Many thanks to all of you for your support and your generous donations.
Slow download speeds
We are observing heavy load on our main repositories.
If you are experiencing slow download speeds when updating large packages (Firefox and Chromium in particular), launch the Software Sources and click on the “Main” repository:
This opens up a dialog and checks the speed on local mirrors:
Pick the fastest, validate and you’re done!
On our side we’ll also scale up our infrastructure and increase our bandwidth. The more people switch to local mirrors though, the better.
Linux Mint 21
Linux Mint 21 was given the codename “Vanessa”.
It will be based on Ubuntu 22.04 and support 3 editions: Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce.
Upgrade tool
Linux Mint follows a 6 months release cycle, with a new major version every 2 years followed by 3 point releases.
As detailed in the user manual, upgrades towards a point release within the same major version of Linux Mint are quite simple and easy to perform.
Upgrades towards the next major release however are much more complex. They require an advanced level of knowledge and experience and they are performed using the command line.
We are working on an upgrade tool which will make this significantly easier in the future.
Here are its main features compared to the existing upgrade tool:
It’s fully graphical, no command line.
It’s localized (the existing tool is only in English).
It performs more checks to make sure everything is fine (for instance it checks that you are connected to AC power, free space vs download size, list of removed packages etc..).
It’s configurable (even though you really shouldn’t skip anything, it does allow you to disable some requirements, such as the presence of a Timeshift snapshot).
It preserves your choice of mirrors (it checks to see if they’re compatible, responsive and up to date)
It doesn’t force you to remove your custom repositories and PPAs (it checks whether or not they support the target release though)
It warns but lets you keep orphaned packages (packages which aren’t present in repositories)
It provides and handles solutions (for most detected issues, along with the explanation you’ll just need to click a “Fix” button to solve the issue).
As you can see it’s much more useful and easy to use than the current command line utility. It won’t change the fact that major upgrades can go wrong and take more time to download/install, but your experience as a user will be way simpler than before.
We’re planning to get this tool ready as soon as possible. It’s our number one priority in this development cycle. We will be using it for the LMDE 4 -> LMDE 5 upgrade first, and then for the Linux Mint 20.3 -> Linux Mint 21 upgrade.
LMDE 4
LMDE 4 “Debbie” will reach EOL in August 2022.
LMDE 5 “Elsie” is available as a fresh install but the upgrade path isn’t open yet.
We’ll release the new upgrade tool as soon as possible. It will go through a small BETA phase when it is feature ready so we can identify and fix any potential bugs.
Is Warpinator the coolest piece of software we’ve ever written? A long time ago, even before it was born, its ancestor “Giver” already felt magical.
When Warpinator was born it made it easy again to share files on the local network without file servers, cloud accounts, USB sticks or even an Internet connection. We were delighted with it. We designed it as an XApp, so it wasn’t just a tool for us, but an app for all distributions of Linux and we made it available also on Flathub. It wasn’t necessarily something casual users need, not yet anyway, but it was there for people with networks, doing what Giver did back in the days.
And then something amazing happened. Somebody made an Android version of it. Then all of a sudden, you could share files back and forth between Linux and your phone or even your tablet. And so it wasn’t just something for people with networks anymore, it was becoming extremely useful.
And then Winpinator came along and brought Microsoft Windows into the equation. And so you can now warpinate all you like between computers and mobile devices, even without any Linux at all.
Look at this video aimed at Steam Deck users:
It’s funny to see how Warpinator became a solution to something we never actually envisioned. In this video Windows users are looking for a way to share files with their Steam Deck. I find this really cool personally, not just to see developers build on top of what we made, but to see software reach new audiences and let completely different devices interoperate like this.
Now, before people ask, no, it’s not “coming on Switch” 🙂
Yesterday we announced a new partnership with Mozilla and a transition to Mozilla default settings in Firefox 96. If you didn’t read this announcement yet, please visit https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244.
Today, in preparation for Firefox 96 I want to make one more blog post, this time to talk specifically about technical details and to help people before, through and after the transition.
Firefox 96 is out today but we’ll publish the update on Friday January 14th. This will give everyone a few days to read this post, prepare for the update and get an opportunity to ask questions and seek help before the transition.
Introduction
Impacted releases
This post is relevant for users of Linux Mint 19x, 20, 20.1, 20.2 and LMDE 4.
Only the repository version of Firefox is impacted.
The flatpak version of Firefox already uses the Mozilla default settings. The Mozilla version (downloaded from their site) obviously also already uses it as well, and so do versions from PPA (ESR or not).
Other browsers are not impacted.
Nature of the changes
If you used Firefox in Windows or other Linux distributions you’re already familiar with Mozilla’s default settings.
We’re transitioning towards the same configuration as the one which is used everywhere else. The most noticeable changes are the search engines, the start page, and the preferences settings.
Impact on configuration (technical explanation)
The main impact is on the configuration. Because of the way settings work in Firefox, only settings which value is different from the default value are actually stored in your profile. As the default value changes, you can lose some configuration.
Say a particular setting defaults to A in Linux Mint but B in Mozilla. If you set it to C, then your profile contains a custom value. As we transition the default from A to B, you keep your C custom value.
Now, say you have it set to A. Since it’s identical to the default value, it is not custom, and so it’s not stored in your profile. To you it may look like something you set, but really you’re just using the default value, so this is actually not “set”. As we transition the default value from A to B, you simply transition from no custom value to no custom value, and thus also transition from A to B. From your own point of view this can create a gap between your expectation and the resulting configuration.
Before the update
Before the transition, make a backup copy of your profile and perform a system snapshot. This guarantees you’ll be able to go back and essentially removes any risk of losing anything.
System snapshot
To create a snapshot, open Timeshift and hit the Create button.
Profile backup
To make a backup copy of your profile, open a terminal and type:
cp -R .mozilla .mozilla-backup
Custom Policy file
Our packages will provide a policy file in /usr/lib/firefox/distribution/policies.json.
If you created a file under that path, it will be overwritten. Make a copy of it.
After the transition you can place your policy in /etc/firefox/policies instead.
After the update
Review your settings
In Firefox click on Settings and go through the tabs on the left to review your settings.
Set things to your liking and select your favorite search engine.
Spell check and dictionaries
On any website, right-click in a text area (i.e. a zone where you can enter text) and select “Languages”.
If you don’t see your language, select “Add Dictionaries…”.
Alternative solution
Alternatively, reinstall the package for your Firefox language pack. Type this command in a terminal to list your language packs:
dpkg -l firefox-l*
And then for each pack:
apt reinstall pack-name
Replace pack-name with the appropriate pack name. For instance, to reinstall the French language pack in Linux Mint, the command would be:
apt reinstall firefox-locale-fr
If you had added words to your dictionary and they are missing, look for a file called persdict.dat in your profile backup and copy it to your profile.
Custom Chrome CSS
If you had a custom chrome/userContent.css file and it goes missing, copy it over from your backup profile and enable the following setting in about:config:
Firefox cannot handle its own updates. It doesn’t know how to check the repositories and doesn’t have admin privileges anyway. In Linux Mint this is the job of the Update Manager so Firefox is told not to handle updates.
In the past, this was done via code changes. We patched Firefox not to do it and not to show any warning about it. This is how it is in Debian and Ubuntu as well.
With this transition this is done via a policy file, i.e. via system-wide configuration. Firefox shows the following messages in the preferences and in the about dialog as a result:
These messages can be quite confusing, especially the first one. Please ignore them for now. We’ll be reporting the issue to get it fixed upstream.
Comments section
The comments section on this post is exclusively dedicated to support. If you have questions, or you need help about the technical aspects of this transition then this is the right place.
We can’t “move” off-topic comments to the appropriate post here with WordPress. If something is off-topic we can either let it harm the topic or moderate it. Please respect this so we have this space to interact on support and technical questions don’t get lost.
For any other topics use the forums or the other posts on this blog.
Thank you for your understanding and if you’re waiting on this update for your patience. I wish you all a smooth update and I hope you’ll enjoy your experience with Mint and Firefox after this transition as much or even more than before.
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