Is Linux Mint Burning Out? Developers Consider Longer Release Cycle (nerds.xyz) 124
BrianFagioli writes: The Linux Mint developers say they are considering adopting a longer development cycle, arguing that the project's current six month cadence plus LMDE releases leaves too little room for deeper work. In a recent update, the team reflected on its incremental philosophy, independence from upstream decisions like Snap, and heavy investment in Cinnamon and XApp. While the release process "works very well" and delivers steady improvements, they admit it consumes significant time in testing, fixing, and shipping, potentially capping ambition.
Mint's next release will be based on a new Ubuntu LTS, and the team says it is seriously interested in stretching the development window. The stated goal is to free up resources for more substantial development rather than constant release management. Whether this signals bigger technical changes or simply acknowledges bandwidth limits for a small team remains unclear, but it marks a notable rethink of one of desktop Linux's most consistent release rhythms.
Mint's next release will be based on a new Ubuntu LTS, and the team says it is seriously interested in stretching the development window. The stated goal is to free up resources for more substantial development rather than constant release management. Whether this signals bigger technical changes or simply acknowledges bandwidth limits for a small team remains unclear, but it marks a notable rethink of one of desktop Linux's most consistent release rhythms.
I approve (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I approve (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who always waits for the "xx.3" versions (and often skips the even ones), I do too.
I've been using Linux since the 90s and when I was younger, I loved tweaking and getting the newest stuff. But these days I want it to "just work"(tm) and not have the UI and features not change a lot.
Re:I approve (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who always waits for the "xx.3" versions (and often skips the even ones), I do too.
I've been using Linux since the 90s and when I was younger, I loved tweaking and getting the newest stuff. But these days I want it to "just work"(tm) and not have the UI and features not change a lot.
Yes. OS providers like Microsoft have forgotten the purpose of an operating system, They believe that the purpose of computing is the operating system, when in fact, it is supposed to allow us to run the programs we work with, then get the hell out of the way.
Maybe yearly feature releases for Mint.
Re:I approve (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. OS providers like Microsoft have forgotten the purpose of an operating system, They believe that the purpose of computing is the operating system,
Not really, Microsoft believes the purpose of an operating system is to a) generate income for Microsoft, and b) generate tons of personal data they can sell to advertisers and AI con artists.
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They (and I'll include Apple, and Google) have created a culture that expects an operating system to be fresh and new and interesting and exciting and not "boring". So this inspires change for the sake of change. Which in turn inspires shit like Windows 11 and "Liquid Glass". Which in turn cripples productivity.
Re:I approve (Score:5, Interesting)
OS providers like Microsoft have forgotten the purpose of an operating system, They believe that the purpose of computing is the operating system, when in fact, it is supposed to allow us to run the programs we work with, then get the hell out of the way.
Indeed. The purpose of an OS is to make things possible and to bother you are little as possible. Same, incidentally, for Office programs. MS seems to instead optimize "engagement" with their OS and Office programs, i.e. they waste as much of your time as possible with far too deep menu structures, changing things around, minimal customization for users, low/no customization persistence, and other crap that makes their stuff a permanent load on your attention capacity.
Essentially, they are doing "attention economy" instead of "professional tool economy" and it is a massive problem now. The second indicator is that reliability and security are slowly getting worse and worse. They probably cannot fix that anymore and hence need to be replaced. In Europe, that process has started.
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OS providers like Microsoft have forgotten the purpose of an operating system, They believe that the purpose of computing is the operating system, when in fact, it is supposed to allow us to run the programs we work with, then get the hell out of the way.
Indeed. The purpose of an OS is to make things possible and to bother you are little as possible. Same, incidentally, for Office programs. MS seems to instead optimize "engagement" with their OS and Office programs, i.e. they waste as much of your time as possible with far too deep menu structures, changing things around, minimal customization for users, low/no customization persistence, and other crap that makes their stuff a permanent load on your attention capacity.
Essentially, they are doing "attention economy" instead of "professional tool economy" and it is a massive problem now. The second indicator is that reliability and security are slowly getting worse and worse. They probably cannot fix that anymore and hence need to be replaced. In Europe, that process has started.
What is amazing to me is that the business mainstays, word processing, database, and spreadsheets, can be installed and used for free. There is collaboration software as well, some free, some paid.
But the point to me isn't cost - it's how Windows has become creaky and leaky, I was at a conference last night where a presenter had trouble getting his Powerpoint working on his nice new W11 laptop. It would only show part of his desktop when he hit the F5 start for his presentation. Picture of his family. N
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Yes. While I generally avoid Power Point and always have a PDF backup if I cannot, MS Teams is also an unreliable, moody POS.
I had made a previous announcement about my offering of Linux classes. At about the12 minute mark of the futzing around, I stood up and announced "Anyone here want to sign up for my Linux classes while we wait?" Brought the house down.
Excellent!
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I never did figure out Mint's versions. Like what's the difference between 22.1, 22.2, and 22.3? Seems like all three versions exist at once and most updates are within the minor point version. Last I had Mint it wasn't an automatic one-click upgrade between, for example, 22.2 and 22.3? That kind of gave me pause when installing it for people.
My laptop is in dire need of a refresh (Ubuntu 20.04 believe it or not). I'm thinking of going back to LMDE instead of regular Mint. Although would be nice to ha
Re:I approve (Score:4, Informative)
>"Last I had Mint it wasn't an automatic one-click upgrade between, for example, 22.2 and 22.3? That kind of gave me pause when installing it for people."
Not sure what you mean. I "one click" upgraded from every version. It was actually a few clicks, because it warns you to make a backup and such. And you click to skip the features list. But it is an "in-place upgrade" to the next version. I have been doing it for years on many machines and haven't had any issue on any of them (knock on wood).
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Well go to mint's website. They have no less than four versions of 22 listed. Why? Why should you need backups to go from 22.1 to 22.2 to 22.3? Why do I need an "in-place upgrade?" Doesn't make any sense to me. As far as I know the last computer I set up for someone with Mint 22 is probably still on 22.1 or whatever it was when I set it up. I don't understand at all the need for a manual step to bump between minor versions. Ubuntu has no such thing. And the RHEL world where I spent my professional c
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>"Well go to mint's website. They have no less than four versions of 22 listed. Why?"
Don't know what you are talking about. When you go here: https://www.linuxmint.com/down... [linuxmint.com] it shows one version, the current one, 22.3. If you go to the Download ALL area here: https://www.linuxmint.com/down... [linuxmint.com] then they list ALL their versions since the beginning of Mint. It is just a reference archive.
>"Why should you need backups to go from 22.1 to 22.2 to 22.3?"
You don't HAVE to make a backup, the system just
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Wow in-place updates between point releases used to require a complete reinstall? Yikes.
Sorry I mispoke. "dnf update" not "upgrade." As for "upgrade" I assume that's a full OS replacement. dnf update just updates packages[1] like apt does on debian and ubuntu. Always the latest point version. AlmaLinux 9.7, etc. On Mint though apt sticks within the minor version near as I can tell unless you change the apt.sources.
I guess I just don't see the logic in the way Mint does it. I think they'll have to aban
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>"Well go to mint's website. They have no less than four versions of 22 listed. Why?"
Don't know what you are talking about. When you go here: https://www.linuxmint.com/down... [linuxmint.com] it shows one version, the current one, 22.3.
I think he's referencing the different desktops. Cinnamon, Xfce, Mate - although that is only three.
You don't HAVE to make a backup, the system just encourages it and makes it easy to do one. There is more chance of something going wrong with an upgrade compared to just regular updates. Keep in mind that most people make ZERO backups.
Good point. I'm too OCD to not make backups. Indeed I have several. And on my Mac, I use Time Machine, which is better than imaging. Restores everything as needed - programs and files.
People need to backup no matter their OS.
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No I'm not referring to that, although that's a good point when it comes to mint developer burnout.
I was referring to 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, which are all maintained individually until EOL as far as I know, even if the primary download is always the latest version. And it requires a manual step to upgrade between 22.2 and 22.3. Google tells me this is by design and that mint's creators want to enable people to stay on 22.1 or whatever until EOL if that's what works for them. Perhaps this idea is part of what l
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If you go to the Download ALL area ... then they list ALL their versions since the beginning of Mint. It is just a reference archive.
Actually, they only list all of the currently supported versions, like it says in large italics on the page you linked. A complete list of all versions going back to 1.0 would be huge and pointless. What practical use is there for a Linux installation that doesn't have access to a single update to the original release, unless you're a masochist who revels in unpatched bugs and security holes? But if you seriously want them, try here. [archive.org]
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>"Actually, they only list all of the currently supported versions, like it says in large italics on the page you linked."
Thanks for the clarification :)
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The base is based on Ubuntu LTS, the point releases are primarily larger upgrades of the desktop environment and some of the associated programs. When you change from 22.1 to 22.2, some things will look different.
On LMDE, they don't do point releases - they use Debian Stable and just do the desktop updates periodically without all the fuss. I wonder if they're going to move closer to that model for everything. It would make sense.
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Oh, and they do the complex upgrade thing because the repository for each point release is completely separate. As far as apt is concerned you are updating "zara" packages to "zena" packages even if they are the same. This doesn't affect the whole system, since the Ubuntu stuff stays the same, but adds complexity.
It's another piece that doesn't happen in LMDE. It's all "gigi".
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>"Last I had Mint it wasn't an automatic one-click upgrade between, for example, 22.2 and 22.3? That kind of gave me pause when installing it for people."
Not sure what you mean. I "one click" upgraded from every version. It was actually a few clicks, because it warns you to make a backup and such. And you click to skip the features list. But it is an "in-place upgrade" to the next version. I have been doing it for years on many machines and haven't had any issue on any of them (knock on wood).
He must have been using old stuff. Mint has been a seamless upgrade for years now. And there's the problem. Too many people have been complaining about this or that in Linux, based on something from the early 2000's.
It's how we hear about things like poor driver support, when in fact Linux driver support is better, and pretty damned automatic in most cases.
I tend to start out telling people - "This is not your daddy's Linux."
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Okay but I installed 22.1 for someone a while back (that was the latest). They do the updates when prompted. They are still on 22.1 now, though 22.3 has been out for a quite a while. And further Mint devs apparently intend to enable users to stay on 22.1 until EOL, despite 22.3 or whatever they end up, getting security updates, but not the other upgrades that come with 22.3.
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>"Okay but I installed 22.1 for someone a while back (that was the latest). They do the updates when prompted. They are still on 22.1 now, though 22.3 has been out for a quite a while."
Correct. Updates keep you on the same version (in this case, 22.1). To perform an upgrade, go to the update manager and click on "Edit" and there should be an option that says "Upgrade to Linux Mint XXX".
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I know the upgrade process is pretty seamless nowadays but unless there's some killer new feature in Cinnamon I just have to have (which hasn't really been the case) I just ride the LTS till EOL. I got other shit to deal with.
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>"Outside of needed security fixes, the rapid release cycle can get to be a real pain in the ass."
I concur. If the choice is between giving up on some of Mint's goodness (like important native packages offered instead of damn containers only), or stretching the cycle to a little later, the latter makes more sense to me. Mint has been a fantastic distro.
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>"Outside of needed security fixes, the rapid release cycle can get to be a real pain in the ass."
I concur. If the choice is between giving up on some of Mint's goodness (like important native packages offered instead of damn containers only), or stretching the cycle to a little later, the latter makes more sense to me. Mint has been a fantastic distro.
I've experimented with different distros, and keep coming back to Mint. It allows GUI users to do their work, yet allow us geeks to have fun too.
And that's the thing. It's still fun for me. Mac can be fun, but Windows 11 is like a visit to the proctologist.
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Yeah it's not a bad idea, it seems like there's not a whole lot of difference between major versions and they're probably making a lot of work for themselves to deliver a "major version update" that's just like the previous one but with slightly newer packages and maybe 1 meaningful functional difference, meanwhile the version older than either of those still works just fine and can run totally up-to-date packages as well...
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The major releases are big updates, they move between Ubuntu LTS base versions. Those are every two years. They waste a lot of time with the minor version releases they do. On Mint the minor releases are mostly Cinnamon feature updates. They set up a brand new repo, compile packages for it even if they haven't changed, and do a whole release management things along with complicated "Update Your System" functionality that ends up mirroring a lot of the work they'd need to do for a major release.
LMDE does not
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Honestly, long release cylces can be just as much of a pain in the ass if everyone else is upgrading before you, you're left supporting software whos devs have long since forged ahead on later versions, leading to your bug reports getting ignored and or other software breaking it due to incompatibility wiht the old versions.
I guess it depends on how long. And it depends on if is just a regular update, of a whole new version. Linux has a lot of regular updates. The best thing is that I can decide when to install them.
I love that name BTW!
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It won't make too much of a difference here, the six month minor releases are updates to the Mint-specific features like Cinnamon. It is built on top of Ubuntu LTS and still uses those packages for most things.
Re: I approve (Score:4, Insightful)
Things are pretty stable is Linux right now too I think.
There was a 10-20 year period where things were rapidly changing (good 3D, new audio systems, gnome 3/kde4, Wayland) and the newest often brought big changes vs running 6 month-year old packages.
But it's been a while since I've felt I needed to update a package to get new features working (even Wine/Proton don't seem to be making major major improvements as they've gotten pretty danged good).
It's good to see Linux having survived this massive shift and going strong again, even if it was painful at times.
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Things are pretty stable is Linux right now too I think.
There was a 10-20 year period where things were rapidly changing (good 3D, new audio systems, gnome 3/kde4, Wayland) and the newest often brought big changes vs running 6 month-year old packages.
But it's been a while since I've felt I needed to update a package to get new features working (even Wine/Proton don't seem to be making major major improvements as they've gotten pretty danged good).
It's good to see Linux having survived this massive shift and going strong again, even if it was painful at times.
Really good points!
I hope not, it's my favorite! (Score:4, Insightful)
Mint is the best out of the box experience for me, and just a hassle-free daily driver. The community is so nice, friendly, and helpful, it is the opposite of the stereotype of just answering "RTFM" and whatever criticisms people had about forums in the 90s. I hope it stays strong, I donate every time I do a new install or upgrade to a new version. In case it does languish, is there anything anyone would recommend that ticks all the same boxes for being a friendly end user desktop experience with a classic Windows 2000-like desktop that has support/compatibility with such a wide and fairly current and stable variety of packages (debian)?
Re:I hope not, it's my favorite! (Score:5, Interesting)
Mint is the best out of the box experience for me, and just a hassle-free daily driver. The community is so nice, friendly, and helpful, it is the opposite of the stereotype of just answering "RTFM" and whatever criticisms people had about forums in the 90s. I hope it stays strong, I donate every time I do a new install or upgrade to a new version. In case it does languish, is there anything anyone would recommend that ticks all the same boxes for being a friendly end user desktop experience with a classic Windows 2000-like desktop that has support/compatibility with such a wide and fairly current and stable variety of packages (debian)?
I'm going to be teaching a class in Linux operations, and that RTFM issue morphed into a noob asking a question, then an experienced user answering "Oh, that's easy!" then launching into a solution that leaves the noob more confused than before. Funny thing is, while canvassing for students, I got a lot of more experienced people who offer to teach.
And here's where it gets odd. I have picked a person to assist with teaching. A woman who pretty much lives in Terminal. I do both GUI and terminal, and plan on learning from her as well. And part of the reason why I chose her is that she isn't doing the typical guy thing. She's an apt teacher. Most guys I know want to impress others with how much they know, more than teach others.
Re:I hope not, it's my favorite! (Score:5, Funny)
She's an apt teacher.
I see what you did there.
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Fedora or Fedora Atomic based OSes. https://bazzite.gg/ [bazzite.gg] or https://getaurora.dev/en [getaurora.dev] for windows-like desktop and/or gaming. https://projectbluefin.io/ [projectbluefin.io] if you don't mind a more traditional Linux/MacOS look and don't care about gaming at all.
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Agree completely. Mint is perfectly suitable for a daily driver. I found answers quickly in the forums, and I provided answers to the forum in the hopes that it would help others. Only real issue I remember having is pulseaudio sometimes burning 7% cpu on an idle laptop with no sound playing (but apparently I'm reading now that pipewire is a successor)
Yes, the forums have changed a lot from when I started. Still have to be careful. Some people make solutions more complicated than need be.
Ohh, I will need to look into pipewire. I've never been all that into pulseaudio.
Linux Mint is in trouble (Score:5, Interesting)
The community over at Linux Mint is showing the pressure. Under the gun, and unable to process even basic issues, they turn on users and blame them for problems and bugs they experience, telling them their use case is flawed when the reality is they just don't have the resources to deal with the issue. Now, not having the resources is one thing, and a fair response. But turning it back on the user and telling them their use case is flawed when they experience is the tail wagging the dog.
Another community I saw this in for a long time, and I really thought the project would implode, was the Palemoon browser. They got behind when webcomponents became a thing and they could keep up with changes. They too would blame the user when yet another web site that didn't work on the browser was encountered, telling them they should be using the site, should complain about the site, and why would they need a site like that anyway??
Palemoon dragged themselves out of it. They buckled down, and it's almost back to being a useful browser again. But the community at Mint concerns me. They are on the down swing. User blaming and load shedding are just symptoms of a larger issue. Too much work for too few volunteers. They also don't have a good end-to-end workflow strategy. By that I mean in many cases they don't seem to treat the OS as a coherent whole that is used for actual workflows from beginning to end. Pieces that have no replacement are deprecated while resources are spent on pieces that have many duplicates.
I'm concerned.
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I can't even get Mint to boot, and haven't for years. It stubbornly keeps telling me that my media isn't a bootable system drive. Apparently, the Mint team is doing something custom with the boot process that requires you to add security keys in the BIOS for it to start properly, but they don't tell you this on the download page and the community has been remarkably quiet and unhelpful about this issue.
I have four other Linux distros on flash drives that boot no problem, and I use Clonzilla on a regular b
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It's called trusted computing and your BIOS requires that keys be added, not mint. You can disable it in the BIOS.
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I have tried disabling Secure Boot, and I still have the issue. There are tutorials that show you how to add custom keys, but that's well beyond the capabilities of an ordinary person.
The key point is that no other Linux distro I've ever tried -- ever -- has has this problem. Mint people run into this issue, and the community just kind of shrugs their shoulders. Not to mention the fact that when you try to update an old system, you suddenly find your updated machine is suddently unbootable with no idea o
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That's super weird. I mean keys mean secure boot must be doing something! Never seen it myself, but it's probably a weird interaction with something mint is doing which is a bit offbeat combined with some motherboards which are a bit offbeat.
What a huge pain.
If mint goes bad for me I'll likely switch to Debian. I used to run a bunch, including Arch on my main laptop of course. I got lazy and started using Ubuntu because it really worked pretty easily. But I don't like Snap packages, it turns out, so I switc
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Last time I looked you could get rid of the snaps in Ubuntu, e.g. getting Firefox from the official PPA instead. (I think there is a Firefox repo now which is not a PPA.) I am using Devuan, telling repos I'm using trixie, and so far so good. Software is even surprisingly modern.
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Yeah it's certainly possible to de-snap, but at some point it becomes more effort than it's worth. It's not just firefox. Meshlab also was another one, and there's a bunch of others too.
Also mint are way less gung ho on Wayland. And wayland is, frankly, a bit of a problem. There's still stuff that randomly doesn't work (Meshlab for example crashes on ubunutu/unity/wayland last time I tried), kicad doesn't get on with Wayland, ImageJ doesn't work properly due Wayland devs being very opinionated about how use
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I feel the same way on all counts. That's why I went all the way to Devuan. It's also possible to un-systemd Debian, but it's a huge hassle, which is why Devuan exists. After having systemd fuck up early boot for me and prevent me from troubleshooting without having to figure how how to do it with a debugger when with grub I'd have had text logs, I ran away from that shit.
Devuan Excalibur/Debian Trixie is the most current and updated Devuan/Debian I've ever used. There are even bleeding edge kernels in back
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Naturally I am also using X. I might consider using Wayland more if I weren't using Nvidia. Maybe by the time I build my next PC it will work well, but as it's been 15 years so far and it doesn't, I won't hold my breath.
It works fine if you aren't doing anything out of the very mainstream. And of course it "supports" some newer features (though the claims X doesn't are often a little dubious). But, for a lot of other stuff it's still wonky.
Screen recording finally kinda works. Automation is a crapshoot. Som
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Very interesting. So Fedora and Ubuntu install fine then?
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Haven't tried Fedora, but Ubuntu, plain Debian, ZorinOS, and CloneZilla work fine. The Mint guys are doing something weird. I was testing Mint 19 for a while and then version 20 came out and it simply refused to boot, with my BIOS reporting the install media is not a system drive. My test system is a legacy rig with Win7 on a separate SSD, so I have no need for Secure Boot and have it turned off.
I'm leaving out a LOT of details, here. I gave up on Mint so easily as I had way, way too many other problems
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You mean https://github.com/orgs/linuxm... [github.com] ?
Fortunately Clement Lefebvre didn't go full blown the GNOME style anti-user attitude, and recognized the issue is valid at the end. A damage control from JosephMcc calling it "isn't a bug" and "no plans to change it" in https://github.com/linuxmint/c... [github.com]
my dream distro (Score:1)
Would be LMDE without systemd. I'm intrigued by Xlibre, maybe that would be cool too, but I don't have experience with it yet. I'm not expecting anybody to do it. But if somebody has the chops and the energy to pull it off, maybe this'll plant the idea in their head.
Is there a need for... (Score:3)
A filter excluding any story titles starting with the word "Is"?
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Yep. Another "tragedy of the commons" problem is sensationalist bullshit headline, like this one.
Wayland on Mint (Score:4, Interesting)
Mint has a small team, and right now, Linux is in a time of rapid development for gaming on PCs with Steam, Wayland, enhanced gaming drivers, and such. I think it makes sense for them to pull back and maybe even just release based on Ubuntu LTS releases every 2 years.
I was a big fan of Mint for a long time because Cinnamon was such a nice alternative to Gnome and Unity. I eventually left for Kubuntu because the Mint devs had ZERO plans to work on Wayland. They wouldn't even entertain a discussion about a plan to make a plan to even think about working on Wayland while every other DE was in active development and even pushing for its release as default over X11 in upcoming releases. Now, they're busy playing catch-up bolting support for Wayland onto Cinnamon.
Maintaining a distro is a lot of work, especially for a small team, and they've got a LOT to improve on before I could recommend them to any of my gamer friends that are interested in trying out Linux - They're playing with Bazzite, Kubuntu, CatchyOS, and others.
Long term, I really think Mint should just fold itself into being an official Cinnamon Ubuntu flavor and work on just improving Cinnamon... or they could rebase on a different flavor entirely, like they did with the Debian version. I mean, they can and will do whatever they want, but my experience with them was that they couldn't see the writing on the wall that Wayland was super important for the future of Linux DEs, and I can't recommend them right now to anyone as other distros have caught up and gotten so much better. What's the point of maintaining Mint these days? Who's the target market that wouldn't do better on another option? I dunno.
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>"because the Mint devs had ZERO plans to work on Wayland"
Yeah. To me, that is a feature, not a flaw. I want stability and functionality. Wayland hasn't been that and I don't want to be forced into it right now. They are of a similar mindset. It might be there eventually.
>" they've got a LOT to improve on before I could recommend them to any of my gamer friends"
>"What's the point of maintaining Mint these days? Who's the target market "
Not gamers. There are, indeed, much better distros for th
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I've never had any of those issues in my 30 years of using X11, but I'll also admit I always buy matched monitors so I'd never have #4.
Just because something is new doesn't automatically make it better. Does Wayland allow me to run a program on a server but display back to my laptop? Oh, no it doesn't. :) Yes, that is a feature of X11 that I do use. I can't tell if Wayland supports the "xkb compose sequences" or has an equivalent (some people say yes others say no), but that is also something I use. For the
Re: Wayland on Mint (Score:2)
So if you have two screens with different refresh rates you're cool with it using the lowest one? Have fun with that. Don't recommend that to newbies. They expect basic features that work in windows.
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Most people don't have two screens, and if they do, they support the same refresh rates. These days you can get big displays for reasonable money, so there's almost no good reason to get multiple displays. It's limited to tasks like video production.
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Multiple monitors are always better than a singular, larger monitor.
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I feel exactly the opposite way. Multiple monitors cause all kinds of problems. They're just often awkward at best. One big monitor is so very much better. Inevitably I want some applications to scale differently from others if I have multiple monitors and it's never convenient.
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I don't understand how they could be awkward. I suppose if the two monitors aren't the same, it could be awkward. But I have never not bought matching pairs. I used to use a giant 42in screen and it was awful for both productivity and gaming.
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That's what I use now, in 4k, and it's great. I can throw a window to any corner and it goes into a 25% mode where I've effectively got a 1080p screen there. Or I can throw them to the side and have double height, etc, and all without any kind of bezels between them. I fully expect that in a couple of generations I will do it over again with a slightly larger monitor at 8k, but my GPU doesn't even have the fill rate to do that justice, let alone any other kind of capabilities.
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I find that to be a highly inefficient use of power and GPU resources. Especially when monitors with essentially zero bezels exist. Not that I mind the bezel anyway, because I'm not trying to display anything that would ever stretch between the two. 4k is overrated for any kind of at home use and anything higher is just stupid outside of certain niche specialties.
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This is such an asinine line of reasoning. Pretty much any laptop is running at 60hz but can drive a screen running at something else. Not even accounting for gaming setups where there's a primary screen pumping out 144 fps and a secondary screen doing 60. Without wayland I would be flat stuck at 60 on my primary. It really is true that society progresses one funeral at a time.
Re: Wayland on Mint (Score:2)
My effectively having four monitors stuck together is a huge boon to all types of work. We have just two monitors at work plus the laptop display and it's irritating when I need to be working, looking up resources, and looking at my notes at the same time. Perhaps what you are doing is very simple, like your reasoning abilities.
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My effectively having four monitors stuck together is a huge boon to all types of work.
Yet, you have no real examples. Everything you've said you do with one big monitor, I can do the exact same thing with two, but also more.
We have just two monitors at work plus the laptop display and it's irritating when I need to be working, looking up resources, and looking at my notes at the same time.
Sounds easy. Though, I would probably just not use the laptop's screen.
At best, you can say you prefer one screen. But you have nothing to prove one is better than the other. Two monitors are for people in video production? What? A single 4k screen would be better for people in image and video production because of it's higher pixel density. Two 2ks are better for sheer u
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Yet, you have no real examples.
I have lots of real examples.
Everything you've said you do with one big monitor, I can do the exact same thing with two, but also more.
No, then you have a bezel in the way. If I'm editing graphics I don't want to be having to work around a bezel. What a stupid idea. What's the "more" you can do by having your pixels spread out across different displays?
At best, you can say you prefer one screen. But you have nothing to prove one is better than the other.
It's less hassle. That's better. Done!
Two monitors are for people in video production? What? A single 4k screen would be better for people in image and video production because of it's higher pixel density.
I see you know absolutely nothing about this topic. They're called preview devices. Run along and talk to some other fucknut who knows nothing about anything but wants to argue about it anyway.
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I have lots of real examples.
No, you don't.
No, then you have a bezel in the way. If I'm editing graphics I don't want to be having to work around a bezel.
So don't split between the bezel. Or get monitors without them. Thinking the bezel is as bad as you do is the only thing stupid around here.
What's the "more" you can do by having your pixels spread out across different displays?
Freedom to arrange the pixels the way I want. Easier to mix and match different window sizes. Can mix and match between full screen applications (games, mostly) with those that aren't.
It's less hassle.
Except it's not.
I see you know absolutely nothing about this topic. They're called preview devices.
Which doesn't inherently mean they are using multiple monitors, but pr
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Does Wayland allow me to run a program on a server but display back to my laptop?
Natively? No. Because that isn't something that needs to be built in for every user, because very few people use it. Not to mention, it's a shitty protocol with shitty performance. Wayland has Waypipe. Or you could just do full VNC/RDP.
I can't tell if Wayland supports the "xkb compose sequences" or has an equivalent
Wayland itself supports them just fine: https://wayland-book.com/seat/... [wayland-book.com].
that's not being stubborn, that because it's missing useful and needed features.
Yes, it is you being stubborn, because there are solutions that you never bothered to check, or are operating off of outdated information.
X11 is straight ass. It's only real benefit is compatibility and
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>"People who refuse to use the new thing are the typical annoying stuburn nerd that speaks from ignorance and has absolutely no idea what they are talking about."
I am quite familiar with X11 and Wayland. It is probable I have been using X11 way before you knew what it was (or maybe even been alive). I have specific needs for X11 that include screen sharing, remote access, remote control, thin clients, screen capture, and other things that Wayland either cannot do, or cannot do well.
I have no problem wi
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I have specific needs for X11 that include screen sharing, remote access, remote control, thin clients, screen capture, and other things that Wayland either cannot do, or cannot do well.
Wayland supports all of these things you specifically mentioned and does them just fine. It just does many of these things *differently* for security reasons, because X11 is a security nightmare. My distro doesn't include X11 or even Wayland's X11 hybrid mode, so I only have straight Wayland and I do all of the things you mentioned regularly with no issues, except for the thin clients.
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> They wouldn't even entertain a discussion about a plan to make a plan to even think about working on Wayland
Thank fucking God someone is being sane in the GNU/Linux community on this. It's absolutely unbelievable that a half-assed display system that's far from finished or feature complete, and is actually less efficient and has higher latency, than X11, is being adopted long after the entire reason for proposing it became obsolete (in 2001 it was difficult to graft a security system onto X11 because t
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We're holding Wayland back because it is NOT feature complete. See my other comment to you about it not being able to display windows to other computers and so forth.
Re: Wayland on Mint (Score:2)
How would you know? You don't use it.
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I have been using Linux Mint on almost all the Linux boxes I have except for Debian on headless servers. Reasons:
1) Mint doesn't change things for no reason, especially UI (unlike Ubuntu used to do)
2) it is compatible with Debian and Ubuntu
3) all the defaults make sense
4) snaps are off by default
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Those are all great reasons, but unfortunately the use cases I get lately are:
Can I use OBS with multiple monitors with different screen refresh rates to stream games to Twitch? What about Discord?
Will it play Steam games without screen tearing using the latest Proton, Linux Kernel, and Nvidia game-ready drivers and Wayland?
Things that even Ubuntu LTS can't do - at least not until 26.04 LTS is released
Debian is my recommendation for servers, Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio for average users (LTS for non-gamers, l
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>"because the Mint devs had ZERO plans to work on Wayland"
Second reply, with new info....
So, released today. 22.3:
https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_... [linuxmint.com] :
The Cinnamon window manager (muffin) received a lot of changes to improve its compatibility with Wayland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Not a reliable indicator for burnout (Score:2)
They may have seen quality dropping or reaction times going up or, yes, a potential "burnout" in the future. Smart people can predict things and prevent getting hit. Only reducing workload when you are already struggling hard is amateur-level. Mint does not strike me as amateur level.
Re: Not a reliable indicator for burnout (Score:2)
And IIRC they've even started cinnamon while all other distros keep crying how bad gnome 3 ... Kudos to them.
I'm using it daily for several years and I'm very happy.
I love Mint, and want a better experience (Score:3)
[I appreciate Mint's desktop mantra and lead, and with Cinnamon helped the Linux desktop--when Gnome turned their backs on it. That stated, I appreciate the work of so many programmers who worked on many of the Gnome and GTK components and utilities that make Mint great. No, I am not going to thank the desktop lead for Gnome 3's GUI transgressions.]
My AMD 3900 desktop has the nordrand problem on boot; it cannot resume from sleep. This machine can render on CPU or GPU for 12 hours straight, so it's not the machine, and I guess it was never fixed. ref: https://www.phoronix.com/news/... [phoronix.com]
My LG Gram displays an error on boot, as well.
I've considered going back to Debian, perhaps with Cinnamon, but I worry that too much would not be current. That stated, where Mint has made progress, corporate factions shouldn't interject doubt that things are progressing too fast. There needs to be balance.
Just so we are on the same page, no one wants to be forced to set the time AM/PM with a encoded command string. Some people may want quite custom settings, but many more people would like to do something else with their time, whether it be displayed as 12 or 12 hours.
Also, if we have a numerical keypad on a desktop system, we probably want it on on boot. You would be surprised how many Linux distros are wrongly influenced by people who have not quite got it--that they aren't typing on a VT100 terminal.
Lastly, while notabug will always be a problem, one of the worst problems Linux has with reliability and software quality is: things get fixed in the forums--not in the code. There forum moderators verify bugs and find answers to bugs that should be fixed in code. I get it, you want be helpful and we appreciate it, but if there is a verified problem, the coders should know. I call it FIFNIC: Fixed in Forum Not In Code. The problem with this is that too many people like us have the same problem. With forum topics being locked earlier and earlier, people with longstanding bugs that could have been patched--have to start multiple threads. Then you get burned out. From our standpoint, program bugs are one thing, but with the number subsystems and layers of functionality that distributions encompass, it would be difficult to know what caused what because we don't know--we're just desktop users.
So, it might be helpful if there was in a distribution a simple bug reporting and passing system. I can be tough on Firefox about privacy, but their happy/sad face reporting system was brilliant. For a successful Linux desktop perhaps these could be collected, sorted, considered, and delivered. --when they could have just
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once a year release cycle (Score:2)
Is it burning out? (Score:3)
Is it burning out, or is the longer release cycle just the right thing to do with a smaller team? The phrasing sounds way more negative than needed, in particular when they decide to use a longer cycle before something may burn out.
Ubuntu vs Debian (Score:1)
Minted (Score:2)
I would just wish that Linux Mint would transition to Plasma. There was a time when it made sense to be different but we need to get Wayland right.
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>"Mint isn't even that great of a distro."
Compared to what? Mint is stable, polished, reliable, and functional. Its updates and upgrades have all been extremely well-done. They offer native packages for important software. They put out an easy and functional desktop that is still compatible with Ubuntu so it has instant mind-share. Millions of people use it. It is on the top or near the top of nearly every list of best distros I have seen, for years.
I don't see how your comment is at all accurate o
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there*
Whoops.
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Also:
its*
"it's" always means "it is" (or "it has" or "it was"). (Or, at least, it has for the last 300 or so years.)
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Yeah, because English is a fucking garbage and pronouns don't follow the same rules for possession as nouns, because *checks notes* no reason.
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Yeah, pretty much.
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Debian -> Ubuntu -> Mint. Mint IS the downstream. Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce are all ass. And while I don't like GNOME, it's better than those 3.
Re: Who Cares (Score:2)
You're such a bullshiter who obviously never used Mint, Debian, Ubuntu nor Fedora. Reading the Internet about these distros is not using them.
Using Debian or Ubuntu out of the box sucks as user experience. I've used Fedora 6 years before moving to Mint. While not perfect, the cinnamon user interface is probably the best tradeof between simplicity and usability.
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You're such a bullshiter who obviously never used Mint, Debian, Ubuntu nor Fedora. Reading the Internet about these distros is not using them.
I'm have used all of them and am currently on a Fedora based distro. I've probably used more distros than you even know about.
the cinnamon user interface is probably the best tradeof between simplicity and usability.
Who the fuck wants this trade-off when you can fully have both with zero trade-off?
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1.
Mint is just Ubuntu with a bunch of pre-installed, pre-configured software aka bloat that often times regular people don't even need.
2.
when their are security issues the Mint team doesn't say shit
3.
Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce are all ass.
4. I haven't had to say it because others have, but also Mint still defaults to X11. X11 is a fucking security nightmare: no application isolation, anything and everything can be keylogged and/or screen captured, insecure defaults, massive amounts of bloated legacy code that most people do not need or use.
Keep sucking that Linux Mint dick if you want, but smart people would stay the fuck away from it.
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Bazzite seems to be the new hotness for user friendly Linux distributions, which seems to be stealing Mint's thunder in that space.
Businesses will probably continue to stick with the stable and reliable Linux distros like Ubuntu, Debian, and RHEL. So, who is Mint for, exactly?
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Bazzite is fantastic and my current daily driver since it's basically a Fedora based SteamOS plus all standard desktop features. I also like it because it is an immutable OS so neither I nor a random program can accidentally fuck up the OS.
The creators of Bazzite also have two other projects, Aurora and Bluefin. Bluefin is designed for workstations only, so it would make for a good business OS as well.
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It works well for me.
However I'm not a gamer and do not use Nvidia GPUs.
If I was to complain it would be that the Libreoffice version is not very recent and was not updated on the 22.3 release. That probably applies to other programs in the library as well.
There are also some broken links for the /usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 program when I was trying to figure out whether the older PCs I have are V1, V2, or V3. The link is there or not there depending on the machine, and when I hunted down the actual fil
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This sounds like enough complaints that I would find a new distro that doesn't have those problems (or any newer ones). And I would mainly look at Fedora based projects aimed for workstations like https://projectbluefin.io/ [projectbluefin.io].
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The new improved System Information shows the CPU but the old display of all the instructions is gone so It's had to figure out what is and is not supported. Hopefully they will put the X86-64 feature version level on the display on a future update. Apparently kernels are going to start caring.
To get the old system information corpus, press the "copy" button and paste it into a text editor or anywhere that can type text.