back to article Oi, Mint 18.1! KEEP UP! Ubuntu LTS love breeds a laggard

The Linux Mint project dropped a last-minute gift during the Christmas period – Mint 18.1. Mint 18.1 builds on the same Ubuntu LTS release base as Mint 18.0, the result being a smooth upgrade path for 18.0 users and the relative stability of Ubuntu's latest LTS effort, 16.04. In keeping with Ubuntu's LTS releases, Mint isn't …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mint v Updating Windows.

    In terms of being upto date. For the time it takes to download the Linux Mint ISO, create the USB installler, install and fully update Linux Mint 18.1, you'd be lucky to get past 'still checking for Updates', on Windows.

    Nothing really shows the timewasting, bag of nails, clunkyness of Windows Update more than a fresh, full install of Mint. Linux Mint is a pretty decent OS.

    1. Mage Silver badge

      Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

      Also very rarely need to reboot (mainly on version changes too entire OS, such as 17.3 to 18.0 which went fine on three machines, now running 18.1).

      I prefer to disable log in screen slide show (plain GTK) and have Mate with NT4.0/Win98 style clean theme (roughly XP classic without the "Fisher Price" stuff.

      I change a few other defaults such as Caps Lock = Compose Key.

      The default Linux AltGr doing something on almost every key rather than just á é í ó ú € is nice too.

      I've never switched as many people from XP and Win7 and Win 10 as the last couple of months.

      NoScript on Firefox instead of Antivirus and disable Autorun / Autoplay on inserted media (Easier on Linux) is a good idea on Windows or Linux.

      Windows Programs running on Linux:

      I have Digiguide, Kindle eReader (use a UserAgent switcher plugin on browser to tell Amazon you run windows or there is no download link!), Orbitron, Duncan Valves, Coil Maestro etc on WINE. I have a copy of XP in OpenBox (but don't need it). WINE seems to run older programs better than Win7 64 bit (which won't run 16 bit ones and many Win98 / NT /XP for me).

      Gqrx and a USB DTT stick as SDR is easier to setup in Mint+Mate+Redmond than the equivalent on Windows.

      copying a profile for multiple new users is simpler than Windows (you need TWO working accounts on Window) by copying the appropriate .files in your own home to /etc/skel

    2. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

      If you download the Win10 iso, it comes with all the updates already added, and takes about as long to download and install to USB as Mint.

      Oh no! I said something non-derogatry about Windows, let the downvotes commence!

      1. sabroni Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

        Wow, what an interesting and novel original post. I'm surprised someone hasn't already mentioned how Windows sucks and Linux rules, considering that I'm sure El Reg has published articles about Linux before. What a breath of fresh air, certainly preferable to the "echo chamber" that makes up most of the internet.

        More please!!!

        1. Les Matthew

          Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

          Having recently had to do a fresh windows 7 install I can assure you that windows update churns away for hours just looking for updates.

          After approx 12 hours and still no result I gave up and used WSUS Offline.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

            WSUS Offline is nice, but for single systems try:

            http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/windows_update_minitool.html

    3. BobChip
      Linux

      Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

      Why Anonymous? I'd give you ten upvotes for that if I knew your name.

    4. Geoffrey W

      Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

      To OP AC - What a ridiculous statement. Example - I kill puppies and kittens but look at Ed Gein, he used to kill women so that means I'm wonderful, doesn't it? Anyway, stop looking at me and complaining; look over there and go back to complaining about him. What a monster!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

        Not too sure what your point is here Geoffey W.

        I am taking it that you are comparing yourself (killing puppies & kittens) to Linux and Ed Gein to Windows?

        Well I cannot comment about you (as I do not know you at all) but Ed Gein was a very sick & deluded psychopath who murdered many he came in contact with and then proceeded with the abhorrent act of trying to make something for himself from their skins....

        So I can see why the comparison with Microsoft...

        What was your point again anyway?

    5. asdf

      Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

      >Nothing really shows the timewasting, bag of nails, clunkyness of Windows Update more than a fresh, full install of Mint. Linux Mint is a pretty decent OS.

      Love me some BSD but after struggling to get PC-BSD to install and update successfully in a VM this afternoon (seriously what a shit update system it has and it is slow as fsck as well, back to vanilla FreeBSD for me) I have to say there is worse than Windows. Still Debian and its ilk really is pretty much peerless at this point IMHO package update wise (both in volume of packages and ease of updating).

      1. asdf

        Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

        >struggling to get PC-BSD

        Found out its called TrueOS only now on a separate web site with nothing saying so on the old site. As usual last to get the memo. On the plus side did get it to install and update successfully in a VM and it looks better. Still its about 15 years behind Linux on user friendliness of the installer and updater.

    6. Les Matthew

      Re: Mint v Updating Windows.

      Sod windows update.

      WSUS Offline

      http://download.wsusoffline.net/

  2. Gert Leboski

    Why the negative title?

    I'd opt for stability over cutting edge, especially for those new to Mint or Linux in general.

    I've not upgraded from 18 yet, but it looks like there could be a few compelling features, such as the vertical panels to save screen space on my laptop.

    Really, I'm happy with the Mint team's approach and philosophy. Nothing negative or laggard about it, IMHO.

    1. alain williams Silver badge

      Re: Why the negative title?

      A few months ago I selected 'Always update everything', things broke big time on my Mate desktop. I poked for a few minutes, could not see anything obvious, so just reinstalled as the quickest way back to something working.

      So: since then I stick with the, default, middle option 'stability and security'.

      Most naive users will not notice these preference menus. This is why I think that they ought to default set the two 'select and trust' kernel & security updates.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Why the negative title?

      "I'd opt for stability over cutting edge, especially for those new to Mint or Linux in general."

      I'd opt for it in pretty well any production circumstances.

      1. itzman

        Re: Why the negative title?

        I've had things break because they were the latest and I've had things break because they were not the latest.#

        Everyone wants the One True Rule.

        I prefer Linux....

        1. asdf

          Re: Why the negative title?

          >I prefer Linux....

          I prefer POSIX but have accepted Linux has gone Oedipus on its roots and is taking over. Besides who needs portable code if you just accept the inevitable that everything must be tightly coupled with udev?

    3. asdf

      Re: Why the negative title?

      >I'd opt for stability over cutting edge, especially for those new to Mint or Linux in general.

      Depends on use case. Watching my lubuntu development environment VM boot and go into the DE in 5 seconds flat is pretty cool (use Mint at home but Ubuntu is hard to beat for a generic *nix development environment, PPAs for days). As for stability if its mission critical stability needed really hard to say anything bad about HP-UX. Never seen the OS crash and worked with it for years. Horses for courses.

    4. Updraft102

      Re: Why the negative title?

      If I "always updated everything," I'd have Windows 10 instead of 7 installed (alongside Mint 18.1, FWIW) on my PCs.

      Sometimes being a laggard is better.

  3. Miss Config
    Meh

    Cinnamon Stable ?

    Will the new version of Cinnamon still keep going as long as Linux Mint itself is up and running ?

    My problem is that every few days Cinnamon crashes and although it's easy enough to restart, it is still annoying when it happens.

    1. codejunky Silver badge

      Re: Cinnamon Stable ?

      I must admit it irritates me when my screen freezes up too (I am still on mint17). I am grateful for the tty access as on windows the power button is the only option.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cinnamon Stable ?

        I know this sounds like a Microsoft apologist, but are you sure you don't have an Nvidia/AMD Hardware Graphics BGA solder fault on that laptop/machine. I only see freezes of Mint (generally) on machines that also freeze/BSOD under Windows 7 / Windows 10.

        I actually use Mint Live USB (because its so stable) to check machines that are causing a Windows BSOD, to check it isn't a software issue/driver issue with Windows. If it freezes with Mint Live USB, 9/10 is either a memory or BGA Nvidia Graphics hardware fault.

      2. David 132 Silver badge

        Re: Cinnamon Stable ?

        I must admit it irritates me when my screen freezes up too

        I got that quite frequently on my NAS-slash-media-box system, which is Skylake on a Jetway NF-592 board running (at the time) Mint 18.. mostly when browsing the web on Firefox. Certain sites would do it every time.

        I updated to the latest video drivers from 01.org (which involves editing a config file to trick the Intel installer into thinking you run Ubuntu rather than Mint) and Mint 18.1 - no problems now. But I couldn't tell you which change actually made the difference.

    2. Updraft102

      Re: Cinnamon Stable ?

      Are you using a Nvidia GPU with the proprietary driver, by any chance?

      If so, you may benefit by disabling PowerMizer. It's buggy in the Linux drivers; I haven't been able to get any variety of Linux (and I have tried a bunch) to work with the proprietary driver on my old (Core 2 Duo/Nvidia GT220M) laptop without disabling PowerMizer. It does mean it will use more power and shorten battery life, but until Nvidia fixes the driver, it's what I'm stuck with (unless the open source Nouveau driver ever reaches true parity with the proprietary one).

      On my desktop, running a GTX 760, PowerMizer works very well; no issues at all under Mint 18.1.

      It's beyond the scope of this discussion to describe how to accomplish this, but there are all kinds of sites out there with tutorials on how to do it.

  4. John Sanders
    Linux

    Perfect If they fix the scrollbars

    My only grief with Mint is their insistence of using phone-like scroll bars in the default theme.

    Come on, for us who do serious work with the computer we need the gadget elements to use more than "2-3 pixels" (Window borders for example) and we need the scroll bar buttons too for long lists.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Perfect If they fix the scrollbars

      I'm irritated by the 'fake scroller' scrollbars of Ubu 14 so hopefully it's not doing that [last I installed Mint, it wasn't]. Having to NOT grab the actual scroll knob, but something that flashes in your face, is beyond irritating. I only use that version because 'customer wanted it' and it's a build environment VM.

      But I am encouraged that the screenshot didn't have 2D FLUGLY on it. Mint 18 Mate had a 2D FLUGLY theme picked by default, and it was DIFFICULT to find a more 3D skeuomorphic one. I eventually found a couple, but they were a little buggy with respect to colors. I worked around it.

      Anyway, I *DESPISE* 2D FLATSO FLUGLY. So it's refreshing when it's NOT in a Linux distro (unless you explicitly WANT that, and so you can change it later)

    2. mrtom84

      Re: Perfect If they fix the scrollbars

      Obviously people have their preferences but I've never understood people's dislike for minimal scroll bars. I can't remember ever actually using the mouse to drag a scroll bar up and down the page. They are plenty big enough to see where you are in the page plus usually increase in size once you start rolling the wheel or hitting j or k or page up/down or whatever. Personally I think a big chunky scroll bar looks fugly and takes precious screen real estate. There are other DEs for people who want the windows 95 look.

      1. luminous

        Re: Perfect If they fix the scrollbars

        Depends on your screen size I suppose, but on a 22 inch monitor, the size of the scrollbar is far less important than the ability to scroll at ease down a very very long page or file.

        I thought Linux was meant to cater for all, and you could change a setting for most things even if it is clunky in the command line for people not familiar with doing it that way. How hard can it be to have a setting in the preferences to use minimal or normal scrollbars? There are many themes/ templates etc for websites that do this.

        I've yet to see a nice UI for Linux, although I haven't tried many flavours. Then again, the programmers I know who use Linux don't care about the look of the UI at all.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bit rushed, that article

    The Mint Team answered that upgrade thing about 3 weeks ago already:

    "Journalists should ask questions before posting opinions. I can’t think of a single security fix in the 18.1 upgrade, it’s all about new features. The security updates are exactly the same on 18 and 18.1 and you get them whether you upgrade or not. They’re completely independent and have nothing to do with this upgrade."

    http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3185#comment-134272

    So apparently, contrary to what ElReg implies, the conservative upgrade choice does not mean that there are no security upgrades.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I can’t think of a single security fix in the 18.1 upgrade

      Well there's nothing like proper research. And having a think surely counts!

  6. frank ly

    Mmmm, Minty

    ".. pursue its own efforts like the homegrown Cinnamon and MATE desktops, ..."

    The Mint people did develop Cinnamon as a 'homegrown' desktop manager but the MATE desktop manager was developed by another group and was adopted by Mint at an early stage.

    https://mate-desktop.org/

    Due to their FOSSiness and being popular in use, they are both available as options on many recent distributions.

    The update to MATE 1.16 seems to have finally fixed the 'roaming panel icon' problem that I'd experienced often. The previous update to 1.14 had fixed the hyperextending drawer problem, which was a total pain in the backside when it happened. Now, MATE just works nicely.

    The Mint 18.x series are LTS until early 2021 so it's a good OS to settle down with for a while. Mint 19 should be out in mid 2018 and Mint 20 in mid 2020, in keeping with the usual upstream Ubuntu release cycle.

  7. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    My only issue with Mint is

    its dependance on Ubuntu and the goodwill of Canonical.

    In many ways it is what Ubuntu should have become before Canonical decided to divert some of its attention into Phones and re-inventing the wheel.

    Long may Mint keep up the good work. I don't use the distro but I do use Cinnamon.

    1. tekHedd

      Re: My only issue with Mint is

      Same here. LMDE FTW, well, with judicious use of backports anyway.

      Cinnamon is good enough. All of the things I dislike about it are "features" copied from OSX or Windows, so maybe I could even say "it's the best." Cinnamon doesn't have to try very hard to be better than Windows; I've actively disliked the Windows UI for a long time now. It's good enough.

  8. wolfetone Silver badge

    The most annoying thing about Linux Mint 18 is when you click on the applications menu, and click on the lock screen you expect it to lock the computer. So I've clicked on it, and walked off.

    About 5 minutes later I come back with a box on my screen asking me to type in a message. You don't have to, it can be blank, but unless you click OK it doesn't lock the screen. This annoys the hell out of me, and because Debian et al don't do this (with the exception of one windows manager, might be XFCE but I might be wrong) it's not a reflex action for me. So quite often if I lock the computer in a rush, I actually haven't.

    That, however, is the only issue with LM 18. Well that and a bitch of an issue regarding the installation of VirtualBox which fails due to the kernel used. But is that Oracles fault of LM's? Who knows. I don't care though, I've another machine which VB runs on fairly well. So I'll just sit tight and wait for one of them to fix the issue.

    1. frank ly

      I've just tried Lock Screen on my Mint 18.1 MATE setup. It locks immediately. Maybe you're using Cinnamon?

      1. wolfetone Silver badge

        I am using Cinnamon yes. It's probably a settings thing, but I'd have thought it'd make sense to have it lock immediately by default, instead of prompting to display a message before locking?

        1. Aitor 1

          You can change that behaviour

          I did.. just dont remember how...

    2. breakfast Silver badge

      I have run into that too, it's mildly annoying but there is a keystroke that can instantly lock the screen.

      I don't know what the keystroke is, but I run into it from time to time when I'm trying to edit sound files in Audacity and lock the screen instead.

    3. Simon Brady

      Re: You can change that behaviour

      Preferences -> Screensaver -> Customize -> Ask for a custom message when locking the screen from the menu

  9. Bronek Kozicki

    There is nothing wrong with kernel 4.4

    Also in the light of the fact that 4.8 is now officially EOL, it makes little sense to upgrade to it. It is not as if 4.4 will not run on newest intel CPUs; it may be simply less optimal e.g. using more battery power than it should.

    1. John Sanders
      Linux

      Re: There is nothing wrong with kernel 4.4

      Most people do not know that if you stick with the supported LTS kernel you get back-ported fixes and support for new hardware.

      Also once Ubuntu 16.04.2 comes out, Kernel 4.8 will be available officially from Canonical by an "apt-get install linux-image-generic-lts-yakkety" away.

    2. alain williams Silver badge

      Re: There is nothing wrong with kernel 4.4

      I sit typing this at a CentOS 6.8 machine. This is running Kernel 2.6.32. It works fine; that is what Long Term Stability means - not breaking things by updating too often.

      1. Pirate Dave Silver badge
        Pirate

        Re: There is nothing wrong with kernel 4.4

        Damn, you beat me to it. I'm running various CentOS 6.x which are still using the 2.6 series. Still work just fine, as far as I can see. Oh, and no systemd garbage to litter things up...

  10. Triggerfish

    Linux Noob question

    So I have installed Mint and rather annoylingy it seems my laptops wifi is not supported which is a problem, so does this mean because there are no drivers for Mint the chances are there are no drivers on other Linux flavours?

    Should I be looking for a USB wifi stick that will work, or just go for a different version of Linux, and if so I assume Ubuntu will have the same issues so what else would people recommend for someone?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Linux Noob question

      People are saying nice things about Fedora 25. I don't know, but that's what they're saying.

      1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

        Re: Linux Noob question

        Fedora 25 with Cinnamon works for me.

    2. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: Linux Noob question

      Companies failing to document or support their chips on non-Windows platforms is sadly quite common, and you often don't find out until actually trying it. If you have one of the Broadcom chips (e.g. some HP laptops like one I bought recently) then it is sometimes mis-detected as acer so this is a solution to consider:

      http://askubuntu.com/questions/798312/ubuntu-16-04-wifi-bcm43142-doesnt-see-nearby-networks/

      For a whole list of potential issues and work-arounds:

      https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/internet

      It is rarely as simple as one distro having poorer hardware support than another, but that can also be a factor.

      1. Triggerfish

        Re: Linux Noob question

        It's an Atheros chip in an Acer laptop, and at the moment is one of those things stopping me from moving across to Linux. Seems like the consesus I got looking around was it was not supported.

        1. Kobblestown

          Re: Linux Noob question

          If your Wi-Fi sits on a mini-PCIe card, as is often the case, I'd rather replace it with something well supported under Linux, like the Intel ones. They go for about 10-20 quid on Amazon. Unfortunately, Wi-Fi is sometimes soldered on the mainboard. There are some pretty small USB WiFi controllers but their usable range might not be that good as opposed to using the antennas inside the laptop.

          1. Triggerfish

            Re: Linux Noob question

            If your Wi-Fi sits on a mini-PCIe card, as is often the case, I'd rather replace it with something well supported under Linux, like the Intel ones. They go for about 10-20 quid on Amazon.

            New laptop unfortunately so warranty issues.

            Damn this is sounding terribly negative apologies, everything about Mint looks like it would be marvellous but this is a deal breaker.

            @Codejunky, cheers for the offer but at work at moment.

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