Monthly News – August 2024

Many thanks for your donations and for your support.

Server upgrades

The repository servers were upgraded. They’re now able to serve packages at 10gbps, which is 10 times faster than before.

We no longer observe bottlenecks during large updates when packages such as Firefox or Chromium are updated concurrently.

Upgrade path

The upgrade between Mint 21.3 and 22 was broken last week due to package conflicts introduced upstream in Ubuntu 24.04 on samba and libreoffice.

When Debian unstable was frozen to make the Ubuntu 24.04 package base, Debian was performing a large transition towards new T64 packages. When the 24.04 release was delayed, it was to address the XZ backdoor (all packages had to be recompiled). The package base was also in really bad shape though. A week before it was due, we couldn’t even debootstrap it. Credits to Canonical, by the time 24.04 was released, everything was stable. The transition to T64 wasn’t finished though and so the path from 22.04 to 24.04 was delayed until 24.04.1.

This usually never happens. Post-release the 24.04 package base still needs to catch up with Debian to backport the rest of the T64 transition. Only then can the upgrade path be stable and open. This is really quite complex because the 24.04 base is frozen and stable.. but Debian unstable itself has moved on. The situation is being worked on and addressed upstream by Canonical. It’s getting better and better but regressions can pop in and break the upgrade path at any moment.

Canonical Pauses Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04 Upgrade Path Due to Critical Bugs

Now, because the T64 situation was already a problem for the Mint 22 upgrade, it was addressed somehow in our upgrade tool. The 21.3 -> 22 upgrade is able to transition towards T64 packages even when the packaging doesn’t handle the transition. What it can’t do though is get passed actual dependency conflicts.

We’ve been re-testing the upgrade path 3 times since the last blog post. We’ve considered closing it. The situation with libreoffice and samba is now behind us. The upgrade path, as we speak, is functional.

As always and now more than ever though, I’d like to insist on performing system snapshots and data backups prior to any upgrade.

Default Cinnamon theme

Outside of Linux Mint, Cinnamon looks pretty ugly.

In our distribution the focus is on Mint-Y. The default Cinnamon theme is maintained for troubleshooting purposes and rarely gets attention from theme artists.

Ideally, it is the responsibility of the distributions to make things look good. In practice, many do not maintain their own themes, focus on other desktops or insist on using default settings.

To address this problem Cinnamon 6.4 will ship with a much improved default theme.

Maintaining better APT libraries and utilities

One of the big projects for Mint 22.1 is to review our APT dependencies to clean up, rationalize and modernize the tools and libraries we rely on.

APT isn’t just a command line utility. It’s a huge collection of tools and utilities. Think of aptitude, synaptic, gdebi, apturl.

It’s also a set of libraries such as aptdaemon or packagekit which allow many of the software applications we maintain to perform package management.

As you can see in the diagram below, many of our applications use these libraries: The MATE menu, the Cinnamon menu, the driver manager, software manager, software sources, update manager, welcome screen, reports manager, locale and input method configuration tools, backup tool…

Some of these APT tools and libraries were written more than a decade ago and are no longer maintained upstream. Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian have been patching them throughout the years so they still work, but their design, their translations, the features they provide are stuck in the past. Every Mint release is a reminder of this and a list of long-lasting paper cuts which we’re unable to address.

Because these utilities and libraries are very important to us we decided to simplify how we use them and to maintain them. Going forward we want perfect translations, no more paper cuts and if something we need is missing we’ll just implement it.

Gdebi and apturl were merged into a single utility application called Captain.

Aptdaemon and mintcommon-aptdaemon were merged into a library called Aptkit.

All the tools which previously used Aptdaemon, Synaptic or apturl will now use Aptkit and Captain.

The tools which use Packagekit don’t necessarily need to transition away from it. Packagekit is actively maintained. It doesn’t provide a set of Gtk3 widgets or translations like Aptkit does, but these tools don’t need them.

All in all, this is a lot of work and you as a user won’t really see much difference on your desktop. The paper cuts are gone though and if you find new ones, this time we’ll be able to fix them.

LMDE 5 EOL

LMDE 5 “Elsie” reached End Of Life and is no longer maintained.

The repositories will continue to work for a while but this release will no longer receive updates from us.

If you are using LMDE 5 please visit the following link to upgrade to LMDE 6:

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4571

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors:
Linux VPS Hosting
IPv6.rs
Silver Sponsors:
Datadog
Sucuri
ThinkPenguin: For Everything Freedom
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
hSo
Agile.Coach
BGASoft Inc
C0MPLÉX1 SEO
DeepTide, LLC
HamoniKR
Tinken Inc
VANT

Donations in July:

A total of $16,029 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 582 donors:

$500 (2nd donation), Ryan S.
$300 (2nd donation), Kathryn H.
$216, Mark F.
$200, Kody B.
$200, Orlando A.
$129, Michele C.
$120, Sarah H.
$116 (5th donation),
$108 (17th donation), Heiko P. aka “CyCroN
$108 (13th donation), Torsten P.
$108 (4th donation), Ruediger B.
$108 (2nd donation), Alan G.
$108, A.Alex
$108, Chris S.
$108, Dennis F.
$108, Dennis K.
$108, Hans-peter S.
$108, Heiko S.
$108, Martin S.
$100 (24th donation), Hans J.
$100 (21st donation), Philip W.
$100 (16th donation), Alfred H. aka “Varmint Al
$100 (9th donation), Michael S.
$100 (6th donation), John B.
$100 (3rd donation), Clive Newstead
$100 (3rd donation), Philip M.
$100 (2nd donation), William P.
$100, Doug H.
$100, Kevin K.
$100, Paul L.
$100, Scott D.
$99, Mark S.
$95 (2nd donation), Jérôme G.
$86 (3rd donation), J S.
$82 (64th donation), Michael R.
$80 (3rd donation), Terry Ya!
$65 (4th donation), Marcus A.
$65, William S.
$57 (2nd donation), Petros T.
$54 (22nd donation), Bjarne K.
$54 (18th donation), Bernard H.
$54 (15th donation), Claude M.
$54 (11th donation), Volker P.
$54 (8th donation), Andrew L.
$54 (5th donation), Martin A.
$54 (4th donation), Birgit B.
$54 (4th donation), Boris I.
$54 (4th donation), Florian L.
$54 (4th donation), Matthias B.
$54 (3rd donation), Dario D.
$54 (3rd donation), pk
$54 (3rd donation), Rainer L.
$54 (2nd donation), Rainer B.
$54 (2nd donation), Rüdiger T.
$54 (2nd donation), Syntega IT Schmitt
$54 (2nd donation), William H.
$54, Boris P.
$54, Cubes CAD Ltd
$54, Enrico V.
$54, Eric W.
$54, Hugues H.
$54, Inge H.
$54, Ingo P.
$54, Ivan I.
$54, Jens S. aka “Poerny HH – DL”
$54, Johann M.
$54, Kuno G.
$54, Matteo C.
$54, Michael K.
$54, Ralf-Andre L. aka “RAL”
$54, Thomas W.
$54, Toni P.
$53 (11th donation), John Mc
$50 (86th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (30th donation), Hemant Patel
$50 (15th donation), An L.
$50 (10th donation), Peter L. aka “Pedro
$50 (8th donation), Mike M.
$50 (6th donation), Jack B.
$50 (4th donation), aka “GM46”
$50 (2nd donation), Andrew K.
$50 (2nd donation), John P.
$50 (2nd donation), Mario A.
$50 (2nd donation), Michael M.
$50 (2nd donation), Robert M.
$50 (2nd donation), Ron H.
$50, Boris B.
$50, Christopher G.
$50, David F.
$50, David H.
$50, David J.
$50, David L.
$50, Dennis P.
$50, Doug V.
$50, Drew H.
$50, Edward L. aka “Edek”
$50, Ewan MacLeod
$50, Gregg R.
$50, Jay E.
$50, John F.
$50, Krzysztof D.
$50, Mark B.
$50, Matias Corporation
$50, Matthew H.
$50, N S.
$50, Nathan L.
$50, Paul H.
$50, Pha N.
$50, Philip E S.
$50, Richard M.
$50, Richard S.
$50, Ryan B.
$50, Tim V.
$50, Timothy J I.
$50, Wagner M.
$50, Whisley I.
$43, Arnaud R.
$43, NIck Glanzmann aka “Nick Glanzmann”
$43, Vizcarro A.
$41, Lucie T. aka “shaolinlucie
$40 (5th donation), Hans G. H.
$40, Anonymous
$40, Gilles L.
$40, Joseph H aka “Joseph”
$39 (24th donation), Joachim M.
$38, Marcos H.
$38, Ruschan B.
$36, John E.
$35 (2nd donation), Rune J.
$32 (10th donation), Wolfgang N.
$32 (6th donation), Richard H.
$32 (5th donation), Jürgen H.
$32 (4th donation), Günther H.
$32 (2nd donation), Geoff P.
$32, Andreas H.
$32, GB
$32, Jan C.
$32, Jerome P.
$32, Reinhard G.
$32, Tim H.
$31 (17th donation), Adam K.
$30 (35th donation), Wolfgang P.
$30 (6th donation), Kevin H.
$30 (2nd donation), Aliaksandr B.
$29 (5th donation), Kevin M.
$28 (2nd donation), Joel M.
$27 (22nd donation), John K. aka “jbrucek”
$27 (13th donation), Frank J.
$27 (3rd donation), Johanan M.
$27 (2nd donation), Rainer L.
$27, David H.
$27, Stephan K.
$27, Tom S.
$25 (41th donation), Linux Mint Sverige
$25 (19th donation), George R. aka “Az4x4”
$25 (16th donation), Vaughan Butler
$25 (13th donation), Andrew Currie
$25 (11th donation), Timothy C.
$25 (10th donation), Thomas C.
$25 (7th donation), John W.
$25 (4th donation), Samuel S.
$25 (3rd donation), Katherine K.
$25 (3rd donation), Ron S.
$25, ChoWard aka “dynamiclynk
$25, David R.
$25, Randall C S.
$24 (6th donation), Pavel P.
$23 (12th donation), Malte J.
$22 (50th donation), Peter E.
$22 (29th donation), Doriano G. M.
$22 (23rd donation), Ke C.
$22 (18th donation), Alain P.
$22 (13th donation), Marek S. [LMDE SUPPORTER]
$22 (12th donation), Benjamin W.
$22 (8th donation), Cornelis V.
$22 (6th donation), John V.
$22 (6th donation), Waldemar P. aka “valldek”
$22 (5th donation), Christoph B.
$22 (5th donation), Jan S.
$22 (5th donation), Lionel R.
$22 (5th donation), Patrick M.
$22 (5th donation), Roberto R. D. T.
$22 (5th donation), vieilletempête
$22 (4th donation), Thomas W.
$22 (3rd donation), Christopher P.
$22 (3rd donation), Guenther M.
$22 (3rd donation), Guillaume P.
$22 (3rd donation), James E.
$22 (3rd donation), Jörg B.
$22 (3rd donation), Markus L.
$22 (3rd donation), Reinhold K.
$22 (2nd donation), Andreï K.
$22 (2nd donation), Dennis H.
$22 (2nd donation), Dietmar B.
$22 (2nd donation), Emmanuel D.
$22 (2nd donation), Florian A.
$22 (2nd donation), Gines S.
$22 (2nd donation), John Baines
$22 (2nd donation), John E. O.
$22 (2nd donation), John S.
$22 (2nd donation), Krunoslav O.
$22 (2nd donation), Loïc A.
$22 (2nd donation), Patrick D.
$22 (2nd donation), Pep C. F.
$22 (2nd donation), Raymond B.
$22 (2nd donation), RP
$22, Alexander R.
$22, Antoine van Dinter
$22, C.H.
$22, Christian G.
$22, Christian W.
$22, Claude T.
$22, Curt S.
$22, Daniele C.
$22, Darryn R.
$22, David C.
$22, Dieter N.
$22, Dirk L.
$22, Dmitriy L.
$22, Dominik L.
$22, Dr. Imre B.
$22, Edward D.
$22, Enrique T.
$22, Falk-wimar H.
$22, Flavio S.
$22, Frank R.
$22, Gabriel P.
$22, Gianluca F.
$22, Grzegorz W.
$22, Hans-jürgen K.
$22, Irimie C. aka “volkunus”
$22, Izaro Basurko (Euskal Herria)
$22, Johan G.
$22, Jörg H.
$22, José R.
$22, Ken H.
$22, Konstantin H.
$22, Lukas E.
$22, Maarten L.
$22, Marcin C.
$22, Mario D.
$22, Oliver L.
$22, Pavel S.
$22, Pete H.
$22, Philip B.
$22, Pincemin F.
$22, Pius Alfred V.
$22, Raimond H.
$22, Ralf S.
$22, Reinhard N.
$22, Robert S.
$22, Rufus
$22, Sebastian S.
$22, Sergio C.
$22, Steve H.
$22, Stewart R.
$22, Susan R.
$22, Thierry J.
$22, Thomas R.
$22, Timo V.
$22, Wilhelm T.
$20 (48th donation), Stefan M. H.
$20 (26th donation), Denis D.
$20 (25th donation), Aimee W.
$20 (21st donation), Nigel B.
$20 (17th donation), Antoine T.
$20 (12th donation), Brandon W.
$20 (12th donation), platypus products
$20 (10th donation), Bill R.
$20 (8th donation), Antonio Misaka
$20 (8th donation), Jeffery G.
$20 (8th donation), Mark R.
$20 (7th donation), David K.
$20 (7th donation), Ulrich H.
$20 (6th donation), Thomas N.
$20 (5th donation), Dismas S. aka “Dismas”
$20 (5th donation), Harry T.
$20 (5th donation), Mark C.
$20 (4th donation), Józef S.
$20 (4th donation), Randolph M.
$20 (4th donation), Sam B.
$20 (3rd donation), Dale C.
$20 (3rd donation), Richard M.
$20 (2nd donation), Anthony L. aka “Badger2Tony”
$20 (2nd donation), David P.
$20 (2nd donation), Lars O.
$20 (2nd donation), Nicholas C.
$20 (2nd donation), Paul M.
$20 (2nd donation), Roger J.
$20 (2nd donation), Ronald B.
$20 (2nd donation), Samuel W.
$20 (2nd donation), Two Schuh’s
$20, Adinoél S.
$20, Andrew R.
$20, Andreza M.
$20, Caleb P.
$20, Caleb P.
$20, Cesar G.
$20, Charles F.
$20, Chris J.
$20, Daniel C.
$20, David Namisato
$20, Debbra H.
$20, Denny O.
$20, Denys K.
$20, Dion D.
$20, Douglas H.
$20, James A.
$20, Jason I.
$20, Jerry K.
$20, Jonathan N.
$20, Kevin D.
$20, Leonardo O.
$20, Lorenzo W.
$20, Matthew V.
$20, Oldies but Goodies
$20, Paul C.
$20, Raymond M.
$20, Robert G.
$20, Scott T.
$20, Steve K.
$20, Steven J.
$20, The Waldo School
$20, Timothy C.
$20, Timothy F.
$20, Tranquillino F.
$16 (78th donation), Andreas S.
$16 (14th donation), Francois B. aka “Makoto
$16 (2nd donation), Nicolas G.
$16 (2nd donation), Sebastian B.
$16 (2nd donation), Werner Palmen
$16, Jai N.
$15 (5th donation), Terry P.
$15, Captain Burgerland
$15, Nicholas F.
$14 (97th donation), Johann J.
$12, Aleksander B. aka “oloke”
$12, Pierre-luc D.
$12, Romulus Freeman
$11 (51th donation), Daniel S.
$11 (28th donation), Tugaleres.com
$11 (25th donation), Denys G.
$11 (21st donation), Eskild T
$11 (18th donation), José G. aka “picaso”
$11 (15th donation), Stefan W.
$11 (13th donation), Tomi P.
$11 (11th donation), Bengt Falke aka “Falke”
$11 (11th donation), Ivan Stamenov
$11 (10th donation), Axel R. aka “Airwave”
$11 (10th donation), Axel R.
$11 (10th donation), Ronald S.
$11 (9th donation), Francis N.
$11 (8th donation), Heston
$11 (8th donation), Johann K.
$11 (7th donation), Bjørn M. J. aka “BMJ”
$11 (7th donation), Francisco F.
$11 (6th donation), Noël D. K.
$11 (5th donation), Cor D.
$11 (5th donation), Jan Z.
$11 (5th donation), Jörg.K
$11 (5th donation), Jouko Tiilikainen aka “JT65”
$11 (5th donation), Marc
$11 (4th donation), Gregor K.
$11 (4th donation), Marko R.
$11 (4th donation), Martin Kamp Jensen
$11 (4th donation), Stefan V. B. aka “stefanvb”
$11 (3rd donation), Benjamin F.
$11 (3rd donation), Fernando A. P.
$11 (3rd donation), Gerard B.
$11 (3rd donation), Guillaume M.
$11 (3rd donation), Jose J.
$11 (3rd donation), Mario M.
$11 (3rd donation), Nicholas J.
$11 (3rd donation), Pietro C.
$11 (3rd donation), William M.
$11 (2nd donation), Andres J. A. L.
$11 (2nd donation), Daniele V.
$11 (2nd donation), Giacomo B.
$11 (2nd donation), Jacques V.
$11 (2nd donation), Johannes S.
$11 (2nd donation), Kevin L.
$11 (2nd donation), Konrad B.
$11 (2nd donation), Marcel G.
$11 (2nd donation), Maria Lina P.
$11 (2nd donation), Michael H.
$11 (2nd donation), Pierre B.
$11 (2nd donation), Rossano Paris
$11 (2nd donation), Ruben de V.
$11 (2nd donation), Victor B.
$11 (2nd donation), Xavier C.
$11, aka “Logos”
$11, Adam Z.
$11, Alberto M.
$11, Alexej S.
$11, Amir A.
$11, Daniel Barbosa Corbacho aka “-McClane2280-”
$11, David K.
$11, David N.
$11, David O.
$11, E J S.
$11, Eliakim B.
$11, Fethi I.
$11, Florian P.
$11, Florian R.
$11, Francesco C.
$11, Francisco Javier G.
$11, Gabriep P. aka “ga44”
$11, Hasan B.
$11, Heiko T.
$11, Hennie W.
$11, Henrique D.
$11, Hermine Hargreaves
$11, Ian S.
$11, Jakub T.
$11, Jörg B.
$11, Jorma O.
$11, Jose L.
$11, Joshua W.
$11, Khaled M.
$11, Marc K.
$11, Margriet V.
$11, Massimiliano M.
$11, Massimo G.
$11, Michael J.
$11, Michael W.
$11, Michele C.
$11, Michele M.
$11, Mihovil S.
$11, Mike T.
$11, Oleg L.
$11, Panon D.O.O.
$11, Paolo A.
$11, Pasquale C.
$11, Patrik .
$11, Pietro B.
$11, Ralf V.
$11, Reidar S.
$11, Riccardo D.
$11, Ringo K.
$11, Rok L.
$11, Ronald W.
$11, Salvatore B.
$11, Sasha A.
$11, Sebastian B.
$11, Stefan S.
$11, Sven B.
$11, Tim Büning aka “Tim Buening
$11, Uwe B.
$11, Vasco T.
$11, Wolfram R.
$11, Yannick D.
$10 (100th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (45th donation), Philip Woodward
$10 (40th donation), Jim A.
$10 (23rd donation), Bruce M.
$10 (15th donation), Dave S.
$10 (14th donation), William M.
$10 (12th donation), Thevirtua
$10 (10th donation), Andreas G.
$10 (8th donation), Joel C.
$10 (7th donation), redman
$10 (6th donation), Alexei S.
$10 (6th donation), Michał K. aka “PoldekPL”
$10 (6th donation), TONY aka “STRUZZIN ELECTRONICS
$10 (4th donation), Frank K.
$10 (4th donation), Przemysław Z. aka “bodek”
$10 (4th donation), Tomasz K.
$10 (4th donation), William C.
$10 (4th donation), Zisis L.
$10 (3rd donation), Helgi J.
$10 (3rd donation), Larry G.
$10 (3rd donation), Simon M.
$10 (2nd donation), Chris B
$10 (2nd donation), Dane M.
$10 (2nd donation), Douglas W.
$10 (2nd donation), Evan M.
$10 (2nd donation), Gerald F.
$10 (2nd donation), James P.
$10 (2nd donation), Jeffrey G.
$10 (2nd donation), Ralph B.
$10, Adam D.
$10, Alberto R.
$10, Andrés P.
$10, Anthony A.
$10, Caleb P.
$10, Chuong H.
$10, Constantin D.
$10, Csaba V.
$10, Francis L.
$10, Gregory J.
$10, Jeffrey D.
$10, Jerry S. aka “jerryprague”
$10, Joseph G.
$10, Justin M.
$10, Ken P.
$10, Kiss J.
$10, Kyle J.
$10, larkworks.net
$10, Lelio L.
$10, Matt H.
$10, Mikhael M.
$10, Nebojsa D.
$10, Nicholas B.
$10, prodbyhx
$10, Quang T H.
$10, Richard H.
$10, Roberto S.
$10, Sam B.
$10, Sebastian S.
$10, SpongebobSquarepants
$10, Tomasz K.
$10, Veronique K.
$9, Holger S.
$8 (2nd donation), Alan N.
$7 (2nd donation), Michael F.
$6, Alan N.
$6, Tobias P.
$235 from 62 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

Patrons:

Linux Mint is proudly supported by 1,318 patrons, for a sum of $3,597 per month.

To become a Linux Mint patron, please visit https://www.patreon.com/linux_mint

41 comments

    1. Just tried to install updates on LMDE6. Doesn’t work now (did several days ago). Throws great gobs of libglib errors. That is something I ran into after upgrading Mint 21.3 to Mint 22. Sounds like things are broken big time.

    2. Interesting. There were a large number of upgrades. I tried doing only a few at a time and this time DID NOT get the libglib errors and all the upgrades were successful.

    3. Debian has some issues too as Jerry said. Ubuntu’s issues are related to Debian’s issues.

      Honestly these are all ripple effects of the XZ backdoor. Too much stuff depended on it.

    4. I had similar difficulties with a routine update for LDME6. First problem I’ve had with LMDE for years. I tried to restore using timeshift, but the resut failed. So I just reinstalled the OS and kept the home partition as it was (i.e., didn’t format the homer partition). So I didn’t have to copy my documents back in. Very fast, and things were fine after that. A few minutes to do the install and a few minutes to correct some appearance-related things.

      Considering how trouble-free LMDE has been (and just plain FREE) for years, I can’t complain about this little hiccup.

  1. Still a bit cryptic problem with stability of LM 21.3 Cinnamon + new LTS kernel 6.8.0-xx. System with this kernel is unstable and freeze soon on later after boot for unknown reasons (no usable info at Logs?!). But the problem is not a global one, only some PC’s are affected.
    Only known solution is downgrade to the latest LTS 5.15 kernel: 5.15.0-119 🙁

    1. No, there are many others on the Forums who have the problem.
      I think the LTS kernel strategy change was a mistake (both by Ubuntu and Mint).

    2. For anybody with newer HW is that problem with LM 21.3 really terrible, because the LTS kernel 5.15 does not boot properly with newer HW (Intel CPU 12gen and higher). With newer HW is only option clean install LM22.0 (not upgrade 21.3-> 22.0 !!!).

    3. That suggests a hardware problem. Odds are you are enabling hardware that is broken. Do a full hardware scan in the uefi or whatever utility your vendor uses.

    4. @JAG I just complete firmware update via dual Windows boot, but the situation is still the same. After cca 10-30 minutes after reboot with 6.8.0-xx kernel the LM21.3 always freeze. This is not firmware related problem at all, there is some other deep incompatibility of the LM21.3 with 6.8.0-xx LTS kernels available for LM21.3 via update manager.

    5. @JAG Just for info: The kernel 6.8.0-47 solve the problem, all previous kernel 6.8.0 versions did not work, at least on my system. So the problem was solved by properly fixed kernel at all. Not problems on my system!

  2. Thanks Clem, this is a very interesting insight into some of the issues you and the team face. Does this upgrade issue now resolve the problem of when upgrading to LM22 on a machine with an AMD graphics card, the machine fails to boot unless “splash” is removed from GRUB?

    1. Not that I’ve noticed. No packages released yet that address the issue, and github has no response from the people posting about the issue. I suppose they are occupied elsewhere. Not sure why, because not booting is a pretty big fking problem.

  3. Hello, Clem, I sincerely thank you for your titanic work on the best Linux distribution and for trying to make the distribution better and better!

    I once said that in the 22nd version Mint is not in the xplayer repositories, since this is the best media player for watching movies/videos for me, because it has basic functions that are not in Celluloid (which is by default, there is really nothing good there, except for geek configs in MPV, which is not good for novice users).

    This media player needs to be fixed, improved and given a couple of new features. First, we need to add support for Pipewire, after all, it is the best sound server, which has been the standard in Linux since this year.

    Secondly, xplayer needs to be fixed and improved from various bugs, well, for example – when rewinding, graphical glitches may appear or rewinding may sometimes hang.

    Also, speed changes and visualization support for audio formats (music/sound) should be added to the new functions.

    Also, I noticed something wrong with xreader, some PDF files are not fully loaded, i.e. a little longer, and epub files are much longer. You also need to add support for fb2 and rtf files.

    And finally, about the theme design: You need to return the monochrome icons to Mint-Y and Mint-L, non-monochrome icons make it ugly, since these current icons are from the mid-2000s. They spoil the design, because they don’t look good.

    Once again, many thanks for the titanic and hard work done for us, the users. Also, many thanks to Clem! Clem, a big request for us, return xplayer in the next release, fix and improve, since I can’t imagine Linux Mint without it, this is an excellent legacy of the now deceased Totem.

    Sincerely, Ioann

    1. Adding to the complaint of monochrome icons in Mint-Y/Mint-L:

      In Mint 21.1 or before, the save icon is a floppy disk. That nice classic touch is lost in Mint 21.2 onward.

  4. Thank you for the monthly news and for your work.

    What is ‘debootstrapping’?

    Also. when you write, ‘We’ve considered closing it’ do you mean, actually, that you considered _(re)opening_ it (‘it’ being the upgrade path from Mint 21 to Mint 22)? Ah, but, on balance, I think you meant what you wrote. You could have been clearer.

  5. Fair play to you and the team Clem, sometimes it is better just to pull the plaster off! While it might be painful in the short term, it pays off in the long term. So, forking the libraries should give the team better control. Thank you all for the hard work you continue to do on our behalf!

    Speaking of pulling the plaster, will the wholesale changes to “dri” in MESA affect LMDE?
    I saw on the github there were a few bugs being raised (and quickly fixed by Mesa I might add) in recent weeks by users in relation to the change to changes of the library location related to “dri”

    egl,glx: Retire DRI2-the-X11-protocol
    [url]https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/19942[/url]

    gallium/dril: Compatibility stub for the legacy DRI loader interface
    [url]https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/28378[/url]

    glx/egl/gbm: link directly to gallium
    [url]https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/29771[/url]

    dri: move internal dri interface headers to gallium/include/dri
    [url]https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/28138[/url]

    zink/gallium/dri2/gbm/glx/egl: allow drivers to choose to use zink instead.
    [url]https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/27628[/url]

    glx: fix build without dri3 and zink
    [url]https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/27478[/url]

    meson: delete dri3 build option
    [url]https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/30952[/url]

    1. Thanks.
      I always thought that was the “epoch problem” AKA the Y2038 problem, akin to the well known Y2K bug.

  6. I’m basically still one of those people that doesn’t understand the deep details of how Linux and the various DE’s work. However, I can certainly see the difference between distros, and I have done some distro hopping over the past few years (I have recently come back home to Linux Mint which I first began using all the way back to Isadora in 2010).

    Because of this — and that I was surprised to read that Cinnamon is not that great out of the box — I just want to add my highest compliments for what the Linux Mint team does with MATE, especially since it seems to not get as much attention from tech media and other reviewers. While there are *some* exceptions, many distros that use MATE are just awful…and I don’t mean that they don’t fit my needs and desires, they are *truly* awful out of the box in both style and substance and take a lot of time to alter, especially for low-Linux-knowledge users.

    I hope this will be seen by some of the Linux Mint team that all the work to make MATE and all of the other DE’s that are used have not only an eye-pleasing look but also brain-pleasing functionality is highly appreciated.

    1. Cinnamon’s look isn’t an issue in Mint. Mint gets a curated version with much nicer theming. It’s the default look when installed in many other distros that really needs the help.

  7. It seems that everyone wants to write yet another package manager.
    Personally, APT (and friends) together with Synaptic as a GUI option have never had any problems in LMDE.
    The Mint notification software has also run perfectly.
    Why fix something that isn’t broken?

  8. Greetings to everyone on this planetary ship called Earth!

    Thank you very much to the people on the Linux Mint team and all the collaborators, your work is a gift and legacy of great value to the world!!!

    I’m still running Linux Mint 21.3, I’m very comfortable with this version!

    To infinity and beyond (^o^)//

  9. God bless Clem.

    LMDE 7 “Metatron” is in the starting blocks. the future is going to be so damn awesome. i’m so grateful to be here. with you, with clem, with everyone. rosy times await us.

  10. under lmde5; I will enjoy the debian updates while waiting for the release in a big year normally of lmde 7.
    Thank you for the staff to provide support to Lmde 5 as long as

  11. Why not replacing xed by Geany and contributing to Geany? It would be better than continuing to waste time on xed. Geany is installed by default in Raspberry Pi OS. It’s a very more performant text editor than xed and can be used as easily as xed if you parameter it with minimalist menus.

  12. The increase from 1GigaBits/second to 10Gigabits/second is a great improvement. However, I think you will find it is 10 times AS FAST, but only 9 times FASTER.
    Pete the Pedant.

  13. Clem I hope you can review the vulnerabilities found in CUPS (CVE-2024-47176 severity 9.9), as I understand it in Ubuntu involves updating the cups-browsed package (see USN-7042-1).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *