn’t receive an answer and the problem still persists accross my two laptops. When I updated Cinnamon from 3.8 to 4.0 (my currently installed version is 4.0.10) a problem arose with Power Settings.

    If I click on Power Settings down in the taskbar on the right bottom side of the screen, the power settings does not open.

    Also, in the system settings under hardware, if I click on Power Managment, the icon becomes marked green, but it does not open. Therefore I am not able to see the battery status.

    I am asking you to try to identify the probem and push a fix through Update Manager.

    You did fix the other problem that I reported previously (that the system goes into total freeze when clicking “Power off the disk” for non mechanical drives (SSDs, Memory card used in USB 3.0 card readers etc). I believe you must have pushed this fix throgh Update Manager. Thanks again!

    Overall I am a very pleased/happy Linux Mint user. Though I am using LMDE 3. LMDE is also Linux Mint! 🙂
    The primary reason I use LMDE instead of Linux Mint Main, is that the latter is not compatible with other Debian distros (mainly live systems that I sometimes like to play with) when it comes to HDD access. A disk formatted with a debian distro can never be accessed from a ubuntu based system, and vice versa.

    Later on I would put forward some suggestions for making Linux Mint/LMDE better when it comes to hardware support, like for example making internal LTE modems to work, though very few laptops have been built and sold with such an option. There are also some other things I believe can be improved regarding hardware in the settings panel.

    However, for this time I am only asking you to fix the problem not being able to access the Power Managment after updating from Cinnamon 3.8 to 4.0. (Remember this problem persists on both my laptops).

    I have been using Linux Mint Cinnamon (the first year) and LMDE Cinnamon (the next four years) for almost 5 years as my daily driver, and I think Linux Mint have come a long way in these years.

    Thank you Clem for pointing out the last month on this blog that the Linux kernel can easily be upgraded to a newer and stable version from debian backports.

    I think the Linux Mint Cinnamon version is the most elegant Linux system available! 🙂

    1. I am not able to post the output of cinnamon-settings power on the blog.
      I am met with secury firewall message.

    2. Paul,

      I saw the issue on github and we’ll find a fix for this. Hopefully that’s the same issue you’re experiencing.

    3. The upower –dump command yielded no outcome, but the cinnamon-settings power yielded a (quite a) few lines, but when I tried to copy it from the terminal and paste it here into the blog, I was met with the Securi Firewall as already mentioned. It seems like pasting those lines made the website firewall “think” I wanted to hack the website, which I off course were not.

    4. Hello Heedermann I am not able to post the output from cinnamon-settings power because the website firewall quoted the following reason for denying my post:

      Your request was not authorized due to its content (HTML code not allowed).

    5. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Linux Mint. I only get one problem and that is mouse freezes. I keep wmshutdown on all the time and firejail to surf, and I restart if I can’t get the mouse unstuck. I am convinced someone is trying to hack my computer, but mouse freezes seem to be a thing with Linux Mint so maybe it is just that. Regardless, Linux beats any other OS hands down. Thank you for all you guys do!

  15. Pruebas Alfa

    Actualmente estamos trabajando para hacer posible el “Alpha-test” de Linux Mint. Un PPA de “Daily Build” está disponible en https://launchpad.net/~linuxmint-daily-build-team/+archive/ubuntu/daily-builds.

    Este PPA reúne los últimos cambios de código para el software en el que trabajamos (herramientas Mint, Xapps, Cinnamon, etc.), construye paquetes sobre una base diaria y proporciona actualizaciones de software.

    Tenga en cuenta que las construcciones diarias son inestables por definición y las traducciones no están completas hasta que nos acercamos a BETA. Pronto documentaremos cómo usar este PPA y cómo reportar las regresiones al equipo dentro de la Guía del Desarrollador.

    Esperamos tener más ojos y más retroalimentación a medida que avanzamos, dentro del ciclo de desarrollo, para identificar regresiones más pronto que tarde y hacer que la fase BETA sea un poco menos intensa de lo que es actualmente.

    Otras mejoras

    El Update Manager recibió un gran número de mejoras (de nuevo). Vamos a repasar esto en detalle, con capturas de pantalla, en la siguiente entrada del blog.

    Clem:
    I love Linux Mint and I’ve followed it since version 17. However, I’m currently very tired of it, perhaps because the characters don’t have enough contrast or because the icons are too faint (this doesn’t happen with Ubuntu, for example). Do you plan to solve this problem in the next version?
    Alejandro

    1. Hi Alejandro,

      Yes. We made many improvements to the theme contrast. I talk about it right here in this post.

  16. To Clem, and everyone in the Mint team:

    A very wise person said once: “try to please everyone, and you will please no-one”. That’s a fact. Change always meets resistance, but change is necessary.

    The changes proposed are very much appreciated, indeed. The website DOES look outdated. The logo DOES look outdated too and it’s difficult to “graphically manipulate it”, so to speak.

    You will always encounter people who would like everything to remain the same for two centuries, but you can’t give to them. For Linux Mint to remain a modern and usable distro, things have to change if the times require it.

    Keep doing a good work and don’t be affraid of the progress. Cheers.

  17. Hello, Linux Mint Team, this OS is cool. Love it. In my opinion, you shoud add nicer icons and themes (not just different colors) and effects. During my installation, when i chose an empty partion, ext4. Then i got message like ” condition not satisfied”. No problems after this.
    Cheers!

  18. People just like to complain. You can never please everyone, you do a wonderful effort to do and we appreciate it a lot. People seem to forget Linux was created from the passion of thousands of volunteers. If something is given to you for free, you don’t complain. The important thing regarding new design it to stick with Linux Mint’s values. Thank you for your hard work, don’t let the few negative comments deter your work I’m sure they’re in very low minority but they voice their complaints, and they’re valid as long as they’re constructive. It is on us to make that simple effort to show gratification…a simple “Thank you” never hurt anyone.

    Thank you!

  19. Linux Mint is my first Linux experience, and I’ve been using it for 2 years. I’ve used a lot of other Linux distribution, but nothing is more stable than Linux Mint. The only big turn off thing to me is Software Manager, because it lacks some applications that I need, and I have to either add some kind of third party repository, downloading the application from its website, or building the application manually, and that is not user friendly at all, and I can’t recommend it to any new Linux user, because of that. Could you please fix that? or is that impossible?!

    1. Hi Ahmed,

      Yes, let us know which applications you’re talking about and we can consider adding them to it.

    2. That’s too niche for us to add Nigel, it would need to be added to Debian. Most people either don’t download from Youtube or use a browser extension to do so. It’s also hard to keep up to date because applications like these just keep failing (the minute the web service they rely implements changes), you’re better off using an extension with a wider audience, and/or a flatpak for this: https://flathub.org/apps/search/youtube.

    3. Thanks for your reply Clem. A list of additional repositories to be enabled from Software Source will be a step to more user friendly experience on Linux Mint. I know it is not safe, but the users can do it on their own responsibility.

      The list of application that I hope to see on Software Manager:

      – 4k video downloader
      – Antimicro
      – Boomaga
      – Citra-emu (It is available on Flatpak right now >>> https://flatpak.citra-emu.org/)
      – Conky Manager 2.4 (It needs realpath_8.26-3ubuntu4_all.deb to be able to be installed correctly on Linux Mint 19+)
      – F.lux
      – master-pdf-editor
      – RPCS3
      – SC-controller
      – SDL2 (Faudio dependency for Wine 4.2+)
      – Winetricks (It is an old version that doesn’t has scripts like “winetricks d3dcompiler_47”)
      – Wine-staging ( A new version, not one year old version of Wine-staging)
      – uget_integrator (it has to be a dependency for Uget)
      – youtube-dlg

      Also there are a lot of browser that don’t exist on Software Manager like: Brave, Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi.

      I couldn’t play any DX11_32bit game on Linux Mint, and I found out that I need to install libvulkan1:i386, and mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386 that can’t be found in Synaptic Package Manager, and I had to install them manually from terminal, and I don’t know why all vulkan libraries aren’t installed by default, all new games can’t be run without them.

      Mesa are out dated, and I need to use either ubuntu-x-swat PPA or padoka-stable PPA to be able to run new games without any issues.

      That is all my complaints about Linux Mint, and I hope it will get fixed in the future, because it is the most stable Linux distribution I’ve ever used, and I want it to be the best.

    4. Thanks Clem

      The reply is much appreciated, and I will follow your suggestions

      Cheerws

    5. Hi Ahmed

      To download YouTube videos may suggest youtube-dl

      To both install, and upgrade on later occations, you run this command:

      sudo pip install –upgrade youtube_dl

      To check the available audio and video qualities for any YouTube video run:

      youtube-dl -F video URL

      To download you change to small f like for example

      youtube-dl -f 137 video URL (this is usually mp4 1920 X 1080 video only)
      youtube-dl -f 140 video URL (this is usually mp4 audio only)
      Then use mkvtoolnix to merge the two files into one.

      When you get used to it, you won’t miss any browser add-on to download videos.

    6. Ahmed

      I think I need to update my post about how to install youtube-dl and keep it updated to the latest version:

      —————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

      To install youtube-dl on a new system:

      —————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

      sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

      sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

      —————————————————————————————————————————————————————

      To update youtube-dl if you have already installed it:

      ————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

      sudo pip install –upgrade youtube_dl

      (note: install packages python-pip & python-pip-whl prior to running this upgrade command)

      ————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

      To check youtube-dl version currently installed:

      youtube-dl –version:

      ——————————————————————————————————————————–
      That’s it! 🙂

    7. Hi Clem

      Sorry, those lines in my post to Ahmed became way to long and was written out to the right on green area. I didn’t think that was possible. If you can, you may edit my post to delete the lines or make them shorter so they don’t show on the green area to the right.

    8. By the way Clem.

      I wish that when we write a post and after we sent it, we see that oh, that post need to be edited for some spelling errors or like in this post to Ahmed, I could go in and correct those lines myself as soon as I had seen how bad that turned out.

    9. Thanks Paul, but my point that Linux Mint is not for beginners, and you proved me right with the explanation of how to use youtube-dl instead of youtube-dlg.

      Try to explain that to a Linux beginner, and you will lose him forever.

  20. Since I used proprietary operating systems for all my life, I changed to Linux Mint few years ago and it is not only that I do not miss anything but i am really confident with using it. My version is 18.2 Mate edition but I will update to “Tina” as soon as it appears.

    I like modern design, but the most important for me are the basics, that the system is stable, fast and leaves the decission about what it does and when (updates for example) to me.

    Regarding a new logo I can only say that you made decissions in the past I agreed with and that I will probably agree with your choice of a new logo. It’s not that important to me.

    The choice of software that comes included with Linux Mint is more important and something that I like too. There is no software included that analyses me or my behavior and I am not questioned to upload informations anywhere, privacy is the word I was searching for.

    The mintMenu is something I like really much.

    I use your distribution almost every day and I am very lucky that i can do so, it’s definitely time for me to donate what I have not done so far but what I will do.

    Thank you a lot.

  21. Sad to have red your first § because you perform very well and Mint is incredible. Perfect not as it’s a personal feeling but overall, it’s my OS for years and thanks a lot to all of you (it’s also the OS for my wife, son, mother and mother in law PCs so all generation appreciate it).
    PS : I focus on performance and for the look, just not too aggressive so the logo and website are OK ! I prefer a solid OS with efficient functions than a nice look !

  22. Hi Clem,
    I still think, that adding customization tool as mentioned before and also in the link you gave:
    https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-themes/issues/204 (last point)
    Would be really, really good solution to us all.

    We would be able to customize many visual aspects of our Mint, like colors of our menu, windows, background in applications, color and thickness of borderlines of a windows, fonts color, title bars color of active and passive window, and so forth.
    Please consider this option in next releases.

    1. To be frank, such a tool will never give you that level of control. If you want that much your probably just going to have to learn how to modify the themes yourself 🙂

  23. Hello Mint-Team,

    I have a question regarding hardware support.

    In autumn / winter I plan to buy a new laptop. The device I have selected is available in two versions. Intel and AMD version.
    I would prefer the device with AMD Ryzen CPU and integrated Radeon Vega graphics.
    Unfortunately, there are many forum posts that users have massive problems running Linux Mint with an AMD Ryzen 2nd generation processor. Installation errors, black screen, permanent system crashes.

    Now my question: Will Linux Mint 19.2 support the 2nd generation AMD Ryzen processors with integrated graphics out of the box? Or would it be better to choose the Intel device for having a stable system?

    Small side note: I’m with you since the Mint version 17 and have not had any problems so far.

    You guys are doing a fantastic job. And whenever I can, I support this project with a small donation. 🙂

    1. Hi Markus,

      I can only give you hints and suggestions in the hope that it can help you, but in the end of the day, you have to choose that laptop and we can’t really tell you what to choose between Intel, AMD or NVIDIA.

      First of all, I’m a firm believer in hardware quality over hardware performance. A great screen, a good resolution and a good keyboard will always feel good, not just for now or for the next few years, but forever until your next laptop. I wouldn’t consider anything with a bad keyboard or a poor screen, no matter what the specs are. I say this because I know some manufacturers differentiate themselves by boosting the GPU offer or the internal specs (RAM/CPU/SSD).

      If you’re not doing video editing and/or gaming, the GPU isn’t as important as you may think, especially for laptops where battery life and heat are more significant. To run the likes of Firefox, Cinnamon, LibreOffice, etc.. the GPU doesn’t matter that much. Cinnamon for instance runs better on Intel than on NVIDIA, it has less input lag and uses less RAM.

      AMD and NVIDIA both have proprietary drivers but also should run decently out of the box without them. I’m not sure about Ryzen 2nd Gen, maybe this will help https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/8xrs5n/ryzen_2nd_gen_compatibility/. Mint 19.2 could potentially come with kernel 4.18, this hasn’t been decided yet though, I can’t confirm or commit to this yet.

      You can run Linux Mint from a USB stick in live mode. It’s worth asking the shop if you can boot the laptop with the USB stick to see whether Cinnamon works fine (this will tell you if you have 3D acceleration with the open source drivers) before deciding to purchase it.

      I hope it helps. Whichever laptop you choose, I hope you’ll enjoy it and that it will work very well for you.

    2. Hello Clem,

      thank you for the detailed answer. 😀

      It is a good advice to test the device first with a Mint Live USB-Stick. It should be no problem. I can return the laptop within 14 days, if something is not working properly.

      Even I do not know yet what kind of device I will finally buy.
      Maybe until then there will be a laptop on the market, which fits even better to my needs.
      Dell e. g. officially offers Ubuntu for its Precision workstations. I assume that Mint will also run on it.
      So I would not have to worry about that.

      Yes, that’s not so easy. But I am also confident that I will find the right device for me. 😉

  24. Well, the post of George was focused more on being a code maintainer than being a package maintainer (something that it makes me feel kind of sad), not to brag about the situation but I took some steps for being a simple user of an app to try to maintain it at least on the packaging (passing into a code maintainer is part of my goals and I will really like to achieve it somehow), if you can see many of your tools inside other distros, particularly Archlinux and derivatives, it is because of me and sometimes it is hard to deal with a variety of issues when testing, many of them are a problem because of newer libraries

    I won’t forget the very first tool I try to add to Arch (Blueberry in order to replace cinnamon-bluetooth, which is now in the Community repositories), it is that tool that has given me the opportunity to learn a lot about packaging at least in Arch, but like I said I would really like to pass into code and sometimes I find it hard of where to begin (something that George did in which I identify myself), specially since I do love some coding but I have almost none to zero experience on the language codes they use.

    As for you guys on Mint; keep going on with the changes, I understand that it would be great to keep things on the way they are but sometimes we need to adapt to newer times or at least try to cherry-pick the best things of new trends and apply it to the current one, so keep going on and hope you can keep being as awesome as you already are

  25. Clem, do not reduce everything to “personal taste”. Application icons, for example, were not created by the Mint team. “Gimp” has the nice looking brown-grey mouse, a “trademark” (so to speak). Yet, the Mint team decided that it’s best to flatten the mouse to white monochrome and put it on an orange background. It is not proper, it does not pay respect to the “Gimp” developers. The same goes for all these “let’s be modern” changes that Mint-Y brought. It is not modern to pay no respect, it is ancient. —- By taking the proper attitude, all problems are easily solved.

    1. Now, i am reading this and i see that it may be misunderstood as me not appreciating Linux Mint and the team behind it. It should go without saying that if that was the case, i would not take the time to comment like that. You guys are heroes to me, as well as others.

    2. Hi Panos,

      I understand the point you’re making but I don’t really agree with it. We using stylized icon themes so the logos themselves don’t matter that much. I don’t think your complaint should be addressed to us, not as a distribution at least, maybe as the maintainers of mint-y-icons and mint-x-icons. Anyway, I think it should be addressed to theme artists in general, and I don’t think it will received or accepted. I don’t think the stylized GIMP icon constitutes a lack of respect. When distributions are showcased in a Linux magazine, whatever the style being used, hand-drawn, stylized, comic-like, it’s not our place to complain that what is meant to represent us isn’t the logo we put forward. I don’t know, I see your point and I understand it, but I find it quite radical and I’m not sure I agree with it. In essence you’re questioning the notion of an icon theme itself. If it was to just gather upstream logos and leave it at that, it wouldn’t be much of an icon theme, and all icon themes would look the same (with apps looking inconsistent too).

    3. Yet, that is where the challenge lies: in creating an icon theme that will embody the “spirit” of the original design, not destroy it, as so many “modern” and “flat” icon themes do. Once more, and i am happy i managed to communicate this (despite the fact that English is not my native language), this is not a comment about icon themes (they are not that important, after all) but for all possible design decisions that attempt to modernize something beyond a certain degree of actual need to modernize it. Also, once again, i trust Linux Mint and encourage others to do so, as well.

  26. Hi Clem,
    Please fix desktop icon position. For example if “mozilla firefox” label is at the edge of desktop the icon will be shifted to fit the entire label on screen and it will be out of place with the rest of the column.
    posible fix is word wrap the label (making it 2 rows label) or just mask the rest of the label. also in case the label results in multiple rows that overlap the icon bellow then mask the rest of the label.
    Also sometimes for some strange reasons i get desktop icons (shortcuts) on top of another icon.

    1. Hi Clem,
      its cinnamon desktop.
      Add two shortcuts one with a small word like skype and the other from my example Mozilla Firefox
      Now set desktop to small icons | bottom bar pozition left (0) and you can see how the icons look on desktop.
      as for icons on top of each other i don’t have any example right now. it happen to me when programs (steam/wine/lutris) adds shortcuts on desktop

    2. Hi Clem,
      I can confirm this behaviour of Cinnamon. It also does not keep / maintain the chosen icon size and grid spacing. 🙁 After each boot the icon size is huge with the overlapping icons! It is a bit annoying, but I still love Linux Mint.

  27. Hi Linux Mint team,

    Thank you so much for all the work you have done for the system, I no longer imagine my life without Linux Mint!

    God bless free software!

  28. Dear Mint Team, Dear Clem,
    I would like to add my little voice to the chorus, despite I’m not an “authority”, just a simple user, so you can throw it away at your wish. Actually I am forced to use different OSes for work, other than Linux in general, but even not being a direct Mint user, I’m convinced you deserve me and others spending some good words about your work! It’s really sad to read such considerations, honestly I think you all are doing a very great job under any POV! Given that any free project out there deserves to be respected, since you are not paid for this, no user paid you to have an OS which fits their wish, so I really don’t get how could someone be so rude writing negativities with hates and expecting to impose their ideas. Linux Mint became a golden standard for Linux desktops, lots and lots of users reward it by choosing it among others, it’s surely the distro I would advice anyone to try above the others, and Cinnamon is a great balance among classic and innovation! Please keep the very good work going, I wish I only could help in some way… my personal advice for the team, to deal with all the rude persons out there, comes directly from a great Italian, Dante Alighieri, I the form of his famous sentence “non ti curar di loro, ma guarda e passa” “let us not speak about them, but look and pass”! Please focus yourselves on the (I’m more than sure) many many positive feedbacks and acknowledgments you receive from us users! Cheers from Italy!

    1. By the way, I always have a VM with mint installed, I love Mint-Y, and I always loved your graphics, themes, websites, and above all I loved the way and the moment in which you decided to gently evolve them during time! I loved Mint-X when it was its time, I really enjoyed Mint-Y, which arrived exactly in the right moment, and in the right way! The same I feel about the website, logos, and so on… I’ll stop here, but it’s never enough to say it’s really unfair and undeserved what some people keeps telling and writing, you really puts everything in Linux Mint, anyone with a living heart could tell it!

    2. Wow, thanks. It’s the first time I see feedback on the timing of these evolutions. I’m really glad and happy to read this because that timing has been and is very important to me. We introduced changes we wouldn’t have introduced earlier on and there are changes we’re introducing which we wouldn’t have introduced in the past. When I look at GNOME, I disagree with some of the design changes obviously, but there’s also a large amount of changes I understand and I appreciate but think were introduced too early. That’s what I meant by being avant-garde, we don’t want to adopt new trends, but when these trends become de-facto accepted and from trends they form a new standard, we need to acknowledge that and not stay stuck in the past.

      PS: There is money involved and we do have a responsibility and expectations to meet, but it has to be fun. It all started with fun and it’s still starting with fun for people who join our teams and that’s a really important aspect.

  29. Hello, Clem & Linux Minters:

    Just a quick post to thank everyone involved with the Linux Mint project. I sincerely appreciate all the effort, love, passion, etc. that goes into making this wonderful Linux distribution. I wish you the best of luck with any renovations and with the current development cycle. Keep up the GREAT work!

  30. Been using Linux Mint since last July. Absolutely love it and it shall remain my primary and only choice of OS for a really long time – if not forever. The developers are my heroes and it’s just amazing what this community has achieved and I can’t wait for the progress that lies ahead.
    Yes, complaints and rants will be there but we need to look at them objectively from a positive perspective. Thank you everyone in the team, do not get frustrated and I know and believe the future is very bright. Love you, Keep going

  31. Personally, I think the old logo is better looking than the proposed logo. However, I don’t use a distro because the logo is pretty or scalable. Changing it won’t affect how or if I use Mint.

  32. Dear Clem and team

    Please do not be disheartened. Personally I love LM and have moved to it almost exclusively, (I just keep windows for Sat nav updates and scanning as my ancient machine will not scan since 17.3). I have also had much interest from friends who are realising windows 7 support is ending and I am doing my best to convert them to LM too, it has come on leaps and bounds over the years and is very easy to use out the box and that is a great appeal to less technical people who just want “something that works”
    I think you will always get more negative comments than positive ones; such is human nature, people are generally very quick to criticise but very slow to praise. And to an extent you will never please everyone whatever you do, as people can have strong opinions as to the direction things should go and if you do not agree they will feel aggrieved. That said, I believe the majority of “negative” comments made are in the form of constructive criticism with the goal of making an even better product and are not intended to be critical of the work you all do.

    I certainly appreciate the effort that goes into making LM, and it is fantastic we, as “users” do have the chance to interact with yourselves and are given the chance to make suggestions with a view to making a brilliant product even better.

    And yes, you are all heroes!!

    1. Hi Nigel,

      “That said, I believe the majority of “negative” comments made are in the form of constructive criticism with the goal of making an even better product and are not intended to be critical of the work you all do.”

      I agree with this. I also think non-constructive negative comments often aren’t meant to really hurt or demotivate.

  33. I’ve probabily used most Linux Distros and Desktop environments, Ubuntu, Arch, Manjaro, Gentoo, Funtoo, Debian, etc… i keep coming back to mint, its just the best linux desktop avaliable. Mint Team, love you guys. Cinnamon + Mint = Perfect. Its time to stop testing distros and stay on mint! Just waiting for 19.2 beta to help testing like a i did on 19.1!

  34. Hi,
    I just feel like saying Linux Mint is a great distro and Cinnamon is hands off the best DE. A sincere thank you to all the developers and contributors.

    And I truly don’t get what is wrong with the web site or why it should be changed. (I’ve read why but I don’t agree.) It is intuitive, clean and easy to read the way it is. As far as I’m concerned this is as good as it should be.

  35. Thanks Clem and all who work and contribute in all the ways they do. The trouble with Linux Mint is that its just so blooming interesting and is always fresh feeling, I simply cant get enough. I tinker with It (Cinnamon), Use it as the Family’s main OS (Linux Mint Cinnamon 64bit). I have got some mileage out of yad/bash/dconf and a custom theme and/or settings loader, it was easy to do and looks OK by my standards (I’m not a coder but a master of web searches and copy and pasting bits and bobs into my own ideas), I just put my scripts into usr-local-bin and create launcher. I hope one day the Mint team will make something like this (With Mint Quality) though I do realise to some it seems pointless, we found it nice to change the theme with one click according to moods (We have a lot of Moods in our House). I know there are other projects out there that are great OS or Spins but for my family and friends it comes top and stays on the hard drive as the main system. Thanks for all you do at Linux Mint, Its been a great ride and hope many more scenic miles to come. Please pass on my thanks to all who work on this great system with you Clem.

  36. I just want to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude to Clem and every person who has been or is currently on the development team. Every desktop computer in my house runs Mint/Cinnamon and I find it to be not only the best “free” OS but the best OS I’ve ever used period. I think the new website design looks excellent as well. Thank you again to everyone who makes all of this possible and I hope you all know your work is appreciated by myself, my family, and countless others as we all look forward to the future of LM. Cheers!

  37. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but I think it goes without saying that any project that’s widely accepted and highly used will eventually get to a point where particular changes cause an uproar. Like many have already said, it’s literally impossible to please everyone. That doesn’t mean to ignore requests being made but to consider them, weigh them accordingly, and see if they make sense to implement. Ultimately, it’s your guy’s decision to put/drop something into the distro. Whether or not that has everyone’s “approval” is irrelevant half of the time. In cases like this, it’s not like you guys are doing things for the heck of it. Above most teams that develop free software, the LM group seems to be the only team that actually puts the user first. Despite my criticisms, I still believe this to be true. That is why I say, you can take the feedback and manage that in your process. It’s important to get insight (taking a step back) but as you’ve done here, it’s also equally important to take kind to the dialogue and respond when it makes sense to—especially for efforts like this which are community-run.

    1. Forgot to say: looking good on the Cinnamon updates. There’s no hurry with this stuff. Not sure why there would need to be. Just seeing you guys plan for the changes and discuss about it is also a motivator in its own way. Keeps things interesting.

  38. I wish there were a way to get Vertical Sync working in Firefox. Perhaps, it already is, but doesn’t use the best method for my hardware? All I know is, it’s super annoying streaming vids, and scrolling through webpages. I haven’t noticed it in other apps, but turning it on in the settings menu does seem to improve it in Firefox slightly. I can’t wait to see if there’s any improvement with the new Mint options.

    1. Hi,

      I don’t understand what this is? Can you describe the issue more in detail so we can try to reproduce it? Are you talking about diagonal screen tearing in Firefox (I remember this being an issue with Intel in the past)?

    2. Hi Sephula,

      Please test the following Firefox tearing fix

      1. In Firefox address bar enter
      about:config

      (accept “Here be dragons!”… …”I accept the risk!” warning)

      2. In ‘Search’ bar enter
      layers.acc

      3. Double click ‘layers.acceleration.force-enabled’ so its set to ‘true’

      4. Close, and relaunch Firefox, navigate to previous page that showed tearing.

      Hope the above helps.

      @Clem, Firstly, thank you for all the great work you do! Can above setting be tested internally, and considered for addition to the default Linux Mint Firefox modifications? Thank you.

      PS: Tested with NVIDIA, and Intel on different systems (don’t have AMD GPU to try).

    3. I had this issue before but with Manjaro Cinnamon, but not with Linux Mint. I use Intel/AMD combination.

    4. yes, firefox has a very huge tearing problem when scrolling. i don’t know about video cause i mostly “fix it” before regular use. my only solution is to set monitor to 120Hz. otherwise is horible
      this happens on my nvidia GTX 970

  39. Also, is there any way we can get Nemo to show an image thumbnail, or preview on network and external drives? It’s so hard to look for photos when you don’t know the filename.

  40. I’ve been using Linux for 9 years, and Mint is my favorite distro. Thanks to the developers for making this distro awesome!

  41. I find LM to be the perfect OS for my needs (varied), and have never felt any need to hop. It’s the combination of the system itself, its ethos, and those who have developed and refined it so well, that create the magic formula. Personally I have nothing but praise and gratitude for its existence.

    @AMartin and your earlier comment about user definable font and background colours that would be a great option, especially as it’s impossible to design something that suits everyone. Outside of actual font selection, it would certainly circumvent some of the contrast challenges.

    Having some experience of how CSS files are loaded in the web development area, and how latter files take precedent, I’m wondering would it be possible for a ‘user’ CSS file to be pulled in and applied after the main LM theme file(s) are processed. A UI could be developed to allow users to make changes to the ‘user’ CSS file as desired. The default would be whatever is specified in the main CSS file. Not sure if the CSS element names are defined upstream or whether they are within LMs control, and whether they change from release to release, but who knows, you could potentially get to a point where only one or two main theme files are required (traditional/modern) and the user can tailor the look and feel to their hearts content?

    Having said all that I’m not sure if that approach is at all feasible, but just musing here.

    1. Hi Mick,

      It’s an interesting idea, I’m not sure either on the technical side of things. I mean, everything’s possible, but we’d need to look at it in details.

      What I looked at already though, following the feedback we got on 19.1, is the idea to not specify the font in Cinnamon themes and let Cinnamon handle it (i.e. use system fonts). That doesn’t work well, at least it doesn’t produce the same results as specifying the font you want. It could be considered a bug in Cinnamon and it’s something we could attempt to fix, but until/unless this is done, we won’t removing the fonts definition from the Cinnamon themes.

    2. I began fiddling with chrome/userChrome.css file in Firefox’s profiles and was really impressed how easily a user could change everything in firefox’s look to their taste. It’s absolutely amazing. And since then, my firefox has been perfect for me. Auto-hiding the side bars on hover, got rid of those annoying tabs at all, simply perfect… And this CSS over-riding technique could be used in personal DE’s setting. I hope for it. DE would become real ‘simply the best’, if “the user can tailor the look and feel to their hearts content”.

  42. Use both logos. Use the new tbd circular logo when it makes sense and keep the legacy logo available for future use.

  43. Thankyou everyone involved in Linux Mint! Everyone involved who do such great work to make Linux Mint as user friendly as possible, your work is vitally important to the future of Linux on the desktop, and Linux Mint is at the forefront of making Linux accessible to a whole new generation of users!

    Linux Mint, thanks to your team’s efforts, is often named as a 1st goto choice by influencers for people transitioning from Windows to Linux. Linux Mint has provided a user experience that has retained many of those Windows users, boosting our collective numbers on Linux, and helping Linux grow and become more popular.

    And thankyou for the kind mention Clem, I don’t think I did that much, just a few mockups, I just wanted to help anyway I could.

    As for the negative comments..

    I think it’s easy for passionate people to often get ‘too passionate’ and forget about everything else, including the importance of being polite and patient. It’s especially true in the Linux community, obviously everyone who uses Linux is always very passionate about their OS and how they wish to see it evolve moving forward. It’s never possible to please everyone, and it’s often necessary to make decisions that negatively effect some while positively helping the majority. Hence whenever an announcement of a major change appears, there are usually many people who are desperate to get their own opinions heard, so that their input is part of the collective decision making.

    Sometimes in the heat of everything, I guess manners go out the window. And then to cap it all off, there are just.. not very nice people in our world unfortunately. Some people who never contribute anything positive and always demand the world of everyone else.

    Please don’t let those people get you down, for every 1 ‘asshat’ in the comments, just know there are 100 Minters who love and appreciate your vital work. =D

    1. Thanks Grady,

      I don’t think we’re dealing with “bad” people. In fact I don’t think many people are “bad” in general. We’re dealing with something (and only sometimes may I say) which is detrimental and hurtful to our project, which is easy to address, and in my experience which is very often corrected when pointed at.

  44. To Linux Mint Developers:
    You don’t feel yourselves dishearted!
    All in Linux Mint (3 buntu editions and LMDE OS) is top notch!
    If you want to change the logo, change it
    If want to change the website, change it
    I don’t care about mint x , mint y , website home page etc.
    It don’t matter much to me
    I want the OS as you ship it
    I run a Great OS, named Linux Mint!
    Thanks!

    1. Hi mab,

      It’s quite fast already. If it isn’t, it’s not optimization that is needed but troubleshooting. Try to identify what is making your boot slow. “systemd-analyze critical-chain” can help.

  45. Just wanted to say thanks to all the coders for Linux, I especially like Mint 19., I have migrated officially now and permanently from windows ten to Linux, windows ten is cumbersome and I suffer hacker attacks a few times a week on windows ten, I would then have to deal with a malware program or key logger embedded deep within my hard drive, even encountered not being able to completely rid them after a complete wipe.
    Now I use Linux solely for my online use, and am migrating to Linux based 3D design software.
    I still keep a windows ten version for 3D design but keep it solely for off line work for above stated reasons.
    The beauty I love about Linux 19, if I do suffer a breach I just shut down boot up off locked USB stick and have a fresh system ready to go.
    Love how light it is, love how quickly it installs, I run a virtual system in ram, that way if I am breached I just shut down the pc and boot back up and away I go.
    Windows ten……Takes many hours to reinstall a fresh system.
    Big thanks to all of you who have worked so hard on developing all the Linux versions, I started out on 17 just a few months ago.
    Several years ago I tried Linux Ubuntu and it was not user friendly enough for me being a novice at the time.
    You have all brought this light years from what it started out early on as and you make it easy to ditch Windows ten.
    I do have a slight concern with google jumping on board…
    Big thanks to all the coders who have worked so hard to bring such an amazing operating system light on its feet.
    Currently have no income coming in but once I get back on tract I will become a regular contributor financially.
    It is well worth doing so to keep this going.
    Take care all, and keep your chins up ok, great work all of you!!!
    Cheers from the USA the last bastion of free speech?

  46. I love Linux Mint. I can’t imagine a ‘computer life’ without it. For me and others you are ‘simply’ the best. I can imagine there might be ups and downs, but the result simply is and shall be the best Linux Distro ever !

    Groeten van Dejan uit Nederland 😉

  47. I am very happy and proud with all that the Mint Team has done, I switched back in 2011/2012, there was no way I was going to windows 8. I run mint 19.1 on my box, and LMDE3 on my older laptop, no issues. I do how ever feel I need to mention this…here in the States, Tina a code word for crystal meth, a very dark and evil drug, just fyi, hate to see a good release laughed at, due to a drug reference

    1. Thanks Jerome,

      I’m quite sad to hear that. Tina to me immediately makes me think of Tina Turner, her music, her energy on stage and of course her hair 🙂

      I was quite sad to hear Tara (which is a beautiful name here in Ireland) meant deficient/slutty in latin countries (and I guess it makes sense etymologically after I was told, but it’s pretty sad all the same).

      Anyway, Tara is still a beautiful name and so is Tina and the World can be sad here and there, we’ll still enjoy our codenames and have a great release.

    2. I remember that here in Russia, they sometimes used a slang, code word “wheels” to denote some tablets which were round and able to drive you to somewhere very far away. So what, people of the globe should not use the word “wheels” and stop using cars, and laugh when seeing cars?

  48. Thank you for listening to those of us who don’t love flat! I know you can’t please everyone because we all have different tastes. The fact that you even pay attention to those who express concern is awesome! Regardless of what you end up doing.

  49. Your site is OK, but it serves its purposed, but it’s Mint that does matter to me, it has been my everyday OS, and for that, I thank you and your team. I have some inconvenience in some areas (like no sound) but I can find the solutions easily.

  50. Hello Clem and the Team,

    Thanks for maintaining this great distro!

    I personally am OK with the current Mint logo. I am not fan of the flat design. Neither do I feel hatred to it. I really like some examples of it. Like the Papirus icon theme, for example. The Mint-Y themes (both the GTK theme and the Cinnamon theme) are a good example of the flat design, too (except that I dislike the Windows-like look of tooltips (that yellowish background; could be much better to have some dark background and light font for dark themes)).
    I think a great overall example of some moderate flat design with moderate gradients and even moderate 3D (as for buttons) is the Obsidian 2 GTK theme (including the metacity window titles).

    Let me mention one trouble that I observed in Cinnamon starting from 19.1. It is when I mouse-click the window title and than press “left” or “right” keys to drag the window to one of next workspaces. Having window-list@cinnamon.org applet enabled the newly-dragged window’s icon in the list has no its icon anymore. I have had this issue on 2 of 2 machines (bare metal) since upgrading to 19.1. The icon is restored in the window list once you scroll to another workspace and then back to this same one.

  51. Why don’t you fix modern layout icon problem? If you open too many apps the icons on the modern layout panel keep going to the right out of the screen, on top of the tray icons. I wonder nobody else has the same problem?

  52. Hi Clem,

    I tried the daily builds PPA (of course I created a system snapshot first) and Cinnamon is so much smoother on my system. The menu is especially way faster, previously it would lag pretty badly on some categories.
    Of course people should be aware that this is a daily builds PPA so it’s UNSTABLE but first impressions are really good.

    Thanks Clem & everyone else working on Cinnamon! Keep up the good work!

    1. Ah cool!

      Ok, I need to clarify something though… the menu is greatly improved, we know about that, and it’s not subjective, it will load and work faster for everybody. You should also see a reduction of RAM usage and maybe also of CPU usage (we’ve improved docinfo/appsys as well).

      What we’re puzzled about and where mileage may vary is the WM performance, i.e. moving windows, scrolling content, video playback..etc. If you think that’s snappier than before, do let us know.

    2. Hi Clem,

      The daily build version of Cinnamon / muffin also improves window manager performance for me, a lot. I use a Thinkpad T510i with ancient Intel graphics and this is the fastest Cinnamon has ever been.

      Tell the dev team they’re doing a great job!

    3. Will do. I think they’re reading that (not sure they read ALL the comments, there’s many, but they do read and it gets to their ears eventually). I’ll be documenting using the PPA and reporting Alpha-testing issues very soon, I’m sorry it’s out without the doc to go with it.

  53. Clem, you do a wonderful job, all of you. For me Linux = Mint. I have tried so many distributions and always came back to Mint. This time it’s for good.

  54. I believe I found the way how to make everybody happier. Let people customized Linux Mint like before. People who don’t want to customize can use settings at “default” position, people who want customize can customize settings as they did it before. Simple as that. What’s wrong with that?

    1. JosephM, Terminal colors, Themes…… do you want whole list? I believe that my idea to make everybody happier is not so bad, right? I appreciate LM team work very much and think LM is THE BEST OS in the world. Criticizing and giving LM team some ideas should make them better in what they are doing. Handling criticism always show people character. Removing criticism from this block will not get LM nowhere. Just my two cents.

    2. Hi fotrot,

      Moderation helps everyone work better. When somebody gets somebody else vexed, or hurt or angry or even opinionated, it focuses people’s attention, prevent calm arguments from being put forward, results in the devs wanting to interact less and also can prevent other users from wanting to get involved. There are issues, there’s no question about this, and not only can they be described, but they SHOULD be described. While describing them, what gets them fixed isn’t how many +1 something gets or how dramatic the report is, it’s how precise the information is and who easy it is for developers to understand and reproduce it.

  55. I’ve used many distributions over my 25 years of experience with GNU/Linux. When I say used, I am talking a minimum of 2 years on any one of them.

    I recently tried Linux Mint and, frankly, I can’t see any reason as to why I would want to switch away from it. If there is a direction I would like to see it develop in the future, this would be the addition of a repository containing more up-to-date applications so I don’t have to use so many third party PPAs.

    I feel that Linux Mint is in the position where it’s the last 10% of polish that’s needed will require 90% of development effort. This might seem like boring work but that polish will truly set Linux Mint apart from the others.

    Keep up the good work Clem and Team. I believe that all serious Linux Mint users do appreciate what you do.

    1. Thanks Neil,

      We can add new software but only to a certain extent. What really solves this problem is Flatpak. Support for it is integrated within the Software Manager.

  56. Love the work you have done over the years. Personally the web site UI makes no difference to me. I will continue to use Mint for as long as you can continue the development.

  57. I’ve been in IT for over 25 years now … and running my own IT support company since 2001.
    – I’ve supported every version of Windows, regularly dig people out of various scrapes they get into …

    I’ve personally been using LM since version 6 … and can honestly say it’s just got better with every release.

    I’ve moved over 50 of my clients over to Linux Mint. Most are running Cinnamon, a few are running Mate due to older hardware.
    – some have purchased a new tower … without an OS installed, so that I can install Linux Mint on it.

    – it’s been a revelation for most of what an operating system should be … stable and easy to use!

    All I can say is keep up the fantastic work ! I’ll continue to plug Linux Mint …. because it’s the best !!

  58. Since 2010 I’m using Linux Mint and I personally deployed it in all workstations at our animation studio to make animations with Open Source Software and LinuxMint has never failed me once. Such a lovely and stable Distro. Keep up the good works Team. Sometimes there might be Negatives, but the glory is in overcoming it and sustaining to exist. You have a strong supporting community. Thats it. Just wipe off unwanted things and move forward. We are with you.

    All the Best.

  59. Hi Clem & Team,

    I’ve been using Linux for 8 years. Linux Mint has became my regular desktop since 2012.
    I do love it although I only an ordinary user without “using terminal” :D.

    You did wonderful things here. Thanks Clem & everyone else working on Cinnamon! Keep up the good work!

  60. It’s the internet. The more popular the distro becomes (I hope it does), the more you should ignore individual comments! That should be obvious. I love your focus on having a linux distro for the average user. I don’t want you to be distracted by any stupid comment that some nobody sends you. Just focus on your core distro principles. Keep it up <3

  61. you dropped kde I moved to kubuntu. I miss the Linux mint tools. Kde is amazing very fast incredible
    I think Linux mint is the best disteo I love it. But Kde is the best desktop and very modern like win 10. Any way I use both Cinnamon and kde on my main computer. Love you mint team

    1. Hi Toni,

      You can add the Kubuntu PPA to Mint and install KDE. You can also run Kubuntu 18.04 and add the Mint repository to add the Mint tools. Use timeshift either way so you can roll back if you make a mistake.

  62. Just to say from myself and family members a big THANK YOU !!
    Your team is making a massive difference to the world in ways that are not always obvious. Quality Foss is I believe essential to our social democratic and economic well-being and developers like your team are real tech heroes
    MANY MANY THANKS !

  63. Dear friends!
    I really want to be able to make a minimal installation, as in Ubuntu. I always remove such programs as vlc, xplayer, transmission, hexchat, pix, the old version of Gimp, the old version of Libre Office. I install mpv player, qbittorrent, new version of Gimp, new version of libre office, gThumb. I install flash plugin again, multimedia codecs from Ubuntu and more. A lot of work. After that I like the system! Why can not make a minimal installation? That would be great!
    Sorry for my english! This is not my native language! Good luck and thank you for your work!

    1. Hi Yuriy,

      That would only solve half your problem, you’d still need to reinstall all the things you want? I think you’re better off using a disk image or scripting these changes. We focus on providing the best experience for everybody, with the defaults and a software selection tailored to suit the maximum number of people. This goes against asking too many questions or providing a barebone solution which lacks all of that. I’m not saying we’ll never do it, but it’s not a priority for us. When Ubuntu introduced that we didn’t really see the point or the need for us to do the same or something similar.

    2. Ubuntu’s minimal installation is actually a full installation that later on removes a few packages. I see no value in such a feature given how you can remove them yourself just as easily but with more granularity as to what you want to keep.

  64. @ Clem (and whoever the cap fits) Clem, Thanks for this month’s update. The way I see it, is that Linux Mint is provided absolutely free of charge. It doesn’t spy on me by reporting home all my activities, files etc, yet it didn’t cost me a single penny. If it therefore disappeared tomorrow, or just stopped being supported in anyway and left to stagnate till it became unusable and irrelevant, then I couldn’t complain because it’s a voluntary project and made totally free for me to use. So while it’s here with us, I’ll contribute how I can by RESPECTFULLY reporting any bugs I come across, and by drawing other computer users’ attention to it and the fact that they are not tied to using Windows; there are other options out there whether it’s Linux Mint or another Linux distro. We’re all free to exercise our right to choose as and when we feel like it, so if Mint or any other distro, doesn’t fit/meet our needs, try something else that does. Linux Mint continues fulfil all of my computing needs since I first came across it when it was Mint 9 (Isadora) back in 2010, and with the exception of two people who simply couldn’t be bothered to deal with a slight new learning curve, everyone I’ve introduced to it, and installed it on their computers are happy with it, and often report that they’d never go back to Windows on any computer that they personally own. They always seem to mention the same things, namely, that it’s much faster than what they experienced using Windows, that updating their system isn’t the painful, interrupting, slow chore that it used to be when they used Windows, and they have peace of mind (and lower blood pressure), when it comes to the viruses/spyware/malware which they are no longer plagued with since they’ve switched to Linux.
    To those who like to complain: just remember that Windows and Mac are by no means perfect either, and are locked down proprietary software. What you get, is what you’re stuck with, and if you don’t like it, tough!. Linux is not perfect, no OS is, so yes, please do report bugs and problems, but does or will it REALLY kill you to do so in a respectful and responsible manner? There are many people who donate their own free time to give you the alternative that you’re using, so bare that in mind when you’re reporting any kind of issue and be respectful to them for the time and hard work they contribute to give you that alternative. Ask yourself how often (if ever) do you actually say “thanks” to these people, and give them some encouragement and incentive to keep going; especially when they hit a seemingly brick wall and feel like it’s not worth continuing? No, I’m not a developer, but I know and recognise that in every kind of work, there are difficulties and frustrations somewhere along the lines that on a bad day may promote the thought of just walking away, and sometimes walking away for good. To you all, I say, “c’mon guys ‘n’ gals, give these developers a boost and a helping hand by at least giving them some encouragement,” and voice your appreciation to them. Be respectful to them for the hard work they put in for YOUR benefit. They’ll appreciate it, and it will give them that extra boost/drive to continue to make a superb OS even better. No likes or wants to work under pressure, let alone under pressure and in a negative atmosphere, so don’t say or do anything to make their atmosphere a negative one. Also, remember that we didn’t all come off a production line, and we don’t all share the same brain or ideals, so your likes and preferences aren’t going to be exactly the same as someone else’s. Therefore, exercise a bit of tolerance and consideration for other users too. You’re not the only user out there, and Mint (or any other distro) is NOT made solely for you …unless you decide to make a distro for yourself …which I dare say MOST of us can’t do and wouldn’t even know where to start.
    I’d personally like to take this opportunity to thank ALL of the Linux Mint Development Team and contributors, irrespective of how “small” an input they have towards advancing and making what I think is a brilliant alternative OS to what comes out of Redmond. Thank you all very much indeed. Keep going despite the naysayers, the spewers of negative unhelpful comments and the general rotten attitudes of some VERY ungrateful and inconsiderate, selfish people. Remember also that we’re not all like that and many if not most of us disagree with them and their antics. Keep up your excellent work. 🙂

  65. I’ve been following Linux Mint for 10 years..
    I miss the universal version, the pre-installed codecs and the elegance. Cinnamon is cool, but the artwork is ugly/homemade. Always is a modification, to worst.
    Even Ubuntu and vanilla gnome are beautiful than Mint nowadays. Today we have elementaryOS, deepin, Solus etc.
    Linux Mint is a excellent operating system, but isn’t the most elegant.

    1. Hi Carlors,

      I don’t see why you would think it’s ugly. I’d be interested to know more about this so we can improve it. The theme you enjoyed in the past is still here btw, doesn’t it look just like it did before?

      The codecs are installed with a click on the mouse, unless you’re offline or you need them in live mode for some reason, I don’t see the issue. It doesn’t strike me as an important one anyway.

  66. I love Mint.
    The best thing about you guys is
    1. You work out of the box.
    2. You have the IRC with support!!! and you chat. This has helped me so much.
    I’ll add my voice to what many have said before – don’t let some unpleasant voices demoralize you.
    If something can be done about it
    Why be unhappy
    And if nothing can be done about it
    Still there is no point in being unhappy about it.

    Thanks for being great

  67. I missed the previous blog entry and the whole web redesign discussion. In what ever feedback i give i have to say both the logo and website redesign is absolutely required and i am very happy you consider it and are doing it. Especially for the website it should have happened a long time now. i have had multiple discussions over the years with both Linux users and non-Linux users that would consider Mint and the website looking outdated was always mentioned.

    As for direct feedback i do not mind the flat website design. I do enjoy it as long as it is not taken to an extreme. But i also get the people that have issues with it. It would be a big challenge and a big plus if your designers could make a traditional website structure look modern but that might be asking a bit too much. At any rate the preview already looks like an improvement over the current situation so i am all for it.

    As for the logo: I am all in for the circle. Looks like the right direction. But the logo definitely lacks a bit of flair. I am not sure if it is distinct enough to work as a true brand symbol. Maybe the new design allows for more interesting animation options that can give it the flair and modernity it needs. Still i am existed for the change and i am eager to see whet you will conclude with.

    At any rate thank you for your work. Free software development done right is essential not just from a practical but also cultural and societal point of view. The work FOSS developers, do such as yourselves, is infinitely important. More important that just making a good product (although a good product is an essential part of the process). I have been using various Linux distros over the years and still distro hop cause of my needs but Mint still finds its way on my daily home driver no matter what. I think you are very close to sth quite extraordinary and i hope you keep up the good work.

  68. I’ve been using Mint since version 15, and it’s been great to see it improve gradually on many fronts over the years. By now, it’s solid as a rock, and I’m using it both at home and at work. In other words, you guys are definitely heroes of mine! Being a developer, I love the fact that some release cycles are focused specifically on bug fixing and/or performance improvements. Perhaps it would motivate team Mint to organize live demo’s at the end of each release cycle (or right before the beta phase?), where a bunch of avid users can join online and cheer you guys on?

  69. I LOVE LOVE LOVE LINUX MINT 19.1 its definitely the dogs bollocks IMO. Knocks the spots off Windows10. So THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone in the Mint development team you people are heroes no question. Keep up the hard work its very very much appreciated.

    **The only problem I’ve personally hit is that I cannot get my HP Laserjet 1100 mono printer to work & this is NOT mint at fault but a problem of compatibility with the latest HPLIP software. Which wont install & wont detect my printer. Hence I’m still stuck with Windows10 for printing, sadly.

    1. Are you saying the latest HPLIP won’t install? Seems odd. Anyway, have you tried using a generic PCL driver?

  70. Very concerned to read the worries expressed above by the developers. Quite understand the personal investment you all have in working on something so special. Can only express my own view in that Mint Linux is simply the best distro ever. All the hard work and dedication by the Mint team is so much appreciated by everyone and all that is reflected in the continuing growth of Mint users and support by individuals and organisations. Thank you.

  71. Not had a booting issue with any Mint until I was gifted a Presario CG71 (allegedly i915 graphics). Got the flashing screens feature. Followed many of the discussion threads, viz. – it’s the BIOS, it’s the i915, it’s systemd, etc. Not sure which, though and left confused. None of the discussion fora help. Machine can be booted by the shiftkey-to-Grub-fsck-resume. Strangely, also partly similar effects sometimes in the non-systemd MX distro but not antiX which auto displays the Grub menu before continuing without intervention. The machine always boots cleanly from the .iso boot CD (or USB for other distros). Strikes me that there’s a lot of smart developers in the Mint team who know the answer…

  72. Hi Clem and Linux mint team, I think Linux mint is one of the best Linux distribution for newcomers to experience and easier user-friendly Linux, you just have to take things easy, work one thing at a time and do it well, don’t bother getting a lot of things done at once, that will lead you to frustration, don’t worry too much about how the website looks and the looks of the logo, take that time to work on the operating system that is Linux mint, remember that Linux mint is one of the first operating system that newcomers from Windows will go to, so your priorities should be the OS, we have to thank you for bringing to Linux those people running away from windows, so work in the drivers, work on the usability and user experience, don’t worry about the logo and the website looks, put your effort in the operating system, like I said before, take your time to do things well, let the community know that you taking your time to make things better, to make things work well, remember that when you do something in a hurry, it doesn’t always have a good outcome, people will always criticize, you have to make a list of priorities, what have to be done first and what have to be done last, don’t bite more than you can chew, take some time away from the distro, take a couple of days to relax, we as humans need some time to get away from daily routine and relax, this will help you to perform better and have better ideas, I wish you the best and good luck!

  73. After 26 years of Windows, it has been a beautiful transition into Linux and Linux Mint. It loaded easily and doesn’t crash. Unlike another distro I tried, Linux Mint easily found and installed my wireless printer. It has been a pure joy to use and learn. I owe you a donation!

  74. Dear Clem and everybody else at Linux Mint,

    I love what you guys do. I use Linux Mint every day and feel a lot safer using computers because of that.

    Thank you.

    MPE

  75. Me, I’m a happy Mint user 😁
    For years I played about with Linux, but never stuck with it. Windows always won out in the end…. Until I tried Linux Mint! That changed the tide of my computer environment use. I do have windows on a computer for the stuff I have been using for years and isn’t compatible with a linux programme. Though, I normally access it remotely though my Minty Laptop when I need it. Most computing is now done on Mint. So thank you for bringing me a Linux Distribution that I can use day to day. Please keep up the most excellent work.

  76. Hi, Mint team!
    I think that you need to make Grub more aesthetic and more functional.
    Grub is the face of the operating system.
    Thank.

    1. You could always give Grub Customizer a try,
      sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
      sudo apt-get update
      sudo apt-get install grub-customizer

    2. I launched Windows – Windows now the first in Grub.
      I launched Ubuntu – Ubuntu came first in Grub.
      And, of course, Grub should be beautiful with the Linux Mint logo!
      Branded Grub from Linux Mint!

  77. Hi all, you do a good job and I consider that some positive criticism it is the way to progress and to improve.
    I notice that after the last kernel update (4.15.0-47) the Update Manager shows that is Unsupported.

    1. No. I am running the default one for LM 19.1.
      The “problem” solved by itself. It is first time I notice this behavior. For now all good.

    2. I think I noticed this too- the last kernel update I applied (4.18.0-17) was marked “unsupported” in the kernels window of the update manager until I installed it, after which it was marked “supported until August 2019”, like the previous kernel had been.

  78. Clem and the team … as long time developer I can tell you with out a doubt, most people hate change. What you all do is AMAZING! Mint is THE best distro there is, and while many people may swap around, play with this or that, fall – for a bit for the new X… Mint is and remains THE best.

    You all do STELLAR work, and as a developer that has products in the field that are YEARS old, I totally get what your going through – but your work is loved and enjoyed by SO many. Mint remains on top, surpassing so many … and because of your efforts, your work.

    Its natural to have some tough moments in all projects, but especially tough when its all a love.

    You Rock Gents! Dont let anyone tell you otherwise. your work, your dedication, your love … has made and will continue to power Mint.

  79. LnxMint 19.1 abolished the awesome collection of X Screensavers… what a BAD decision!!!.

    The ability to have freedom of screensavers choices was really Badly affected by that.

    When they will come back to the screensaver option again???

    With the past of the time more and more LnxMint is distancing itself from the core hacks mentality and only

    embracing the simplistic JOE Basic needs one, Maybe that explains why in DistroWatch ranking LnxMint is

    going down the tube… as we speak. (don’t get me wrong. I Love LnxMint. But lately things are looking grim.)

    Clem Remember? “In this Universe BALANCE is Key!… No BALANCE? then CAOS (Entropy) takes it all.”

    1. Hi Mario,

      Yes it’s true and you pointed out the rationale behind it. There’s no pun intended on “hacks” (that’s the name of the screensavers incidentally) but there are design trends within the project, and I think to a larger extent within any distribution’s lifecyle. For years now we’ve turned our back on the idea of doing “more”, of supporting any little feature we could think of, of providing any edition, variation we could think of, and of trying to do things to be different. I think these are key for small emerging projects which are trying to attract users. Our mission isn’t to attract users though, it’s to do better and better and better again. We’re a big project with an established user base, there are features which we call “niche” and which aren’t used by a vast majority of people, we can support them, but they need to work and not have a negative effect on the overall quality of the distribution. What we’ve seen with xscreensaver support is that we could do it, it did please people, but it never ended being as robust as we wanted, it would crash and affect a very important part of the desktop, one which stability is really important in terms of security. By removing a feature like this one, a buggy feature shall I say, we lose some people, we’re aware of that, but we ship a better release to everyone else.

      Let me make something clear that is rarely said. If we wanted to raise on distrowatch we wouldn’t be focusing all our efforts on improving our software, we would spend it on pleasing niche audience: We’d go back to non-LTS (more releases means less quality but more hype), we’d go back to supporting KDE, LXDE, why not GNOME, Unity even.. the more of these the more people we get, we’d develop things which everybody says “wow, cool” to, whether or not they’re actually needed.. a theme generator for instance, a compiz integration tool, a grub customizer, there are many ideas here, we’d be in every podcasts and youtube shows, basically we’d care less about development and work hard on getting high-fives. That’s not what we want and I think our move to LTS and the drop of KDE clearly show that. We know what we want, we know what we want to do, and it’s not a bit of everything to please anybody out there. We want to do less and do it better, and we want to please our core users more at the cost of losing people who want something different than what we envision. I think that’s key and I think it’s a very honest exercise for us to be clear on that.

  80. Maybe it’s time to finally speak out, I’ve been one of those silent users: I’ve been using Linux Mint for years on all my devices and supported it with donations as good as my tight budget allows. I missed the recent debates though. However, I know how hard it is to work in open source projects and I really, really do appreciate your work. You’ve provided an alternative to Ubuntu for years and if there’s any possibility to support you otherwise, let us know. Your fan-base is out there, thriving and cheering at every release!

    1. Hi Mimi, and many people here who said something similar and who I didn’t reply to, sorry it’s hard to reply to everybody especially when you agree and there’s nothing much else to say 🙂

      I just wanted to tell you, we know there’s a part of the audience which is very silent but also very happy. When you get 200 comments, some of them negative, but also 500 donations that same month, it doesn’t matter how unhappy the vocal minority is, you know it doesn’t reflect the entire audience. Now of course, it’s also thanks to the vocal minority that we move forward, without feedback we’re lost. We do always have that in mind, that the feedback is very important but that there’s also a part of our audience which isn’t necessarily reflected in it. That’s what’s difficult sometimes when making decisions, especially when it goes against a part of the vocal feedback, is it good for our user base as a whole? Is that negative feedback significant within that user base? It’s not easy to assess.

      I’ll give you two examples to illustrate this a little bit. We got negative feedback on the switch to systemd (I was going to say we can’t really “not” switch to systemd, but we did co-fork MATE and fork Cinnamon instead of switching to GNOME3 and people saw us do that, so I guess we could have been the champions of some systemd alternative if we had wanted to, anyway.. let’s just assume it was possible and we were considering it), which we didn’t really agree with, but which we had to look at all the same. We assumed it represented an insignificant part of our user base and it was more characteristic to the audience of other projects around us. We didn’t know that for sure of course.

      Another piece of negative feedback lately is on the Mint-Y theme. It’s new (well, it’s newer than Mint-X) and like many things, we start getting more feedback and improve it more now that it’s the default (more people use it). Again, we go by feedback which is expressed by a vocal minority of people, and here, not only do we see the point and agree with it partly (some of it is a bit extreme, 100% black fonts for instance), but we’re also worried what we’re seeing in the vocal minority’s feedback is the tip of the iceberg, something that is felt by a majority of silent users as well. Again, the difficulty for us, is to assess that. We don’t really know for sure how “most” people are annoyed at the lack of contrast, if they really are, and to the same extent as expressed in that negative feedback. There’s a bit of guesswork at play here and at trying to imagine or get a feel for an audience which is largely silent and which “vocal vs silent” ratio you don’t really know.

      We see how big that silent majority is during releases, when stable dwarfs beta, and with the donations, when money contributions even dwarf technical feedback. Both parts of our audience are really important to this project, we couldn’t do it without that support but we also couldn’t do it without an active minority of users who are vocal on our blog, forums, github sections and who provide us with the feedback we need.

      Ah it’s hard to talk about this 🙂 I hope I put a bit of light on this, we rarely get to talk about it.

  81. You guys are heros.

    Linux Mint is awesome and we love you all!

    Never, ever, back down. Never, ever, give up. Fight, fight, fight!

    Keep up the good work!

  82. Hello.
    I have never posted here, but used Linux Mint for years now, to test, to install on my media server, then finally 2 years ago, I swapped my main laptop to Mint. It’s always made things work.
    When Windows wouldn’t freaking load an ethernet adapter through multitudes of drivers and we figured it was busted, the BIOS wouldn’t line up for the Windows reinstall.. Linux mint came through like a freaking champion.
    I dabbled in other distros but in the end, I came back to Linux Mint and I’m done changing, this is the distro that makes my life easy, it doesn’t stand in my way and lets me do everything I need.
    The work that you do is stellar, and I have only the utmost respect for you all that work on this distribution.

    Thank you, sincerely.

  83. I came here for one reason, I want you guys to know that I have been using Linux Mint since about a few months before Cinnamon was first released. When I installed Cinnamon, I knew I had found the perfect OS. I knew it was a first version, but I saw your vision immediately, and you gave me hope that there was an OS built exactly how I wanted it.

    I had been using Windows for so many years, dealt with Macs plenty, but Linux Mint with Cinnamon was how I would have made an OS if I was able.

    I don’t know what to say to encourage you guys, I don’t have money to send (sorry, I will when I get some), but your work has enabled me to break free from so many mental constraints and worries with computers. As soon as my budget is in the black, I have a list of open source projects that plan to send money to.

    So hold your heads up, be encouraged that there are many people who love your software. I also develop software for users, and know that negative feedback (or no feedback at all) can be draining. But during these times, I have to find other reasons to work hard and do well. Feedback and encouragement is only part of the payment we get.

    Mint is incredible, even with all the bugs I have ever run into. I posted some issues early on with Cinnamon, and get Clem’s direct response and the bug fixed. It made me feel like you guys actually cared about my experience. Let me know what you need back to keep going strong. I will do what I can. Based on time spent, I use Mint/Cinnamon more than any other software. I hope to keep things that way moving forward.

  84. Well, Im really worried about Mint by this post. Mint is not something like “other” Linux distros out there, it is a portal for newbies to change from other OSes to Mint. It has been (/is) a game-changing OS available. I have no complaints about Mint till date, and its like I forgot what a “bug” is when I use Mint. And yea, developing something for other people without expecting anything from them back, is not so easy… I don’t know what to say, guys please, you are our heroes…real heroes…

  85. OMG it’s so sticky sweet around here this morning. 😉
    But seriously, I too am one that appreciates the give and take and flow back and forth from the Mint development team and Clem in particular. Being able to get direct guidance at times is simply awesome and something I have never found from any other OS’s. Like explaining why I need ia32-libs and being told by Clem that he will add it in. How wonderful is that? So, yes, I admit it, you guys/gals are my heroes. I do a lot of mp3 editing and voice recording for my webpage which generates donations which my family takes and buys groceries with. I have made maybe 17 kindle books which sell on Amazon. At night, I watch Major League Baseball and can follow my team which is 3,000 miles away. And of course the hundreds of emails I get from my Yahoo group and my WordPress Blog. You folks at Mint make all of that possible. And then for fun there is my Pandora app compiled with Adobe Air, and my Compiz Reloaded which allows me to change my complete DE using my favorite borders and themes in my Mint Mate machine. We sometimes take our OS’s for granted. But don’t ever feel discouraged as much of my life is better because of what you all do for us. Go Mint! 🙂

  86. I’ve tried many Linux distros in the past before finally settling for Ubuntu and then Linux Mint, which delivered an optimum solution with a stable base (thanks to Ubuntu) and the latest software as well as such an elegant desktop environment as Cinnamon offering many more options to different tastes of users in terms of themes, applets, extensions, etc.

    For me, one of the outstanding features of Linux Mint is how easily a user can enhance the file manager via Actions (e.g. in comparison to the file managers of Gnome, KDE and Pantheon). I think many users might not even be aware of this or find it still difficult to add custom Actions. Therefore, I think it might be a good idea to discuss ways of making this feature still more user-friendly such as adding more default Actions, having a dedicated place to share user Actions or even integrating an option to download Extensions, Actions and even Scripts in the File Manager Preferences/Plugins dialog box.

    But having said that I also hope I’m not suggesting to add more burden onto the file manager which is apparently struggling to perform its existing functionality as fast as expected. For often I find it come to a halt, freezing and crashing especially when I have two windows containing many thumbnails of PDF and/or image files, performing many file operations like bulk renaming, moving, copying, deleting, etc. I would rather have the file manager work more efficiently than have an enhanced plugins feature.

    Overall I’m a great admirer of LinuxMint and cannot thank enough to all who have put and continuing putting so much work into it.

    1. Thanks for the upcoming enhancement!
      As I’ve said, I’d rather see more improvement in overall Nemo performance.
      Something like a dedicated subtopic for Nemo Actions could be useful as well.

  87. Just a word of encouragement! I have been using Linux Mint (cinnamon ) for years and installing it on many old laptops and desktops. Most of these old machines would have been discarded as “too slow” or worthless for the bloated Windows environment. Mint works fine on most (the rest can usually run Xfce without too much problem) of these and has allowed me to donate these machines to people who need a computer and can’t afford it. Please keep up the good work and ignore the minor gripes that come your way. You guys are doing a great job and we appreciate it very much!
    Rob

  88. Appreciate your work, but I just can’t come back to Mint until you’ve dropped systemd, or at least made it optional.

    1. It will never happen. It’s been accepted as a standard by a majority of distributions, including the two we’re based on. It would take a huge amount of resources for us to go against that, and unlike what happened with GNOME 3 where we were not ready to accept regressions, feature losses and a change of paradigm, here with systemd we see no technical merit to go against it, quite the opposite. The only two reasons we would consider it are politics (its leadership, our influence in it and the fact that it’s getting bigger and it’s not modular) and PR (if we wanted a boost in popularity and make ourselves “look good” to people who don’t really understand what’s at stake, we could champion this like we championed MATE/Cinnamon.. the difference here though is that we don’t believe in it, to illustrate this, we didn’t even know if we could release Mint without GNOME 2 at the time). None of these reasons are important to us or even feel legitimate. I personally wouldn’t enjoy going to work in the morning and dedicate my day to going against something I don’t see a problem with.

      Now, I’m not saying nobody should have a problem with it, but I know we don’t and I really think our user base doesn’t either. We’re sensitive to problems which result from such a switch (XDG runtime directory collisions in particular) but we see the switch itself as a good thing. If this is a key problem for you, you did the right thing to move to a project which sees it as a real problem, because we do not here and we’re therefore not working against it.

    2. I am in the same boat. I’ve been using Linux since Redhat 5.1, so I know a thing or two about working through pains with the OS. The progress of Linux since then has been fantastic. I found my way to Mint 13 because I am an XFCE user, and had been on Xubuntu for a few years. I was very happy with it. I only really learned about the switch to systemd because after upgrading to the version where it was the default (I forget which) I started having problems with my system. I wasn’t aware of the philosophical wars of systemd, but quickly got up to speed. I honestly didn’t care much. But I couldn’t sort out the problems I was having – which I won’t go into here. I even started replacing hardware thinking that was the problem. As I gathered more and more info, everything pointed to systemd. I eventually got a newer PC – and the problems remained. I knew I had to get away from systemd, and thus Mint. It made me sad to do so, but I looked into all the options. I’d been spoiled by deb/apt and wanted to stick with it, as well as XFCE. So I landed on Devuan. The problems I was having went away.

      Now I understand completely why Mint had to switch to systemd, so I am not here to rail on that decision. But that fact that there was no other choice is what makes me uneasy, not only for Mint but for the entire Linux ecosystem. When there is only one option for the something as core as the init system, it had better be bullet-proof and universally accepted for all the right reasons. I don’t have a problem with learning new things like systemd, I do that all the time. I don’t care for the philosophy, but the practicality of it is that it was causing me pain and frustration. Now I am free of that, and I plan to keep it that way. I am only posting because I decided to check in on my old friend Mint and see how things are going. To the development team – keep up the great work on a great distro. You’ve made a positive mark on the Linux landscape.

  89. Great software as an operating system. Improvements I wold like to see that would propel you into the realm of must have operating system are: (1) use of Slimjet as a browser. Why? Because you can download movies and music videos from YouTube, (2) a slide show to put pictures on disk so you can watch them on your TV, and (3) a movie maker so you can download movies from YouTube and put them on DVD to watch on TV. Some programs to do this are free from “Download” but you also need software such as Nero when using Windows.

  90. Well, i can as well add my sincere appreciation for Your work for i couldn`t be more happy using LMDE for a couple of years, since a i had to run away from ubuntu after they killed 10.04 and i had no options left. Then i found about YOU guys and the beauty You`ve created, and that i can still work in my beloved environment which was gnome2-then-MATE. But there was even more, You gave me ability to choose Debian and LMDE and drop ubuntu which i disliked more, and more. I felt so great about it that i never asked myself “how long it`s gonna be?”. And then bang! LMDE3 came (that`s right, negative feedback now…) and i felt like there`s 10.04 story all over again. It was even worse when i looked for explanation and it told me between the lines (sorry if that was not Your intention) “Hey, if you still like that Debian crap it`s your problem, we never treated it seriously, just keep maintaining it, because noone knows what will be. Take it as is, no time for more”. Don`t get me wrong here, i like Cinnamon, but i found it many times heavy and laggy and i prefer MATE more. So i felt treated unfair that “if you like Debian, you like a hard way, so get MATE by yourself, it`s not bundled for non ubuntu-almighty users now”. Of course i installed LMDE3 and tried to use, but again, seeing that even that ancient debian GRUB design had no time to be fixed to look like in LMDE1 & 2 made me think that situation is really no good. I admit, that i never paid You Guys for Your hard work though i appreciate it a lot, but if i paid i would feel betrayed and angry, and now i`m just sad. So as You see it`s a two sided story of being well and bad treated. However keep up good work, i still believe in You. Cheers!

    1. Thanks Vrangor,

      On this I think what we need to work more on is communication. LMDE is a fallback plan, it’s not an attempt at diversifying and doing more editions for the sake of it. I mean, if it wasn’t for that, who would maintain two separate distributions? and why? The goal is to be able to continue without Ubuntu and know that our project doesn’t die the day Ubuntu vanishes or is no longer an option.

      For us to achieve this goal we don’t actually need LMDE to be as polished as Mint, or to support all the features Mint supports. We need to know it can and have a good idea of how much efforts it would take for it to do so.

      Now, that’s the plan itself, ideally. In practice things are a little bit different, you can’t take the popularity of LMDE out of the equation, because there are people involved, on both sides, and you can’t ignore them. On the one side there are LMDE users who don’t use LMDE just to give us feedback and don’t see it as just a fallback. The minute we release something and people start enjoying it, we’re responsible for it, no matter its scope, and these people are our users, just as if they were using Mint itself. To say this very clearly, the fact that people use LMDE makes us support LMDE more than we would normally do, and implement support/features that we wouldn’t bother doing in the scope of that fallback plan. We spend more time on LMDE than we need to for it to be that fallback, and the more people use LMDE, the more energy and resources we send towards it.

      On the other side though we have users using Mint. The more energy and resources we spend on LMDE, the less energy and resources we can spend on Mint itself. The bigger Mint gets in comparison to LMDE in terms of user base the more we need to acknowledge that and invest time to support Mint itself. It’s not only our core mission and what we’re here to do, it’s where most of our users are. If we have 90% of our audience using Mint and 10% of people in LMDE, we can’t ignore that, treat them the same way and spend 50% of our time on each, that would be irrational and long term it would be detrimental to the entire project as a whole.

      When we looked at the available stats at the time we had 4 DEs, 2 bases, for a total of 6 editions: Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, KDE, LMDE/Cinnamon and LMDE/MATE. Our Cinnamon and MATE editions were dominant, Xfce and KDE were much smaller and LMDE/Cinnamon+LMDE/MATE was comparable to them. In other words we realized we spent way more time on something that had twice as less users than Xfce/KDE combined. Of course that fallback plan is important, so it’s not just about the size of the user base, but still, it’s important. We’ve been making it cheaper and cheaper to please people, with Xapps, with GTK projects and by combining cross-DE initiatives and in essence we’ve made it really easy to improve Xfce, MATE and Cinnamon on the same base. This is not true for MATE on top of Debian which comes with a significant amount of work involved, work which isn’t readily available elsewhere if I may say. Dropping KDE and LMDE/MATE had to be done, it made sense and it was a really hard decision, not because there were pros and cons for our project, there were only pros, but because there were people involved, in the scope of the entire audience, sure, maybe just a few, but we were failing them, and that’s never easy to do.

      I’m sorry, I don’t believe in the “it’s not you, it’s me” and I don’t really know how to apologize for your situation. I definitely understand your frustration and your feeling of being abandoned. The decisions were really good decisions for our project though, they freed the resources we needed and restored balance to let us work on things most of our users were using and that’s really positive. I do feel bad for people we lost and disappointed but more so than losing them, I feel bad for letting them come in the first place. I feel bad for not communicating enough and for the gap in expectations between them and us on projects they cared about that we had to discontinue. Everything we do has to be promoted, but everything that fails to gather users also has to be questioned. KDE required far too much design considerations and had far too little people using it, the same went for LMDE, not only was it the size of our smallest editions, it had two mini-editions. Its strategic role as a fallback plan mitigated the problem with that cost to a certain extent, but something had to be done.

      Looking forward I think the best we can do for LMDE isn’t to allocate it more resources, it’s to make it cheaper and cheaper to develop (we do that by maximizing compatibility and development tools across the two bases) and to be clearer and clearer on its goal, scope and purpose. We’re not a project shipping two distributions and spending 50% of its time on each. We’re one distribution with a fallback plan to ensure the entire project doesn’t die or rely on a single base, where a fraction of the user base is using LMDE and where resources are allocated to it in proportion of its strategical importance but also on its popularity within our overall user base.

      It is a two sided story. You’re entirely right. I’m hoping this illustrates our side of it a little better. I definitely understand yours and I’m happy we’re getting the opportunity to talk about it.

    2. I’ll just comment a little more on this, KDE in particular. We couldn’t reduce the cost of developing KDE, it was too different than the other editions, not only because it was a different DE, but also because it revolved around a different toolkit, a different software selection, key different libraries and it had a different scope (it provided key utilities which would other be cross-DE for instance). To say it simply, we could make a good KDE edition, but as we were getting better and better at developing all the other editions in unison, most of our efforts did not benefit KDE (mintlocale didn’t, blueberry didn’t, xapps didn’t…etc). This was a problem, not enough to drop it but it made it so it was harder for us to make KDE better than any of the other DEs.

      Then came the issue of stability and development pace. KDE in Ubuntu was not good enough. Some of the features we buggy, others were incomplete. Upstream KDE was working on its DE and improving it at a very impressing pace but didn’t care enough (for us) about stability and compatibility with the LTS base. This became an issue for our edition because it meant we had to rely on a PPA and continuously upgrade KDE for it to be OK. While I’m on this topic I want to thank the amazing work done by Kubuntu on this, I don’t think people value it fairly, it took a huge amount of work to balance this upstream development pace with the need for stability and compatibility with the base, and that’s something Kubuntu did with their PPA. Anyway, back to topic, this was a second issue for us.

      The third issue and this is the real killer, is to see the user base of our KDE edition drop. It was once quite high, never as high as Cinnamon, MATE or GNOME 2 back in the days, but it was once high. It had dropped in 4th position behind the GTK editions and only represented a very small portion of our user base. Why? I don’t really know. I think KDE itself lost people with a really hard transition to KDE 4 first and then maybe as the result of a development pace and lack of retro-compatibility which meant stable distributions found it hard to keep up and users had to choose smaller projects to stay current… Neon comes to mind. I don’t really know to be honest.. it’s much simpler to analyze losses when a competitor targets our audience, Ubuntu MATE for instance, or when a project is initiated by our own community and splits the user base to some extent like was the case with SolydXK.. but in the end it’s the same result. If we’ve less people caring about a particular edition we need to care less about it too. If it comes down to just a fraction of our user base, we need to question why we continue working on it. As long as we had a significant amount of people using our KDE edition, it didn’t matter as much how hard it was to make it improve, it did much more when that was no longer the case.

    3. Hi Clem

      I think Linux Mint did the right thing deciding not to continue allocating resources on LM KDE and LMDE Mate.
      Especially KDE or the plasma desktop that I never really liked that much. But enough said about that.

      I would like to add some views on the current versions of Linux Mint Cinnamon and LMDE Cinnamon.

      Yeah LM Cinnamon Main may have 10 times more (or more) users than LMDE at this time.
      But this may change in the future. Maybe 5 or 10 years from now it could be 75 % versus 25 % instead of 90 % versus 10%.

      I think LM Main is built upon Ubuntu testing? Thus it runs on a newer kernel and software packages than LMDE and newer versions of LM Main seem to be pushed out much more frequently, like LM 19, LM 19.1, LM 19.2 and so on.

      Also remember that LM have been around since 2006, while LMDE was first released around 2010. And then it took 5 years before the release of LMDE2. And LMDE3, the current version was released 3 years and 4 months after the release of LMDE2.

      You shouldn’t underestimate the future possible popularity of LMDE Clem. You must not forget that Debian is Linux biggest distro with more than 50 000 software packages.

      You can look at distrowatch where MX Linux, which is based on Debian now is number two in page hit ranking, while Linux Mint is number 3. That said, I have no plan to switch from LMDE to MX Linux. I am too much in love with Linux Mint Cinnamon/LMDE Cinnamon. It only got more elegant than ever with Cinnamon 4 (with improved contrast for taskbar icons as the biggest improvement in my opinion. I also think folders look better today in Nemo in Cinnamon 4 than in Cinnamon 3 (3.8).

      LMDE being based in Debian stable may run older versions of many packages compared to LM Main.

      For this reason I would welcome a LMDE Cinnamon based on Debian Testing. But I think you have answered this before? It is not on the roadmap possible due to the tight integration of LM Main’s and LMDE’s desktop environment (Cinnamon 4 on both systems)?

      Anyway, LMDE running on older software packages is something I feel is less critical compared to just recently.
      Today we have flatpaks where newer software are available.

      Also as you yourself pointed out, LMDE users can easily and “riskfree” update to a newer and stable Linux kernel from debian-backports.

      LMDE does not have PPAs. But we do still have the option to get some up to date thirdparty sofware by adding repositories into Software Sources (etc/apt/sources.list.d) and downloading their corresponding keys.

      Software I have set up there in order to get some packages not availabe in the LMDE repository (or in order to get the latest versions without having to download large flatpaks) are MKVToolnix, Flacon, OpenVPN, Opera and Winehq. I have only installed two “windows” programs though, both of which are Oxford English English dictionaries.

      Thanks to you Clem and to all of your team for your hard work on making this lovely OS which is Linux Mint/LMDE!

    4. Wow, I’m a ‘niche audience’, cool!.. 🙂 If seriously, thank you, Clem, for even more detailed clarification on KDE problem, especially in historical retrospective that’s very important. And I’ve always said that is not your fault about KDE. And I remember very well that the only working KDE implementation long ago, when it was KDE 5.6.5 perhaps, was yours – Linux Mint KDE, as a pinnacle or a cherry on the top of Ubuntu’s cake. And I appreciate it very much. But the times have changed and it’s already Big Three – Fedora, Manjaro, and Kubuntu – here now. So you, as a very polite Clem, have left your KDE place in favor of Kubuntu. It’s OK. Kubuntu 18.10 is wonderful. Kubuntu 19.04 beta is even better. It runs simply perfectly with kernel 5 and plasma 5.15. Unbelievably amazing how but they did it. It’s a great job and real succes of Kubuntu, as I see it as a user, and appreciate it very much too.

  91. Easy install. Easy setup and configuration. Intuitive. Beautiful graphics. You folks are all heroes.

    Linux Mint is awesome. Period. Enough said.

  92. A very BIG thank you to all at Mint!
    I have been running Mint Cinnamon as my main driver for many years now, it has to be said it is without doubt the most stable and trouble free system I’ve used. I have tried others, but in my opinion none of them are anywhere near close to Mint for ease of use, stability and in the case of Cinnamon, none of them come close to Mint (thinking of consistency in the appearance of the programmes across the system). Mint also produces the best by far XFCE spin!
    As for the logo, personally I like the ‘linuxmint-logo-flat-4-symbolic’ it looks great on the menu and could look awesome with the Mint colours on the splash screen!
    So to Clem and everyone else at Mint, thank you for giving us this truly wonderful O/S. 🙂

    1. Hi Barry,

      I’m interesting in getting more feedback on the Xfce edition. The reason I’m asking is because we can make it more exciting at the cost of making it less stable. What do you like the most in this Xfce edition? Is it is stability on the LTS base? Or do you feel like we could start backporting more from upstream Xfce potentially at the cost of stability?

    2. As an xfce user, I’d rather it be stable than up-to-date. There’s already a couple of small bugs, but I know what they are and they’re mostly harmless, so I’d rather stay with the bugs I’m used to than regularly get new and different ones.
      xfce 4.14 should be being released some time soon- will it be in mint 19.2? I’m looking forward to the xfce screensaver, since I had no end of trouble with xfce and xscreensaver. I think there’ll also be improvements to multi-monitor support.

  93. Overall, i think Mint’s Dev Team and Comunity are a shining example toxicity wise. Everyone seems to get along here way better than anywhere else.
    Of course there things that i’d change in Mint, but overall i love it and the Devs effort in trying to listen to your users is clear and larger than on any other distro i know of.
    For instance, i complained about a simple icon for subtiles being very similar to the video icon. You solved that issue in a matter of hours, while the distro was in beta…

    Bottom line, Mint mught not be perfect, but the people working on it make it perfect for me, and when i use it, it feels like someone payed a lot of attention while deveolping it.

    1. Totally agree, Clem’s / the dev’s feedback and “listening” is awesome and I really appreciate it, as I am sure does everyone else here

  94. Good news 🙂

    For the problem of downtime on multiple servers, you dont have a PDC / SDC configuration ( primary domain controller / secondary domain controller ) ?? If this is not the case, create it as soon as possible.

    If one failure occurs when a system make an update and that there are missing packets due to service interruption, this can cause a system crash and require a full reinstallation. Such a situation can be extremely embarrassing.

    Best regards and good continuation to you.

    1. Hi Phil,

      No. We recommend people use mirrors (though they’d have the same issue with them) and we’ve got two servers on the same DNS to serve the packages. Timeshift snapshots will help, you don’t need to reinstall. Now with that said, your solution would be really good, and we should look into it, it’s not there as we speak though.

    2. Hello Clem,

      Tank you for your message.

      The problem with Timeshift is that he needs a backup disk in EXT4 format. I use a Windows / Linux dual boot system, I have only one NTFS disk for backups and this file format it is not compatible with Timeshift. In case of problems, in my current situation, I have to reinstall everything.

      You are someone good and generous with us, we can never thank you enough for the Linux experience that you bring us 🙂

      Perhaps you could get closer to the Debian developers, get closer collaboration with them, more support from their developers and perhaps an integration of all your modules into their distribution.

      I must confess that what scares me the most is that one day Mint disappears for lack of resources / developers. Everything has an end in live, but we would like your work have a eternal posterity 🙂

      As we say in French ” A chaque jour suffit sa peine “. Courage to you and yours.

      You are the best, I love Mint (LMDE 3) !!!!

  95. Dear Developers
    I have Mint since Isadora. Before that, I tried a big number of distros. At least 20. Some time ago, I don’t remember the year, but in april 1st, I read a note that said Mint was acquired by Ubuntu. I can’t describe my feeling of sadness.
    Really I have to beg your pardon for my silence, simply getting the best of your work and never had declared my thanks. Mint is the best we have to use Linux. Please, go on! Don’t give up! You are our olimpic athletes.
    Thanks, very, very much!

  96. Wow the amount of comments is heart warming. I also feel I should chip in. I have been a long Linux user. I do not remember when I switched from Ubuntu to Mint but it has been a while.
    Yes there are improvements to be made but: and this is a big BUT. I use MacOS on a daily bases on my job and use Windows as well professionally. If I compare features, stability, customizability, flexability and usability I choose Linux (Mint) every time…
    If any of you need a hug… (it will probably will have to be virtual due to the distance) I am here and not just for the developers. I love everyone!

  97. Why NumLock is not activated by default? Every time i have to download the script, then go to the settings and make it active. Also, after i enter my login password, numlock is not working when i have to install a software i need to press the numlock button again.

    1. I’m using Mint Cinnamon and its enabled by default for me. Some computers have that option in the bios, might be worth checking its enabled there.

    2. Is this something you can set in the BIOS of your PC as opposed to a LM setting? Numlock is on by default on my PC, but I have set it that way in the BIOS

    3. Go to System Settings /Login Window /Settings/…top line “Activate numlock”. Hope that helps.

    4. Because it prevents people from typing other characters on some small keyboards. We had numlockx installed by default during one of the BETAs and it resulted in a critical issue, we were happy to have it fixed before stable.

    5. Taz840209, i know that, but first you have to download numlockxx script, so that option could be avaible.

  98. I use Mint every day at work. I need a solid, reliable and stable desktop that can stay up and running while I perform lots of delicate work across hundreds of servers. I’ve tried Ubuntu and Redhat, nothing comes close to the rock solid stability that Mint provides. I don’t want frills or decorations, I’d rather the CPU went to making sure the system traps bugs and “features” I never even see, so I know I’m safe to attach to that database that’s about to crash, knowing I’m not going to lose connection and bring it down ‘cos my desktop O/S crashed in the middle of a recovery operation. Nothing comes close to Mint!

  99. Hi, Clem. You guys *are* heroes, and Linux Mint is hands-down the best desktop Linux distro I’ve ever used. Kudos to all.

  100. I have donated 50 euro’s just now.
    Please have a drink on my behalf !

    My opinion: Linux Mint Cinnamon is in the top 3 and my favourite !
    Keep up the good work !

    And please ignore al those negative vibrations !
    Think positive guys !

  101. I got bored of Cinnamon due to the flat themes and lack of effects so I went Manjaro KDE/XDFE worked well for about 6 months then Manjaro decided to start breaking things even though they were being warned by testers so I came back to XFCE Mint. Mint is doing a great job and I donate regularly because developers really do have to be paid at some point. My suggestion is that you many want to start having some paid features in mint to bring in more money because people don’t donate like they should be. I know that is not popular and some Linux users will hate the idea but I really don’t care as there needs to be an alternative to windows 10 and the only way to get that is to get revenue so that someone can make one.

    Now I know how to get effects and themes in Cinnamon that I want but stuck with XFCE because Compiz is there. My GUI is not flat at all and that’s the way I like it. I don’t know why the work is drunk crazy on flat but they are. Shipping Mint in a flat theme is fine with me, but please include the non flat themes as a separate package on the software store or by default so the user can easily theme it the way they want. (I use wobbly windows with the xpared theme in compiz for example with vertex-mia icons looks great to me). It is true that making everyone happy is not possible so I only ask that you make it possible to theme it they way the user wants while the rest of the world does something else, not everyone likes what is popular or perceived as popular or being forced on us… No really don’t force things on people because that will kill the mint project faster than anything.

    I came to Linux because windows 10 was forcing things on its users, I don’t mind that the default GUI is flat BUT I do mind that it is really hard to change. Of course the Spying was a deal breaker as well.

    This is more of a warning for the way ahead.

    Mint is doing a excellent job and people have to start donating to it if we want to to stay that way. Development is not easy and only a few people have the brain that can do it so please start donating…

    1. Thanks Steven,

      We don’t know how many people use Linux Mint but we know we’ve many donors. We also have a really good relationship with them, they trust us to do our best, we trust them to support us and we’ve managed for money not to interfere with development or dictate design considerations, and that’s really important. All of this is built on user satisfaction, product quality and the fact that it’s completely free. It’s also super exciting for us and when I touch on the need for our developers to feel like heroes, we can’t start thinking like that and make people pay or have less because they don’t pay.. the last thing we want is turn our relationship into some kind of seller vs customer relationship, it’s the total opposite we’re interested in. My post here tries to raise awareness on the fact that we’ve not only got the same goals as our users, the people you see developing this ARE users, WERE only users (as opposed to also developers), and came from the user base. There’s no strict divide between devs and users and we want encourage users to feel more empowered, not have them consider themselves as customers who pay for something they shouldn’t participate in only other than with their wallet. I see that in the gaming industry personally, how hard the communication is over there, and I think we’re lucky.

  102. Clem,

    Your words hit hard, and I can totally feel your frustration. I would hope there has never been anything I’ve ever said that has caused you or your team undue stress. If so, I humbly apologize. You have always done amazing work with relatively little thanks or monetary support. I applaud everything you’re doing and encourage you to keep doing it! Since LM 8 Helena, Mint has been my go-to OS, and is currently my only OS, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Anytime I can, I promote LM in forums and on Facebook. You guys have done so much to advance Linux and Open Source, as well as peoples’ computing lifestyles. Keep up the awesome work! I’m not a programmer by any means (I’m a musician and teacher), but if there’s any other way I can help take some of the pressure off so you can keep moving in positive directions, I’ll be happy to do it!

  103. I have not commented before. So I guess it is time for me to say something. I have been using Linux Mint since KDE 16 and have upgraded with each new system. I think Linux Mint Cinnamon 19.1 Tessa is the greatest OS out there. I have converted more than a dozen (now ex-Windows users) over to Linux Mint. The youngest is 9 years old and the oldest is 96 years old grandma. They are all very happy. The 96 yearold is still running LM KDE 17.3 and it is doing fine. LM does everything she wants to do on the computer and I don’t want to confuse here with a NEW Look. I hope the Linux Mint community keeps delivering the best quality OS out there. Good Hunting… from Varmint Al

  104. Bonjour Clem,

    Si toi et les développeurs sont contents, si je le suis, moi – eh bien, utilisez à nouveau des lettres noires au lieu de gris. Par exemple, ici, sur cette page. 😉

  105. You have a great team! In my case, everything works fine. If a problem occurs? I solve it quickly. It will be a pity if you close this project! Do not waste your nerves and time on lazy people! They always have something not working, someone is guilty. Linux is not for their mind! Sincerely, Reypo.

  106. I just wanted to say thanks to the Mint team to show my appreciation for the work you guys and gals do behind the scenes. I am a low level Linux user and I have to say the in it’s current state, Linux Mint is as robust as any commercial OS and it is my favorite and it’s the only distro I use. In fact Linux Mint is so good that I now prefer it to macOS.

    People need to realize that an operating system will never be perfect and will always have bugs. It’s really no different than Windows 10 or macOS.

  107. Mint has been the distro of choice for two years at the Remote Observing facility for University of California Observatories. Astronomers sit down at the Mint stations, connect to the telescopes at Lick Observatory and Keck Observatory, and acquire images and spectra of the universe with the biggest telescopes in the world. The Mint desktop provides productive tools and amenities for folks staying up all night. Daytime updates and upgrades keep things safe and current without management hassle.

    1. This is really cool, thanks Steven. It’s the second comment telling Mint is used in a particular place here. It’s a bit like seeing it in magazines or in a TV series, it’s a very nice feeling to imagine people enjoy it and hearing about how it’s used, by who and where. Thanks for this.

  108. Distro work is hard, and making your own components is even harder. It’s also draining and demoralizing sometimes. I know from experience.

    Thanks to the entire team for such a *great* product over the years. There are a lot of reasons why if someone asks me about Linux I specifically recommend the Cinnamon variant of Linux Mint. I won’t go into them all here, but I commend you all. Heartfelt thanks for your hard work.

  109. I know that all the positive commentary I, or anyone, could make won’t keep coders, developers and maintainers “pumped up” all the time. But the team needs to know that for what I use a computer to do (web surfing, emailing, photo correction, music, videos, simple games) Mint of all the distros I’ve sampled or used is the standout Linux without a doubt. I’ve encountered no major issues using it. All the hardware I’ve put it on works. My Mint install on the old Toshiba Laptop I owned lasted 6 years with no problems. All updates install right. Really, adding the ease of use and desktop layout and changeability make this the first best Linux I use and recommend to all who ask for distro comparisons. So in any moments of frustration among the team, I hope the notion that you all have built and manage a distro that is cream of the crop keeps you going.

  110. If I understood correctly, this is about washing some dishes, and slicing some vegetables rather than just eating and saying the food was good, isn’t it?

  111. Hello Clem and Team Mint.

    Will they abandon the project?😢. Because if so, I, like so many other happy users to have and run Linux Mint on their computers, would be very sad. I, like all of us, would like to continue praising this fantastic and wonderful Linux distribution. If it were not for you, it would not be anything of all of us, that every day and every day of our lives, we happily enjoy this Linux distribution. Up that encouragement, guys! They are doing an excellent job with Linux Mint, and I hope that they continue to grow, both you and us (Linux Mint users), because what they are doing and are doing nowadays is excellent. 😊 Up Team Mint! Up Clem! Up Linux Mint !. Greetings from Argentina. 👋

    1. Hi Guido,

      No, well, people do retire or leave projects all of a sudden, we’ve all seen that happen but that’s quite rare and it’s usually after a particular incident. What happens way more often is for people’s motivation to slowly vanish and for them to start focusing on other things and stepping away slowly but surely from the project. Most people get involved in a project because they’re passionate about it and because there’s nothing else they feel like doing in their spare time than working on it. This is about spare time and fun really. When years later they keep thinking of how entitled some user is, how big the bug reports backlog is, how tough the cause of an issue is to find out and fix, how little information they have on X or Y, and how draining this is for them, they wonder why they’re doing it rather than watching TV or spending more time with their kids. It’s natural, the only way people stay involved is if they’re having fun. We can share the wealth, the excitement, the feeling of getting things done, but if it’s not fun, or if it’s too frustrating, it cannot last.

      I’ve been doing this for 13 years myself, I still have a lot of fun doing it, if I had to stop I’d probably find myself doing it anyway because I would miss it, sometimes I work when I’m not supposed to.. just because I’d rather do that than watching a movie (I suppose it depends on the movie of course), but there’s already a difference between now and 13 years ago. If I think of the day I retire I can already see some positives in it, no more stress, accountability, blog controversies, toxic competition/fanboyism, infuriating interactions, unhappy people, IRC trolls, spam, emails… I mean it will be boring, but there’s good aspects to it. If you asked me that 13 years ago, I could only see the boring part. Now I’m at a stage where I’m still leaving the dream, I don’t want it to finish but the day it does it will also be a relief. That said, I don’t see it happening, I don’t see myself not immediately getting into doing it again/more, or something very similar. I hope that makes sense, when I wrote this blog post I wasn’t really thinking about myself, it’s mostly about the people in our team who have less in this than I do and who need to be protected more. Their motivation is key to their involvement, they’re not here from 9 to 5, they’ve many other things in their life and the amount of attention they invest into this depends on the feelings they get out of it. It has to be fun.

  112. I’ve been using Mint as my stable Linux desktop distro for the last 7 or so years, and donate on a regular basis. I guess that’s my way of being supportive of the project in a small way. I retired from my university IT job 11 years ago, and have been using Linux ever since. I discovered Mint a year or so after having used Ubuntu on a Dell Mini 9 netbook I purchased shortly after retirement. I’ve been using it as my “it just works” Linux desktop ever since, moving to ArcoLinux and MX for goofing around. I’ve noticed that Canonical seems to be going through some corporate changes which may affect Ubuntu (I’m vaguely aware of this, no details). I sometimes worry that downstream distros like Mint might be affected by that sort of thing. I will start paying more attention to things like that. It’s kind of funny – Mint and the Linux desktop has so improved over the last ten years, that I tend to take it for granted, and don’t participate in forums as much as I used to. Perhaps I should again become more participatory. Anyway, I will continue to be a regular donor because I believe in the value of the project as a great desktop OS offering. Carry on.

  113. Might I also suggest that someone on your team might see about being featured on something like “Destination Linux”, a regularly weekly show I view on youtube. I’m sure they would love to have Clem or one of the other developers discuss the distro. They have featured folks from Manjaro, Debian, MX, and ArcoLinux on the site, and I think it makes for great publicity within the Linux community. Anyway, something to think about. Having Clem as a guest on a show like that would be great.

  114. Hi. Just wanted to say that I absolutely love Linux Mint (with Cinnamon) as a higher-level user of it. When I first installed it moving from Windows/Ubuntu dual boot to Windows/Mint, my first reaction was something like “holy hell where was this my whole life” because I felt way more at home than I did with Ubuntu. I use Mint now over 95% of the time. I’m a CS student in undergrad. I do competitive programming problems, Android development, Arduino/teensy development, some web development, some 3D printing stuff, some machine learning stuff, etc. I do all of that and some document work from Mint on my laptop, and I quite like it compared to bare Ubuntu or Windows. Keep up the great work!

  115. Clem and team,
    Just want to thank you for all of your hard work. Sorry to hear the feedback for some things you’ve been working on has been very negative. Hopefully people will consider the tons of good you guys have done with Mint across the board, and not hyper-focus on a few disagreements.
    Keep up the good work and thanks again!

    1. It’s really tough when you don’t know if your efforts will pay off. Typical examples are artwork where the improvements are subjective (do we like that new website? hmm.. after hearing people who love it and people who hate it, the more we look at it the less we know). When the results aren’t noticeable also… we’re there developing ways to detect performance improvements because we can’t really notice them ourselves, that’s super frustrating, or when you fix something that happens randomly and you don’t know for sure if it’s gone… ah well, it’s part of the job, it can’t always be straight forward, yes v2 is 58% better than v1, we know that for sure… it’s not always like that 🙂

      I’m not worried about this, it has been like that this cycle so far way more than usual, and the fact that we worked on WM performance and artwork is responsible for it. Then again, we need to. When in 19.2 we hopefully come to you with a snappier WM and a brand new website, we’ll look back at that very same work and be delighted we did it. What I did in this blog post is use that to illustrate what happens to us, how we work, and for people to put themselves in the developers’ shoes a little more when interacting with them.

      I’ve seen on a blog that we were “depressed”. No, we’re not depressed 🙂

  116. This is an incredible bunch of people. I have a completely Linux household due to the commitment the Mint people have to delivering an OS that can be easily and quickly installed. The number of decision points have reduced to a relevant minimum. No release will ever be perfect, but to date, I’ve never uninstalled one due to bugs or performance (v17 thru 19). I work in an IT dept that’s about 80-90% Xicrosoft, I have a lot of Unix experience, DOS, yada yada, there just has never been a simpler, more straightforward install that quickly produces such a capable, ready-to-go environment. I’m completely spoiled now.
    Please keep heading the way you are.

  117. Long-time user, first-time poster.

    I want to add my thanks to all those here in the thread for the fantastic work the Mint team is doing and has done. Without dedicated people building the tools a lot of us use, and occasionally take for granted, a lot of us wouldn’t be able to get done what’s required of us.

    To paraphrase Isaac Newton (and of course, Bernard of Chartres!): “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

    Thanks to the Mint team for being my Giants!

    1. Yes and that applies to us too, without upstream free software libraries and toolkits, upstream free software applications, the Debian packaging and the work done by Ubuntu we wouldn’t be where are are today. It’s a huge collective effort, we’re all sitting on the shoulders of giants.

  118. Hi Clem and team members,

    I just wanted to say that we appreciate your hard work. Mint is the distro of choice of human rights activists. We use it in our non-profit organisation and it always works. We’ve never had any issues. It plays well with FreeIPA, and with PXE boot, all the drivers work.. it’s just amazing and we’re very grateful for your work. Your dedication gives us the freedom to step away from proprietary software. I hear what you’re saying though, it’s hard when people respond negatively to your hard work. But please know that many more appreciate you. Thank you for building such a great distro.

  119. Hi Clem,
    I’m a Mint (Xfce) convert since version 19 and I believe it to be one of the best distros currently available. I’m sorry that you’re feeling down about things. I believe that you shouldn’t. You and your team should be quite proud of the work that you do and the product that you deliver. I don’t go onto many linux forums but I’ve noticed that in the linux community there are a lot of critics out there who nitpick about trivial things. They don’t seem know understand how good they have it. Complaining about a logo change? Are you serious? Fonts not quite what you like? Give me a f@#&ing break! Disregard these individuals.

    Speaking for myself, Mint has resurrected my 2008 low end Dell PC and saved me a bunch of money. I’ll be retiring in a few years and plan to spend some of my time volunteering as a Mint developer if I’m able.

    Keep up the great work and hang in there.

    1. Hi Steve

      I didn’t see your post before now. Clem has already replied to my post that he/they are working on a fix.
      But I am following the github activity on this issue. As I understand it, Clem is already making progress on the Power Management under system settings. Then there a similar problem with the Power Applet down in the bottom right corner. I think there is no need for me to post anything there as they have identified the problem and Clem replied me here in the blog that they will be able to fix this.

      Are you using LMDE and are you experiencing the same issue?

    2. Hi Paul,

      Yes, it’s specific to Debian/LMDE. I could only partially reproduce it but the cause is understood so a fix will definitely come for it. Michael is leading this atm.

    3. When I run cinnamon-settings power I do get at the bottom the same as already reported on github and pastebin (by you?): TypeError: Expected a UPowerGlib.DeviceState, but got int

      So must surely there is a Debian problem as they state this does not happen in Linux Mint 19 with Cinnamon 4.

      Anyway, there is no more to be said on this from my side.

      I will make a comment if I see the problem fixed on my two laptops.

      Thanks for your link to the issie on github Steve M

  120. Just a quick note to clem and team to say thank-you for working on Mint both when its fun and when it’s occasionally not. Quietly very appreciative user here…. 😉

    1. Sorry we’re being acquired by Oracle, there’s a lot of restructuring to do, people being told to go and features being ditched, with all that going on, we didn’t have time to make an April Fool’s Joke 🙂

    2. What do you mean…? Of course there was an April Fool’s joke, and a good one too – what else do you think that part about there being no difference between a user and a developer was about? Or the other one about developers being incapable of things like actively refusing to see some problem any number of their users can rightly point out…? Best one in a long time.

      I mean it’s obvious to all that whether you’re a five-kids mom or a chimney sweeper, not being able to take on Hakkinen as an equal or fix the Space Shuttle mid-flight is strictly your fault and your fault alone. You’re clearly not trying hard enough, any NASA mechanic can tell you it’s child’s play, really, once you put your mind to it. Didn’t you know all humans come with certified calibration right from the factory, to a strict +/-0.01% tolerance on absolutely any aspect of their existence, between any two specimens throughout their entire lifespan…?

      And it’s also well known that regardless of how outrageous and obvious a mistake a developer might be making, there will always, always be some percentage of his users whole-heartedly supporting it as the best thing ever (if only those other idiots could see the light), so all they need to do is find a justification to dismiss the nay-sayers as obviously wrong and focus on the cheer crowd, and they can never possibly be wrong about anything they want to do! Seriously, one could advocate for starting literal Armageddon, and there would still be plenty of enthusiastic supporters! So how could that be a bad thing…? It’s clearly popular…

      A good thing these were only jokes, I almost got scared there for a moment.

  121. I am a recent convert to Linux Mint and also just a practical user. I have been reading this blog but have never thought to comment before. I used an old O/S developed by Windows before this and I reached the point where the system was not supported. I had to decide should I buy a new computer and upgrade or should I continue to use the old one? Someone suggested Linux Mint and I loaded it onto my computer. It has been a lifesaver, I have been able to run my old computer with the software and ease of use is great. I am now able to access the Internet and I am currently through writing my second novel using Linux Mint. I would never willing go back to any other O/S especially not that large corporate company. Please keep up the good work and just remember that there are plenty of people who are quietly using Linux Mint to function and perhaps don’t think to give feed back on the great work that you are doing. Best of luck Clem.

  122. Don’t know if mint is the best or most beauty..
    But few days ago i got an old laptop (core2duo + hd6550m) can’t even boot on the USB, I try to install win 10 cos i got a licence, but the blue screen appear due to the old hardware and the fan can’t stop to turn at the max speed and loud.
    So I decide to try linux, first i wanted to install ubuntu, but the live CD didn’t even start get a problem with the GPU cant use it.
    I started thinking “it will be like 4 years ago when i try to install it and didn’t reconize the wifi card, and the keyboard config,…)
    And after I tried Mint, and no problem, the live CD start very well and installation worked perfectly. Everything worked immediatly, GPU, wifi, bluetooth,….
    Don’t have to spend hours to configure hardware. For me it’s the first time i didn’t get issue with linux , one of the reason i always prefer windows.
    And another great thing , the old computer start fast, and no fan noise, it’s so quiet now.

    So maybe ubuntu, ubuntu bugdie, and others might be pretty, but 1st I looking for something who work immediatly and Mint did it.
    I was looking for a distribution who will work a long time and not like hundred of linux distrib who lived only 1years and didn’t bring anything to the linux dev.
    I got a choice at final as stable distrib, ubuntu, mint, fedora, debian, manjaro.

    another good thing it’s not the most pretty but get an desktop ergo close to win with the toolbar , so easy to install it on the laptop of an old lady , like this she will be not lost.
    The only think i didn’t like but it’s might be me or the linux system, i cant drag and drop a folder on the desktop or an icon on the desktop and place it anywhere.

    Keep up the good work, and the good hardware support, it’s for me the most important, cos if people want linux become more use than windows, 90% of people just want a system they install and everything work, and not use terminal.

  123. Dear Linux Mint developper team,

    I am myself a 50 year old developper and I never did it before but now is the right time I think : THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH !!!! Thank you for your incredible work. YOU gave me the final opportunity to get my Windows habit to hell and to populate my computers with your WONDERFUL distribution. I could not live a new day without Linux Mint at home. I did pushed it too to my 16 year old son and he definetly adopted it, in a breeze.

    THANK YOU again, don’t give up, dont’ surender !

    François, from Paris

  124. Very nice! Thank you for your great work! 😀 If Cinnamon will be improved and become as fast as MATE, I will surely switch to LMDE. The heavy desaktop environment is the only thing that has stopped me from using LMDE.
    Keep up the good work!

    1. Resource-usage and performance are really important to us, we work on that in Cinnamon for every single release.

  125. Greetings Mint Lords,

    I am an absolute noob who only recently found out about GNU/Linux and all its advantages – YouTube vids helped biggly 🙂

    I have retired Windows10 and jumped across to the Linux-verse and installed Mint 19.1 on an Intel NUC box – everything worked and is working perfectly. The ease of the process more than met my expectations, helped by excellent documentation – and it was fun!

    I’m looking forward to exploring the system and getting familiar with LM and all it has to offer especially in helping to archive and edit an extensive family photo collection – I might even start investigating the terminal.

    Thank you so much to the team for all the hard work in getting Mint to the state that it is; it is greatly appreciated. I get the impression that I have joined an engaged and supportive community and look forward to many years of Minty happiness.

    Kind regards,

    Pete

    1. Mint Lords? Well you’re very welcome humble user 🙂

      Thanks Pete. It takes time to get used to Linux and it’s really only up to you how far you want to learn from it. Back in the days we didn’t have a choice, nowadays Linux is a bit easier to use thankfully. I think one of the beauty of it is that we all remember how we got into it, how we were welcomed and guided through our first steps when at the time we were “absolute noobs” and those who helped us were experienced. It was in the 90s for me, but I remember that, I think we all do, and there’s an element of being not only thankful for that but of wanting to doing it as well, years later now that we’re experienced and we’re in the capacity to welcome new “absolute noobs” ourselves. If you’re into IT, this is also a really exciting time, discovering Linux is really interesting, you do get used to it after a while sadly. I hope people will help you and welcome you very well while you go through your first steps.

  126. I think I’ve been a Mint user since Elyssa and upgraded with each new release. With an Atom based Samsung netbook I use MATE editions and on my little Mintbox (Fitlet) I use the Cinnamon edition. I’m only an average user but I really love the Mint Forums, too, so that when I happen to hit a software or hardware problem I can always chat with other Mint folk. I always read these comments every month as I find it fascinating to see the spread of Mint everywhere. As most folk are saying, we REALLY appreciate the super work that Clem and all the developers put into Mint. Thank you all (community included!) for making this such a special distro!

  127. Ok let me tell you something, I’ve been a Gentoo fan and user for 7 years trying all flavours including Funtoo, Calculate, Sabayon. And I was pretty sure there is nothing better in terms of performance/power. But the problem of things not working out of the box was there all those years. At some point I checked out Ubuntu because in the most “popular and user-friendly” distro things should work in the best possible way, right? They didn’t, there are many problems event today.

    And then a friend told me to try Mint as “a polished Ubuntu”. It went so good that in a few weeks it became a distro of my choice for everything. So many things are taken care of, like packages for my favorite fonts instead of manually downloading and playing with `fc-cache` – it’s mind-blowing. Even for on mom’s laptop I install Mint because I know it works right away, she can easily use it and updates don’t break things basically at all.

    Just a few months back my company gave me a new PC with Ubuntu by-default and USB headphones refused to work, changing settings on Unity requires a lot of tools and so on. I wiped it out for Mint and everything worked like a charm right away.

    So my message to you guys you are already a mile ahead of probably any other distro out there, I’m super happy even if the things stay on the level they are now.
    Another thing is we do the best things only when we like what we do when we do it joyfully. Since you achieved this much there is no doubt in your competence, don’t feel intimidated or depressed or whatever. I fully trust you with any decision you make, make the logo just a green circle – I will vote for it because I already know what you can do.

    It is true that community feedback is not always constructive and helpful, but then isn’t it even more important that you do what *you* think is right? Use the feedback to the extent it is usable, you can not satisfy everyone’s needs anyways, so just keep doing what you’ve been doing all the time, it’s not a coincidence that Mint stays in top 3 on DistroWatch *for years*. This kind of competence and experience that you have has to find success, one or another way.

  128. Thank you very much for all the good work. I have been a Linux Mint (Cinnamon) user for about five years now. I now use LM 19.1. It’s by far the best and most stable OS I have ever used.
    My only wish is for a more configurable main menu applet. That’s not a major issue though.

  129. I read your feeling a bit down. I’m sorry.
    From time to time one loses one’s enthusiasm for the common places and activities of life.
    When this happen we all to often blame ourselves. We ask what we might have been doing wrong.
    How do we reestablish contact joyous side of life?

    You probably won’t like this any more than I do..but..
    “Everybody gets the blues.”
    There is no cure. But no cure is needed.
    What is needed is further nourishment.

    Our spiritual resources have dried up! The easy inspiration that comes to us unbidden as the sun is now obscured by dark clouds, what we thought we knew slips into doubt and often doubt leads us to fear “What comes next.”
    At times such as these there is nothing to be done. We have exhausted ourselves. We are like fields plowed and seeded. full of potential, but stalled.

    Our field lays in need of outside nourishment. In need of the rain.
    For this we must wait. as disagreeable as it may be at times, as long and exasperating as it can be,
    we have no choice.
    we have no choice.
    What we can do is be of good cheer. We can wait in confidence for the rain that will surly come.
    Gather together with friends to enjoy this life and give expression to our joy in one another.
    Doing these things will not bring the rain. But they help pass the time of waiting.
    “All creatures stand in need of nourishment, but for this we must wait.”
    I-Ching

    Did I mention that You give me joy!
    I am not at all a code kind of guy. Linux was unusable and beyond my poor abilities to understand.
    Then I tried Mint 7
    My world made right!
    I have never gotten over the simple fact that you created mint to help me, one who you have never met.
    Please do not be dismayed that I have never sent you any money to help your noble efforts.
    I’m a hermit, hermits rarely have money.

    So if you can content yourself with my deepest gratitude you will have done me yet anther service
    You are making this world a better place…
    “Nothing can withstand an idea whose time has come.”

    What we can do is be of good cheer. We can wait in confidence for the rain that will surly come.

  130. After reading this somewhat depressing update I felt compelled to comment. I am one of the silent majority that uses LM exclusively as on OS, donating $10-$20 then and now, never complaining, but being thoroughly grateful for the work you do and fully appreciating your efforts.
    For me, LM just works. I don’t have any reason to complain. If you find a way for me to convey to all the developers that my silence is based on happiness, let me know. You’re working on a new website (for me, the current one works. It does everything it should) – maybe integrate a facility to upvote/downvote the release plus a very short comment?
    To summarize my sentiments – it may be that most of your users are very happy with what you are doing and just don’t have a way to express this – or don’t feel entitled to do so because they never donated.

    1. I always assumed a vote would only more or less reflect the opinions we could already see in the feedback. I guess this is a question I’m asking people who read this blog but never usually comment… would you be likely to vote in polls/surveys?

      Another reason we don’t use polls, is because they give an answer without a rationale.. if you ask A or B, and get a majority of B, you haven’t really discussed why it should be B, and you’re now in a position where you more or less should implement B whether it’s the best solution, or not, even if you think it might not be the right thing to do. We’re usually more interested in getting feedback from both A and B supporters, so we can really understand why A and also why B.. and then we can decide that calmly without being forced by a quantifiable metric like a majority vote from a minority.

      A vote result also crystallizes a direction and warrants a decision. On the Internet it’s permanent, people voted B, it doesn’t matter if you didn’t or they didn’t think of related aspects at the time, everybody can refer to that vote at a later time and feel frustration if B doesn’t get implemented. That’s not constructive as it can lead us to implement something that isn’t good or at the very least the feeling that we’re ignoring something which was decided by the community and on which they appeared to be consensus.

  131. I’ve run into lots of crashes on 19.1 Cinnamon. I may be used Android Studio and things can hang. I tried opening a file in VLC too and the whole machine just locked up. This has been frequently happening since 19.1 but not much before (been using it regular since 17.0). I’d like things to calm down again for the 19.3 cycle and literally just focus on small refinements (think Apple’s Snow Leopard release).

  132. Thanks Mint team for all your hard work , I know sometimes negative reviews can encourage a change for the better but these days the internet seems to be full of them. I for one am really happy with Linux Mint and so is my wife for that matter . All Linux household here thanks to Linux Mint.
    Keep up the good work

  133. Clem:
    Just wanted to say thanks to you and the Linux Mint developers. I am a longtime Linux user remember when getting online meant mucking with kernel drivers and buying specific NICs. The fact that I’m typing this on a modern laptop with videos playing in the background and a host of productivity apps running on a rock-solid system still makes me smile. And I don’t mean that lightly. On my work laptop, I turn off extraneous apps because it has been known to crash under load. I don’t worry about those things on this Mint laptop and I thank you and the team for that.
    All the best,
    Kwan

  134. I have been using Mint v19.1 Xfce as my primary OS since Jan 2019 and while it’s pretty good overall I do have a couple of issues…

    1) The system randomly freezes/crashes when using GPU accelerated video playback on programs like VLC (and others to) that use ‘vdpau’ (GPU acceleration) as it can work okay for a while but it will inevitably crash at some point as it happens often enough to where I just had to disable the GPU acceleration (vdpau) to fix it.

    2) I notice that the system uptime don’t seem to be able to go more than about 10 days or so (sometimes less) before ill have one of those system freezes coming out of the ‘lock screen’. like you will type your password and as soon as you press enter, normally it goes back to the desktop like normal, but it will just freeze the system and then I have to press the reset button to get it back up and running again.

    NOTE: I have a Geforce 1050 Ti 4GB GPU using the NVIDIA driver v390.116 which is available from the ‘Driver Manager’.

    1. On Mint 19.1 you can try and get better results with nvidia-driver-410 (or 415 or 418) and latest kernel 4.18.
      Just add the Graphics Drivers team ppa and then install new driver from Driver Manager (see launchpad Proprietary Development GPU Drivers).

  135. I have been a passive new entrant into the Linux world. As a relative outsider, coming from the MSFT world, trying to take everything in that I have been exposed. Overwhelming is an understatement. Based on what I read above and understand I would like to participate, do my part to help the team anyway I can. I would be more than happy to provide feedback, interact with developers and if possible, contribute at some point. My only request is, please do guide how I can go about this process of providing feedback/interacting.

    1. Hi Peri, the easiest is to involve in the Beta stage, downloading & installing the 19.2 Beta (when announced) and sharing the observations (both positive and negative) here or in the Mint forum page.. (Even if not replied one by one; every single comment is read and taken into consideration by the Team). Also other than the Beta stage, feedback here are appreciated and considered valuable by the Team.. (No matter the commenter is a professional or just an average Joe like me 🙂 )

    2. Thanks Peri,

      We’re aware of this. We need more documentation and in particular we need to guide people who want to help and contribute. We’ve written a guide on the installation, and how to troubleshoot bugs and help with translations, we’re now working on a guide for developers.

  136. just want to share and encourage the mint development team. I have been a mint user for many years, going back to Elyssa. You all have made huge improvements and kept up with kernel updates and drivers. I am super thankful for every one of you and what you each contribute to this awesome Distro. I want to let you know that i am a fan of all of the changes you are making to improve upon an already fantastic OS. Keep your heads up. i hope you are encouraged by all of the feedback you receive, whether positive or negative. Thank you again for all that you do!!!

  137. I finally feel the need to say something here, even though I am not a technical person and just a user. Once I found Linuxmint and chose Cinnamon I really like using my computer. It does anything I want it to do and I have so many options. For me, this is one amazing team. I thank you all.

  138. Dear Clem, dear LM Developers,

    seems like you are in a crisis. To my experience if it gets too hard to do things it is good to interrupt and have a look whats actually going on. This releases tension, and from what I’ve read this is what you do. That is great!

    I have used LM for many years already. Much more than one bad release must happen to scare me away.
    Your very open model of communicating with users got me convinced. I bet many users would like to interact more closely with devs if they know how to help them. I know I would.

    My tip with the website: Personally I don’t use them. It is probably less work to focus on reddit.

  139. Had to stop by and share my encouragement. All the desktop are happily running 18.3, but I just got a used thinkpad laptop and with 19.1 it’s running great right out of the box! All the function keys work, media keys, power settings. I just got a new favorite laptop for less money than it would have cost me for the (far worse) commercial OS. I find the new cinnamon refreshing.

    Don’t stress yourselves out on too much too fast devs. Linux Mint just got a nice refresh with 19. Changes can come as they’re ready, for things are already stable enough and good-looking enough that whatever added themes or performance improvements are just that- further improvements. There’s nothing missing from Linux Mint; what you all keep on adding is just more layers of extra awesome.

    1. @Mark B. ; you said, “but I just got a used thinkpad laptop and with 19.1 it’s running great right out of the box! All the function keys work, media keys, power settings.”

      Yeah, I noticed it does run pretty well out of the box as I installed it on a couple of used laptops I got not long ago that had Windows 7 on them. it seems to run more efficiently/smoothly because both of the laptops have under-powered CPU’s (which are the clear weak link to those laptops) and Windows 10, which I tested the free upgrade on them both, does not like those computers (Win10 seems to tax the CPU’s a bit too much as the CPU’s are already pretty weak(Intel Atom N455/AMD E-300)) where as with Mint everything runs about as good as could be expected and does so out of the box with all of the keyboard buttons etc. one laptop now has 8GB of RAM and the other 2GB although when I initially got them not long ago one only had 2GB (but about 1.6GB was usable due to GPU using some system RAM for the GPU) and the other only 1GB. so what I did was pull the 2GB RAM chip out of the better laptop (the one with the E-300 CPU) and put it into the weaker laptop, which 2GB of RAM is the max I can put in that laptop, and bought some used Samsung RAM on Ebay for cheap and now it’s got 8GB of RAM (has a bit less due to GPU using some RAM) so RAM will never be a issue on that one and even 2GB is passable on the weaker laptop (especially given Mint is light on resources) but you know the laptop is pretty weak when 2GB of RAM is not the weak link, but the CPU (I applied the usual ‘vm.swappiness=10’ tweak which is a wonder this is not applied by default). but they are passable basic internet machines with Mint unlike with Win10 they are too sluggish and going back to Win7 is not much of a option given Microsoft is dumping support of Win7 in Jan 2020 so Mint was a solid replacement to Windows. hell, I even got one laptop, which I don’t plan on using all that much, running from the SD card slot (luckily that laptop supports booting from it’s SD card slot) with Mint and considering it’s running the Mint OS completely from that, it’s not too bad even though did take a hit in speed vs loading from it’s 250GB hard drive. I did it just so I could use the 250GB hard drive for external storage because if I was using that laptop more on a regular basis I would have left the hard drive in it.

      “Linux Mint just got a nice refresh with 19. Changes can come as they’re ready, for things are already stable enough and good-looking enough that whatever added themes or performance improvements are just that- further improvements.”

      Agreed. Mint is generally decent looking enough and fast/stable enough as they don’t need to rush any of this stuff as speed tweaks etc will come whenever they are ready.

  140. Hi,
    From my experience don’t try to please everyone, just do what you think is best. There always be multiple people with different options. Take some rest read book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” and stop reading comments, they are not important and for many people Internet comments are just used to blow off steam and frustration 😀

    Best wishes and enjoy you life, you will not get second chance 🙂

  141. Dear Clem and dear Linux Mint Developers!
    Your work helps many and many users to softly switch from windows to linux.
    Thank you so much for your work!
    LM is the best !!!

  142. I just wanted to say, GOOD JOB !!! Don’t give up and you’ll get to where you want to go, which makes sense cause if you give and just sit there, you’re not going to go anywhere. Thank you for giving me something better than Windows 10 to use on my computer.

    1. Well, you could offer your standard, fixed themes, along with a variable theme that allows customization. I would not expect the customization to be very comprehensive at first. Perhaps it could be enhanced incrementally as time goes on — if you feel like it.

      I’ll repeat a couple of points others have made. (1) Mint, including Cinnamon, is a very convenient, intuitive, ergonomic, and good looking system. There is probably no urgency to changing it. (2) You’re going to get widely varying opinions about look and feel from different people. But for most of us, issues of appearance are not hugely important — especially when the starting point is a system that looks as good as Mint does already.

      Thanks and much appreciation to you and the Mint Team for your continued work.

    2. Man O man, do I miss being able to customize colors like in the GTK2 / GNOME 2.x days. That would be so awesome to have back. Seems like little things such as that made things more fun “back in the day”

  143. Hello, I love linux Mint, I’m a quantum engineer, and we are using linux mint as our main controllers. Why? Because. After some tests, the results shows that linux Mint is the most stable linux distros. And the most elegant…

    For the website redesign, just make the redesigned website live, then make a banner that will prompt the users if they want to go back to the previous design ( this one). For the logo on linux Mint, maybe make an option to use the ””””old”””” logo…
    Overall, linux Mint is perfect. I have a lot of respect for you guys.
    Aside from thinking that the Arch linux developpers are just lazy (I know what im saying, im a qauntum engineer, rn), linux Mint community is the friendliest and the best. By the way, Clément Lefèbvre, you’re the futur…
    Cheers, and if you ever need my help, contact me!

  144. At first, thank you for your work. I have a suggestion for a new item to the Office menu (I am not a computer-fan, I just use the computer, so I do not know the proper expressions), where you find Writer, and Calc, and Impress. I would use a merge of Writer and Impress. Store recipes, short notices, 1 or two pages of photos between them. On the left side there would be a menu-style place, with “ears”, like on the left top of this page, and a lot of them. Like the left bar in Impress, but with separate “ears”. Every ear has a title, and when you click on one, the right place open a Writer-like page. Do you like the idea? It would be very useful storing documents, bookchapters, ideas, recipes. Thank you for reading my idea.

  145. Linux Mint team do a great job. For me, this version on my machine works perfectly. I can finally be focused on my work, not on my system. Thanks a lot.

  146. I’m using Linux Mint MATE since more than 5 years, it’s the best Linux distro I ever tested.
    What I think important for the future :
    – Will you plan to develop GUI to easily integrate Linux Mint into a Active Directory (Windows AD, 389 Directory Server, Synology Active Directory Server, Tranquil IT System Samba Active Directory, SambaÉdu, SerNet SAMBA+, EOLE Seth, Zential… ?
    And to easily share a folder or a printer with diferents AD users/group ?
    – Bugs that are reported remain open because it’s difficult to know where to report them (Mint/MATE/Ubuntu/Debian/softwares bugtrackers ?) and because there’s a lack of help. Could you propose a commercial offer to solve bugs in Debian/Ubuntu/Mint ?

  147. Linux Mint is my favorite desktop OS distro. It takes the least amount of work to setup and to maintain. Please don’t get discouraged by the haters out there. There are a large (mostly silent) block that really appreciate the hard work by the Linux Mint team. I will donate again as soon as I am able to. Thank you for all the work you do!

  148. I think Linux Mint Cinnamon is best option for someone who want to move from Windows world to Linux. Cinnamon is familiar, easy to use and full feature.
    I also happy that you are going to use Ubuntu fonts because i always use them and I think cinnamon look better with Ubuntu fonts especially in menu and notifications which i have to change css file for that to work.
    Mint team doing a great job, thank you.

  149. Even though Tina Turner’s version is much more popular, “The Best” was recorded by Bonnie Tyler first.

    1. Thanks a lot, Stormwatch, I’ve just watched this her old video restored by Vevo on you tube, after your words. Looks like a familiar video frames sequence for me, so I must be having watched it on vhs videocassettes long ago. Bonnie Tyler’s “The Best” is better, of course 🙂 And as I can see from the search results, those lucky guys who are free in Europe can visit her concert because Bonnie Tyler throws her European Tour supporting her new album in 2019, wow…

  150. You know, I changed to Linux from MS back in late 2016. Had no choice, Win10 was not for me. I landed on Mint. Loved it, love it even more now. I detest the poor contrast on the 18.x editions, found contrast to be better on 19.x, but still in need of work.

    To be clear, I have not found a single distro that is as reliable/resilient/clean as Mint.
    I made the right choice, I am sticking with it, even if it will be based on Debian in the future. LMDE rocks btw.

    I gnash my teeth and brain cells when Americans/Canadians(I an Canadian) bash on Mint, citing nonsense and generally being ignorant of where Mint ends and Ubuntu begins.

    I for one support Mint, the Xfce team and the Libreoffice team I live in these environments 6 hours per day.
    What the Mint team does is just so damn solid compared to the rest.
    The sheer utility of some of the Mint tools can be so awe-inspiring that no other distros can come close.

    Beautiful tools , beautiful distro, superb work done my the Mint team, just need a wee more contrast.

    Mint, be mindful of this fact, in the world of Linux user who do real work, NO OTHER DISTRO COMPARES.

    Mint is so good, so stable, so elegant, the fact that a few snifflers would want to diss the editions is so telling on the part of these naysayers.

    Thank you Clem and all of the Mint team and voluteers. Thank you Xfce, thank you Ubuntu.

    After hopping though some 42 distros, Mint is the best, period.

  151. I just want to say, that I’m a happy Linux Mint User since years at work and private. 🙂

    I had just problems with Mate and Multimonitor using with changing Monitor Configurations.
    Cinnamon is way better to handle this but sometimes likes to slow down, specially if I use a Widget in my Taskbar which shows me the CPU diagrams.

    But I am sure you”ll fix that too somewhere in the future. 🙂
    Keep the good work. 😀

  152. Hey Clem and Team,
    Amazing job as always on Linux Mint! I’m in I.T. and claim myself to be a “Linux Evangelist”. Not only do I run Linux Mint (I’m a die hard XFCE user) on all of my computers, I am constantly touting its benefits to all of my clients. Please don’t let the negativity get you down, you all really are HEROS in my book!!

  153. I love mint, its the best OFB Distro ive treid so far, stable and easy to install and use.
    But, some other distros have a really nead features that I would love to see in mint…
    MX Linux and its remaster tool… from the current installation… that make at least for me so easy to setup an installation and just install it to all my other pcs, even though I still like mint better so…
    Hope that kinda feature appears in the next release…. Im just an user not a developer so I could not help but just giving the idea…. Hope this is read, and hope mint keep it going…

  154. Gracias a todos los que hacen posible esta distribución, a la que lo inspira y todo el sofware open source que lo completa a pesar de tener que aguantar a gente como “nosotros” aquí cabe todo tipo de gente.

    Hace años compartía linux con windows por curiosidad veía potencial pero no veía el momento de separarme de windows.

    Hace unos dos años y gracias a Linux Mint por fin estoy 100% usando linux, no diré que sin problemas que algunos tengo aún, pero más o menos torpemente y gracias a los comentarios de la comunidad que ya sufrió antes que yo lo voy solucionando. Aún sin actualizar ni reinstalar MInt.

    Dos niños de 9 y 12 años que tengo están deseando que este verano les elimine windows 7 de su terminal para instalarle Linux Mint ya que se han acostumbrado a verlo y les parece más atractivo y práctico, están cansados de las ventanas emergentes de actualizaciones y de las alertas de seguridad.

    Tengo instalado xamp pero inicialmente tuve problemas por asunto de permisos si fuera posible su instalación limpia y rápida desde el gestor de software estaría muy bien y otra cosa que sería mejorable en mi opinión es la actualización más rápida de programas como gimp, darktable, dedicadas al diseño que luchan contra gigantes.

    Mi consejo para diseño web es el blanco o casi blanco para el fondo y texto casi negro. Diseños planos y limpios.

    Para el logotipo el nombre Linux Mint es lo suficientemente bonito una buena elección de tipografía y en todo caso un pequeño isotipo que lo acompañe como mucho.

    Espero no desagradar a nadie y mis mejores deseos para esta gran distribución.

    Saludos.

  155. Hi,

    if anybody is giving very extreme, negative, non-constructive comments (“ugly, sh**, etc.”), always ask for the OBJECTIVE reasons of their comments. Usally they won’t give sensible reasons, because there aren’t any and they just want to hurt or to insult or trolls from other distros…(“There will be haters!” Do you know any person, who is/ was liked by everybody? I just know people, which are more popular than others, but nobody will “fit” everything…) LM19.1 cinnamon hits my sense of asthetics best of all distros around, for me it looks “out-of-one-piece” and “elegant” really pops in my mind, when I take a look at LM. Colors don’t bite each other, they fit with the icons, transitions are smooth, etc., these are some “standards” which you can value astheics in bit more objective way, as just saying “it’s ugly”! Reading those comments is just a waste of time… So, great work and keep it up!

  156. Dear Clem and dear Linux Mint Developers!
    Thank you, Thank you Thank you all.
    Please do not give up!
    I am 79 years old and have worked ( since 1958 ) on all phases of computer development. Just think that for every post here there is hundreds of thousands of happy users. I used Windows from the beginning. But Win 10 makes it almost impossible to get your work done, Example: Uncontrolled updates taking one and a half hours that fail. Anyhow don’t get discouraged. Some of the best developments happen after you think you failed a task. If you continue thinking, well you end up with Linux Mint. Very Good!

  157. I wish I could find words to express fully how strongly I agree with, and praise, your comments in your paragraph that begins with “Let me make something clear that is rarely said.” You are so right!

  158. I have hopped 42 different distros, yes 42. Debian-based, Ubuntu-based, Arch-based.

    – Mint is the easiest to install.,
    – Mint is the most hardware-compatible
    – Mint works with old hardware and new hardware
    – Mint looks clean and very VERY polished
    – Mint is resilient
    – Mint support is excellent
    – Mint folks are accessible

    – Mint is not perfect, but MINT IS BETTER THAN THE REST AND IT IS NO ACCIDENT. SAY HELLO TO CLEMENT AND THE REST OF THE MINT TEAM.

  159. I’m an IT guy, all we did with my IT company since 1992 was MS stuff.
    Since late 2016, we started to introduce Linux — Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian.
    None of it went well. Low level of traction. Little adoption.
    Spring of 2017 saw us embrace Mint. We never looked back.
    Mint on workstations talking to MS servers and Debian servers. We never looked back.
    We encourage our Mint users to support Mint. We hope they do.

    We are at a CROSSROAD – – Windows 7 is soon to go away, Mint is the obvious replacement for these users!
    The Mint team work their A$$ses off on this distro, we as users need to work it too!
    Let’s all spread the word — Get evangelical! Get Mint-Y! Don’t think about it! Just do it!
    Let us show the Mint Devs that we are all in this together and their work is of great value, sure is to me!

  160. In less that a year, Windows 7 will no longer be a supported OS.
    Today, there is a more than viable alternative. It is called LinuxMint Cinnamon Edition
    Today, any user of Windows can move to Mint Cinnamon with next to no re-learning required.
    This is a ground-truth.
    Wherever you go, when asked what to do about moving from W7? Mint is the answer. Spread the word people.
    Gnome-equipped ISOs will not fly with Windows refugees, Mint will. Linux has to to be welcoming to Windows refugees and Mint is that open door.

    Please Mint developers, take heart, the brutal nay-sayers out there are voicing their ignorance in simply not understanding what Mint is about and niggling on small details. Stand firm, stand your ground, your truth matters, your truth is Mint. We support you. Thank you.

    1. You can also try to remove locale packages of Firefox. You can list following command.

      dpkg -l | grep firefox-locale

  161. First I would like to thank you and the others in the Mint team for your execellent work !
    I have been using Mint since 17.2 and I amalways impressed by your work!

    I noticed your disappointment with some comments on your decisions on the Mint development.
    Maybe It would be a good idea to establish a list of Mint Users that you could poll about possible coming features in Mint ?
    It would off course have to be volontary, but I believe many Mint users would like to give their opinion on your plans
    This would give you an idea of how your ideas are received and perhaps avoid extremely unpopular plans in advance or at least know what to expect
    Obviously such “polls” would have to be advisory only – the Mint team does all the work and should decide what to do, but I am sorry to see you dispair over some comments, considering how much time and effort you put in to Linux Mint

    Kind Regards
    Gert

  162. Thank you guys so much for what you do! I switched to Mint about a year and half ago and it’s been an absolute revolution for me. I reached my frustration limit with everything about Windows, and wanted to regain actual ownership of my computer. I tried a ton of Linux distros and Mint is by far the most polished and functional. I can tell it has really been a labor of love. I’ve been using Mint as my daily driver for everything but gaming since then and it’s been incredible. I finally feel like I own my own computer again. I haven’t enjoyed the day to day use of my computer as much as this since I was a kid using my first PC. Free software is what will save us from the technological dystopia we are marching into year by year. The 1% of negative people will always have louder voices than the 99% who are just using this wonderful creation in their daily lives. It’s good to listen to feedback, but know that there are 100x more people who love you and what you’re doing. You guys really are absolute fucking heroes, and I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate everything you do.

  163. Greetings Clem !!!
    I discovered Linux mint cinnamon after some years not using Ubuntu and only using Windows 10.
    I’m a psychiatrist and on my private office I have using informatics for increase productivity and quality of care to my patients here in Brazil .
    Very frequently I came into my office and after boot my notebook was surprised with a screen of updating of Windows 10 and must wait for 30 minutes for start working.
    This was time consuming and patients became impatients, bored and discontented.
    At this time I used a medical system running on windows that after wile create a web interface.
    I migrated windows notebooks to linux mint cinnamon that I already start using at my house and everything changed.
    No more crashes, no more forced updates , no more time lost .
    I experienced improvement of productivity and reducing time waiting of patients.
    I actually use two notebooks Asus for me and secretary and a hp 2136, a hp ink tank gt116 and another hp 1115 and everything works very fine.
    For a long time I have no crashes except sometime when I opened too much Google chrome instances on multiple work environments maybe more than an Asus z550 celeron could afford with 4 GB of ram.
    I like cinnamon, I like green color, I like stability, I like the site as it is.
    I don’t think it’s nothing wrong.
    Everything is perfect.
    I can make everything that I could make on windows 10 with no hassles.
    I think people gives bad feedback with no reason.
    I think developers should don’t let in account and continue with the excellent work already in course.
    Please don’t change nothing except bugs and obsolete programs.
    Everything is amazing.
    I became a donator for gratitude .
    Great work!!!

  164. Linux Mint is beautiful, quick, practical and productive- Linux.
    I am new at this and after installing it I realized I can´t write on NTFS.
    It would be nice to do it from instalaltion and not havignt o look for information and do it by my own. I am looking now for Disk-Manager, but i dont know if it will work or not.
    Another positive aspect, the possibility of making a full backup of system. Very practical. Go on.

  165. I suggest to include a (positive) vote icon for some new features and changes? Although you will miss the negative ones, you can at least get a sort of estimation of how good the feature is perceived.

    Or just make something like “Liked it” vs “Needs Work” vs “Not my type”.

    Maybe also for your posts? I liked this one a lot. I would have preferred to have the chance not to add a comment but just to vote it?

  166. Hello .. Good night. Today I decided to publish on linux mint. I need to say that Linux Mint is so good to me that a week ago I dug Windows for good. I do not intend to use it anytime soon. It’s not because I think Windows is bad, it has its advantages. But Linux Mint is free to me and I’m not not hacking software, at least being exposed to risk for it.

    The Linux Mint development team are fantastic in my humble opinion. The system is solid as a rock, light and fluid. Not to mention its beauty and ease of customization. It is very easy to deploy Linux Mint to your liking, such as icon themes, windows, controls, wallpapers, bootsplash themes, and so many other possibilities.

    It really is very annoying when someone simply criticizes something without even bothering to research how he can modify it himself. Search engine is not to your liking? Is the Linux Mint logo not to your liking? search how to modify. Study. Get out of your comfort zone. You will find it satisfying to overcome challenges.

    Congratulations to the Linux Mint developers. For me everything is perfect in Mint. Cinnamon: best desktop environment. Nemo: best file manager. These two are simply a perfect wedding.

    From now on I will not be just a Linux Mint user, I will be a project supporter. Later this month I will make a donation, simple, but still, a donation. This project can not die.

    Willer R.
    Just a Brazilian anywhere.

    Translated from Portuguese to English, by online tool (google – rsrsrs).

  167. Please do not lose hope in this project.

    I’m telling you, Linux Mint is the reason why I am a proud supporter of GNU/Linux operating systems and Open Source Software.

    I don’t hope to sound like an entitled prick, but please stay on the project.

  168. “I Love My Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon. You All Are Great Who Contributed in This Great Project.”

    Seconded.

  169. Listen you guys,
    I am one of those old guys, 68 this year, who is supposed to be computer illiterate because I`m an old guy.
    Well I got so totally cheesed off with Windows 10 controlling my computers, I got out of it. I killed it with Puppy Linux….maybe not what you guys would do, but it worked for me….GParted.
    My original intention was to go with Ubuntu and that is the first system I successfully loaded myself after killing Windows…..and man did that feel good !!!!….freedom at last.
    But after having the ability then to pick and choose my distributions, I fell in love with Linux Mint 18. I have it loaded on my main PC and it has become my Rock, my workbench, my reliable friend that I use to do all my stuff that is important to me.
    I currently have have Ubuntu and Mint 19.1 loaded on my Laptop and I must say I have probably tried between 20 and 30 distros now on that machine…….BUT……I can`t find one really that is so pleasantly and effectively thought out and easy to use as Mint.
    Your O/S does not come with the baggage that Windows comes with. Those multiple layers buried under each other to make it extremely difficult to set the system the way you want it.
    No….you have paired it down to a wonderfully clean and logical system that just works and keeps on working.
    Just keep going guys…..don`t get hung up on how pretty it looks, and it does look good, … the true beauty of it is hidden under it`s skin and that beauty is the fact that it works so well and it`s free……….UNBELIEVABLE !!!
    One very happy user here
    Cheers Gormo

  170. I have been using Mint for years. In my opinion it is the best distro out there for simplicity and also for bringing Windows users into the fold. It takes the best from Ubuntu and packages it in a clean and elegant interface.

    Keep up the good work !

  171. “We can do small things with great love” Mother Tereza

    Guys, just work with love.
    And everything will come to you.
    I was born in Crimea (Ukraine), my parents are buried in Crimea.
    In 2014, Russia attacked Ukraine. Russia occupied the Crimea.
    I did not want to live with the Russian aggressor.
    I left my home in the Crimea and left for Ukraine.
    My home is lost to me.
    I had nothing. There was no home, there was no work.
    I started my life from scratch.
    Now I have everything: work, home.
    I just do my job …. but with a lot of love.
    I do not pay attention to money, I just work for people helping them.

    I am a surgeon.

    Work for people and you will be EVERYTHING!

  172. First, I have been a distro-hopper since 2003. I have tried them all. While they all have issues, I have far fewer in Mint, to the point where I can use it on my “production” system without penalty. After three phone calls from the”Boss” asking, “Can you look at…” and having to say “Arch just crashed and I have to reload” the response was, “Either get something that works, or go back to Windows”. So I came back to Mint, and here I sit.

    I am not a “flat” person. In fact, I’m a bit “rounder” than I would like. I absolutely hate flat themes. If I wanted flat, I’d load Windows. Doesn’t get much flatter! How about a few themes with some flair? I particularly like BlackMATE, but it is too dark (Well, it DOES say “Black”, doesn’t it?). Some coloured variations would make me happy, especially a gray, like the old Gnomish Gray that no longer works because of the switch to XML. Sure lost a LOT when that change happened.

    You can’t please everyone, I understand, and there are those that will always be unhappy with something or find fault. Overall, however, Mint is a well thought-out product, and I haven’t done any distro-hopping for over a year now. Except Arch. It’s like the guy in Support Your Local Gunfighter (old movie) who gets mezmerized when he hears a roulette wheel. But, not for a production system. I’ll stay with Mint, thanks.

    Really.

  173. Thank you for a wonderful installer of LMDE3. There is a button “Advanced (or Enchanced, I don’t remember”) in it. This button opens a very convenient tree of options, guiding a user by hand through deeper settings. And because of GUI, and because it’s really holding your hand firmly in the process, it’s even better and easier than the Text UI of Manjaro Architect.
    So for testing, I have quite an old asus UL50V notebook (3GB, core duo) with multiboot and:
    1. LMDE3 perfectly installed onto a compressed (lzo) btrfs partition (17GB) of the second HDD inserted into the optical drive slot;
    2. Quite fast boot and run of LMDE3, due to compression;
    3. Timeshift of LMDE3 working like a charm on btrfs.
    But I didn’t find such a good button in the installer of the mainstream Cinnamon Mint, so had to use the well known and famous Ubuntu trick to mount btrfs subvolumes with compression right before install, as usual…
    And referring to Philippe’s comments on difficulties of multi boot environment:
    Clonezilla is very effective time to time when a new build of some OS, or a new kernel happened. Because there are plenty of other – NTFS, APFS, Ext4(/boot), EFI(with rEFInd) – system partitions to clone in multiboot environment too. But for shapshooting of the Linux systems right on the run with Timeshift (or Snapper) in between, and for HDD compression as well, I prefer btrfs now. It’s very convenient really, so do not hesitate to use btrfs for system subvolumes, especially on the old hardware.
    And it’s very good that Linux Mint runs perfectly on btrfs – SSD and HDD, thank you.

  174. hey MINT team and MINT community. i just wanted to say how impressed i am with linux mint, also just to give a quick story of my linux mint history. i first started using linux a in about july 2017 and my first distro was mint 18.2 cinnamon, in the early days it was frustrating for me just coming front windows but after about i week i got the hang of it. i loved everything about linux mint and i been using it as my daily driver O.S and i don’t use windows or MAC OS in my house any more. i support the work that they do, i played around with many linux distro’s sense i first started using it. for me linux mint cinnamon is “king” or “ol’faithful”. it works on everything i’ve put it on and i hardly ever had any issues with it. simply “it just works” every time. it does everything and has all the basic’s built in. i find my self comparing every other operating system to linux mint and i tell everyone i can about it. i could go on and on about it but i’m just going to stop there and i just want to say to the MINT team keep up the good work!!!.

  175. Another first time poster wishing to say a huge thank you to Clem and Mint team. I earn my living entirely from work done on a computer running LM. It never lets me down, and is always a pleasure to use. I value it very highly, and feel that it has improved my life.

  176. been distro hopping and settled on Mint
    i have no idea how much work is involving tuning muffin, but if you need more time to iron things out, go ahead
    i enjoy the linux mint cinnamon as it is, can wait on muffin
    stay strong and do what you can

  177. Dear Linux Mint Team,

    first of all I would like to thank you for all your excellent work on Linux Mint. For me personally, it’s the best Linux I know and the main credit goes to you.
    I understand, that you partially depend on the positive or negative reactions of the users and of other developers in the Mint team. But I hope, that you don’t feel demotivated or even depressed, if you receive those reactions. You all do a great job and I’m really excited about the new release!

    Kind regards,
    Jakob

  178. Dear Linux Mint Team!
    Sometimes is good to share the negative feelings that arises from time to time within a project.
    But please, don’t let them guide your motivation. Moreover, when behind all of you is a huge community supporting, as better as they can, the Linux Mint project.
    As a short story, I can say that since I discovered and tested Linux Mint ( V18.0) , I switch out from my old distribution, fascinating of the simplicity, beauty and robustness of the LM system. It was the first distribution that offer to me (I am spoken from the user view) a complete multimedia, network, office and game application experiences with the better ratio between success vs time invested.
    Additionally, and because this excellent result, Linux Mint is also the first distribution where I was, and I am still ready to support it with money … which is probably the same argument of the rest of the contributors.
    I am working also in different projects (for other industry) and the changes of team and people is something that is not easy to keep, but looking for the project goal it is worth to manage the spirit of it.
    Please think big and look to all what was achieved. You will sure overcome this phase…. keep calm, relax, don’t lose the goal of Linux Mint and try to keep the team close one to each other connected to the happy community feedback like this one.
    For a beautiful future and your success.

  179. I would like to make a donation but I don’t want to submit data to PayPal. Is there any other way to make a donation, maybe by bank transfer (*not* involving PayPal) or credit card (also *not* involving PayPal)?

  180. Dear developer team,
    i’m a developer as well. I know how frustrating it can be. However, i want you to know that severel tries with linux were unsuccessful / frustrating for me. My fourth try was Linux Mint and i love it! Not one negative aspect. I got frustrated with windows, because it got more and more non-transparent. Thanks to linux, tinkering, toying and working with computers is fun again. Take a step back, see what you accomplished and don’t rush things. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Thanks for this great product!

  181. I think you are doing a wonderful job and I am very grateful for it. You will always find negative people; ignore them. You have my full gratitude.

  182. Hi Clem and the Linux Mint developers. I read an article telling about how you might be somewhat discouraged in your work. Don’t be. We really appreciate all that you are doing. I have a job where I work with people and we get to know early that some people just aren’t nice or affirming. We just ignore them because we don’t want to be like them. Keep up the good work. We appreciate all of you very much. Have a great day.

  183. I’m a long time user of Mint Linux XFCE having started exploring Linux by way of Zenwalk and other predominately XFCE based distros, some 18 years ago. About 12 years ago I got fed up with MS Windows and switched to Linux.
    Mint XFCE has always been dependable and the support is good, which is all I need.
    Having said that I have noticed lately that Manjaro and MX Linux have overtaken Mint on the Distrowatch download popularity listing; noticing this at about the same time that I started playing with MX Linux on an old media centre computer. I tried Manjaro but prefer to stick with the familiarity of Apt for updates. My only feeling about MX is that for me the XFCE desktop seems a little better integrated, but of course one can always be attracted to something that’s different, shiny and new. Maybe the public like the notion of a rolling release (Manjaro and MX)? Of arguable benefit as that is OK until major architecture evolution requires a major change that implies reinstall for easier development work.
    Another nice thing that MX does is to provide a pretty GRUB boot screen. They also provide as standard “Grub Customizer”. I’m aware of warnings against this package and persist in doing my own mods of Grub2 but I have to admit that it’s a real pain, and having used Customizer in the past, I’ve never had a problem with corrupted config files, and if I did I’d just flash the last Clonezilla weekly partition image.
    Personally the improvements that would be welcome to Mint are :
    – a cure to the occasional hang of Thunar, but that’s more an XFCE issue,
    – modify the Backup tool to give the option to back up all the config settings in the home directory. Currently the only option is the back up the entire home directory. As all my personal and work files are in a separate directory (for rsync to the NAS backup disks) but symlinked to my home directory this results in a V large backup of files that are already backed-up.
    But those are small glitches so well done Mint, Congratulations.

  184. Hello Linux Mint devs,

    I have used your distribution previously for short spells and found it a stable and solid desktop experience.

    I have added myself as a Patron with a small monthly donation even though I do not use the distro anymore. Please remember that there are many silent users like me that have benefited from your work worldwide and I hope that gives you fuel to keep improving the Linux desktop experience!

  185. I Just sent Clem money to buy his team a round of beer, that is a great way to show appreciation, others may want to do the same.

  186. “For a team to work, developers need to feel like heroes.” Actually, you ARE heroes! Never before a non-commercial OS was so comfortable and user-friendly. As for me, Mint is just perfect. But you always find something to improve, that’s unbelievable! You say this production cycle was not as successful as you expected but should everything be successful all the time? May be the production cycle is too short? It’s even not enough time to enjoy the current release before next one is announced 🙂

    Best regards,
    Sergei

  187. Hi, firstly, I want to thank everyone in your team for the excellent job you’re doing with Linux Mint. I use your distribution since the 17.3 version, when a Windows 10 update crashes definitely a sub-notebook that I liked to use. Testing a KUbuntu distribution on a laptop, with a lot of compatibility and stability problems, I noticed how much you increase to Ubuntu. I have financially contributed for the first time for this reason. I have an answer: do you think internal fingerprint readers compatibility on notebooks will be available soon ?

  188. Linux Mint was my first Linux distribution, and really my intro to Linux, and OSS in general. I downloaded it over 10 years ago, and back then Linux Desktops were not nearly where they are today. Thanks for the hard work of this team, and all contributors of open source, and free software. Because of people like you I have made a career working with technology. So I just wanted to say thank you

  189. Yo! Random guy here, just stumbled upon this post and wanted to say thank you for all the great work, it is truly truly appreciated. I haven’t run Mint in years but only because I turned my PC into a gaming rig and had to put Windows back on it, but I’m going to put it back on my XPS I use for dev work because Ubuntu isn’t really cutting it for me. It was great ~5 years ago when I used it daily and I’m sure it’s even better now.
    Thanks again!

  190. I have been using Linux mint since version 12 and Linux in general on and off since the old mandrake days. I believe that Linux is the best OS in the world and Linux Mint is the best desktop OS period. I have freed my wife and her mother of the windows nightmare and they are quite happy and no longer call me with issues. I have found it to have the most hardware compatibility as well. It’s the only OS that has worked with ALL my hardware! Thank you very much for all the excellent work you have done for the Linux community!

    For all those people complaining about colors and icons and whatnot, if you don’t like it, CHANGE IT! I mean seriously, you are using Linux. It’s very principle means choice! If you don’t like the logos, design a new one and donate it to the community! Or choose another OS.

    Bugs are gonna happen. A little more constructive feedback goes a long way but unkind words can do much more harm.

    Clem and team, you guys are doing the work of saints. Keep up the great work and please don’t let the negativity get you down.

    1. The last time I used Linux was RedHat in ’99. I didn’t do much with it, and didn’t touch Linux again until now…20 years later. We have a household with 9+ computers. There are 2 remaining that run Windows 10, the rest run Linux Mint 19.1. It’s exceeded all expectations. The kids have very low-end Asus laptops and Mint/Cinnamon runs beautifully. They do some basic video and sound editing now. They were NOT able to do this when Windows 10 was on those systems.
      I’ve been inspired to learn BASH scripting, and the kids are also learning to use the terminal. I think it will get them farther.
      Thank you for all of your hard work. I remain impressed. Immensely impressed.

    2. >>For all those people complaining about colors and icons and whatnot, if you don’t like it, CHANGE IT!<<

      Like you, I don't understand this complaint either. How many people liked the stock look of Windows? How long did they put up with the look before changing it? Did they complain to MS about it, too? It is just as easy to change the look of the Mint OS as it is in Windows. There are a couple of menus to pick colors and icons from, located in the Settings menu. *Just like Windows*. So anyone who knew how to change their desktop theme in Windows, knows how to do the same thing in Linux. There is no excuse for that complaint.

      Some people just can't be satisfied (I see this daily in my line of work too). Those are the people that should be ignored, as they have nothing to offer and it's not possible for *anything* to please them. They must lead a very unhappy life, going around hating everything around them, never finding joy in anything. Clem's team should just pretend these negative people don't exist. Useful criticism ("oops I found a bug in X location. It did Y when I tried to do Z.") helps the devs make things work as intended. Negativity for the sake of it ("OMG this whole OS sucks because I don't like green. What a stupid thing Mint/Linux/the devs is/are.") helps no one and just makes the devs wonder why they even bother to try. Not cool!

      Clem, Keith is right. Your work is excellent, and you should ignore the negativity. If the criticism doens't help you do your work, then it should be treated as nonsence blathering and ignored. Pay attention only to the stuff that helps. But also take the time to read all the forum posts that say how much they love Mint, how it's helped them do something, how easy it was to figure out, how stable they found it to be on their hardware, etc. These positive posts will help bring your spirits up. Spend 5 minutes every day just reading those. Lots of new ones get posted daily; it will help remind you of why you keep doing this. You should love your work, it should bring you joy. It certainly brings many other people joy to use it.

  191. Hi Mint developers/maintainers!

    Just wanted to let you know that thanks to your efforts, a nine-year-old girl has a working laptop, which she uses both for her school work, and to learn Python.

    You rock, thank you!

  192. To Clem and the Team,

    First off — Thank you for all that you do! I don’t believe in false gratitude, so please take that as sincere appreciation. I do realize that appropriate thanks for doing a job/task is usually presented in the form of monetary compensation. For currently being unable to do so, I apologize.

    Having read this blog for the first time, I was shocked to see what your operating funds look like! That you continue to do what you all do within that bracket, is a testimony to your resolve and passion. Yes, it may be freeware, but still… Have there been any effort to solicit donations to your non-profit? I’d expect that more companies would be donating, if only for the tax write-off.

    Have you considered running campaign fundraisers for specific projects that you have in mind?

  193. Hi,

    I saw the news about bad feelings on your side, I don’t use Mint daily anymore but you did so much nice work that benefited me and others, I felt compelled to send you a thank you kudos message.

    Hardship don’t last, don’t burn yourself though.

    Regards

  194. Clem, I’m a huge fan of Mint and switched to from Fedora back in 2008. I’m a big fan of the continuous development the team puts into every release. If there were a small group of vocal users who lamented cosmetic changes to the sites and blogs supporting the product, I’m hoping that they had a great product experience. I for one enjoy the updated clean look and feel of the new sites. And either way, the content is amazing. Thank you.
    Thank you.
    Keep up the great work. The mint team is amazing.

  195. To the development team: The news has focused on the latest blog entry to suggest the leaders and developers of Mint are over-worked and dispirited. I am not a developer, or even a full throttle power user, but I am a long time user of Mint in my home and office. It has been backbone of our law practice in Minnesota U.S. almost since the inception of the Mint distro, and we have never looked back. It is easy for us to assume that Mint will always be there, and to forget the team that is diligently working away on this project, year in and year out. In some respects, it is not unlike our business in which clients will never really understand how much work goes on in the background to prepare their cases for trial. I am adding a donation at this time, but more than that, simply want to express my profound gratitude and appreciation for the work you have done that has made it possible for even a relative neophyte like myself to appreciate and enjoy linux. Thanks to the whole team whose brilliant work has made this possible. Cheers.

  196. Hello, Clem and the whole Mint Team,

    Please, do not get discouraged! Your work is appreciated! Not every release of an OS can be a spectacular one. We have seen big releases recently… Attention paid to minute details is important too, that is why Linux Mint is a polished distro. As for the website design, follow your own judgement – it’s unlikely anyone will abandon Mint because of the Internet site itself. Anyway, the old design will have to be left behind at some point in the future.
    Since I said that details matter, I would suggest a few things (‘details’ from my point of view, although I’ m not tech savvy):
    -consider improving colour of folders in Y- theme to make them more vibrant and energetic;
    -fix list view in Nemo – when zoom is adjusted to it, what now scales is not only thumbnails but the accompanying text as well. E.g. if you enlarge the folder thumbnails a lot, their names get monumental size;
    -enlarge calendar numbers in the bottom bar applet.
    Do not get discouraged. Your work is important for many of us, readers.

  197. I’m sorry to hear (belatedly, via Proggit) this has become such a source of concern.

    Even during many, many years as a macOS user and software developer, Mint has been on my radar as the “first Linux distro to look at.” And after many, many years, it’s apparent to be that Mint is STILL one of the first Linux distros to look at, whether your priorities are stability, support for a huge array of packages, flexibility in user interfaces, or, yes, aesthetics (we Mac users are about this a lot…)

    I guess what I’m trying to say is, I doubt very much I’m the only one out here who checks in on Mint from time to time or even installs it when given the opportunity, and is very happy with the evolution. And that’s probably a big part of the problem: I’m the first to admit that I don’t write enough comments like this one.

    So, thank you for all your hard work. From where I sit, the results are spectacular.

  198. I love linux. Have used it from the time when ordering disks was free. I am a user. Don’t know much about it but I will use it till I can’t anymore. No complaints from me only cudos. The men and women do a fantstic job. Problems are only learning curves. At 70 I can install a new os and just have a boat load of fun. Keep it up.

  199. Just wrote you guys a thank you email and dropped a donation.
    I never comment or pay attention to internet discussions, but this one deserved recognition.

    Keep up the great work, we love you!

  200. Linux Mint is by far my favorite OS and I’ve tried at least virtual 20+ Linux in the past four years. Linux Mint does not have problems that Microsoft Windows does and not as slow as Windows. I know the Linux Mint is free and I donate $20 a year, and never send an rampage email or blog about it. Each release is better than the prior. I guess I am not picky as some users; I don’t care about the logo and I fit Mint into what I want and don’t complain what is the default.

    Cheers to the developers and Clem!

  201. As primarily a Windows user, I have to say that I absolutely love this distro.

    I bought a laptop and it didn’t have an OS so I bought Linux magazine and installed this version.

    I like the simplicity and the feel.

    Don’t get discouraged by all of the negative comments.

    Keep up the great work!

  202. Hi Clem and Team.
    I’ve been using Mint (Cinnamon) since version 17 at home, and my kids use it too, on an old laptop. I also use it for an entertainment computer plugged to our TV. My personal computer is up to the current version of 19.1. I think it is awesome, and has far less issues than Windows 10 which I have to use at work. I’m looking at setting myself up as an independant consultant and would use as much FOSS as possible for that, and would donate to those systems what I would otherwise be paying in software fees.
    The main issue I have is with the wifi card in one machine which is not stable with network-manager (it uses atheros9 driver). I haven’t bothered it replace it as its a minor issue.
    I really like the window grouping working well in the current version.
    I use third party icons though (sardi).

    Keep up the good work – you and the team should be proud.

  203. To: Clem & LM team
    I want to say thank you for your work and consistent vision. It took me a few years to fully move to Linux, but when I finally did, I not only fully moved to Linux, I also helped my partner and a couple of friends to do the same.I love the simplicity that LM provides, which allows me to streamline my work.
    I can only leave a simple message with a few heartfelt words, donate some money to help you run the team and help in any way I can on LM IRC. In the end I know this is not a lot – but this is all I can do to show how important your work is. I can’t imagine my digital life without LM.
    Please, do not listen to criticism, as internet often allows for bluntness that would not be possible IRL. Icons, graphics can be changed, bugs take time to straighten, but there has been nothing so far I couldn’t fix, thanks to the wonderful people on LM-help chat and the forums.
    Keep on the good work!

  204. To Clem and the dev/testing team:
    Thanks for Linux Mint. It’s everything in an OS that I need. I have installed Mint 19.x on all the computers that my immediate family uses. It works, works very well….no surprises, no need to tweak lots, it’s stable and reliable update after update and has all the necessary software we need installed.
    Often people who are happy with something forget to make comments. I bet there are millions of happy Mint users and I am one of them. I tell every single person thinking of moving to Linux to start with Linux Mint.
    Please keep up the good work .

  205. Dear Linux Mint team,

    I’m saddened to hear that those who’ve produced such a compelling “product” (if it’s free is it a product?) are disheartened thanks to negativity in their feedback. As someone who is among the satisfied users of Linux Mint, I hope this phase will pass quickly. You do not deserve it. Your operating system is a delight, with much inside it to be very, very proud of. Even someone who is not working in a “tech”/computing field like myself finds Linux Mint straightforward, flexible, aesthetically pleasing, and quite “fully stocked”, if I may borrow a line from the late great Desmond Llewelyn. As someone who likes to find high-quality products that provide high usability, I can say Linux Mint easily qualifies. You have much to be proud of, and with the support of the community I’m sure future challenges will be met and overcome. Please don’t let frustration or excessive negativity from your community sway your enthusiasm; you have so many supporters and friends behind you and your excellent work.

    Your supporter and friend,

    nicholaicheck

  206. I cannot say enough positive things about Linux Mint / Cinnamon — easily my distribution / window manager of choice. I appreciate all the hard work you guys put in to each and every release. Thank you!

  207. The old saying is “you can’t please everyone” is never more true in any Linux community. I find Linux Mint my standard not just because I am writing this in hopes of encouragement, but because it is. It fits all of my needs and it just works! I distro hop from time to time and I can find issues with all of the desktops, but I keep coming back to LM. It is simple, easy to customize, and themes to me boils down to a choice of different colors. I can get to work in a matter of minutes doing what I do. Sure there are some wants, but I have work arounds that fill that want nicely. You as a team are doing a great job with this project. It does indeed matter what you do and counts in producing a great product. Cheers guys and gals, I raise my beer!

  208. Hello all, i’m hoping someone can help; i’m running Linux 4.15.0-43-generic x86_64, when i try to upgrade via comand i get the message that it failed because the connection to mirror.hmc.edu timed out (this mirror is down and unreachable) this is part of the errors i get below, can someone help?
    Err:13 http://mirror.hmc.edu/ubuntu xenial InRelease
    Could not connect to mirror.hmc.edu:80 (134.173.34.196), connection timed out
    Err:14 http://mirror.hmc.edu/ubuntu xenial-updates InRelease
    Unable to connect to mirror.hmc.edu:http:
    Err:15 http://mirror.hmc.edu/ubuntu xenial-backports InRelease
    Unable to connect to mirror.hmc.edu:http:

  209. I may have never said this in the past (thinking that my input as a basic user were unimportant – and that still may be true), but I don’t know what I would do for my computing needs without Linux Mint. As a former MCSA and Windows user who got tired of a multi-billion dollar corporation dictating how I should interact and what I would be saddled with for software and OS environments, I was ecstatic to discover Linux Mint and finally find an OS I could use that provided me with an easy transition into Linux and the promise of freedom from the MS-Ultra mind control (if you’re in the US, you might see what I did there). Anyway, I am fully aware of how difficult it can be to deal with demanding and sometimes less than grateful users, especially when your creativity and hard work is required to bring an idea to fruition. I want to thank all of the contributors and developers that help to make Linux Mint successful, and who maintain the project through there monumental, selfless efforts, for making my life 100% better with all you do. You really do make so many peoples’ computing experience much more pleasant on a daily basis without knowing it.

  210. I think some people confuse criticism with critique, which is easily done from behind a keyboard.

    For my part, Mint 19 came through when I needed it. Something in my old 17 install went haywire, probably a corrupt block on the SSD. I was in the middle of a job so I could have done without the downtime. But I resigned myself to the better part of a day to get the OS reinstalled. I was amazed that I was back up and running *within an hour*! No fuss, no missing files, my home and opt partitions were preserved and just started working. That is a testament to the diligence and hard work the LM team put in.

    Carry on those devs!

  211. To the Mint Team,

    As a small professional developer who works on project for an ERP system, I cannot begin to imagine the thing y’all deal with. However, with that said I want to take a moment to say, THANK YOU for EVERYTHING you do for Mint. I’ve used Mint for my primary desktop for years. You folks are great, the product is great, and I appreciate everything you do. I just wanted to say thank you, and take care of yourselves.

    Billy

  212. Hi Linux Mint Team,

    As a fellow software engineer, I empathise with you.However I would like to say a few words of encouragement guys! Keep up the great work! You are doing a fabulous job!

    I have switched back and forth between Windows and Linux for the past 8 years…usually switching back to Windows because Fedora or Ubuntu was missing certain features. Linux Mint however, has been able to meet all my requirements and has gone above and beyond! It is a pleasure to login to my machine daily and work in the Cinnamon DE. I have in-fact completely moved to Linux Mint, and finally un-installed windows from my machine!

    I would like to thank you and your team for the hard work you have done. Keep it up guys. It is because of folks like you, we still have a free internet, more DE options and are less slave to the big corporations who are trying to monopolize our digital world

    P.S – The new logo looks fabulous!

  213. I took a look around the os and the only place with less contrast is the desktop. I think everything else is fine

  214. I’ve been using Linux Mint Cinnamon for a few years now and it has been a good experience thus far. I can understand what has been said about the negative aspects of maintaining a Linux Distro. Every change might result in negative feedback since there will always be people who do not like things and are bringing that forward in a way that is not condusive to a positive developing atmosphere. This is enforced by the fact that people who are positive usually have a lesser tendency to comment. In the past few years I think the choices that were made in successive releases made sence to me. Does that mean that I like every aspect of Linux Mint. Not nessessarily but I like the package as a whole and the philosophy behind it. For me it’s one of the best distro’s around, if not the best, and this is thanks to the good work of the Linux Mint Development team! So please keep up the good work, you have my support!

  215. I’ve been doing some distro hopping and I am back with Linux Mint. It’s a terrific distro for people who just want to be up and running in no time with a very comfortable distro. It excels at being an easy, approachable distro. When asked for a distro I recommend for people looking for an easy and comfortable distro, I recommend Linux Mint as well as Ubuntu Mate and Elementary. Being in put in the same basket as these two distros should be a testimony of the excellence of Linux Mint. Thanks for your good work! Your on my list of organisations to donate to. (I’ve donated to you before.)

  216. Dear Linux Mint team.
    I very rarely leave reviews, but the moment has arrived when I have to thank YOU for your work and patience in the development of Linux Mint.
    By profession I am a doctor – I use Linux Mint for 4-5 years.
    In the clinic where I work, Linux Mint has been used by every doctor, nurse for almost 2 years now. Data processing, radiology images, echography, magnetic resonance etc. is performed on your system (with specific programs without using wine).
    The transition from Windows 7 to Linux Mint was made with almost no problems.
    During my conversation with my colleagues, I learned that most of them also use Linux Mint at home.
    As a doctor I want to give you advice:
      as a doctor has patience with patients, and you have patience with users, but do the work as you see fit for
    the benefit of users, not forgetting about yourself and your team. I think every user who has experienced
    Linux Mint will entrust this hard work to you, as patients trust their treatment to a doctor.

    And once again many thanks to the whole team for your work. Linux Mint is the best !!!

    Regards, Alex.

    P.S. Sorry for the translation (“English is lame”)

  217. Just want to say thank you to all who work on Mint. I don’t really understand much that is posted in the monthly update.
    What I do know is you provide a stable OS for my rickety laptop that is easy to understand and use and looks good.
    I’m proud to have donated to this endeavor in the past and expect to donate again in the future because I have so much respect for people taking on such important work with no real promises of compensation or budget to meet the project needs, just the hope that the community will meet the needs.
    Thank you to everyone involved.

  218. Hi Clem and the MINT team. Life is sometimes very hard and with software sometimes difficulties can seem almost insurmountable. Just wanted to say how much I appreciate your work and that I’m continually amazed by the quality of the product. I’ve been a bit lazy showing my support, including making donations, now, with great pleasure, corrected. Maybe one thing to say is that there is no point everyone getting so stressed out that you don’t enjoy what you do. You all have a life. So, if the coding difficulties and the impending self-imposed deadline are making life too difficult I’m sure the vast majority of us would be happy for a delay or even for you deciding to skip 19.2. The current version is working splendidly.

    1. “You all have a life. So, if the coding difficulties and the impending self-imposed deadline are making life too difficult I’m sure the vast majority of us would be happy for a delay or even for you deciding to skip 19.2. The current version is working splendidly.”
      Absolutely! I have nothing but praise and thanks to all the Mint team for giving us this amazing product. It is rock solid, seems to me to be as fast as the lighter systems and it looks wonderful!

  219. Guys the Donate button doesn’t work. Sort it out, I am sure there are people out there trying to pay you and simply does work. Is that the old Paypal donate button or what is the issue. Maybe just post your account name so we just send you cash. Don’t make it hard… make sure this stuff works.

    Guys, you are doing a brilliant job! just keep it up…. I do wish you dumped systemd…. that is probably the only reason I would switch from Mint.

  220. Hello Clem and the Mint Development Team. Thanks cannot be said enough for what the Team and everyone who helps does. I would just like to comment that with Mint 19.1, Cinnamon has become impressively fast. A lot of work was put into making Plasma 5 faster and for a while it was faster than Cinnamon on Mint 19. Now Cinnamon is faster. There can be a point of diminishing returns on wringing out the last little bit of speed. I value the high quality and stability of Mint releases. Would not be bothered at all if no further optimizations were made at this time as I believe Cinnamon has answered all the critics about speed and lag. I am more than happy to spare a computer and the time to test the Alpha.

  221. Thank you LinuxMint Team! Many of us really appreciate all your hard work, though most of us cannot truly appreciate all the time put into the project and your personal sacrifice.

    Take a break once and a while. No one important will really care if you miss a deadline because you’re on the beach for a week or two. Get refreshed and new ideas and energy will follow.

    Cheers,

    Chris

  222. First of all. Thank you all for the work you do with this system. I have recently converted from the main OPS. I find this of course different but better, simple, and easy in some aspects then harder in others. There are things I would implement in Linux to make it easier to work with like the other OPS. Then again that would not be Linux. All in all, I like what you guys and gals have done and continue to do for us trying to be safe from those snooping others.

  223. Speaking of needing feedback, I’ve got some. Thank you for the changes you made in the taskbar. Instead of duplicating icons and cluttering things up, an active program in the taskbar just has a green line under it. Instead of having multiple browser icons, the one I use to start the program and the one that represents the running program… there is just one icon, and it has a green bar if the program is running.

    It’s a great idea and I don’t know why nobody thought of it way back in 1995. But it sure is reducing task bar clutter for me in 2019.

  224. Hey guys.
    Please help me.
    How to disable Switch user function in Menu — Logout menu — Session window?
    I just have to the Cancel and Logout.

  225. Hi Clem, Hi DevTeam!

    I don’t get how could anyone hate you guys and the work that you do. LM is awesome, keep it up! Please don’t mind the haters, remember about us – loads of happy and faithful LM users who appreciate and enjoy each and every new release.

    Thanks for what you do for all of us!

  226. Hi.
    I am Windows user since W95. I used to test sometimes Linux distributions, but after one day testing them, I turned back to W. Now I have been testing (better working with) Linux Mint and… well, ok… Last time I wento to W there was an Update that never ends installing, the last W10 one, april… So I want to thank MintTeam for this great work they have made. All is working, and productive; all can be handled as quick or kicker and better than Windows and problems appearing in another Linux distributions are not in here. Two days without Windows never before had benn so productive and positive.
    Very good work, people. Letś go on improving this very practical beauty.

  227. Dear Clem and the Mint Development Team,
    I’ve just switched to Linux Mint. Was a Linux virgin until a month ago. A certain other major OS manufacturer was nannying me like an imbecile and gobbling my data. By comparison, Linux is way cool: fast and to the point. Love it. Haven’t had time to get persnickety about it’s foibles yet. When I do, I’ll just remind myself that I can always go back to what wasn’t working for me before (shudder).
    Keep up the great work!

  228. Hola Clem.

    Gracias por tu pronta respuesta.

    Entiendo tus palabras, y quisiera decir unas ultimas y sinceras palabras, estoy muy contento de haber conocido Linux Mint. En estos 3 años que llevo usandolo y recomendandolo, no lo cambio por nada en el mundo. Por eso, estoy muy agradecido con el Equipo Mint y con vos, Clem, por hacer que Linux Mint sea la DISTRIBUCCION LINUX PERFECTA PARA TODOS. VAMOS LINUX MINT ✊

  229. Hi, Clem.

    Thanks for your prompt response.

    I understand your words, and I would like to say some last and sincere words, I am very happy to have known Linux Mint. In these 3 years that I have been using it and recommending it, I do not change it for anything in the world. For that reason, I am very grateful to Team Mint and to you, Clem, for making Linux Mint the PERFECT LINUX DISTRIBUTION FOR EVERYONE. LET’S GO LINUX MINT.✊

  230. Read some “news” that your team was disheartened about your Mint project development challenges.

    Having recently switched from Windows 10 to your distro, let me thank you and express my gratitude for your efforts. A truly awesome job. Thank you so very much.

  231. Clem & Team-

    I have been using Mint Cinnamon since v14. It is a fantastic OS! I think Mint is very stable and I recommend it to others as well. I have a small pool of Mint users that I watch over. None have had to ask me for tech support, which is a testament to the quality of your OS.

    I love the Cinnamon DE for it’s ease of use, visual appeal, and feature set. I don’t understand some people’s complaints about Firefox defaults. I prefer Startpage as my search engine, and it’s super easy to make that change. The option is right there in the settings. I just don’t understand the problem here. Keep DDG as the default search engine, there’s nothing wrong with it. Google is scary.

    Don’t let the negative comments get to you guys. I know that’s hard, as the same thing in my work can ruin my day too. But you guys do excellent work, and you should be very proud of yourselves. You are a small team of volunteers doing the same thing as large companies like MS and Apple who have thousands of paid employees, and your end product is at least as good (it’s better, IMO). My god, do you know how awesome that is? You guys are amazing!

    LINUX MINT IS THE BEST OS THERE IS! Keep going, you have way more adoring fans than you realize.

  232. P.S. I should also add that I’m currently using 19.1 and it’s been flawless. I get excited to see each upcoming upgrade as they come out. It’s like a surprise present!

  233. I just like to say thank you for a great distribution. I have used Linux Mint since version 17 when I switched from Windows XP in 2014. And I haven’t regret once. I also installed Linux Mint 18 on my parents computer some years ago when they got a new computer, and it has worked very well. What I like about Linux Mint is that it just works. When my parent where using Windows earlier i often got phonecalls about a new popup window about something. Either something about Windows or some of the other pre installed unnecessary software nagging about something. This is what I like about Linux Mint. It just works, and you are in control of what is happening on your computer. I also prefer a stable and fast desktop instead of a lot of fancy features. Therefore I started using the XFCE edition, and this works very well for me. Thanks again Mint Team and the community for this great Linux distribution.

  234. Re: The Update Manager.
    I successfully installed mintupdate_5.4.7-unstable-201904051116 in the Mint 19.0. It’s working fine and the new kernel features are amazing! May be you will consider to include this new version in 19.0 stable repository.
    It is not so simple with 18.3, due to some syntax error in the code but, I hope, backporting to 18.3 makes sense too.

    Also there is no trouble with all other alpha packages for me this week.

  235. Dear Clem and other Mint devs,

    Thank you for all your work on Mint. I’ve been using Mint since Ubuntu switched to a touch OS several years ago. Whatever logo you decide to go with, I’m okay. For me, appearance doesn’t influence my decision to continue using Mint.
    On all computers I buy, first step is install Mint! (Well, wipe out Windows is preliminary step.)

    I love how an point-and-click always-newbie like me can get friendly help from the LinuxMint Forums. It looks dated, you say. Well, it works fine. Just like Craigslist looks more dated but gets the job done.
    I love using the Mint-Y-Dark theme.

    Keep up the great work, developers! I’m cheering for you all! 🙂

  236. Linux Mint est le meilleur système que j’ai pu utiliser, depuis Mint 18.3 je l’installe par défaut sur les machines de mes amis qui trouvent votre OS bien moins relou que n’importe quel Windows.

    Pas de virus, pas d’antivirus, un interface simple et claire, une suite logicielle de qualité, pas de formatage tous les deux ans… C’est ce que demande le peuple !

    Je suis sysadmin microsoft depuis 15 ans et je n’en peux plus. Mint sur mon PC perso c’est un bonheur.

    Bonne continuation, courage !

  237. Hi.
    Installed with Universal USB Installer on sdcard pluged into sdcard port (first attempt on microSD card with sdcard adapter with the same good results). Then unplugged from its natural port and connected to USB port with an USB-To_Sdcard adapter for booting from it. Another Sdcard into sdcard port where I installed Linux Mint.Grub installed in the Sdcard itself. After installation, the same, unplug from sdcard port to USBToSdcard adapter to boot it installed and perfectly running. I created some Timeshifts, deleted and recovered, just testing. All worked fine and quick. This is an SanDisk Extreme 90Mb/s Sdcard, but the micro SD at the first attemp has no so high rates of writting-reading, but LMint worked fluently and quick almost the same.
    Trying more things I unplugged the sdcard on USB adapter. Y plugged it again. No hanging OS occurred, but n operation possible either (this must be normal). But the best thing was that after unplugging it I disconected power and when plugged again from zero it was ok again, as if nothing had happen. This might be not good thing to do, but just proving it happened to work ok even doing that. Windows, the OS from which I come, is not so brilliant in this aspect… And everytime a upgrade appears… problems again.
    I have been thinking about what would happen if Windows become silly or problematic. People ought to have another more secure OS to work with and that would not make W.Users to learn too much before working with it.
    This is the third or fourth day I am in Linux MInt, never before so much days with another Linux distributions, and it is practical and useful as Windows or better. Kolourpaint makes me save time compared to MsPaint (and it was terribly fast and good for the things I do). Resizing, painting transparent… Perfect quick. TheGimp is great too. Kaffeine works fine, though i would like to see a timeline and not using pause-pause to make it possible. but it works great. Customization is superb, smart design, friendly beautiful, quick windows actions, active cornes are great, practical, fast… Intelligent hidding panel is great too. Wine works fine for some portable exes. Dark >Theme is great for eyes… I feel secure even working from an USBtoSdcar adapter (I can do this with Windows10, but unplugging it and restarting offers no the same results…)
    I am working with LinuxMint now more than with Windows10 (last time it was making an eternal loop updating one of its KB…) three days ago. Good job to this LM Team and thanks for creating an equal-practical and more secure OS. If not… waiting for W to repair things… not good solution. Thanks.

  238. Aha! Nice things I am discovering at Linux Mint. I can change keyboard keys for ImpPaint and for different situations. And these intelligent way to change controls while passing mouse pointer on icons like battery, volume… and more than this, right button to configure them… Great. I am loving it. 4 days without Windows10 had never been so little worrying. Happy.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewFBuYHldeY

  239. Clem, You guy’s and Gal’s at Linux Mint has done a great job, in all that You do, and I would like to say Thanks!
    As some has said, you can’t please everyone, no matter how you try. I remember Linux from years ago, and for someone to complain about about a theme or some other pity thing. Well let them go back to the stone age of Linux, and make them use it for awhile, I will bet you when they come back to today’s, Linux they would be singing You guy’s praises! People ought to be grateful that we have such a great team as You guys, I know I am. Because without people like You, we would be stuck with Windows, or if we was Rich enough Mac. LOL!
    Again thank you all for Linux Mint! Can’t wait for what comes next. Regards!

  240. To the team that has brought this project along and have made it what it is today:
    I truly salute all of you! Your time, aggravations, uncertainties, dedication, your will, tired minds, loyalty, love, passion… Man, I can keep going!! What all of you have done is just WOW for me!!! I know you keep an open mind to feedback, and you hope to bring the best experience to everyone. Sometimes, there’s only so much room on the bus for people to get on and enjoy the ride. To those who have nothing good to say or don’t bring value to this project, get off the bus as I’m sure many more people out there would rather be on it once they realize what a gem this is. There are other options out there for everyone. For those that have helped inspire the team to make improvements for everyone, AMEN! For me, you have found a person who’s out telling people who will listen to try Linux Mint OS. This is the first time I have explored other options outside the main operating systems and all that comes to mind is “where the hell have I been this whole time.” Linux Mint is fantastic!!!

  241. I’m a Mint new user, about 6 months. My whole life I was a windows usr and after a lot of research and trying many different distros running on VMs I picked Mint Cinnamon, I really love it.
    Now, one big bug in the instaler: I have a laptop with 2 SSDs: A, where I installed Qubes and boots from it as default, and B, where I installed Mint. Well, it installed Mint grub on A and ruined my Qubes installation. I had to install Qubes on A again, open the laptop and physically remove A and then install Mint on B and then put back A. Why grub wasn’t installed on the same SSD where I told the installer to install Mint?

    1. Hi Poncho,

      Belated welcome to Linux Mint, hopefully the following will be helpful for the future.

      During installation you can choose which drive GRUB is installed on (default is sda)…
      Something else > Device for boot loader installation: (located at the bottom of the ‘Installation type’ screen)

  242. thank you for a great distro, enjoying it.
    i’m sticking to cinnamin 3.8.9 or below 4 coz icon size changing from cinn4 is not continuous but discrete, they jump sizes suddenly and look not good for every value of panel width when width of the panel is large[and vertical too maybe coz i use that way and found this issue]. its the only thing i think is holding me from upgrade! it would be great if this is addressed. though non discrete size change is available for symbolic icons but its solely for them.
    nevertheless, still a great distro. i think life is short, so never take any worldly issue[like mentioned in blog] too seriously.

  243. All those entitled fools who are complaining actually forget that the dev team is not your servant. If you dont like Mint, you can go to hell. Dont toxify the community and most importantly dont bring the morale of the devs down. Destructive criticism should be dealt with equally harsh reply. You are not doing any charity using Mint, the dev team is the one who is doing charity here. I am very very grateful to the dev team for giving me the opportunity to break away from Windows with this wonderful OS.

  244. 5th day without Windows10 and enjoying Lmint. All is going very good.
    I want to know if I can rename, delete or acting any command on an archive when, for example, I want to send it by email via Thunderbird. When I want to attach it to message, is it possible to rename on live from the opening window instead of having to go via Nemo to rename or delete the archive or other? It is for doing things quicker, if possible. Thanks for LinuxMint existing.

  245. Been using Linux Mint full time since 18. Ever since I decided to move to the Cinnamon DE. I have never had a single problem, ever. Great work on LM 19 and thank you for all the hard work.

    I fail to see any of the problems some mention. After all, everything is fully customizable with the UI and browser choice and settings. If I need a Google search I use StartPage. I need a reliable OS for my work and play and Linux Mint gives me that. I will be donating to the project whenever I can in the future. Once again thank you.

  246. I love Linux Mint Cinnamon with all the defaults! Cinnamon is the best desktop by far! All of my clients for Mobile PC Clinic are using it! No complaints from my clients yet. Some want occasional training, but no complaints! Keep up the great work!

  247. Dear Linux Mint Team,
    In case none of you are aware (but I doubt it), Mint Cinnamon is the easiest Linux to use for beginners (coming from Windows) and for experienced users who don’t have time to tweak their machine. I have been spreading the word to my family and friends. Thanks to all of you for creating this gem that is Linux Mint Cinnamon.

  248. I thank all who has given of their talents to produce Linux Mint. It is truly a work of art.
    I have been a Linux convert for about 10 years, have tried them all. Mint Cinnamon is the most elegant to me.
    I know from my past endeavors when working on a project it often feels like nobody appreciates the effort.
    I just wanted you Mint developers to know “Hats off to you” and thank you for such a great slick operating system.
    I am a hardware developer and do appreciate just how much work it is to pull this massive project all together.
    I think your awesome . And you can publish this if you want.

    Best Regards,
    Your fan
    Dean Craig

  249. Firstly, let me thank Clem and all the other developers for their work, which has brought us this wonderful distro, which just keeps getting better and better with every update. Even those of us who post here in disagreement with a certain design decision are, by the very act of posting, expressing their confidence in the team’s willingness to take their views into account….

    Myself, I started using Cinnamon in Ubuntu, when that distro made the Unity DE, which I didn’t care for, standard. After a while I decided to try the OS for which Cinnamon had been made, and since then have never looked back. I presume that I’m older than most of the posters here (and probably, most users as well) and in my retirement help other retirees with their computer and internet-related problems. I can now report that after years of nagging about what to my mind is the superiority of Linux Mint to Windows, not least the former’s greater reliability and predictability, which are of great importance to older people without a background in computing, that I’ve been able to, for the first time ever, organise a course in Mint 19.1 for members of our local club (450 -500 members) for pensioners interested in computing. This by way of background to the two suggestions I here propose for the consideration of the developers :

    1) Make it possible to configure the mouse cursor so that its colour contrasts with that of the immediate background. At present it’s possible to configure such matters as cursor size and to show its position when the Ctrl-key is pressed, both of which are of great help to users whose eyesight is no longer as good as it once was ; an option to make the cursor contrast in colour with the immediate background would further improve usability for this group….

    2) One aspect of what I consider the greater usability of Mint compared with Windows – and always used as an example of such when discussing the matter with my fellow pensioners – has been the difference in what clicking repeatedly on the File Manager icon does ; in Mint clicking twice has always placed two instances of it on the screen (very useful in moving files from one directory to another), while in Windows, a click on an open File Explorer icon instead minimizes the window to the Taskbar (panel). Imagine, then, my surprise when upon recently installing Mint 19.1 on an old Acer laptop, I discovered that repeated clicks on the File Manager icon now behaved in the same manner as the Windows counterpart ! I soon found that using the same trick I use in Windows, i e, holding down the Windows tangent and pressing E also worked in Mint and would place a new File Manager window on my screen, but this wasn’t the way I expected or wanted the icon to work. I then, as usual, appealed to the forum, but no one there seemed to know what was up until Moem intervened and pointed out that to get the behaviour I desired, I’d have to go to the Welcome Screen, click First Steps, and then choose the «Traditonal» desktop settings, rather than the default «Modern» ones. My suggestion is that in the next versions of Mint, the traditional behaviour of the File Manager icon is restored as default, while those who for some reason prefer the behaviour of the counterpart in Windows can choose that as an option….

    Again, many thanks to Clem and his team for this wonderful distribution !

    Henri

    1. Hi Henri,

      Sounds like you’re doing great work helping others!

      In connection with your 2nd point “File Explorer” observation, if helpful, using the ‘Modern’ layout there’s other options too.

      1. Shift + left click to launch multiple instances
      2. Ctrl + left click to launch multiple instances
      3. Middle click (mouse wheel) to launch multiple instances

      – To setup option 3.
      Grouped window list (preferences) > Configure… > Middle click action > Launch new app instance

  250. Your work is amazing. Don’t confuse some nit picking naysayers who don’t like some little design tidbit. You’re freeing us from Windows and doing a helluva good job. You’re, by far, my favorite distro. You just do what you think is right. You’re the Doctor. They will all eventually see the light.
    Gratefully,
    HP

  251. There has been a lot of “fud” posted around the ‘nets as a result of this post. Let me just add to the chorus of praise that the developers of Linux Mint so richly deserve. I’ve been using Mint of and on since Mint 14. I distro hop quite a bit when I hear about “the new shiny” in some other distribution. I always come back to Mint, and have it installed on 4 laptops and 2 desktops. It is solid, stable, reliable, well designed with a workflow that works for me. I install it on friend’s computers, knowing that I will rarely if ever, get a support call. If I could switch my workplace over to it, I would in a heart beat; but since we rely heavily on an Access database program, that is not possible yet. Clem and company, keep up the good work. Regarding the logo and design change, I don’t know if you have opened up the design options to the community, but think about that. There are many very talented folks who would love to submit options.

  252. Clem and the developers,

    I hope that you all see this message. I just want to thank you all for the wonderful, hard work that you all have done on Linux Mint. I have moved to Linux mint about 6 months ago and it has allowed me to move on from Windows for good. It has already run very well for me and I have not have any problems with it. I agree with some of the others that Firefox should stay the default browser, and that Duckduckgo should remain the default search engine. Its easy enough for users to changed to Google if they like. If you visit Gmail, Google search or YouTube Google practically spams visitors to install chrome. The performance on my system is fine too, its a Core i7-6700 with Quadro M1000M, which is decidedly mid-range these days. Improving the performance on Cinnamon is great, but the rapid pace of technology will aid in these efforts. Again, thank you so much Linux Mint for created a great OS which allowed me to move from Google, Apple and Microsoft for good. 🙂

  253. Mint is my first OS in my first machine.
    Very comfortable with Linux Mint. It is SUPERB.
    Terminal is fabulous.
    Around me very few people use Mint (some use Ubuntu). Actually they do not know about it. It needs some advertisement to inform and engage the COMMON USERS about its existence, how they get it easily, and how simple though secure.
    Yes, it is our duty also to make people inform about it. And I think most people use it they inform their circle. But the it is a bit hard to change the habit of using Windows until they use it personally. Few computer users are slowly turning to Mint because of its Windows like functionality.
    And I request all who are able to donate do this holy act and join hands to strengthen the community without which progress will come to an end.
    Lastly, I faced aminor issues – i) Firefox is slow in functioning in comparison to Cromium …why?
    And my request please guide us to learn the use of TERMINAL easily and simply. You can make a page on learning Terminal.
    Thanks.
    From India (Kolkata)

  254. I am an “old” computer user. Like TRS-80-old. I wanted to try a Linux based OS but didn’t know were to start. After searching I found Mint. Easy to install, and fast running on an old laptop. I had to learn how to get around in Mint but the learning curve has been much easier that it ever was in Windows. Keep up the good work. I think people spend too much time being excessively picky. I use Mint and install apps, and have fun using it. The big plus is almost all my questions have been answered just by searching for the answer to my questions in the vast resources out there.

  255. Hello Clem and others,

    I not only use Mint on my laptop (9yo Acer running LM19.1-64b Cinnamon plus for comparison Debian and two flavours of Android) and netbook (9yo Acer Aspire One running 32bit LM XFCE), I also installed it on a home computer for someone with an outdated WinXP. She saw the differences in colour and the fact that some things in the menu are at slightly different places, but apart from that, she mentioned its speed, fluidity, the fact that everything seems to be automatically right.
    We prefer the somewhat darker colours, easy on the eye, delicately styled and not so screaming.
    As almost everyone, she is used to the XP and Vista world, which was -let’s be honest and fair- fine for everyday use. Moving to Mint, she only needed a ten minute explanation and she never looked back.
    No update hassles, no antivirus pop up bla bla, just a quick machine.
    After all, for her it’s just a computer, it has to work and that’s it.
    And that means you succeeded in what I think is the role of Linux Mint in the Linux world: make it easy for everyone.

    So… Mint is just lovely as it is.
    Of course you’d want to modernize the look etc, but hey: perfection might be the ultimate goal, but it is the effort and dedication that makes this a great distro!
    Keep it up, you are doing a superb job!

    Regards from the Netherlands

  256. Linux Mint 19.2 ist sehr gut. Allerdings kann ich den Brother-Drucker MFC 5460CN nicht anschließen. Die Linux-Software von Brother scheint zu alt, denn das Bild des Druckers verschiebt sich und der Scanner wird, obwohl die Installation funktioniert und der Drucker gefunden wird, funktioniert nicht.
    Mein Bürorechner auf LinuxMint. Mein Laptop deshalb zurück auf win10.

  257. Linux Mint is very good. The updates are in the background and I can activate it, when I have time. Very better than with Win10. But only my printer can not work with Linux Mint. We worked 10h, but didn’t find something to activate it. But I love Linux Mint. My PC has 12 Years now and with Linux Mint it is very fast. Very faster than with Win10.

  258. Clem, I agree with Bill S. Please tell your group I showed another fellow several flavors of LM, and now he is a satisfied convert, like me. We’re abandoning MicroSoft as fast as we can distance ourselves. May I also posit that if you and your team can possibly do an off-site get-together, it would benefit you to all read D. Michael Abrashoff’s “It’s Your Ship” and possibly get a dvd from Washington Speaker’s Bureau if not all of you could get together, to just sip some suds and laugh heartily for an hour or so. That’s the best cure for the “Team Blues”. Roy W.

  259. Hi developers. Firstly thanks for this awesome work that u did and still doing. I would like to see in new features phone integration like Kde connect. But native. If it will be possible. And style of icons the default look as how they should be not in LM style. Thanks in advance.

  260. I’ve been using Mint since 17.1, it’s great. It’s a great work OS. It’s intuitive and lets you just get on with things. I tweak almost nothing in the settings! You should be creating a business for Enterprise Mint, because that’s where it would be particularly useful, as it fixes everything wrong with the Unity interface.

    I confess I had a go putting cinnamon on Ubuntu in a VM once, doing this made me realize how good Mint was. The updater alone is worth installing Mint rather than Ubuntu.

    One thing though, please always keep the option to have non-grouped programs in the task bar, i.e. the ‘traditional’ way.

  261. Hi, Linux Mint is also my favored os. I appreciate all the effort that goes into making this wonderful Linux distribution

    Keep up the great work, thanks

  262. Well done Clem and the developers, you’ve done a great job – you know this because people still here to post comments 🙂

    As for the logo nonsense, it’s all subjective. Case in point, look at the comments here posted on a website about Spotify’s Android icon – https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/04/13/spotify-made-the-worst-possible-adaptive-icon-for-android/ .

    Is the website dated? Yes but not for the reasons you think. For me, a modern website is one that allows me get from A to B with as few clicks as possible. Say I am having trouble with my Nvidia graphics driver, how many clicks do I need to make from the home screen to get to a relevant tutorial? What is the chances that i will just use an internet search engine instead?

    Then we have the multiple websites, for example, http://www.linuxmint.com, https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/desklets/, https://community.linuxmint.com and https://blog.linuxmint.com/. (many of which have inconsistent colour schemes and icons, some no icons).

    I feel Linux Mint is missing something obvious. As the (oft suggested) introductory distro to linux, in my opinion, we fall short in one obvious facet – help. Yes we have HEX chat, yes we have the forums, and yes we have tutorials somewhere online, all daunting to use for newcomers to use/find. Instead, we should be compiling lists of the most asked questions on the forums, construct tutorials on How To Solve them, and post these in a tool. I see the tool being like Mintinstall – launchable from the Mint start menu, where i would open it, and I would be faced with several categories for my tutorials – and a search box in the top right. This would minimise my searching, and it offers solutions relevant to my distro.

    As Jam says above(we no longer use numbers beside comments, pity) it would be nice to be able to connect to Android Phones from Linux Mint – KDE Connect is in Mintinstall, but not sure people could get it working. Do we need a tutorial on this? I feel that at a time of people being obsessed with casting to various devices, we could almost have a “Connectivity” or “Casting” category in Mintinstall and include the apps discussed in the following links along with a tutorial.
    https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/11/connect-android-ubuntu-gsconnect
    https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/03/kde-connect-app-sms-features-removed

    Likewise, casting to a chromecast (or smart television) is becoming more popular, I think Linux Mint should be talking about how it (through third-parties) can provide such features. You can see that there are some very topical articles on these sites below, and i think that if OMGUbuntu covers an article on such a feature such as FX Cast, Linux Mint could towards the end of month review in its blog, say we now have this feature working, for more see our tutorial here(insert link).
    https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/01/chromecast-tv-gnome-shell-extension
    https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/09/stream-video-pc-to-phone-with-smplayer
    https://www.ghacks.net/2019/03/04/fx_cast-brings-chromecast-streaming-to-firefox-early-look/

    Aside: Maybe it uses a Flathub for all recent versions, but MKvtoolnix has a version number “7” in Mintinstall, but upon launching it you’re told you can download version “33” from a website. Just don’t think it’s good to be encouraging users to download via a website just after you downloaded via Mintinstall.

  263. This is most satisfying and comfortable Linux flavor I have ever used. I have used anything from Redhat, Elementary, PopOS, Ubuntu. I usually end up uninstalling them and moving onto something else. I have been using this for over 2 months for Home use and my PC is dual Boot with Win 10. In past two months, I never logged in or used Win 10. I love you guys for making this.

    Cinnamon4lyf baby <3

  264. Hi there,

    Thank you for creating such an amazing OS. I started using linux when i got into university.
    At first mint was not my first choice, i quickly look for an alternative because of some problems with my laptop and the distribution i used before. I came upon linux mint cinnamon. After three years i am still using linux mint, working as beautiful as the first time i installed it.
    You have done an amazing job and i hope that mint will live for a long time.
    This is actually my first time donating after 3 years and i will keep doing it.

    Thank you!

  265. I have one ask, where I think Manjaro and PopOS are surpassing Mint in usability. Getiing rid of the black screen of death on install. Allow the option of proprietary network and nvidia drivers to be installed before reboot. Pop deals with this via a rerolled iso. Manjaro via default aur repo’s. It would be nice to not have new users freak out with grub/nomodeset on a new attempted install. And by nice, I mean necessary. It’s asking alot for converts to just know how to get to a bootloader and alter kernel options.

    That would be my one wish. Everything else is Aces. You guys do a great job of filtering the brokeness that sometimes slides out of ubuntu releases.

  266. I really like the look of the new Mint logo as well as the new clean dark proposed look for the website!
    Bravo! Definitely moving in the right direction! I typically make all of my UI dark/black, which looks much nicer and is often easier on the eyes. ::: Linux Mint is my favorite Distro!

  267. I just want to thank Clem and all the people who make possible for as to have the privilege use Linux Mint (I particularly love and use Cinnamon DE). I also thank your families who support you, from which you take time for working on Linux Mint. I am honored.
    Linux Mint Cinnamon is the most perfect OS.
    God bless you all.
    Best regards.

  268. Just want to say that I really really enjoy Linux Mint! I love it and I am using it since last year. Keep up the wonderful work!!!!!!

  269. I would just like to thank all the Mint team. I’ve just finally given up on Windows having tried and retried various distros over the last 7 or 8 years, and always they have fallen just short. I was so pleased that I can now do everything that I need to do, Cinamon is so familiar and easy to move to, and I have all the compatibility I need with my enforced Windows “work” system.
    Keep up the great work!!

  270. Regarding Style Changes

    In my youth the cars had fins because it was the modern style. Thankfully, those days are long gone. I’m confident the modern flat, difficult to interpret icons will go to byte heaven, and none too soon.

    Concern has been expressed that the current look is old fashioned. Keep in mind that stable and reliable look old fashioned, and a new look implies changes under the hood.

    Sullivan said, “form ever follows function”, which means make it work, pretty will take care of itself.

    Mike

  271. Hi,

    To all the devs and contributors, I’m really sorry that things are getting rough at the moment. Please do know that your work is greatly appreciated. I can’t live without Mint. I installed it back in 2012 when Unity became unusably slow for me on my machine and have never looked back. I find myself wanting to install a new distro and a new WM and see the world a bit but I just can’t go without Cinnamon and I’ve spent too long on a Debian-based system to migrate from what I know.

    Really. You’ve taken the vision of Ubuntu, made it more configurable, lessened the learning curve to the trailblazer bits and still given everyone just as many configuration options to install these things if they want, if not, more. Honestly, hands down Cinnamon is the best WM I have used. The Schools of Informatics and Physics use at my university both use Scientific Linux with GNOME 3 by default. The GNOME shell is too minimal and unconfigurable in my basic experience of it for me to get what I need to do done, and KDE looks interesting and glossy but things like requiring me to press Alt+F2 and not start to open the menu are just a deal-breaker. I have friends that make a very convincing argument for vim. But I’ve spent 20 years with ctrl-c, ctrl-v, and the start key. To undo that in my memory is just not going to happen. I like what I know, a traditional desktop look, with all the power features bolted on. Mint is the sensible distro that still has all the cool features in just the same way. On my desktop, I have four menu bars, about 15 extensions in these, ad everything is heavily themed. This is what helps me get the job done (TM) and how I like my computer and without these things I’m not at home.

    So I know one voice isn’t much, but the simple answer is that if Mint ended now I would lose my computer, and I spend an awful lot of time on that. A little bit of me would die, because I really couldn’t just move to another distro this far in the game. I like Cinnamon and I like Mint too much even to give Fedora a test drive. Every single machine I own bar my router and my backup server is running Mint.

    Aside form the waffle XD – I would love to be a part of the dev team in code terms. Right now I don’t know if I can commit to that, I have enough programming to do for my studies and on top of that I’m trying to create a site for the borderline personality disorder support group that I’m running at the moment. I have some cool ideas for Cinnamon (I think that would fall under Muffin) so that would be an interesting beast to get to know, if that’s causing a lot of bugs at the moment.

    What I can do is provide feedback on the website and logo. I have some ideas that I’d be happy to share, and I would love to toy with the logo a bit, but I’ve been googling and searching for 30 minutes and I can’t really see where the right place to discuss this is.

    Could anyone please point me towards a forum discussion or the right repo where I could provide feedback and my opinions on the new website and logo please?

    Thanks very much, please do keep doing what you are doing.

  272. I got fed up with Windows 10 browser freezing errors and was unable to browse using any browser. Hence due to sudden issues and problems with Windows I always keep Linux Mint Debian Edition ready on my PC in dual boot mode using GRUB. I have been doing so since 2009-10. I love Linux Mint and thank all guys for their contributions to make Linux Mint great. I urge everyone to give it a try and I bet you’ll too love it.

  273. I finally made a donation because I read that the Mint developers were “defeated and depressed” leading up to 19.2. I guess it’s because you don’t get enough feedback on the transformative impact your work has had.

    2016 was my “Year of Linux on the Desktop” and I moved several 24×7 computers off of Windows. I’ve never found anything I needed so far that wasn’t available free of charge, and on eight different computers running 24×7 Mint has never crashed. I’ve just upgraded several to 19.1 and it was completely easy and painless…. much easier even than installing Windows, what with everything being detecting and set up automatically, plus not having to hunt for drivers or worry about registration.

    Thank you so much for what you have given us; I’m sure there are thousands of other people who are equally happy with it!

  274. A month ago (March 2019) I read in the Dutch Linux magazine about Linux Mint. I have 3 “old” laptops, a HP Compaq NC6120 (2005), Asus F3E (2007) and a HP Pavilion g7 (2014). All 3 doted with different flavors of Windows but with one remarkable problem, the OS’s are simply to slow to work with. Startup time 3 minutes or more and no more support for XP. When I read the article I decided to take the HP Pavilion g7 and installed Linux Mint. I ditched Window fully and installed Linux Mint from the USB stick. It was a remarkable changeover. The system was fast again in conjunction with Windows 10. It started within 50 seconds. After that I installed Linux Mint on the ASUS and the oldest laptop the HP Compaq NC6120. No problems with the hardware. Even the oldest system is up and running within 90 seconds and with Open Office you can really do your job. I have used Linux before but I am a novice, my knowledge about the system is low. Nevertheless I can use it with remarkable comfort. I thank all the developers of Linux Mint for creating such a beautiful OS.

  275. Since I found Linux Mint a year ago I’m totally satisfied that its the best OS I’ve ever come across. I’ve since converted my sisters computers and about 5 friends and all are very happy that their old laptops now have new life. Their old laptops work as computers are supposed to work, they turn on, you work, they turn off. This is what windows fail to do. Thanks again for superb OS and I’ll continue to tell the world about Linux.

  276. You are doing great work! Don’t take any feedback negative. Look at all the possibilities instead.

    Keep going your great work! I hope you’ll find new developers joining again your community.

  277. Dear Mint Team, thanks for your monthly update and I realized how important it is to send you my gratitude for so many years (since Mint 6 I think) of reliable use of Mint. I am a simple end-user and I very much appreciated how easy it was to install Mint 19.1. I now installed Mint on my 89-years mother’s computer and I can very easily maintain and update her computer. She was complaining (rightly) about Windows, requiring update confirmations all the time from different programs, she does not trust clicking on these, so its very unpleasant for her. With Linux Mint, its all in the Update Manager, which she (or me) can safely use. Same for my daughter who is not into computers at all, just needs basic use and going to Mint made that so much more comfortable. Hardware recognition such as printers improved so much, in the early days, that was sometimes a struggle, but that is clearly the past now. You make a lot of people happy every day! Thanks to the whole team. Best, Jan.

  278. If something works well, then changing the “look” just to indicate that the underlying software has been improved is short-sighted.
    Personally, I’ve been using Mint from its early days, but switching to LMDE1, LMDE2 & now LMDE3.
    My switch to Mint was a direct result of Ubuntu’s continual messing with the desktop.
    A stable desktop is a good thing to have.

    If I want to have a new look (just to be different) then I can do a lot with different themes etc.

  279. Mint is by far the best Distro.
    It is much more polished than all the others
    I use Mint 19 and 19.1 Mate on 2 Dell Optiplex 780 PC’s
    Keep up the good work Clem and the team

  280. Linux Mint is still THE best OS. Practically.

    One bug in Cinnamon Nemo (File Manager) is still driving me crazy for a long time.
    I’ve explained it in details a long time ago but no change is done.

    The Bug (Shortly):
    – Open Nemo, press F3, now you have two “windows”.
    – Copy (backup) directory with many sub-directories and files in it from “window-1” to “window-2”;
    – Nemo will ask you to Merge (since it is the same directory name)? say Yes.
    – Now Nemo will ask you to Skip or Replace a FILE? say Skip.
    * So Nemo will not only skip all files from that point, but also Skip ALL Directories !!!
    This is NOT what I’m (the user) said – I’ve said: Skip FILEs – but continue to Merge Directories !!!
    This is a logical common sense !
    Please fix it – it makes my manual backup process with Nemo worse then using FreeDOS and Norton Commander. Honestly.

    Otherwise, congratulations for Linux Mint 19.1 – The Best Linux, The most practical and functional Linux, The most easy to Install on Any PC!, The most polished Linux in the market, and probably the most stable Linux. Thanks a lot to Clem and the Linux Mint Team !

    1. Shian, Are you actually copying the files and folders to another location or are you just opening two windows in the same location? From your description, it appears you are trying to copy and paste the folder on to itself. Of course Nemo will skip all files and folders as you are just copying them into the exact same directory. Having two windows does not mean you have two different locations on the hard drive. Make sure you are actually copying the files to a different location.

  281. For the longest time my primary linux OS was “UBUNTU”, seeing as how back in college I started my linux journey with Ubuntu 10.04, but I’ve noticed especially recently that it didn’t have that pull, that attractive energy if you will, I was jumping all over the place distro to distro, until, I found Linux Mint by chance, and I was forever ‘hooked’. I love Linux Mint, the ease of use, the functionality, the overall elegance of the whole OS, it’s inspiring and comforting to know that there are people out there like yourselves that put in the time and effort to create such a stunning masterpiece for we the users. Thank you all you and your team of magicians do.

    1. Oops there is a bit of a typo at the end there, sorry… It should say “Thank you for everything that you and all of your team of magicians do”.

  282. Hey mint team , I missed the KDE desktop environment a lot. Please if possible again start providing KDE as default desktop environment .. Waiting for the news ‘Linux mint starts rolling 19.3 in 4 different Desktop environment along with KDE ‘..
    Thanks

  283. I just wanted to say thank you, I’ve been using Linux Mint did around 10 years and I absolutely love it!

  284. tHANKS FOR your great job. Bought a used PC an mint was already installed. As a former windows user it is so easy for me to find my way in mint. I tried several years before on another PC a linux system and it was much harder for me to get through the other routines.

  285. HI Guys.
    For the last far too many years I have been using windows XP. It is an all my computers for work. However I have not upgraded my desktop physically for several years – probably since I got it and xp.
    It got clunky. It got slow. It took about 10minutes to be booted up and happy to do anything.
    Mint was suggested along with a new drive.
    I have been terrified of the change.
    It took me about a month to slowly switch over.
    I am impressed.
    I love the speed and the cleanliness of the gui.
    It just works, it feels simple ( I know that it isn’t but as a user it feels simple)
    As a hardware engineer I have the fear of the dark arts that you employ even though I know that I shouldn’t.
    I have used mint now for about a month as may main operating system.
    I suspect that they will have to pry it out of my clenched hands when it comes to upgrade next.
    Thank you for this amazing system.

    Tim

  286. yo soy usuario de la ditro y no puedo contribuir monetariamente, pero soy ing en sistemas y si bien no estoy en el desarrollo puedo aprender dado que programamo en varios lenguajes nada de otro mundo….asi que me ofresco a aprender contribuir con desarrollo si es necesario.

    Saludos desde la argentina my friends

  287. Hi again.
    Well, I have not been working on Windows10 since more than a week. Last time i went for Options in order to look for Updates and the blue window vanished and dod nothing, just dissapared, one time after another. I have installed Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo on another Sdcard on USB-SDcardadapter. Well, I just started installing some things but… it is not the same. It is not so practical… And Desktop is very limited.. I tried another distros these days but nothing compared to LMint. The best for me. It makes me feel like the worker with a great tool, not a verysplendidhotpowerfulblabla tool that will work if you understand its innermechanicaltothelimitside… It helps me to work and do great job; the great job is not to understand it, it becomes a very easy job to work with it since the first contact with this precious tool.
    One thing that could be perfect, I think. During these days I realized that I cant rename mass archives from Nemo. I had to install Gprename. It would be nice to copy and paste some archives into the others and being able to select the DOtheSamewithAlltheRest for renaming them, instead of doing it one by one or using the terminal or third part programs. I dont know if there is a possibility in Nemo for doing it.
    And another second one thing. It would be nice to make a shortcut in the Desktop or in the Panel from a Window’s programm (portables in example) and make it run the same way that it runs if executed from the archive that contains it. From desktop, the shorcut alone goes into trouble mayday mayday missed in combat.
    Ah, just one final thing. I can run PhotoshopCC 2019 portable, yes!! but the only problem is that Tools appear ok, but dropdown menues from them appear all in black, so I have to pick in the dark for the tool I want to select it. And the appearing window at Help-About Phososhop flashes one time and quickly dissapears. For the rest, all ok.
    Clonezilla works perfect, I cloned the full sscard into another one and both run perfect LMint. I did a recovering from Partition to Image-Image to Partition and perfect too.
    Thanks for this great OS, genius.

    1. In my then Linux Mint KDE, it was real simpliest to launch absolutely any linux, and windows app (either installed in any os, or portable) as well, from any place (desktop or panel) with standard desktop element including, for example, the lines:
      [Desktop Entry]

      Exec=/home/vg/.local/bin/Foobar2000.sh
      Icon=3C17_foobar2000.0

      The script file Foobar2000.sh was this, with “Win” set equal the path where I kept windows portables:
      #!/bin/bash
      wine “$Win/Programs/Portable/foobar2000/foobar2000.exe”
      # end of script
      I hope it will do on the other flavors of modern Linux MInt too.

  288. Hi Mint team,
    Thank you so much for your work and the quality of the product. Never mind those who are negative! They need to learn how to express issues positively.
    Keep up the good work!
    Thomas

  289. Hi vegalin, thanks for your help. I am new here at Linux and knowledge about Linux surpasses me, so it was hard to understand how to do this easy-for-you process, but it helped me to try another options.
    I run winecfg from terminal and in Units I found the route to my Photoshop19Portable (I did not installed it, just copied and pasted from Windows all archives expanded in one archive, just as it is). So I copied the route to according to Winecfg and then I made a shortcut on desktop with this command:
    wine “D:/home/mi/WIN/Adobe PhotoShop CC/Photoshop.exe”
    (I have window’s portables inside a Win named directory too :-))
    Now it runs perfect and quick. Thanks. LMint respondes great almost to everything, even to ignorant hands like mine 🙂 Things go on perfect again.

    1. Hi aio, I’m very glad that my option has helped you to find a straightforward, one step solution. Actually, I must confess, my option is more suitable for multiboot environment when one single script can be used in all Linuxes installed. Moreover, it can be used in all OSes – windows, and mac os as well. And if to name this script, for example, foobar2000.sh.cmd, and make *.cmd files executable in linux, then the fist two lines of the script will open the app with wine in linux. In Windows boot, the *.cmd files are executable by default, so the third line opens the app:
      #!/bin/bash
      wine “$Win/Programs/Portable/foobar2000/foobar2000.exe”
      C:/Programs/Portable/foobar2000/foobar2000.exe
      # end of script
      Another example of a multi OS script (Example.LOGs.open.cmd) for opening a folder LOGs of NODE partition either from LInux Mint KDE, from Windows, or from Mac OS is this:
      #!/bin/sh
      dolphin /media/vg/NODE/LOGs
      explorer N:\LOGs
      Finder /Volumes/NODE/LOGs
      # end of script

  290. Hi everyone
    How can I remove the writings “Linux Mint 19 Tara ……. HP-250-G2-Notebook-PC tty1
    ……. HP-250-G2-Notebook-PC login:” during the boot on blak screen?
    These writings appear even if, during installation, I have selected access without a password.
    Someone can help me? Thanks

  291. Thanks to all the developers of this wonderful OS, its a joy to use and a true benefit to so many people in so many countries 😀
    I’m sure there are millions of people who love what you achieve but don’t find the route to thank you. Have used Mint for many years and love it 🙂 adding a donation today.

  292. Thank you Linux Mint developers! I know how hard you guys must work to churn out such an efficient distro & that work is very much appreciated! Linux Mint is polished/compact enough to rise above the rest for MOST PEOPLE, but we will always have those who hold different points of view- many I suspect are new users/inexperienced. It just shows how much Linux Mint Developers care that negative comments weigh as heavy as they do. It is a good thing to care.

    I also suspect competitors are likely trying to demoralize the Linux Mint team because it is such a strong distro. Possibly even politically motivated.

    With Windows now collecting ALL personal browsing data & selling it to advertisers their product has limited shelflife as far as privacy is concerned. Privacy will become more prioritized in the face of growing surveillance capitalism. I have confidence Linux Mint has the ability to rise above the rest but this Linux Desktop thing is certainly a long game.

    My parents LOVE Linux Mint much more than they did Windows. They still don’t understand what Linux really is but they don’t need to, nor do they want to. Low maintenance for them & they can’t hurt their machine logged in as users.

    “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
    – Benjamin Franklin

    “There is only one way to avoid criticism:
    Do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.” – Buddha

    I love you guys! Thank you so much & please don’t give up. This is a great movement & I would like to help as my skills get better.

  293. Reading your comments above I would like to express my utmost thanks to all those who contribute their time to develop LInux mint. I wish that I had enough knowledge and skills to even help a little. Without Linux Mint I would not even be a computer user. What you have done is to widen my ability to achieve almost anything that I have had the motivation to try from CAD design including a very credible animation technique as well as the ability to attempt learning Python together with QT5 to achieve good graphics user interfaces. My budget is zero and I could not even start the simplest of tasks if I was stuck on a Windows machine. I thank you again and again for this wonderful software.

  294. I think Linux Mint is great and have been using it for about 10 years, and it gets better and better. I dual boot to Windows 10 so that I can cross check a few things when leading a local study group. If you want a speed comparison compare LibreOffice on Windows 10 against LO on Linux Mint. People can’t believe Windows is so slow.
    On the question of themes, I would only say consider people with poorer eyesight or colour blindness. Make sure there is sufficient contrast between text and the background, and ensure overlying windows have distinct edges.

  295. just my story, i have been working on a desk, using a computer for the last 20 years or so, i use a computer since microsoft DOS, and i have been heating since then the microsoft way of doing business, 3 years ago i fullfilled a little dream, change all the pc on my office (+/- 11 pcs) to use linux… i try a lot of distros, and when i was exaust and almost quiting the task… i found mint 😀 (it it just real) since then i love linux, but it is some kind of guilty love, because every single time that y try another distro, ANY other distro… i say… man! linux mint is my only linux. if linux where ubuntu, or any other distro… i maybe would be just another microsoft angry user. 😀 thanks guys for all the joy you give to my work… not to mention all the job i dont have to do (clean viruses and stuff like that).

    by the way microsoft never asked my for a logo or a website 😀

    ps. i dont like the curent linux mint logo i really think that the website and logo would easely be updated 😀

    i the logo stays just the same… i dont care, i feel super hapy about been able to give an opinion.

    thanks for all that

  296. Have been using Linux Mint for three years in the home PC. Everything works out of the box and and easy to use. As someone who cares about privacy, using Linux is the best option out there. And Linux Mint makes is really easy. Thanks for the great distro and hope see it getting better!

  297. Well, I did something new for me and it worked.
    I had installed LMint on a Sdcard connectet to Usb by UsbToSdcard adapter. All was ok. Then I used Clonezilla to save Partition to an image. Today I made use of Clonezilla to recover that image into the SSd disk where Windows is installed. I just created another partition and then I put the Image to Partition recovered there. Windows was the owner of boot in this ssd disk, so I downloaded BootDiskRepair, burned it into an usb stick and just let it do the job (recommended procedure) Now I started the ssd and… grub is there and working ok for both Windows and LMint entries. Quick and easy to Use software. This makes me feel more secure after thinking Windows Updates sometimes changes the boot manager. If it happens from now on I really don’t mind. Long life to LMint and all the perfect free tools made by super geniuses out there. LMint runs a little quicker now, but on Sdcard attached to USB3 was nicely quick. Perfect. Iǘe been working with LMint and sometimes I thought I was on Windows. They are almost the same, and LMint surpasses some windowś software. I love LMint, best Linux distro I.ve tried. Waiting for Tina, thought as it is now LMint is great.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC5E8ie2pdM

  298. As a longtime Windows user — and before that, DOS — it just amazes me that people are working so hard on creating, maintaining and improving a FREE operating system. Who would have guessed? Such generous souls! I’ve fiddled with Linux now and then over the years by booting from a USB stick, but I heard such good things about Linux Mint on YouTube lately that I finally decided to delete Windows 10 from a laptop and permanently install Linux Mint. Cool. I like it! For a start, it’s just nice to be out from under Microsoft, but what I really like is all the control I get over my computer. And without all the malware worries! My first project will be trying to learn the command line well enough that I can see what people mean when they get all excited and breathless about the power of command line scripts.

  299. For the longest time my primary linux OS was “UBUNTU”, seeing as how back in college I started my linux journey with Ubuntu 10.04, but I’ve noticed especially recently that it didn’t have that pull, that attractive energy if you will, I was jumping all over the place distro to distro, until, I found Linux Mint by chance, and I was forever ‘hooked’.

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