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Main Area and Open Discussion => General Software Discussion => Non-Windows Software => Topic started by: 40hz on May 31, 2014, 10:01 PM
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It's heeeeeere! :)
Mint's latest and greatest (codename: Quina) has just been officially released to distribution in both 32 and 64-bit native versions. Cinnamon (http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2626) and MATE (http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2627) desktops are both available now. This is Mint's first LTS release (based off Ubuntu 14.04 "Trusty Tahr") which will receive security updates until 2019 and reflect Mint's new long-term strategy.
More here (http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_qiana_cinnamon_whatsnew.php#lts) and here (http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2627).
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That's great news, mint has worked well for testing here :Thmbsup:.
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I get good use of their iso images as rescue / live usb tools :up:
Getting the 64-bit Cinnamon image now.
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This time I'm downloading the x64 Mate version. Just curious to see how it differs.
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This time I'm downloading the x64 Mate version. Just curious to see how it differs.
-MilesAhead
I'd appreciate you sharing your impressions on that. There's tons of comments and reviews of the Cinnamon version. Hardly anything of substance posted about MATE.
FWIW I tried MATE and decided that (for a full bells & whistles desktop at least) I preferred Cinnamon. It's what Mint is focusing the most effort into since 'spicegirl' is their baby. Probably why it somehow seems more polished. For really ditzing with desktop customizations (which I don't do very much these days) I'd probably be more inclined to start with some distro that favored KDE. KDE was made for tweaking.
Either way, if you do, let us know what you think about MATE. :Thmbsup:
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Informal video walk-thru/review:
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Got 17/Qiana Cinnamon loaded on a test machine. I put it through its paces for a few hours and it's looking lovely. I'll probably test it a little more tomorrow - and likely install it on my main general productivity workstation sometime this week.
(Note: I'm not exactly happy with the systemd capitualation decision. But that's not a battle a non-dev is going to be able to fight let alone win. "So it goes." as Kurt V so aptly put it. :-\ )
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I installed it on a VM and it crashes VirtualBox every time it tries to shutdown. I'm not sure what went wrong. VirtualBox is working just fine with my other VMs.
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I installed it on a VM and it crashes VirtualBox every time it tries to shutdown. I'm not sure what went wrong. VirtualBox is working just fine with my other VMs.-Deozaan
At least it turns off when you tell it to. I just spent 10 minutes at a command prompt trying to kick mine to sleep in Hyper-V.
Apparently it doesn't much like the video driver, as it complained every step of the way that it couldn't access hardware acceleration. On boot it gave me a CLI login and refused to go graphical until I ran StartX. Then it loaded the desktop and promptly told me it really wanted hardware acceleration (GUI), and that the X server had crashed (CLI style error)...but then went right back to the desktop. O_o
Then I polked around for a bit and all seemed fine, but I had a rather narrow window of time to play with this thing ... So, time to shutdown and go back to work. Ha!
Apparently after hitting shutdown on the desktop it just starts a 60 second timer (WTF..?) that then closes the desktop...only. Shutdown had actually just dropped me back to a command prompt and then syntactically teased my until I stumbled the correct command to get the thing to exit ... Which it finally did do smoothly.
Booting from the "CD" (.iso actually) did not however exhibit any of these ill natured shenanigans.
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FWIW running off the ISO or installed on real metal works just fine.
I wonder if something with the current version of upstart is causing big stones for virtual machines?
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Tried Cinnamon 64bit on SSD dual booting with Windows 7 and i find that Ubuntu loads a few seconds faster.
Used to be the opposite.
BTW, is there a way to perform searches in LM somewhat like the Ubuntu search that also does a Google search (while showing other things on computer etc.)?
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FWIW running off the ISO or installed on real metal works just fine.
I wonder if something with the current version of upstart is causing big stones for virtual machines?
-40hz
Realistic Expectations issue perhaps? Since everything else (network, sound, mouse, and keyboard) worked fine in the virtual environment - smooth guest/host transitions with no captured mouse issues - the OS's desire for hardware acceleration is fairly reasonable in this day and age. I'm assuming there is a setting somewhere that will quiet the video grumbling ... I just wanted to chime in on Deo's shutdown issue incase they were somehow related. I'm wondering when during the shutdown is the VM crashing. Is it during the graphical, transitional, or textual phase of the shutdown?
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BTW, is there a way to perform searches in LM somewhat like the Ubuntu search that also does a Google search (while showing other things on computer etc.)?
-dantheman
There's a way to do anything in Linux. But Ubuntu's implementation of scopes and lenses which make that 'feature' available as part of Unity aren't something most other distros (and their users) will be anxious to copy.
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BTW, is there a way to perform searches in LM somewhat like the Ubuntu search that also does a Google search (while showing other things on computer etc.)?
-dantheman
On a side note, I just installed kupfer on LM 17 and it provides a way to interface with search engines -- I don't know if it's quite what you're looking for, but FWIW:
http://engla.github.io/kupfer/help/plugin-websearch.html
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Thank you ememoa! Will investigate.
The option to add search engines is interesting for sure! :Thmbsup:
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The option to add search engines is interesting for sure! :Thmbsup:
-dantheman
It's particularly convenient if you happen to use FF's search engine integration capability :) Though to get kupfer to pick up new additions via FF may be a little bumpy (for better detection consider restarting kupfer -- though there may be a way to manually trigger a rescan).
Good luck!
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I installed it on a VM and it crashes VirtualBox every time it tries to shutdown. I'm not sure what went wrong. VirtualBox is working just fine with my other VMs.
-Deozaan
Hmm, I just gave this a try a couple of times, but no crashing...this was after having done an initial update of packages.
FWIW, the VirtualBox here is 4.2.22 on Gentoo.
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I installed it on a VM and it crashes VirtualBox every time it tries to shutdown. I'm not sure what went wrong. VirtualBox is working just fine with my other VMs.
-Deozaan
Hmm, I just gave this a try a couple of times, but no crashing...this was after having done an initial update of packages.
FWIW, the VirtualBox here is 4.2.22 on Gentoo.
-ewemoa
No problems here either, running LM 64-bit inside VirtualBox on Win7.
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I'm also running VirtualBox on Windows 7 x64. I'm not sure what the issue is. VirtualBox is running my previous Mint (15 XFCE) install just fine, as well as other VMs. But Mint 17 Cinnamon x64 is crashing VirtualBox each time it shuts down.
Maybe I need to update VB. I'm running 4.3.10 and it tells me 4.3.12 is available.
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@Deo- don't forget the guest additions. Most times I have problems with VBox it's the guest additions that are responsible. And I almost always forget to update them. 8)
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@ewemoa,
Kupfer shows much potential (first i've heard about it) but i'm probably missing something about shortcut (hotkey).
Invoking Kupfer (step 1) then step 2 and step 3 is one step too many compared to simply opening browser and search.
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May be you'll find the triggers functionality to your liking (check out the examples):
http://engla.github.io/kupfer/help/plugin-triggers.html (http://engla.github.io/kupfer/help/plugin-triggers.html)
FWIW, there's also a "Google Search" plugin.
Actually, it doesn't look like it's possible to do what I was thinking. IIUC, kupfer is inspired by the QuickSilver application, and IIRC, there it was possible to create a trigger (global shortcut) that invoked a command which let you type some text which if followed by Enter would perform a web search. I didn't figure out how to do the comparable thing in kupfer unfortunately -- triggers exist in kupfer and it is also possible to create commands...however, it doesn't look like it's possible to create commands that when invoked allow you to type the text of your query (though you can make commands that operate on "selected text").
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@Deo- don't forget the guest additions. Most times I have problems with VBox it's the guest additions that are responsible. And I almost always forget to update them. 8)
-40hz
I just tried a fresh re-install and attempted to install the guest additions. I'm not sure if it worked or not because I don't think I've ever done them before and all I found was a file on the CD that said Linux in the filename. I clicked it and told it to run in the terminal. The terminal popped open for a second, some text flashed across the screen, then it closed.
After that I decided to reboot the VM to see if anything was working any better. It crashed VirtualBox again. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I'm picking "use LVM" in the installation options.
I'll try a fresh install one more time, this time without the LVM and see if that gives different results.
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FWIW, I didn't use LVM. Also, I think I may have used the following packages for guest additions via apt-get, synaptic, or equivalent:
virtualbox-guest-x11
virtualbox-guest-utils
May be 40hz can comment on whether that sounds appropriate.
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May be 40hz can comment on whether that sounds appropriate.
-ewemoa
:huh: On a virtual machine, I can't see any good reason to put your virtual drive(s) under an additional layer of abstraction. So no - I wouldn't use LVM in a VM. Others may feel differently. Or possibly have some reason to do so. But I couldn't think of any.
re:virtualbox-guest-x11 & virtualbox-guest-utils
I've got those two packages installed too.
I can't really comment from experience on how well VirtualBox works with Nix in a Wintel environment. Because I always try to stick to Microsoft's own virtualization software for Windows. To my mind, it's easier and safer to use whatever Microsoft offers - or go with VMware Workstation. (Especially since I bit the bullet and finally bought a copy.) :mrgreen:
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I just tried it without LVM and it still crashes VirtualBox when I shutdown the VM. Weird.
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@Deo- Have you tried looking/posting on the Mint forum yet? IIRC there's some discussion about hangs and crashes going on.
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FWIW, I've used VirtualBox a fair bit with Windows 7 64-bit quite stably for some time -- virtual machines being *NIX, Windows, etc.
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I guess I just don't use non-server versions of Windows that much any more. On those increasingly rare occasions when I do need a Windows desktop, it's usually a VM running under Linux. :)
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He he -- you have nicer toys to place with ;)
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I'm using the guest additions that were installed with LM here (as far as I know they've been included for a while in Ubuntu and LM?), works fine for mouse integration and shared folders and such.
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I just tried Mint17 Mate x64 Live. I just set the params quickly. 2 GB ram, 16x9 video, hw accel etc. But it seemed like something was sticky or strange. Every time I closed the window with the Computer icon, there was another underneath. Finally I clicked Close All Windows to be done with it. Maybe I'll try again after a couple of intervening versions.
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Looks like the XFCE version is out:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2656
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...and the KDE version:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2653
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v2 releases of Mate and Cinnamon are avaliable:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2662
Apparently they contain the following fixes:
MDM crash with non-xrandr compatible GPUs
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Dangerously ambiguous label could lead people to mistakenly wipe their hard drive
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Driver Manager didn’t handle missing firmwares correctly
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Corrupted APT sources when / partition wasn’t formatted
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Better out of the box experience for Steam, Wine, Skype, LibreOffice-base
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All level 1 updates were added
See the post for more details.
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Is there any way to upgrade an older installation to the latest version? I have a working Mint 15 install. Instead of starting it all over from scratch, it would be nice if I could tell it to upgrade itself. I went into the Update Manager and updated everything, but it still says it is running Mint 15.
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Is there any way to upgrade an older installation to the latest version? I have a working Mint 15 install. Instead of starting it all over from scratch, it would be nice if I could tell it to upgrade itself. I went into the Update Manager and updated everything, but it still says it is running Mint 15.
-Deozaan
You can...but it's not recommended. Especially if you have a bunch of PPAs added to your repositories. Many of those are version specific so you'd need to remove and install the correct ones for the version of Ubu underneath Mint.
And even though Ubuntu has a do-release-upgrade command, you'll need to manually update your software sources list first for it to work.
I've done upgrades that way (in the past) and I learned they made for far more work than they saved. About the only time I've found Debian's apt-get dist-upgrade or Ubuntu's do-release-upgrade really useful was for upgrading servers. Desktops just have too much "other stuff" loaded for either upgrade command to work reliably.
Recommendation: Don't. Just do a clean install. You'll save more time in the long run.
8) :Thmbsup:
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A totally clean install? Or something fancy like have a system partition and a data partition and only wipe the system partition and install the OS there, keeping my user/data partition from before?
And while I've got you on the line, how about fixing the name of Mint 17 to "Qiana" in the OP's title? :D
Sorry, it was bothering me. :-[
But not as much as when the guy in that review video you linked pronounced it like "quinoa" (keen-wah).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_BOkrcjEY#t=1080
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A totally clean install? Or something fancy like have a system partition and a data partition and only wipe the system partition and install the OS there, keeping my user/data partition from before?-Deozaan
I'd make a copy of /home just in case, but the current partition scheme should otherwise be fine.
And while I've got you on the line, how about fixing the name of Mint 17 to "Qiana" in the OP's title? :D
Sorry, it was bothering me. :-[
Well...we can't have that now can we?
Ok. It's done. (Not my fault they can't spell.)
And not that it will make much difference because it only fixes it in the OP.
Note: the Mint release names are supposed (according to the Mint folks) to be the names of women picked from the works of William Shakespeare.
Just for the record: of the 1,224 character names (http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/characters/chardisplay.php) found in Shakespeare, "Qiana" is not one of them.
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Have you written Clement Lefebvre about that yet?
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A totally clean install? Or something fancy like have a system partition and a data partition and only wipe the system partition and install the OS there, keeping my user/data partition from before?-Deozaan
I'd make a copy of /home just in case, but the current partition scheme should otherwise be fine.
-40hz
Thanks. I'll see what happens. (c:
And while I've got you on the line, how about fixing the name of Mint 17 to "Qiana" in the OP's title? :D
Ok. It's done. (Not my fault they can't spell.)
And not that it will make much difference because it only fixes it in the OP.-40hz
Now all further replies to this thread will have the correct spelling. 8)
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Been using Mint-MATE since version12. Made a clean install when 13 came out and was running that until 17 came ou. I have quite a few computers and dual-boot all of them with Linux17-MATE, and Win 7. I only get into Win 7 a few times a year, as I've decided that for over 95% of my computing, Mint is great.
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Is there any way to upgrade an older installation to the latest version? I have a working Mint 15 install. Instead of starting it all over from scratch, it would be nice if I could tell it to upgrade itself. I went into the Update Manager and updated everything, but it still says it is running Mint 15.
-Deozaan
You can...but it's not recommended. Especially if you have a bunch of PPAs added to your repositories. Many of those are version specific so you'd need to remove and install the correct ones for the version of Ubu underneath Mint.
And even though Ubuntu has a do-release-upgrade command, you'll need to manually update your software sources list first for it to work.
I've done upgrades that way (in the past) and I learned they made for far more work than they saved. About the only time I've found Debian's apt-get dist-upgrade or Ubuntu's do-release-upgrade really useful was for upgrading servers. Desktops just have too much "other stuff" loaded for either upgrade command to work reliably.
Recommendation: Don't. Just do a clean install. You'll save more time in the long run.-40hz
Does anyone know if this has changed now that Mint has changed its upgrade path? That is, if I install some version of Mint 17, should I then be able to update to Mint 17.x without having to do a clean install?
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Is there any way to upgrade an older installation to the latest version? I have a working Mint 15 install. Instead of starting it all over from scratch, it would be nice if I could tell it to upgrade itself. I went into the Update Manager and updated everything, but it still says it is running Mint 15.
-Deozaan
You can...but it's not recommended. Especially if you have a bunch of PPAs added to your repositories. Many of those are version specific so you'd need to remove and install the correct ones for the version of Ubu underneath Mint.
And even though Ubuntu has a do-release-upgrade command, you'll need to manually update your software sources list first for it to work.
I've done upgrades that way (in the past) and I learned they made for far more work than they saved. About the only time I've found Debian's apt-get dist-upgrade or Ubuntu's do-release-upgrade really useful was for upgrading servers. Desktops just have too much "other stuff" loaded for either upgrade command to work reliably.
Recommendation: Don't. Just do a clean install. You'll save more time in the long run.-40hz
Does anyone know if this has changed now that Mint has changed its upgrade path? That is, if I install some version of Mint 17, should I then be able to update to Mint 17.x without having to do a clean install?
-Deozaan
Yes. You can.
I made an error in my original reply (since corrected) because I got sloppy about the difference between a release upgrade and a version or 'dist' upgrade. (It's a common error for which I apologise. :-[)
Within the same major version, apt-get dist-upgrade is fine and probably a good idea to run since dist-upgrade will also attempt to intelligently upgrade any dependencies along with the installed packages plus resolve any dependency conflicts that may result. The regular update only updates the installed packages themselves. It will not update, add, or remove anything else - including any new dependencies or unneeded packages. Additionally, any update that would change the status of another installed package won't get downloaded or installed using just apt-get update.
To clarify - a "dist upgrade" is not the same thing as a "release upgrade." "dist-upgrade" works within the same release since it uses the same repositories as a regular update.
:Thmbsup: