226 comments

1. Wonderful!!! Meanwhile Linux Mint beginners may check out Six ways to install Linux Mint https://www.techsolveprac.com/install-linux-mint/

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   1. Thanks for the wonderful OS, we are really enjoying the new features and flavors of Linux Mint Tina.

      ~ Rajan from adbangs.com

2. I love what you do, and I hope all the best to you. I wish if you make a new theme for Mint-Y-Dark that is pure black with really white background not a variant of other colors.

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   1. I agree with this. The current generation of developers who have embraced the concept of using only grey fonts on a white background obviously do not suffer from vision problems. Consider making a solid black on white if for no other reason then as an ‘accessibility’ option for handicapped individuals.

3. Thanks so much for all the great work, merci!

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4. The news about system tool update excites me, and really appreciate the efforts in making the distribution logo more aesthetically pleasing and modern. Well done

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5. Can you add ufw report to mintreport tool.

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   1. Hi,

      What do you mean exactly? In which case and what info would you like to see?

   2. Another thing that could cause issues without the user being immediately aware of them is AppArmor. Some of the current AppArmor profiles prevent some applications from starting at all, such as Firefox and LibreOffice.

      Although if I recall correctly the packages apparmor-profiles and apparmor-profiles-extra are not installed by default let alone put in enforce mode, so I’m not sure if any casual users are affected by this.

      As for which case and what info – you could parse the syslogs for lines where UFW blocked something or AppArmor prevented something from running.

      If’ anyone’s interested in this for AppArmor there’s already the apparmor-notify package which parses logs and uses desktop notifications to tell you when something has been blocked, although there’s too much noise to be useful IMO because it’s blocking something all the time and you can’t blacklist certain notifications.

   3. Hi Mino,

      That’s pretty cool. I’d like to keep it simple especially for cases which can’t happen out of the box (ufw and apparmor are disabled by default) and for which the user might be more aware of what they did. We don’t have root access also… so we can’t run things like “sudo ufw status”. The way it works right now is that the background process checks every check every hour. We can probably set that to a longer period of time, and it’s also worth mentioning that this process only checks as far as to see two invalid checks (it doesn’t need to run them all, if two of them require the user’s attention).

      I like the idea of parsing syslogs for errors though. We had that in mind a while ago to detect hardware problems, but it could be used for other issues as well.

   4. ufw is not enabled by default on Linux Mint. I’m talking about a warning about enabling ufw (firewall), similar as root account warning.

   5. That’s typically a job for the welcome screen, and it does that already.

   6. Welcome Screen also includes jobs for timeshift, driver manager, multimedia codecs. In this case, will they be remove from the welcome screen? Is a warning about multimedia codec mor important than warning about firewall?

   7. I see your point Butterfly but I don’t really agree with it. Many people are behind a network firewall and don’t need to activate ufw. It’s cool to tell them it’s there at the beginning but if they don’t activate it, you can’t assume it’s a problem they need to address. Timeshift is completely different, it’s part of our upgrade strategy and the only solution we provide to rollback the system in case of a system failure or a regression. Some people will want not to use it, and that’s OK, but it’s something we’ll recommend to all casual users out there. Same thing for drivers and multimedia codecs.

   8. Hi Clem

      There is another solution to provide a rollback in case of system failure.
      That is Disks (gnome-disk-utility) where you can create a disk image of the entire disk (located on the top right of the app) or create a disk image of a partition (located under volumes).

      For users who aren’t familiar with how to do this you would typically run your distribution from a USB stick or USB Reader with your distribution on a memory card (in other words running your distro as a live-system) then create a disk image of your system disk and store it to another internal or external drive that is bigger in size than your system disk.

      Later when you want to restore your system disk image, you would to the reverse action.

      I don’t have Timeshift installed. I prefer using Disks for creating security backups of my system disk as described above. I do this perhaps once every three months, when I can find the time to do so. For a SSD of 256 GB which would be a typical system disk size for many users, it takes around 40 minutes if your machine is equipped with a reasonably strong quad-core CPU of recent years, to create and store the image , and 40 minutes to do the reverse when restoring an image.

      In any case it is important that when you release LMDE 4, that users can still upgrade without having Timeshift installed before starting the upgrade. Like you had configured it when users upgraded from LMDE 2 to LMDE 3, it was possible to get it done by running a command in the terminal to remove the warning that you don’t have Timeshift installed and then carry on. In my case I updated my LMDE 2 system, then I created a system disk image Using Disks, then I upgraded to LMDE 3 by bypassing the No Timeshift installed warning.

   9. I second the idea of doing a disk image backup/restore solution as a recovery from a general failure, and I understand that Timeshift addresses a different problem. I’ve never got my head around doing a full backup since I stopped using WIndows dual-boot (when I used Macrium to image the disk partitions). In my view, backup-recovery needs to be simple convenient comprehensive and difficult to get wrong (!). The Disks solution looks viable but if it backs up blank sectors then it is going to take a lot more time than necessary . . .

6. Will it be possible to disable System reports from running in the background? For example, via Startup Applications?

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   1. Hi Mino,

      Yes, that’s exactly how it’s started and you can disable it there.

7. It would be interesting to have a “Dock Mode” option for the cinnamon panel, just like Budgie Desktop.

   (Translator)

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   1. There is a 3rd party theme ‘SimpleDock’ you might like to try from the Spices Themes that you can download using the themes settings. It has transparent left and right panel sections when placed on the sides or bottom, so may give an effect you like, particularly in conjunction with scaling up the panel size. It is a simple theme effect though, so does not bring additional functionality to the standard panel. There are also transparent panel themes.

8. ok hello there im still in win7…maybe gonna switching to lm cinnamon after win7 die…but i gonna miss some feature like windows explorer preview pane. i tried a few distro with other de on distrotest net but none come close to windows explorer preview pane, heck not even kde…i know there nemo-preview?(the description sound like the preview pane i want or is it not the same as windows explorer preview pane?) on lm github but when will it be incorporated in linux mint itself?. another dealbreaker i found is “computer” places…i like windows “computer” places more especially using content/tiles/details view since it show how much space it have, what format it use & category them…it doesnt look messy especially when there a lot hdd/ssd/usb/partition involved.

   like i say i test on distrotest. nemo only have icon/list/compact? view & none of them really show any information in “computer” places.

   i also have feature suggestion about right click context menu on panel & desktop, there “terminal” but why no system monitor?coming from windows i have to say i always open task manager through taskbar.

   sorry for my bad english…tq

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   1. I know the perfect alternative for your needs, when Win7 dies. Please have a look at this cool new distro called “Windows 10”.

   2. if i want use windows 10 i aint gonna come here & comment boi…

   3. Yeah the closest thing I have seen to windows preview pane is the one seen in KDE in the dolphin file manager.
      This guide here mentions how to enable it:
      https://www.ghacks.net/2018/03/01/tips-and-tricks-for-kde-5-dolphin-file-manager/
      Rather if nemo (the file manager for cinnamon) will offer this or not is unknown, I mean i understand you wanting this but keep in mind it may not be a top priority as a feature.

      As for the “computer” directory well thats a tad more complex.
      The way the linux filesystem organizes things is far different then windows and the “computer” icon on mint works a little differently then it does in windows.
      Expecting a 1 to 1 comparison is not the way to use another operating system as well the only operating system that works like windows is well… windows.
      Macs dont work like windows
      Android phones dont work like windows
      iphones dont work like windows
      Hell even windows phone didnt work like windows.
      How linux conveys its file space info is different then windows, in linux mint it uses the system monitor to do this in its file systems tab.
      Actually windows does this too in the task manager…. well sort of.
      In any case getting base information such as file space and all that is clearly indicated in linux and its various front ends.
      Cinnamon for example has free space information at the bottom if nemo and there is a tiny little bar under the file system/home selection that shows off how much is left as well.
      Its not that hard to learn and only takes a few seconds getting used to.
      As for the linux file structure and how things are organized well again… its not windows so of course its going to be different.
      Actually I personally find the linux file system far better then windows as it properly categorizes things and if you think it looks messy…. well look at the /windows or the /system32 directory in windows, go on I dare you.
      Linux is a well organized system compared to the chaos in that thing.
      If you want confusion and think windows is so great it only takes a few seconds to realize its a facade and its utter mayhem right under the glitz and glamour.
      As for why there is a terminal link in right click well thats a sensible choice, since the terminal is the linux universal language it makes sense for it to be here.
      Again this is a functionality perspective, linux wants you to learn it while windows just holds your hand like you are a child.
      While yes the terminal seems antiquated especially in the modern age of touch screens and flashy lights it does have a purpose, its a toolbox.
      A toolbox to solve issues that may not be able to be solved by the user interface.
      Its a venerable swiss army knife far more useful then it seems on first glance and while yes i do feel linux needs more graphical front ends I do feel the terminal has its place.
      It may not feel that way when on windows you can just click on something and have it do something but the linux terminal is very robust when you know how to use it.

   4. ok…i guess i will have to wait & see for that preview pane.

      as for that “computer” places…yes mac/ios/android dont work like windows but my experience with android, i can say some of it file manager even simple one(which i use now) show both phone internal & sdcard with information like available space and total space right away though it doesnt show what file system it use & you need root to explore that root part of it.

      yeah i do see how much is left in “home”…but seeing everything straight from “computer” thing easier. i already explore /windows i actually can understand some folder actually, /system32 is a bit too much though. while you say linux is well organized i cant actually find myself in there, the folder name it just feel like it intended for tech people…i dont usually go in /windows anyway but mostly in programfiles/programdata to cleanup some uninstalled software crap & user/appdata to tinker with something like firefox profile…

      i just want to use pc and when i done with it i just shut it down, i’m not tech savvy or anything but in my search for alternative for win7 lead only to this lm cinnamon…and for that fs info actually i just use it to see if my purchased usb/sdcard/hdd/ssd already in the format that i like or not…cause usb/sdcard fat32 limitation on 4gb is a bum & i might as well mention it here does the format option only do quick format like window because that too damn quick, is there full format/secure format?

      as for terminal i dont see why home user should use it…i know linux is known for it terminal…but dont expect everyone to use it.
      agree about that toolbox part but probably will only use it as last resort.

      linux want you to learn it(that good for someone that like pc or pc hobbyist)…windows hold your hand like you are a child(i guess that what make windows goes big till windows 10 happen, eughh)

      soooo…im waiting for linux mint 19.3 & future release…last question is there roadmap? of what to expected on future release.

      thank you & sorry for my english.

   5. Yes there is a full format option under linux Mint, usually this can be done in gparted again not as direct as the way windows does it but it does exist.
      And yes maybe there will be a preview pane for the nemo file manager.
      You can always ask for the feature on the forums and contact the developers.

      And yeah I can understand wanting things to work but it must be understood that windows is windows and linux is linux.
      Linux mint is not a windows clone or replacement, its a windows alternative.
      Its going to have its own quirks and features compared to windows.
      I mean Macs are the same way, heck by looking at Mac OSX its doesnt look a thing like windows.
      Linux mint here is actually something in between.
      User interface wise its similar to windows and while again its not a 1 to 1 comparison as there are actually more similarities to OSX then there is to windows.
      The settings manager, the task manager, the file manager all take cues from OSX.
      This kind of makes sense as both OSX and Linux kind of come from the same family tree as both are from the unix school of operating systems.
      For the non tech savvy Unix is pretty much the grandfather of all modern operating systems, even windows…. well sort of….
      You see Unix was more popular on big data centers back in the 70’s and the early 80’s.
      It only lost popularity due to nonsense too complicated to talk about here but in short:
      It was a mess.
      Meanwhile Windows is based off DOS a popular system from the 80’s and early 90’s
      While mainstream unix faded out its copycats and clones came out.
      One such clone was Minix but it had some nasty restrictions and so Linus Torvalds decided to create something else as he liked minix and his answer to that became Linux.
      Now Macs, well they always had Mac OS and Mac OS was its own thing for the longest time.
      However classic Mac OS is not the same as OSX as they are totally different kettles of fish.
      OSX is actually derived from Unix and also NeXTStep a OS that was created by NeXT.
      Now that name may not ring a bell but its founder sure will be familiar: Steve Jobs
      Steve Jobs left apple in the mid 90’s, formed NeXT and NeXTStep is based on Unix.
      When Jobs re joined Apple all the tech from NeXTstep went into OSX (OSX is also based on BSD another Unix like OS)
      Meanwhile another project happened from Microsoft, the Windows NT line of operating systems.
      Windows NT was Microsofts way to leave DOS as DOS became a bit of a burden and the funny thing is windows NT is almost Unix like in some of the ways it does things but its not a unix based OS.
      Linux is also Unix like but its more unix like then windows but not actually unix due to the Unix license (the main reason unix lost favor)
      OSX is the only “true” Unix based OS that is in the mainstream but its more on a technicality, and honestly if i confused you by this dont blame me as the complexity of the history of Unix, Linux, Minix, OSX and BSD is a whole mess of a story.

   6. Well, I do agree that Linux is a bit different than Windows is. And it has some annoying features. As a developer worked for MS and Apple, I could generate a mile long list of things that could be better.
      However, a very small list will do:
      1- Interface Language Translations are most of the time not consequent and it appears to be changing by every new version. For example: The Dutch translation for “Cancel” is widely (Windows and Mac) accepted as “Annuleren”, In Mint it could be “Verwerpen”, “Negeren”, “Cancel” – someone forgot to translate this – etc. But also accepted English terms are translated to Dutch equivalents nobody understands.
      2- The naming conventions for programs are nice for language nerds but not for common audience. It does reminds me of the early DOS age. Like “Formatteur voor USB-staafjes” (format USB sticks) All Dutch use the term “USB stick”, not “USB staafje” , So this should be “USB stick formatteren” or even better “Format USB medium”.
      3- The widely use of the terminal for common tasks is nice for nerds, but not for users that needs some basic things done. In general they should dis-encourage practices like using a terminal service.
      4- In Linux there are at least 4 ways to get a job done. It would be more consistent to limit these to a least 3, but better is one way.
      5- When starting up Mint, you may notice that after the bios prompt, you see for about 20 seconds a black screen without any information about what’s going on -on a bit slower system-.
      6- The file manager… well, it looks like the graphical interface of DOS 6.0.
      Now, this is a very short list, and I’m not surprised for comments on this. But there is a lot of work to be done to get an adult interface for everybody to use. Like my old boss used to say: A fancy look and easy use are more attractive than what’s under the hood.

9. Great to see LMDE 4 mentioned, and Debbie is a nice name for it. I’ve used Cinnamon on Debian 10 and it runs perfect, so LMDE 4 on Debian 10 should be excellent.

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10. i realy like linux mint i am new with linux mint i replaced windows 10 in september with linux mint i use dual boot with windows 10 because i use a few programs that only windows 10 have but i use linux mint as my main operating system now its faster and stable than windows and you can change the looks and i never going back to windows

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11. Dear Clem:
    It is very gratifying for me to receive news of this fantastic distribution. Thanks to you I was able to migrate from Windows to Gnu Linux. It is wonderful to see the professionalism and dedication you dedicate to this project, which improves version after version.
    Could you please clarify a doubt for me. When I put icons on the panel they don’t look very good aesthetically since they are very close together. How could you increase your separation?
    Many thanks to the Linux Mint team for this wonderful distribution.

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    1. Hi Alexandros,

       If the panel launchers don’t look good, you can pin apps using the grouped window applet instead. Another solution is to have a panel launcher instance for each launcher and to use separators in between.

    2. configure grouped window list in panel applets (I leave at 8).

12. Can you please add the capability of seeing the battery % status of Bluetooth headphones/speakers in Linux mint I’ve tried many ways like ‘org.bluez.Battery1’ but i always get error my headphones support battery information as i can see the percentage in android device(native) & in windows too using 3rd party software. i would love if you would highlight something regarding it.Is it not possible on Linux?I don’t think so
    P.S: I’m using Boat rockerz 400 Bluetooth headphones.
    Link to forum post:https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=296600
    i love mint very much thanks for such a great OS i’m posting it here cause i just have a hope maybe you could help or even shed more light on it.

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    1. Hi,

       The cinnamon battery applet and settings are upower clients. If the device is seen by upower (type “upower -d” in a terminal), then Cinnamon should be able to show it. Otherwise it’s a deeper issue and one we can’t really help with.

13. Love the new icons!

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14. Used to use LMDE Cindy could not install best music player out there or Foobar 2000 so switched to Ubuntu Mint but like Debian based Mint distros better but not pure Bedian which imho is rough around the edges . Please figure out a way to include Foobar 2000 in Debbie or if it could work with Cindy somehow but I could not get it to work.

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15. It’s really great to see XFCE being considered alongside Cinnamon ans MATE, many thanks for this.
    I’m already looking forward to the next update in the 19 series.

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16. Awesome stuff, fellas. As usual. Been using Mint as a Daily Driver now for almost 10 years! Having an easy to use and configure Compiz desktop (Mate Version) has been a game changer for me, and a lot of clients.

    PS Check out OpenAirShips.com

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17. Why is VLC bad?

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    1. A few formats can’t be played. Subtitle won’t download. Screen stuttering.
       None of this happens with MPV.
       I welcome MPV to be the only media player in place of VLC and Xplayer. Why have 2 when 1 is great.

    2. Hi Andrey,

       VLC isn’t bad, in fact it plays videos better than Xplayer. On a powerful computer they’re all good and they all work well. You start seeing a difference when the resources are scarce (whether the computer has low specs or whether it’s just busy doing other things) or when the quality of the video you’re playing is high. I personally tested Xplayer, VLC, mplayer and MPV (including MPV itself, Celluloid, and our own little MPV prototype) on a middle range laptop (Asus laptop with an NVIDIA 850m). They all play 720p movies at 24fps very well. Try to load a football match in 4K at 60fps though and you’ll see which of them struggle the most. Xplayer shows a frozen playback and can’t handle it. VLC only manages to plays the audio. Mplayer shows a frame every 3 seconds or so. MPV struggles and is far from smooth, but it’s the only player of the bunch to manage to actually play the file.

       Of course, in everyday situations you won’t be playing a video your hardware can’t handle, but as something loads in the background, as your battery depletes and your CPU throttles, you’d want the backend to be the best as possible so that it’s not only smooth in normal situations, but also on the few high resolutions files you’ll throw at it, and under temporary stress.

       One of the reasons VLC is installed along the multimedia codecs is because you can’t use hardware accelerated playback with Xplayer.. it’s a limitation of ClutterGst. Neither Xplayer nor VLC are best in town when it comes to playback, so if we manage to come up with something mature and well integrated we have an opportunity to replace them both in the default software selection.

    3. I am so happy to hear that you making this move to remove both Xplayer and VLC as a default media player and replacing the both with MPV! Wow I had never thought you were going to be so bold to go ahead and do this.

       I actually suggested this to you a couple of months back here on the blog, but I didn’t have much hopes that you would actually do it because I was thinking since Xplayer was part of the Xapps with other apps that I consider to be great such as Document Viewer and Image Viewer, I thought we would be stuck with Xplayer as the default media player. I agree with you Xplayer is not bad, but ever since I discovered MPV I realised this is the King of media player for Linux in terms of speed and performance.

       I discovered that VLC can have problems when I tried to play back a German TV series which was encoded in HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding – also known as h.265) and AAC (Advanced Audio Coding). VLC could play back the video just fine. However, VLC could not play back the audio without some kind of cracking distortion.

       After that experience I searched in the LMDE repos and found MPV and this player could play the TV series video files with ease. No cracking distortion sound here! And the colours also seemed more natural than with VLC, where VLC seemed to have a sort of colour filter making colours appear more saturated than on MPV.

       I felt that MPV colours appear more natural which I like.

       Anyway long story short, I then switched to MPV as my default VIDEO player. I wrote video with bold letters, because I still prefer VLC as my player for music or sound files. The reason for that is VLC player’s play list, with it’s white background where you can drag your tracks to sort them in the order you want them to be played. No fussy or colourful background, simply a white background where you sort your tracks in the order you want them to be played. I am aware that there are dedicated music players like Clementine, but for me VLC is still the one I like for music.

       I agree with you to have mpv Media Player as the only installed media player for future releases. If anyone needs another player they can fetch their favourite player from the Software Manager or via the Synaptic Package Manager or via CLI. Or users like me who wants VLC as their music player, can get VLC from the repos if they did a fresh install of LM or LMDE in the future.

       For Xplayer, well I uninstalled that a year ago when I started to use MPV after upgrading to LMDE 3.

       I am not familiar with Celluloid or libmpv1, so I would have to look into what that is on a later occasion.

       One special request for MPV Player when that becomes the default player:

       I mentioned this in a post about MPV a couple of months ago when we discussed these media players.

       One thing that VLC can do, which MPV can not, that would be a very welcome feature is the ability to control the subtitle position in ultra wide movies such as – 2.35:1 Anamorphic Scope / Letterbox – Film Aspect Ratio – where your movie on a Full HD LCD panel would appear with wide black bars above and below your movie.

       In VLC under Tools –> Preferences –> Subtitles –> Force Subtitle Position you can set a number px (sometimes you would use a minus to move your subtitles downwards, sometimes you would not use anthing in front of your number, meaning it will move your subtitles upwards). With this setting you would be able to move your subtitles so that one line would appear on the video and one line would appear on the black bar below. In VLC you have to save your setting, then restart VLC before checking the result. In a minute or two, you would have found your optimal px number for your subtitles to be perfectly placed with one line on the video and one on the black bar below. The px number would be different for every movie, and for some movies you can leave it blank as the subtitles would automatically appear with one line on the video and one on the black bar below.

       If you could forward this special request to the MPV developers, that would be cool.

       Cute and suitable codename for LMDE 4! LMDE 4 Debbie 🙂

18. Hi Clem,

    The idea of enhanced system reports is of course good and useful. However, there is no signalling yet in the systray when there are waiting messages. Would you consider adding a signal icon like the one we get when there are updates? That would make the system reports really convenient.

    Thanks for your attention, and best wishes.

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    1. Hi Rob,

       There is. You don’t need to run anything to be told something is wrong. There are two processes at play. One runs in the background, checks the computer at regular intervals and shows a systray icon to catch your attention. The other, which you can either launch by clicking that icon, or by launching the app from the main menu, is the one you see in the screenshot.

19. Thanks a lot Clem and everyone for the efforts. Love the work and enjoying LM 19.2. Love the idea where system reports are going… Can’t wait to try it out

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    1. I also loved the news about System Reports!! Can’t wait for it! 😛

20. Thank you so much!
    I’m looking forward to the mint news every month and it is always great, with a “I knew they were awesome!” feeling 😀
    I didn’t know that date format was a Mint thing. For months I was searching how to switch to dd.mm.yyyy format and just couldn’t get there. It’s great that I was not the only one and you are addressing this <3
    xPlayer – I totally agree. I use MPV myself and I love the performance. Just one note please… If you change to MPV, please keep the possibility to adjust it's keyboard shortcuts in its .config files. I love the fact that I could set the left/right and ctrl+left/right keys to what I'm used to. Not sure if you heard it before, but the one thing that bothered me the most on xPlayer, is the fact that the time jump between left/right was different, with no way how to adjust it. This was a deal-breaker for me.
    Good defaults or at least adjustable arrow (ctrl + arrow, shift + arrow) keys are a big deal. The same goes for Pix, though its default arrow keys are good (in zoom mode). Better than on gThumb! Though not adjustable ^^
    Once more, thank you so much for your hard work. I love my LinuxMint, thank you for keeping it awesome!

    PS: I also love the Mint stance on snaps. You were so right with everything that's going on.

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21. Congrats to everyone who’s contributed to the project!

    Personally, I think the new report/notification tool is going to be very well accepted by Linux newcomers and Windows/MacOS abandoners. Very useful tool if properly made aware of to the first-time user.

    Additionally, I think the new logo is turning out slick. I’d love to see that on the Mint Box at some point.

    Looking forward to more updates. Well done everyone!

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22. Clem, I am using Linux Mint Cinnamon and LMDE, love them both. I am curious on the thought process on choosing Ubuntu vs Debian way back when.

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23. Hey Clem,
    First of all i want to tell you (and your team) that Linux Mint is truly amazing project and only distro i ever used (from 18.1 version). It took me from total beginner and is still good now that i am kind advanced, i never felt a need to distro hop so amazing work. But few days ago i noticed a bug and i am not sure where to report it so i will tell you about it here, hope that’s ok.
    So this bug is in a sound settings interface, it happens (for me) when using 5.1 speakers. When you set your output profile to analog surround sound 5.1 output there are 4 sliders under it (Volume, Balance, Fade and Subwoofer). If you set your Volume and Subwoofer sliders to 100% and then pull your volume slider to lets say 20% (anything under 100% will do) your Subwoofer slide will follow it so all good for now. But then if you push your subwoofer to 100% your volume will follow it and your current volume will become your max volume at 100% so in this case 20% real volume = 100% Bug volume. It will reset back to normal when you pull volume slider back to 0% (muted) and back to 100%. But i didn’t do that for months and wondered what happened to my speakers and why where they ok on windows. Hope i explained this ok if you have any questions or any way i can help you please ask or at least tell me you read this. One more time thanks for this amazing distro and i hope you will fix this little bug 🙂

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    1. Thanks GV, I passed it on to the team. Hopefully someone has a subwoofer to reproduce it.

24. Hi Clem, great to see that you push Mint (and Cinnamon) even further (with every release I think, it’s nearly perfect now, but you always see some more details to work on).

    One little thing – I have problems with using mintreport and “Protokoll” (I think it’s gnome-logs), because I changed the way to use my main user (I need another user-id than 1000 for my NAS using nfs4 and had a few problems changing and maintaining the default installation user over time):
    First I install the “normal first” user as dummy with id 1000 (who has admin and sudo rights), then I add my own (without those special rights). When I need to use sudo, I switch to the dummy admin user on terminal or the dummy is automatically chosen to enter the sudo password with graphical applications (works great).

    But when using “Protokoll”, there’s an error that some logs could not be read (I think system-log and another one, can’t look at it now), and I never saw any crash entries in mintreport since I work with a user without sudo rights (ok, maybe there was none).
    Could this behavier be changed, so system reports, error and crash logs etc. could be seen completely with a standard user, or would that be a security flaw?

    Reply

    1. Hmm… I’m surprised about mintreport. It shouldn’t need admin rights to manipulate crash reports… You’re talking about the latest version (in 19.2, using systemd, not apport)?

    2. Your’re right with mintreport, yesterday I obviously had the first crash since installation (it’s not deletable any more?). So my comment is just fucused on the gnome-logs without admin (system- and hardware-logs are missing).

25. Thanks for the hard work, Mint getting better

    About the tray icon which solution do you have for applications written in QT?

    See this software: Ksnip written in QT – In version 1.6 under development a tray icon was implemented using the QSystemTrayIcon component. It worked on Ubuntu Gnome 19.04 but does not work on Mint cinnamon 19.2.

    https://github.com/DamirPorobic/ksnip/issues/224

    Have you thought of any way to fix this for QT applications?

    Reply

    1. Hi Antonio,

       If that’s compatible with libappindicator then it should work. LibAppIndicator has a fallback mechanism already in place towards Gtk.StatusIcon, so already in past releases this should work fine in Cinnamon. Going forward we’ll patch LibAppIndicator to fallback towards XappStatusIcon, so this will continue to work and unless it’s a path towards a low quality picture it won’t be blurry or poorly rendered.

26. Hello Clem,

    looking forward to the “System reports” upgrade.

    Have you considered adding “fwupdmgr” (https://github.com/fwupd/fwupd)?

    Lots of Logitech (and other vendor) devices that could be patched for higher security if it would be highlighted.
    Many people would have a more secure system, should you choose to include this,

    As you can see below this has succesfully worked on LM19.2 using latest fwupmgr-snap

    [code]
    $fwupdmgr get-history

    Unifying Receiver
    DeviceId: 47a010bb1b3f1f1a91006cf50db58d2189404511
    Guid: 9d131a0c-a606-580f-8eda-80587250b8d6
    Plugin: unifying
    Flags: updatable|supported|reported|(null)
    Version: RQR12.08_B0030
    Created: 2019-09-26
    UpdateState: success

    [Release]
    RemoteId: lvfs
    Version: RQR12.10_B0032
    Checksum: SHA1(afe3c3bff4a35ef556a650f4ef7448455f97f636)
    TrustFlags: none
    CpuArchitecture: x86_64
    RuntimeVersion(org.freedesktop.fwupd): 1.3.1
    DistroId: linuxmint
    CompileVersion(org.freedesktop.fwupd): 1.3.1
    RuntimeVersion(org.kernel): 5.0.0-29-generic
    CompileVersion(com.redhat.fwupdate): 12
    CompileVersion(org.freedesktop.gusb): 0.3.0
    RuntimeVersion(org.freedesktop.appstream-glib): 0.7.14
    DistroVersion: 19.2
    CompileVersion(com.redhat.efivar): 37
    RuntimeVersion(com.dell.libsmbios): 2.4
    BootTime: 1569489210
    RuntimeVersion(com.redhat.fwupdate): 12
    [/code]

    There is even a GUI:
    https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.gnome.Firmware

    Thanks for your thoughts and considerations on this topic.

    Keep up the excellent work!

    Robert

    Reply

    1. Hi Robert,

       You’re using fwupd 1.3.1? It’s 1.0.9 in bionic atm.

27. hello clem
    You could include Cast to TV in the new media player to play videos directly on TV without using a chromecast

    See these definitions:

    SSDP Protocol -> Searching for DLNA devices in the local network

    UPnP’s AVTransport service -> Streaming Audio and Video, with subtitle support

    DIDL-Lite meta-data -> set this for some TV models

    Reply

28. Hello, I have been a user of Mint for three years(I love it), I recently switched to an Asus laptop with AMD Ryzen 5 3550H CPU, I tried to install Mint (19.1 and 19.2) but I did not manage to load the GUI even by placing compatibility mode not loading the screen remains black , the laptop model is ASUS TUF FX705DY, any advice to install Mint?

    Reply

    1. Hi Carlos,

       You might need a newer kernel than the one which comes with 19.2. We might bump it in 19.3.

    2. Hi Clem

       If you could bump the kernel in the 19.3 ISO that would be great, as I too have a similar problem. I bought a machine expecting to be stuck with W10 on the machine until Mint 20 is released next summer as the hardware needs kernel 5.3, but if it is shipped with 19.3 that would be a wonderful xmas present 🙂

       Incidentally, the new system reports features etc just continues to make Mint better and better. I really appreciate the work you and the team do

    3. I would also be very happy to see kernel 5.3 available in the ISO for 19.3.

       Is xfce 4.14 also a possibility?

29. I love Cinnamon 😉
    But I currently can’t/don’t want to use it.

    For me the most interesting future feature would be support for fractional scaling. I have a 4K monitor and my eyes are simply not good enough to use it in full resolution. Everything is too small.

    I tried to set the scaling to 200% (which is supported), but it is kinda pointless to use a 4K screen when you only can have an effective 1920 resolution.
    I tried without scaling and bigger fonts, with 200% scaling with smaller fonts. Now I have switched to Gnome and set the scaling to 150%. That works pretty well, except for one thing: I absolutely hate Gnome. And Unity too. I want Cinnamon back :-/

    So, it would be really sweet if Mint Cinnamon could support fractional scaling and I would like to ask if it is on the roadmap somewhere. (Or maybe even possible with some hidden setting).

    Reply

    1. Hi Christoph,

       It’s not currently possible. I’m not sure it’s feasible with Xorg. Last time we checked there were some very serious limitations.

30. it is like a rolling realease or something like that with that new application if i not wrong it’s possible update the system for example to 19.2 at 19.3 with no format and reinstall everything … i think it’s great if i wrong please explain me that

    Reply

    1. You have got everything here.There you can find a lot about linux mint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint

    2. This Wikipedia page is not only inaccurate, it’s full of misinformation. We do not write it and we’re not welcome to correct it.

       Here are a few examples:

       “After the attack Linux Mint was severely criticized as being a distribution that, unlike many others at the time, “just worked” and became popular with non-technical users, but at the expense of security, with some security updates to the underlying Ubuntu or Debian blacklisted from running due to compatibility issues.”

       Which security updates? what “compatibility issues”? There were no security updates ever “blacklisted”, even less so for “compatibility issues”. Can you name any? No.

       “Linux Mint’s inclusion of proprietary software is unusual; many Linux distributions do not include proprietary software by default, as a common goal for some Linux distributions is to adhere to the model of free and open-source software.”

       What proprietary software do we currently include by default? Again, that’s not true. Not only don’t we include any, we have a process to install codecs post-installation which is very similar to many other distributions.

       “Linux Mint is available with a number of desktop environments to choose from, including the default Cinnamon desktop, MATE, KDE, and Xfce.”

       Well, not anymore sadly. We no longer ship KDE. That’s not false per se but it’s outdated.

       “Software by Linux Mint”

       This list also is outdated and incomplete.

       “In June 2015, Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report showed 6.4 million hits for Linux Mint”

       That’s just ridiculous. Firefox 4 was released in 2011. Since Firefox 4 Linux Mint uses the EXACT SAME user agent as Ubuntu. To put it bluntly, in 2015 the only “Linux Mint” users Wikimedia would get hits from would be people using a 4 year old version of Mint. Anyone one running a more modern version of Linux Mint would be counted by Wikimedia as an “Ubuntu” user. You can check this like any other facts here, it’s easy to check. And yet, we’re in 2019 now and that kind of nonsense is still on Wikipedia.

       There’s a lot of bias and hearsay in this article. In Wikipedia’s defense they scored its poor quality with a C-rating. It doesn’t deserve any better.

    3. @ Clem
       I have made some changes to the wiki yesterday (please see history diff between October 11 and 15). I hope they will last for a while but we will see how that goes. The biggest issue I had was with “Ubuntu Mint” editions name which was introduced by anonymous user from Hong Kong on 18 July 2017 instead of “Ubuntu-based” edition. Anyway the article need further improving.

31. The colors are really bad. Something a bit more vibrant would be nice.

    Reply

32. Bonjour,
    while preparing the migration from mint 18.3 to mint 19.2 (whith a fresh install of mint 19.2), I would have loved to have a tool able to analyze the system it’s running on and to say :
    –>Be careful the “XYZ-tool” you are using is not any more available under the system you want to go to
    –>Remember, you have to install system-config-samba and apache (by example), so please don’t forget to save your configuration files
    –> and many other things useful in such a context

    Reply

    1. Nice idea! I want it, too.
       But I’m still waiting for working Onboard-Onscreen-Keyboard with Mint-menu before I change from 18.3 KDE to 19.x Cinnamon.

33. Rob to Clem

    Thank you very much for your detailed answer. It’s fine to read that the developer team thought the thing through to the end. Why didn’t you mention that icon in your article? A little bit of self-praise can’t be wrong. 🙂 Howsoever, I’m looking forward to seeing that icon sometime in December when 19.3 will be available, and I’ll continue doing what I’ve done for years now: appreciating LM.

    Once again best wishes.

    Reply

34. The new logo looks like someone is giving a “finger”. It is very weird. How about using just the “leaf” without the LM?

    Reply

    1. That’s what I thought. I’d never noticed it on previous logos, perhaps because of the shading which separated the L and the M. But now it looks like a fist, with either extended thumb or little finger, depending on which way one looks at it.

35. I am not happy with the happy that System Reports may be running in the background potentially communicating with the “Mother Ship” (receiving notifications or others). This should have an option to get it removed or stopped. I don’t need anything to tell me if it is wrong or not. I am pretty OK with the way it is now. Most Linux (and LM particularly) users are kind of advanced users who are far from “average Joe” and don’t need such a tool to report from their PC to who knows where and who knows how

    Reply

    1. No problem. There is the option to disable it (in Startup Applications), and it does not communicate with some imaginary mother ship. “Who knows where and who knows who” is typically a worry that relates to proprietary software. The code is on github for anyone to see. That said, I would not recommend you run a software application, and even less so an operating system, if you’re not ready to trust the team behind it.

36. Can’t wait for your report on the new MintBox! It looks like the Airtop (as opposed to the previous MintBoxes), so I went over to CompuLab’s website to see what they were doing with the current gen Airtops. And then built one to see what options were available. I’m sure the Mint version will be similarly specced, so at least I now have an idea of what it will be. I am excited. The world needs more pre-built Linux computers, at all price/performance points, so that average people with different performance needs can easily get into Linux without having to know/figure out how to install an OS from scratch.

    Question about the upcoming MintBox: can I install any Nvidia GPU sourced from the usual computer parts websites, or do I have to buy it from CompuLab due to special physical characteristics designed into the Airtop chassis (so that it sheds heat as described on their website) or due to heat/wattage constraints? I would be interested in sticking a RTX2070 into it, instead of the GTX1660Ti.

    Reply

    1. Hi,

       Yes, it’s based on the Airtop3. In terms of SKUs, we have $1543 with a Core i5 (6 cores), 16 GB RAM, 256 GB EVO 970, Wi-Fi and FM-AT3 FACE Module. and $2698 with Core i9, GTX 1660 Ti, 32 GB RAM, 1TB EVO 970, WiFi and FM-AT3 FACE Module.

       The unit is very easy to open (you don’t even need a screwdriver) and inside of it you can access the RAM and SSD/HDD bay in seconds. The GPU is different though. Even though it’s right there and accessible as well, it’s glued to the opening side in a way that its heat is dissipated through the external heatsink. I’m not sure you can install your own. It’s worth checking with Compulab directly though. The embedded Intel chipset is a Coffee Lake GT2.

    2. I would like to see an amd based mintbox.

    3. Thanks Clem! I had a hunch that the GPU would be a different animal due to the way the heat shedding works in the chassis, and that pretty much confirms it. I might send a note to CompuLab for direct confirmation, but as I recall correctly you have (still?) an Airtop1, so you have hands-on experience with one and know what you’re talking about. Glued in, is glued in. No big deal, I still want one. LOL.

       Stefan B…. the MintBox Mini is AMD based. It uses one of their low power APU chips. A Ryzen MintBox would be interesting, but I wonder if it might produce too much heat to be a good candidate for a fanless computer?

    4. I do. I’ve got both right now, the Airtop 1 is my main computer and I’m testing the MintBox 3 on the side.

    5. How do you like the Airtop1 after long-term usage at this point? Internals holding up to the fanless cooling style and whatever internal ambient temperatures? How did it fair this summer during what I heard was an incredible heatwave all across your side of the world, since it lacks fans to spin up? Did future Mint versions “just work” with the hardware without issue?

       I absolutely loved the industrial look and form factor of MintBox2, and also really like the look and form factor of the Airtop/MintBox3 (especially if it allows a desktop CPU to be used).

    6. The heat didn’t affect it. When it was 42 celcius mid-June it wasn’t the Airtop which was finding it difficult to work, it was me 🙂

       In terms of compatibility the only two things I can think about are the NVIDIA driver for the GPU and an additional package to install for the front panel display to display temperatures. Everything else works out of the box on a fresh install.

       In terms of issues:

       – I often missed USB3 on the front of the unit, you have to get to the back for that. That’s fixed on the MintBox 3 though (and Airtop 3).
       – When there’s a power cut and the unit is brutally interrupted, there’s some sort of safe mechanism going on and you can’t power it back on after the power comes back. To fix that, you unplug the power cable, open the unit, remove the storage bay (you don’t need any tools to do that) and press a little button on the motherboard to reset the clock. I haven’t had a power cut since the MintBox 3 arrived so I can’t say if doing that is still necessary.
       – When we were working on optimizing muffin/cinnamon during the last cycle, we were trying to reproduce latency and I couldn’t. To stress the DE to its maximum I ran stress tests on the GPU and one of them was furmark (if I remember well). I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do that on passively cooled hardware. I guess I learnt it the hard way, I lost the GPU. The embedded Intel works well for everything I do except Blender. Compulab is replacing the GPU under RMA, but I don’t know if they’re just being nice to me, or if it’s included in the warranty (it was self inflicted after all). The warranty itself lasts 5 years.

       One last thing about the heat. The heatsinks on the side of the Airtop are not hot. It seems to have a lot of surface and handle dissipation very well. In comparison, the MintBox 2 and MintBox minis were getting really hot to the touch.

    7. 42C! Noooooo thank you! I despise heat. Give me snow, or give me death! LOL. Glad the Airtop held up fine, though. I’m relieved to hear that, as that’s always been a bit of a worry for me regarding passively cooled computers in general. Summers here get up to 32-35C in August (I hate it so much!), although thankfully not as hot as some places (like 42C…). Until now, I’d always shied away from passive cooling out of fear of how well they do in summer heat. Your testimonial clears that one right up.

       What about the GPU required the Nvidia drivers to make it work? I run the stock Nvidia 390 drivers from the driver manager in System Settings for my GTX1080 GPU here in the desktop I’m typing from. It also works well with the Nouveau drivers (but gaming works best with the Nvidia 390). Did the Nouveau drivers not like your GPU? And where would one find the special package for making the front display panel function?

       Regarding power outages, I suppose you can simulate that by plugging your MintBox3 into a power strip and simply pressing the power strip’s power button. Sudden power loss, just like from a storm. Otherwise, send it here and I’ll have a power outage within the week! LOL. We have weak power here even in summer, and have just entered our wind storm season….. Lost power twice in Sept alone, and only one of those was due to actual wind. Hah! Fortunately backup batteries are mandatory here in this house, so even if the MintBox3 has the same safety switch as the Airtop1, it won’t be a problem (and doesn’t sound like a problem to hit the switch anyway).

       That’s awesome of CompuLab to RMA your self-inflicted crispy GPU. Were you able to re-glue the new one in, or did you have to send the whole computer back to them (probably this option)? I will learn from your mistake and not *ever* stress test any passively cooled computer, LOL. Totally didn’t even think about that, but it makes sense why one shouldn’t do it. LOL. Other than killing it by stress testing, how did the Nvidia GPU fair in normal (anything except Furmark-) usage and Blender? I would like to use the MintBox3 out in my (to-be-built-next-summer) workshop for CAD/CAM work along with some music or videos playing on a secondary monitor as I work. I have my normal desktop in the house for super heavy workloads and anything the MintBox3/Airtop doesn’t really do well. Also, 5 year warranty is killer! Nobody offers that, as far as I know.

       My cats will be devastated to hear that the Airtop does not produce heat as it dissipates the internal temps. LOL.

    8. By default Compulab ships it with the NVIDIA driver installed and the drivers PPA activated. You can remove the driver to fallback to nouveau but it won’t give you the same performance. If you reinstall Mint you’ll default to Nouveau and the NVIDIA driver will then be available in the Drivers Manager.

       The driver for the front panel is installed by default by Compulab. On a fresh install it’s just a .deb you can get from the Compulab forums.

       When you RMA the GPU, it’s not the GPU they replace, it’s the opening lid. I didn’t use Blender much at the time and I don’t play games on the Airtop (they did run well, but it’s too close to work.. I always end up chatting or working, so I play games on a switch or console well away from the computers most of the time). Most of what I work on doesn’t require a strong GPU, so going back to Intel was OK (well, Blender is slow to render) 🙂

37. @Carlos A.: FWIW, I’ve been using kernels in the 5.0.0 series since 5.0.0-15, and am currently using 5.0.0-29. No problems with any of them.

    Reply

38. @Carlos A.: Should have added that I running LM 19.2 Cinnamon.

    Reply

39. I liked so much the System Reports update! 😀 I love the idea of updating the whole OS to the next version just by clicking on a button!
    I’m also excited for the LMDE 4 release! 😀
    Great job!

    Reply

40. Hi Clem,

    If you made the background a half or 3/4 of a circle, it’d make the shape of a C.

    Then the letters C L E M would all be visible. Think about that!!!

    Reply

    1. Oh no, rofl 🙂

    2. LOL, now that’s funny! 😀

    3. LOL 👍️

41. The new logo is such a drastic improvement! I think the rendition on the very bottom-left of that mockup image is my favourite.

    Keep up the great work!

    Reply

42. I have general question, is it possible to make Linux Mint to have all XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE in one computer without any problems? For me it would be great if I could use all window menagers on my computer. I know that it is problably not so easy to menage. It is a pitty that user has to choose only one WM at the beginning in download section.

    Reply

43. Hi Clem;

    Have you considered creating a contest for the new Linux Mint logo?
    I think the community could and would very much like to participate and contribute to it!
    This idea would also be valid for choosing new wallpapers, as Ubuntu has a habit of doing …

    I like the design below, I think it’s minimalist and modern, what do you, the team and Mint users think?

    https://imgur.com/sC7eBBU

    Reply

    1. Unfortunately the logo in the link looks too busy. Hard to make out what exactly it’s supposed to be. Since I know it’s a logo for Linux Mint, I knew to look for an L and M, but I would not immediately see them if I didn’t know. The round ones in the blog pic above us are better because they are easier to read.

    2. I actually like it! 🙂 Why not… It seems perfect for what it’s trying to be. But innovative is not it. These hexagons are just about everywhere. The classical LM logo is it’s own thing, which is positive.
       Another minor point is… I still feel like LM is trying to be a beautiful and friendly distro. One that is not afraid to be plain or “simple”, when that is what the normal user likes. For that I see it better represented with round edges, rather than sharp edges, more indicative of a cutting edge hardcore enthusiast style.

    3. 41?

44. https://github.com/Andhrimnirr/Mintinstall-object-injection

    Reply

    1. Hi Pan,

       We were contacted by email by the person who found the issue. We’re working on a fix by trying to restrict the pickle loading. https://github.com/linuxmint/mintinstall/pull/261

    2. https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=143&p=1695728#p1695728

    3. Thanks

45. Clem,

    Can we expect to get a remote desktop in the near future?

    I’am quite annoyed by Mint lacking this.
    Also when you search the forum for help, it is filled with comments that you should use Nomachine or Teamviewer. Both of them are non open source and also non free software witch IMHO this not a “linux like” solution for this problem.

    So I would really appreciate a working linux solution for this problem.

    Reply

    1. Try AnyDesk. It is better than TeamViewer.

46. When will Firefox be updated in LMDE3? Firefox 69 has been out a couple of weeks now. LMDE3 still has 68.1.

    Reply

    1. Hi Kim,

       LMDE ships the latest ESR version: 68.1.0esr.

47. I like that hexagonal logo – something fresh in the ideas dept. I must say the L on the currently suggested logo(s) does look like it “sticks out” (delicately put). If that could be brought in line with the top of the M, it would improve. Clem – please see your emails around 12 June. 🙂
    I can see that we would like to stay close to the original, like Coca Cola (very little change over 100 years) and not do a Pepsi (change the logo completely several times). The Mint logo has been great and part of the success. Some distros have had “not so much luck” with their logo design (again, delicately put). Note the distros that succeed generally have a simple, effective logo. The fringe ones, have something complicated and twirly.

    Reply

    1. I’m still using 18.3 on some older computers. I like the logo / default background better than 19.2.

48. Thank you, Clem, for your answer.
    Please, can someone clarify if you can use Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon on touchscreens? I plan to buy a computer with these features and would like to install Linux Mint 19.2. Cinnamon.
    Thank you in advance.

    Reply

    1. You should be able to click and get around. Don’t expect too much in the way of finger gestures though. I also remember a few bugreports on right-clicks (leaving the finger pressed for a while to bring up the menu). The best thing to do is to test the hardware before you buy it, using a live USB stick.

    2. Mouse focus by touch screen display doesn’t work correctly when there is an external non-touch screen display attached
       https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/8826

    3. Long story for why, but I have an Acer touch-screen monitor and use Cinnamon on my self-built desktop computer. There is no right-click ability (a long-press of the finger), nor gestures, when using your finger instead of a mouse. You can basically left-click on things, click-drag a box around several icons to do a multi-select and then drag those icons around. You can also draw with your finger in Pinta. But that’s it. Using a touch-screen in Cinnamon will not be like using one on an iPad or Android tablet. 🙁

       Now, I have heard that Gnome may be the DE to use for touch-screen environments. I have not used it, so can’t confirm. But you may want to play with Gnome and see if you even like that environment, before committing to the hardware. But like Clem said, test with a LiveUSB before buying anything (after first seeing if you even like Gnome).

49. Hi Clem,

    You said you’re “working on a (XAppStatusIcons) panel plugin for Xfce 4.14”.

    Does that mean you are planning to introduce Xfce 4.14 in LM 19.3? Or Xfce flavour will not get XAppStatusIcons until LM 20?

    Reply

    1. Hi Slavko,

       Yes, we’re planning to upgrade Xfce to 4.14.

50. You gonna be updating UI design? Linux Mint looks too boring and too flat, in comparison with Ubuntu (19.10), Zorin OS, Deepin, Elementary OS and KDE neon.
    I think you should to create new Linux Mint era. The usual logo and website update without updating the appearance of the Linux Mint is boring.

    Reply

    1. Mint is fine the way it is. It does not need to cater to the “hip” or “edgy” crowd. There are other OS’s for that: various other Linux distros, as well as Windows 10. Also, going to gnome-look.org will provide ways to customize Mint Cinnamon so that it looks as flashy, “hip”, or “edgy” as you want. There are other sites for XFCE and Mate, as well. A quick Google search will provide those websites. You are only stuck with the stock look of an OS if you use MacOS and probably also Windows 10 (can’t confirm, I don’t use it). Every single Linux distro can be made to look however you want. So if you don’t like the stock look, go mod it to look how you want. It doesn’t even require special skills or knowledge to do so. I can make a How-to in the Mint forums, if you want.

       My own Cinnamon install is always modded to suit the current season. Currently everything is black and orange in color scheme, for Halloween. I like non-flat custom-designed icons, and so I have them. Come December, I will change my theme around again to reflect a snowy winter, and my Firefox theme will have the festive colors of the month. My mouse cursor also periodically changes to suit my fancy. My desktop is not “boring” to look at.

    2. I don’t think Mint should fall in to the trap of putting a priority on updating “eye candy” that adds nothing to functionality, or making other UI changes for change sake. This is part of why we hate Windows 10. Windows 7 may have been plainer looking but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like it (or even XP) better than 10.

51. The desktop seems to be becoming less usable if you try to run more than one thing at a time. I may be wrong but I suspect this is a fault of CAJA?
    I click on something and have to wait seconds to minutes for something to happen. Three different computers are experiencing the same problem.

    Reply

52. So much work for each release, I never cease to be impressed.
    I hope one day dialogs displaying files (such as Save as..) will be able to be used as regular file explorer windows and allow file actions like rename or copy or paste or delete. Needing to open a new window for such simple operations is frustrating.

    Reply

53. Also: I couldn’t care less about how boring this or that looks. Simple and easy and discoverable wins every time. Vanishing, 3-pixel wide, light gray-on-white scroll bars scan roast in hell (example not aimed at Mint, but at my-OS-needs-to-be-hip comments). :o)

    Reply

    1. Agreed!

       Mint is fine the way it is. It does not need to cater to the “hip” or “edgy” crowd. There are other OS’s for that: various other Linux distros, as well as Windows 10. Also, going to gnome-look.org will provide ways to customize Mint Cinnamon so that it looks as flashy, “hip”, or “edgy” as you want. I’m sure there are other sites for XFCE and Mate, as well.

    2. Thank you! I totally agree. I’m a fairly new user (Windows refugee) and I love Mint the way it is. (Although I still haven’t been able to make the scroll bars in Firefox and Libre Office wide enough.) I also really like the current Linux Mint logo. It is very recognizable and appealing, and I don’t understand why you would want to change it.

    3. Maria: This is what I did for the scrollbar in MATE edition
       create “~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css” and within paste

       scrollbar.vertical slider,
       scrollbar.slider.vertical
       {
       min-width: 11px;
       }
       scrollbar.horizontal slider,
       scrollbar.slider.horizontal
       {
       min-height: 11px;
       }

       I didn’t manage to make older gtk2 apps such as gimp to resize the scrollbar, but at least it has taken care of firefox and office.

       In long term it will be best if there is an option to pick scrollbar behavior separately, offering one to have it the 100% traditional size and feature, without the need to choose an outdated desktop theme.

54. i dont’t why always Clem or someone answer me …if i have to be always ignored i don’t know why i not change distro if my opinions are equal a shit

    Reply

    1. I think that it is hard to answer for everybody.It is a lot of people here and probably gonna be more… They have much more important things to do than responding to every each person…

55. What good is apparmor installed but not enabled in LMDE3?

    Reply

56. Hello, I know that this is kind of controversial, but I love the new logos.
    Keep up the good work.

    Reply

57. @Carlos A.: Now running kernel 5.0.0-31, still with no problems (but my fingers are crossed).

    Reply

58. AFAIK mpv does not support DVD menus or BD menus. Whereas with VLC you can open and navigate DVDs and BDs with their menus. So in way switching to a mpv-based player means a regression in functionalty out of the box. As much as I like the attention given to the performance of a system I am really not sure if the improvement of the user experience in one corner case justifies the deterioration of the user experience in another case…?

    Reply

    1. Hi Arthur,

       It’s a good point, when you move from one application to another you’ll often trade pros and cons, neither players are perfect. That said, HD isn’t a novelty anymore, it’s a standard. Everybody had DVDs in the past and being able to read them out of the box was a requirement for a mainstream distribution like us. But this isn’t true anymore. Among the users who still have an optic drive in their computer, most people find the low quality of DVD unacceptable nowadays. Nostalgia, retro-compatibility and Bluray (which never worked well) mean there’s still an audience, but it’s a much smaller one than before. You have to weight that in against playback performance, fan speed and battery life, these are aspects which weren’t important in the past but concern way more people nowadays. When nobody had laptops, everybody had optic drives and any chipset could play DVDs, we didn’t have to care about the backend and the resource usage, it was all about compatibility. Now that DVDs are a thing of the past, now that the standard quality is moving towards 1080p and people run that on budget laptops with limited capabilities, we need to take performance way more seriously.

       And it’s the same thing with VLC, it also has unique features, but not everybody needs them. Both VLC and Xplayer will still be there in the repositories and easy to install, they’re just no longer the best options for a majority of users.

    2. Just a little extra comment on DVD. The version of Celluloid we’re looking at includes a menu to open discs and mpv has limited support for dvd menus afaik.

    3. Hi Clem

       I fully understand the reasons for you moving to mpv (although I am one of those people who finds DVDs to be perfectly acceptable quality and have a reasonable DVD collection and 2 optical drives in my desktop) and as you are leaving the other options in the repositories for those of us that want them any moves towards better performance can only be a good thing. On a different note, the new mintbox 3 looks amazing!!

59. I would also appreciate it if the version 19.3 ships with a more recent kernel.

    Since I want to build a system with AMD Ryzen platform by the end of this year, the whole thing would be a lot less complicated if the integrated Vega graphics is working out of the box.

    Reply

60. Firefox 68.1-oesr is a piece of crap. It freezes and quits responding after about 20 minutes of use. Why can’t we have the real Firefox in LMDE3? I tried the trouble shooting feature in Firefox, but nothing helped. Running it with add-ons disabled did not help either.

    Reply

    1. ESR is actually more stable than non-ESR, by definition and in practice. It gets all the security fixes without the feature changes. Both are officially the “real” Firefox.

61. If the mint team would have offered xfce or mate in LMDE3 it would work better on old computers.

    Reply

62. Hi Clem, Always looking forward to and update/upgrade for Mint/Cinnamon. Even now Mint/Cinnamon is just about perfect for an old tech-head like me so many thanks!

    I have one request.

    If you do replace Xplayer with something like MPV and not just replace the back end, please consider configuring whatever you replace it with (like MPV) so it uses the same mouse controls and configuration as Xplayer.

    I know this may be somewhat of a singular case but with Xplayer I review 2-minute security videos, one after another. With Xplayer I can pause/start each video by clicking the middle button of the mouse and then use the scroll wheel to slowly advance the video (looks like a “frame by frame” setting) back and forth. I can also do the same by left-clicking the scroll bar button at the bottom of the video and moving it back and forth. This way I can have precise movement, frame by frame through any video I review/watch (great for screenshots and such).

    In short, with Xplayer I have precise control of any video just with the mouse alone. With Xplayer, the default settings are perfect as is. Also, the various information I can select about each video in the sidebar is excellent so please consider duplicating these settings in whatever you decide to do with Xplayer–if it’s possible.

    Reply

    1. Hi Kirk,

       Looking at Celluloid here, you can pause with right-click but scroll wheel affects the sound volume. You’ve the same progress knob at the bottom. The middle-click doesn’t seem to be doing anything, I’m sure we can PR the project to add a functionality for it. They’ll probably want that to mute. You might enjoy the slight difference or you might not. I’m pretty sure it’s a better player for most people but that doesn’t mean it’s the best for you. In any case, we’ll continue to build xplayer in the repositories so you’ll have the ability to continue using it.

    2. Thanks for the reply, Clem. I got a chuckle when I found out that Celluloid is just a new name for the (Gnome) MPV player.

       And very glad you’re going to keep building Xplayer. It really works for someone in my position. Many thanks.

63. Hi Clem.
    Mostly running LMDE3 with Cinnamon DE here.
    Is there an option so that the window decorations are taken directly from the GTK3 theme code?
    As far as I can tell, we are kind of stuck with the metacity-3 code that comes with themes.
    Or maybe that’s because Cinnamon applications are not fully GTK3?
    If I launch file-roller in Cinnamon, I get the true GTK3 window decorations of the them I’m using.

    Maybe what I wrote doesn’t make sense, due to my poor english…

    Thanks in advance!
    François

    Reply

    1. Hi Francois,

       Yes, GTK3 themes provide styling for titlebars and headerbars. Most applications use titlebars, some use headerbars (the calculator for instance) and some can use either a titlebar or a headerbar depending on configuration (Celluloid for instance). Headerbars are commonly called CSD (client-side decorations) and they’re rendered by GTK. When an application uses a headerbar, the window manager doesn’t draw decorations for it (i.e. no titlebar and no shadow), it’s all done by GTK itself. Muffin, the Cinnamon window manager, and a vast majority of window managers render titlebars using metacity styling.

       The dev team is favorable to a move to GTK titlebars (i.e. dropping metacitity themes altogether and rendering all windows with the GTK theme). Because our metacity and gtk themes are made to look very similar, you wouldn’t see much difference, but it would make shadows between CSD and non-CSD windows more consistent. It’s not a priority but it’s something we’d like to do in the future. I can already tell you it won’t happen for this dev. cycle though.

    2. Thanks for the explanation Clément!
       I have LM19.2 XFCE on another partition, and use metacity as the window manager instead of xfwm4.
       This way I get the GTK3 theme decorations.
       As strange as it may seem, I tried that with Cinnamon.
       I opened a terminal, typed “metacity –replace” but it didn’t work well at all.
       Just had to shutdown the terminal window to go back to normal.
       Glad I didn’t add that command to the startup config.
       Cinnamon can’t really work with another window manager than muffin?

       Thanks again!
       François

    3. In terms of binary, cinnamon is both the desktop and the window manager (same process). Muffin is a dummy window manager, it’s not very stable and it lacks most features. We use it to test or isolate issues now and then, it’s not targeted at users. When we say “muffin”, we don’t really mean the muffin process or the muffin package (which aren’t used by default in Cinnamon), we mean the muffin project, because although the window manager is part of the cinnamon process at runtime, in terms of code, it’s the muffin project. I hope that makes sense…

       Cinnamon implements libmuffin basically.. and that’s what gives it window management.

    4. If I replace with muffin with metacity like described above, the bottom panel disappears completely.
       When I close the terminal from where metacity –replace was launched, it doesn’t come back and everything is broken, I need to reboot the PC.

64. Sometimes Mint takes a long time to shut down.
    Seems random. Perhaps one time in ten on average.
    When it happens shutdown takes about 90 seconds instead of about five.
    During a slow shutdown, pressing F5 displays many messages about Plymouth.
    Clem – is this a known issue?

    Reply

    1. I encounter this issue also. In my case a timer is counting down.

    2. It could be anything. It usually means a process is not responding/quitting and the session is waiting for it to finish. You need to troubleshoot and identify which process that is.

65. I find that out of existing icons “linuxmint-logo-flat-3-symbolic” works best. This is the one that has a gray-only background in the shape of a leaf with bold LM letters carved out.

    The circle background does not look very interesting or distinct, while the leaf is not simply straight-edged either, it has some roundness that makes it “approachable” and mix well with the rest of the elements, as opposed to a square or other sharp-edged shapes. The simple circle shape would have worked if the icon/logo contained something else or more than just letters. But with only letters as the filling you need to compensate with some other design element to make it stand out. And the leaf shape is in my opinion a very good choice because it stands out already at the level of the “main” or “outer” shape and does not rely on the details. This makes it work very well at different sizes and colors.

    Or you could go in the other direction: keep the circle and replace the letters with something more distinguishing. Funnily enough, a leaf in a circle would perhaps work much better than letters in a circle. Letters only work well if they themselves are designed as an interesting and distinct shape and I’m not sure that’s the case in the current letter design, considering it will be used at small sizes like icons. Usually when letters are the main shape then they are the only shape, although that doesn’t work well in the computer world where you don’t control the background. Which is why you don’t see a lot of icons with letters. If I look at the icons in my menu only a couple of them use letters and some of them do that only because they’re actually font/character-related programs. Same thing if I look at logos of various OSs, both GNU/Linux distros and others.

    In the current flat design climate the single color flat leaf looks much better than the old green-white leaf with the inner white “outline” which might have looked good previously but now seems superfluous and actually makes the shape more “muddled”. The flat leaf design of the flat symbolic LM icons is the right direction in the current moment, I think.

    In summary: make the leaf the centerpiece and maybe even drop the letters. I’m interested in your opinion on this, you’ve probably had some internal discussions about this already.

    Reply

    1. Hi Peter,

       We did. What I like with the LM is that it’s not a break from the past. It’s just a simplified version of the logo we already have and it just makes it look more modern. The shape of the leaf could do that as well, but it looks more like a container than a design if you see what I mean. Put it inside a circle and it looks busy and empty at the same time.

66. I like Linux Mint Cinnamon very much but it has one serious drawback : outdated repositories. If you have enough computer-skills, it is often easy to find a work around in order to use a more recent version of an application, but I’m managing the computers of relatives and friends having no linux-skills at all. They normally don’t ask for a more recent version, but when a known application encounters problems, then they call me in. Last week one was complaining that qtqr was crashing when trying to save a qr-code. Well, it is due to an outdated version of the program. Work around is easy for a nerd: use the stable-ppa, but for my relatives this task looks very complicated. In such a case they are helpless and lose faith in the OS. So if it possible, try to update the linux-mint-repositories. Can we help the team in updating the repositories?

    Reply

    1. As far as I know, QTQR is not from Linuxmint repos, but from upstream, Ubuntu.
       Linuxmint is based on Ubuntu LTS, which is 18.04LTS at the moment.

    2. Yes, with LM being based on latest Ubuntu LTS, one of the usual annoyances is outdated packages that are missing bug fixes or essential features. And it’s not always about versions lagging behind upstream, often it’s the package maintainers being slow to update depends or build flags. Your version might already do what you want, yet the package wasn’t build with all its features enabled. So you have to patch and build them locally yourself.

       However there’s a very good reason why Mint is based on LTS, and that’s because it allows them to focus on Mint itself instead of trying to adapt the system to all the changes every 6 months.

       You could try using whatever is the latest Ubuntu release (19.10 will be released this month). But if you administer multiple systems for other people then it could be too much work to upgrade their OS this often. So either way there’s some compromise. You have to decide what you prefer.

    3. Flatpaks are easier to install than setting up PPAs. Now, qtqr itself isn’t available as a flatpak right now, but there are alternatives, both online and in the repositories.

       We’ll always fall behind in terms of repository versions, no matter what. Debian is a snapshot of itself, and Ubuntu is a snapshot of that, so from the get go it’s both frozen and outdated. We keep that frozen base for 5 years though and it’s the main focus for an entire 2 years and during that time we’re protected against the many regressions and bugs which happen (and to be fair which are also fixed) upstream. You can get the latest of everything in some rolling distributions, and you’ll never be stuck with outdated libs, but each time a new lib change comes up it might break this or that for a week, until things get fixed again. We’re on the boring and abandoned side of things, stuck on a snapshot of the past, but where things don’t break and it’s not a crazy ride. It was a tough decision for us to stick to LTS but it was also a very good one imo.

67. @Opsimath and MenthaSuaveolens, Hi both, I had the same slow shutdowns using the 5.x.x versions of kernel. I reverted to the 4.15x series and all is ok. You could check with Mintupdate it gives tips how to go back, if you have uninstalled 4.15x you could reinstall then boot back with it and remove the 5x version. Hope that helps

    Reply

    1. Hi Wayne,
       I have kernel 4.15.0-65 installed and never one of the 5.x.x versions. In case the system “hangs” when shutdown, when one hits the esc-button, one can clearly see a timer counting down from 1min30 sec. The question is, which event causes the setting of the timer. What is the program waiting for?

    2. Hi Wayne,
       It looks that from time to time some peripherals fail to respond when shutting down the system.
       One can change the timeout-setting
       sudo gedit /etc/systemd/system.conf
       #DefaultTimeoutStopSec=90s change to DefaultTimeoutStopSec=4s

       Note: Remove the comment-character #

68. Why is there no password set for single mode in mint 19.2 ?

    Reply

    1. Hi Vieng,

       There are a couple of reasons.

       1. To be consistent with Ubuntu. They don’t set one, we did.. we build on their platform and so both in terms of expectations and compatibility it made sense for us to align ourselves and do the same as them unless we felt strongly about it, and we didn’t (there are pros and cons associated to both the presence and the lack of a root password).

       2. The installer didn’t explicitly tell you it was setting the root password for you. Say your password is compromised or too simple and you decide to change it. Because “you” never specifically set the root password, you won’t necessarily think of changing it when you change your own.

       3. Anyone with physical access to the computer can become root, whether or not a password is set (boot a live USB, chroot, done). But many casual users do get stuck when they forget their password if you don’t let them easily get root without a password. We’re typically in a scenario where a skilled hacker will ALWAYS get in (unless a skilled user REALLY prevented physical access to the BIOS/machine), and so what matters isn’t the false sense of security really, but people who actually do forget their password. Ubuntu decided to make it easy for them by default, and although both sides of the coins are arguable, their choice makes sense.

       All in all, we can argue for hours about whether or not it’s best to have a root password set. The only two things I know for sure though, is that anyone who feels strongly about this is wrong (it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation, it really depends on the situation and the people who are using the computer and have access to it) and that the user should be told about it and given a bit of explanation so that he can choose what’s best for himself (and that’s what we’re doing with the report).

69. Just writing in to say Thank you so much for Mint.
    After nearly two years of futzing around with distributions, I finally found Mint to be both fairly recent as well as dead stable.

    Been using it for nearly six months now.
    Everything just works.

    Thank you so much Mint Team. for all your hard work!

    Reply

70. I just installed Celluloid and it seems to have even less options than Xplayer. It doesnt even have contrast or color adjustment. Since I never use Xplayer anyway I am not much bothered by replacing it with something else, but leaving out Vlc Mediaplayer during installation is not a good idea. There simply is no good alternative for the many options Vlc has got. Even Smplayer, a worthy competitor for Vlc, doesnt come close in the amount of options available, compared to Vlc. Smplayer, being based on Mplayer as well, does not play all the video formats I use. Vlc is known to be able to play everything and has such a stellar reputation. Sure I can install Vlc myself from the Software Manager, but I fear many new LinuxMint users will start asking questions on the forum what videoplayer to use, because Celluloid in it’s current state is nowhere near compatible with the versatile Vlc Mediaplayer.

    Reply

    1. Hi Renee,

       MPV is known to play everything as well. Contrast, gamma, brightness and saturation can be changed using keys 1 to 8. That said, I’m sure there are features in VLC, and many actually, which aren’t and never will be in MPV. It’s not trying to implement numerous features, it’s a simple player which works really well for most people.

71. It is so cool and existing to see LMDE 4 mentionned !

    Reply

    1. *exiting

72. I’ve got a bug with Update Manager. Is somebody else have the same ?
    When I start Linux Mint MATE and immediately, without doing anything else, I start Update Manager and immediately, show the Linux kernels : Update Manager crashes and stops.

    Reply

    1. Hi David,

       Can you paste the result of “apt policy mintupdate”?

73. I am border agent in North America and i introduce Linux Mint to many of our guards every one like it. We promote of understanding and peaceful ways for world. We have to agree Linus Torvalds was new Edison in our planet. Open source is key to all keys.

    Reply

74. I really would like to see a dark Mint-X theme (have the feeling that the attention for X themes have shifted a bit to the background but I really like them). Thanks!

    Reply

75. Hi Clem. You mentioned that the update manager tray icon had been fixed. As of October 9, I am still experiencing this bug with both the update manager icon AND the bluetooth icon. They are both only partially displayed. They are still functional, however.

    Reply

    1. Hi Colin,

       Can you paste the result of “apt policy mintupdate”?

76. Hello Linux Mint staff, Let me start off by saying that I absolutely love Linux Mint. I started using your Mint system in 2015. I was fed up with Windows. It is very user friendly and is fast, safe and extremely functional. Rosa was a very nice release , stable , safe, fast and smooth. I was having a few issues with both Tara and Tessa and recently upgraded to your new Tina release. let me say that Tina is an excellent system. Stable, safe, fast and smooth with all the tools you will ever need. My upgrade to Tina went smooth and without problem and system snapshots kept me from losing any of my files, although I keep a flash drive to back up with important files and family photos just in case. I think everyone that uses Mint should make a donation each and every time they upgrade!

    Reply

77. I like the idea of including a version of mpv as a default player. Personally, I’ve never cared for VLC. bomi is my favourite video player but it appears to be discontinued. And I’ve been leaning towards using mpv more often.

    Celluloid has been mentioned a few times. Is the plan to just use a version of Celluloid as is or will the Linux Mint team be adding more on top of Celluloid?

    I briefly installed the flatpak of Celluloid. It was okay, but there were a few things that I found annoying:

    1 – The window only drags when you click and drag the title bar. This is the same behaviour as VLC. This is a personal thing, but it really bothers me when a video player cannot be dragged by dragging the video itself. mpv and bomi are two examples of video players that behave the way I prefer, where you can just drag anywhere on the video to move the window around.

    2 – The seek bar does not show the timestamp that corresponds to where your mouse is hovering. I find this to be a usability issue because if you want to click to a certain point in time of a video file you don’t really have an idea of where you are jumping to. For example, if the video is 1:00:00 long, and the video is currently at 0:10:16 and I want to jump ahead to the 0:45:00 mark, when I hover over the seek bar there should be some indication that my mouse is near the 0:45:00 mark of the video. The basic OSD for mpv does this.

    3 – I would really like to see a frame preview. This relates to the seek bar similar to my issue #2. I think it is even better if you get a thumbnail preview of the video frame when you hover your mouse over the seek bar. So if I were to hover over the 0:45:00 mark of a video I would see a thumbnail of the video frame at 0:45:00 as an overlay. bomi is one program that has an option for this. I don’t know of any others.

    Thanks for all your hard work on Linux Mint.

    Reply

    1. Hi Rick,

       It’s a young project and it hasn’t been given much exposure yet. I would encourage you to make feature requests at https://github.com/celluloid-player/celluloid/issues. Make sure they’re not already made, and make one issue per feature.

78. Dear Clem:
    Talking about the date format… would it possible to include an option, so when i click the date on my mint bar, the calendar that opens could opens biger (i use that calendar for my daily work, and when i dont use glasses its hard to see… i know there are calendar option all over the world, but… i love that one an it is placed on a grate place)

    Reply

    1. We’re planning to looking into configurable text sizes.. but I can’t really talk about it yet. I don’t know yet if it’s feasible, or when it could land.

79. HI Clem. It seems I was premature. The update icon and bluetooth icon are both displaying properly now. 🙂

    Reply

80. Here is the result of “apt policy mintupdate”

    Installed: 5.5.4.1
    Candidate: 5.5.4.1
    Version table:
    *** 5.5.4.1 500
    500 http://packages.linuxmint.com tina/main amd64 Packages
    500 http://packages.linuxmint.com tina/main i386 Packages
    100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

    Reply

81. its a work in progress, we used to say in the post office. 😉

    Reply

82. Good to see LMDE4 get a mention!

    Reply

83. Hello team Linux mint,
    Have been a user of Linux desktop OS for well over a decade. During this time I have always preferred Mint, mainly due to it’s stability and cautious behaviour to change, for the many old(er) systems in the family and friends circle.
    Unfortunately on the more more laptops (with hiDpi screens, etc.) I must say Mint never looked or behaved well. Another example the kernel being much older always meant finer items (laptop specific) like quad speakers on my convertible laptop won’t work.

    I recently tried Mint 19.2 on a fairly new laptop and I must say Mint has now managed to merge good looks with the robustness and slick desktop (Cinnamon) – what a joy it has been to use with minimal customisation over the past few days – for this I wanted to thank the team and the community which fuels continued development of this amazing product.

    Obviously I had to do some minor laptop hardware specific tweaks but the ease of build in kernel manager meant this was fairly straight forward affair.

    Again thank you and all the best for future endeavours.

    Reply

84. I want to point out again that I love you guys, but I hate the new proposed designs without the LM in the leaf. I just hate it. It lacks flavor and falls into the whole modernist bullshit. Just saying. If I wanted to look like I was poor (and I am) I would go with that. It’s….. well… I still think it’s ludicrous. I hate it.

    Love the rest of the stuff. Still miss the KDE version.

    Reply

85. Scanner not detected. Epson xp-257 and OS up to date. Tried Simplescan and SANE but they could not even detect the scanner. Am I missing something?

    Reply

    1. John,
       Try this solution: https://tutorialforlinux.com/2018/06/13/driver-epson-xp-257-linux-mint-19-how-to-download-install/

    2. Thanks Mentha, much appreciated. Taking a look at that now.

    3. I’m a newbie but I have a couple of Epson printers. Try turning off the Firewall temporarily. If it works after that you have a clue that that’s the issue. I had the same issue. Maybe some of the gurus here will know the fix.

86. I recently started using two monitors on Linux Mint 19.2. Now every time I turn on my monitors all my open windows have jumped to the secondary screen. How can I fix this?

    Reply

    1. Go to the display settings and set your primary monitor as primary. Save the configuration. If that’s not enough, delete ~/.config/monitors.xml, have both monitors plugged and re-save the configuration again.

87. Just FYI, I had an exchange on gnome-look.org about the behaviour of the metacity decorations of a theme, where both the light and dark variants of the same theme display as light. (Only the metacity decorations and titlebar. The GTK theme is okay)

    fblais 11 days ago
    Works great with Cinnamon, but with the regular (light) GTK theme, both metacity themes (regular and dark) are light. Is it normal?
    I’d expect to get a dark titlebar with the marwaita-dark metacity theme, even when using the light GTK theme.
    Thanks!

    mamorex 6 hours ago
    It’s a Cinnamon/Linux Mint bug. I have this with all custom themes. And close buttons are disappear in small windows (e.g. Help-About in VLC).

    Reply

    1. Well no, it works fine in Cinnamon. It’s a bug in Marco (which was fixed upstream by monsta if I remember well) and mint-y (which is yet to be fixed). It’s also an item on our roadmap and something we’re hoping to fix in 19.3.

88. Apropos icon, shouldn’t the favicon of linuxmint.com have transparent background?

    Reply

    1. Ah yes, thanks. It’s transparent now.

89. not sure where to put ask this…

    E:The repository ‘http://packages.linuxmint.com tara Release’ is no longer signed.

    is what the Update Manager is telling me…
    Have I screwed something up?

    Thanks for any help…

    Reply

    1. Hi John,

       Sorry about this, it was on our side. Thanks for letting us know, it’s fixed now.

90. FYI. I have not been able to run Maps from behind my VPN and even if I exit out of the VPN it will not run without a re-boot (don’t know if this applies to all VPNs). After discussions on the Gnome boards I have come up with a work-around
    1. Exit VPN
    2. run “$ nmcli networking connectivity check” in terminal (you should get the reply “full”)
    3. start Maps as normal
    Don’t know if this is a Gnome issue or a Mint issue

    Reply

    1. Hi Calvin,

       I have no idea. The connectivity check in NM is there for captive portals (like in hotels, when the network doesn’t work until the browser itself redirects you to a page which asks you credentials or to click a but to agree terms and conditions). Make sure network-manager-config-connectivity-ubuntu is installed, and check in the System Settings -> Privacy to make sure support for it is enabled.

91. Clem, Thanks for the response. Apparently when behind a VPN the reply to “$ nmcli networking connectivity check” in terminal is “Limited” (which I have verified) and as a result Maps will not run. Why it still won’t run after exiting the VPN, I don’t know. Here is a link to the Gnome thread if interested: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-maps/issues/214

    Reply

    1. Hi Clem,
       I did just the opposite. Under System Settings -> Privacy I turned Check connectivity to “Off”, rebooted. Now I can run Maps even with the VPN active.
       I don’t know what the ramifications are down the road having this setting turned off.

92. Mint Linux system of the finest systems
    I’ve been using mint linux for four years
    What a smooth system and does not consume the resources of the device
    thank you all
    I am grateful to you for your development

    Reply

93. As a really casual user, I thought I might still dare to mention, that Xplayer gets fooled by a 90 degrees rotated display and fails to display using the correct aspect ratio. (I prefer using a 90 degrees rotated 1280×1024 display on my “Internet PC”, as that seems nice for vertically scrolling many news sites.) Luckily, VLC player works fine. I bring this up, because I suspect few people rotate their displays, so it might not get easily noticed.

    Reply

94. I am the developer of Quirinux, a customization of GNU/Linux based on Debian, made for the development of animated cinema. I am writing from Galicia, Spain, birthplace of Trisquel. I moved here recently, although Quirinux 1 was born in my native home: Buenos Aires, Argentina.

    I apologize for my English grammar.

    I tried LMDEint for the first time and was amazed. I CONGRATULATE YOU AND THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

    I would love to be able to base Quirinux 2 on Mint, recognizing the corresponding credits, of course.

    I use Systemback as my personalization system, as well as AV Linux.

    It is a pity that Systemback is not compatible with Calamari, although it works on Buster anyway.

    It would be great if it came pre-installed in Mint LMDE 4, and that includes the possibility of working with XFS. I have noticed that some versions of Systemback bring it, but the one that currently works under Debian 10 does not. I refer to the Edmon Blog: https://francoconidi.it/systemback-1-9-3-per-debian-9-ubuntu-17-10-18-04/

    Systemback comes pre-installed in Emmabuntus… but not the ISOs generated from there, so they don’t start.

    I understand that Mint once brought Systemback with it. It would be great if Mint LMDE 4 would reincorporate it and how much better if they manage to make it work in conjunction with Calamares. The similar Remaster-GTK script (based on Remasterys) manages to work with Calamares, but I also had some problems to start ISO live. Maybe you can polish that script and include the utility in LMDE 4, we would make things much easier for those who want to make specialized customizations for an inexperienced audience. Anyway, Buster’s version of Calamares doesn’t allow formatting in XFS. Which would be good to solve, since for the work with Audio and Video the performance in modest equipment is much better, according to my checks.

    I know, I am very pretentious and I know that I exceed my requests, but in truth they are suggestions, in case by chance they thought to consider something of everything I have said, as to help them to decide with approval. I’m really looking forward to LMDE 4 and I beg you not to remove the sounds from the events, it’s something I missed very much.

    Greetings and thank you so much for this incredible distro.

    Reply

95. Hi Clem,
    Speaking of the next 19.3 version, according to you, is there a chance that it will be compatible with my new ASUS ZenBook 14 UX431FA ?
    The new version of Ubuntu (19.10) works only with nomodeset grab parameter, otherwise the screen is always black.
    Thank you.

    Reply

96. Mint Cinnamon 19.2

    Memtest86+ shows in Software Manager but does not post on boot list or with install medium.
    How can I run Memtest86+ to test my RAM?

    Reply

97. @Clem

    Memtest86+ does not show on my grub menu. Neither does it show with my install medium.

    Reply

98. Dear Clem:
    As always I can’t start these lines without thanking you and your team for this wonderful distribution.
    Please answer the following questions:
    01. In Windows there is the option to create a custom panel where you can anchor folders. Is there something like this in Linux Mint?
    02. Everything seems to indicate that the computers that are going to be massified in the near future are those that use touch screens (convertible or 2 in 1, for example). Do you plan to orientate Linux Mint in this sense?
    Thank you in advance for your answers and your time.
    Alexandros

    Reply

99. Hello dear Linux Mint developers, first of all, I want to thank you for all the excellent work your wonderful team has been doing, I have been using your distribution kit since 2016, and I want to say that as a former user of windows it suits me very much, of course, the OS is slightly different from windows, for example, there is no grouping of icons in the system tray like in Windows 7, but in general it’s all nothing

    Reply

100. Dear Linux Mint Team,

     Could you please advise when version 5.3 or 5.4 of the Linux Kernel will be available in the Update Manager > Kernels to solve ‘Cant access emmc, error -84’

     Thank you

     https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1818407/
     https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1818407/comments/46
     https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1818407/comments/47

     Reply

101. way to go…last kernal and other things october wifi blasting at max speed 112 to 115 5 ghz alfa network awus 1900 wifi…got for the long range and speed 5 ghz…october upgrades nailed it on speed…thanks

     Reply

     1. # rtl8814AU
        Realtek 8814AU USB WiFi driver.

        Forked from [Diederik de Haas](https://github.com/diederikdehaas/rtl8814AU)’
        repository which is based on version 4.3.21 of an Edimax driver for the
        EW-7833UAC device.

        Updated with support for kernels >= 4.14.

        # DKMS support

        From your src dir

        ““
        sudo cp -R . /usr/src/rtl8814au-4.3.21
        sudo dkms build -m rtl8814au -v 4.3.21
        sudo dkms install -m rtl8814au -v 4.3.21
        ““

        This should keep your 8814AU adapter working post kernel updates.

102. Linux mint used to work a lot better when it only required 1 GB memory to run smoothly. Why such a memory hog now? Firefox is also unusable on computers with 1 GB memory or less, and yes I know about upgrading my laptop. Upgrading is expensive.

     Reply

     1. have you try xfce version?i have to say 1gb is way too low…normal nowadays is 4gb & low end 2gb…if your pc is super old you might wanna try other linux distro that intended to run on old/low resource pc…as for firefox, i think its more to website actually than browser, browsing on social media nowadays easily eat up 1gb or more…i remember using 2gb laptop 10 year ago & social media website isnt that heavy, heck i could even run flash game on 2 tab…of course by then it would be a little lag over time but a refresh would make them smooth again.

     2. Hi George,
        Mint 19.2 XFCE is a great option for low-memory systems as well as Mint 17.3 MATE.

     3. @ George, It’s not just Linux Mint, it’s all of the other software as well. Over time, with each update, software gradually uses more system resources especially when new features are added. Firefox, Thunderbird, Google Chrome, LibreOffice, etc, they all “grow” and take up more resources as they get updated. Think back to the days when you first bought your computer. if it ran Windows XP etc, it was fast and could cope, and if you had a system restore disk, and restored the system, it was fast …right up until you installed the updates to whatever it came pre-installed with. Then it immediately got bogged down. Yes, some of it was to do with fragmenting files, but the rest was to do with Windows service pack updates, and other software updates. Mac owners will experience the same thing. It’s just the nature of the beast. Sooner or later every system will become too slow to run the current operating system and software, and will have to be retired to the scrap heap. Linux does allow them to run for longer though before that happens, but even with Linux, they will eventually be too old, and slow with not enough system resources to cope with the demands placed on it.

103. I really appreciate Timeshift. There are so many reasonable defaults and so many sensible settings available to adjust. Thanks Linux Mint devs. And I think the RAM requirements are absolutely reasonable, and easy to live with.
     I think this is the best distro for noobs to begin with. I’ve even convinced my mother to run Mint on her home computer.

     Reply

104. speaking of date format, how about clock digits size fix (they’re too small)?

     Reply

     1. +1

        and also allowing multiple clocks by default

        and notifying daylight saving changes in the week prior to its effect?

105. No me gusta Timeshift. De hecho, en cuanto acaba la instalación del sistema lo desinstalo. En realidad, lo malo que tiene Timeshift, es el mismo problema que tienen otras muchas utilidades de ‘backup’: eso es que no usa ningún tipo de compresión y utiliza demasiado espacio en disco. Ya se que si no se configura no hace nada, pero prefiero desinstalarlo y efectuar mis copias de seguridad en forma de clon de disco, con ‘clonezilla’. Me parece un sistema más seguro que como “copias acumulativas”.

     Reply

106. I’ve been using the Brave browser for some time now and there have you a adblock, and you can collect money from advertising, just donate it to the site of your choice. Anyway, you can have a look at it, but I don’t know what the regulations are for donation recipients. Might be a nice alternative to supporting you?

     Reply

107. “Thunderbird version 68.2.0 provides an automatic update from Thunderbird version 60.”
     https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/68.2.0/releasenotes/

     Do you know when Thunderbird, in Linux Mint, will be updated from 60.x to 68.x?

     Thank you

     Reply

108. the problem with it is that after installing it my pc says no operating system found and this happens evrey single time i install it

     Reply

109. Longtime user… Mint just keeps getting better and better. I recently switched to Mint Cinnamon edition from XFCE and before that KDE. Wow!

     Reply

110. Enjoying 19.2. Thank you Team!
     Cinnamon panel… too easy to click and drag something off, even the Menu icon. This seems to have happened to one of the older people I help. Maybe adding a pop-up to confirm that you really want to drag an item off could be added? Sigh, .. yes, and then I clicked Yes when it asked me (scared of upsetting the computer). We can try 🙂

     Reply

111. I think Linux Mint is missing something like Xtra-PC or Debian Desktop persistent to enable full install on an USB stick with computers with damaged HDD or no legacy mode.

     Reply

112. Please fix annoying problems with LibreOffice. They’re related to the Cinnamon-desktop.
     1. Vertical white column on the second screen during presentation-mode in impress (LM 18 .. 19)
     2. Doubling (even tripling) of the menu-bar (LM 19.2)
     Create new text-document
     Insert object = formula => formula-application opens
     Enter any king of formula. Click on the right area to close the formula-application
     Menu-bar gets doubled!

     Reply

113. anyone heard about that lz4 compression included in Ubuntu 19.10 Eoan Ermine
     it would be nice to include that for the initramfs which is supported in 19.10
     compress the initramfs with lz4 might be a welcome boot speed boost
     another suggestion this one is for all editions the ability to change font size and color for the panel and panel clock you can in XFCE change font size for the panel clock but no easy way to change font color i like red myself it reduces eyestrain also for the volume icon the ability to change it to any color you want i have observed the work you guys are doing and all i can say about that is WOW Totally Awesome you fine folks are so amazing
     I Run Linux Mint XFCE Edition everyday and its Awesome So Rock Solid And Reliable
     Personally i,am impressed i just cant think of any words that do it justice
     I,am Looking Forward To Linux Mint 19.3
     Oh BTW is the Regression in libsane fixed yet? the one that causes vertical bands in scanned images and documents that is the main reason i have not switched my clients over to 19x series

     Reply

     1. Shawn, try ‘orage” panel clock (in LM repos). Built for xfce & plenty of customization.

114. Hello, brand new Mint user here. Just switched from Win7. Thanks for the awesome work!
     I want to get involved in development (but in a very small way). Let me explain.
     When I was customizing everything about my fresh Mint, I noticed that under Sound settings, there is no option for an “Empty Trash” sound effect.
     After a bit of searching I found the folder.
     My /usr/share/mint-artwork/sounds folder has 14 sound files in it, including one trash.oga.
     But Sound settings only include 13 (login, logout, switch, minimize, maximize etc.)
     I thought that was really weird. Why is the sound file there?
     Maybe the devs never got around to it, or forgot, or planned it for a next release?
     I went to the GitHub page for Cinnamon and browsed the code, but it’s really difficult for me.
     The only relevant thing I found was under /js/ui/soundManager.js, which lists the 13 options.
     GitHub is a very intimidating place, so could someone point me in the direction of how to implement an additional sound enable/disable option?

     Reply