Ready for a newbie-friendly Linux? Mint team officially releases v 22.3, 'Zena'

The timing is right if you're looking to try out Mint. New improved "Zena" is here – still based on Ubuntu Noble, but now with Cinnamon 6.6 and improved Wayland support, plus better internationalization, new System Information and System Administration tools, and clearer icons. The latest Mint – 22.3 – was officially released …

[JessicaRabbit]

I guess it's time I gave Cinnamon another look given KDE are planning to betray those of us who want nothing to do with Wayland and its GNOME-like attitude towards users.

[Anonymous Coward]

@JessicaRabbit

"I guess it's time I gave Cinnamon another look given KDE are planning to betray those of us who want nothing to do with Wayland and its GNOME-like attitude towards users."

I do like Cinnamon and find it works pretty good. It is on my day to day system and far more stable than a few years ago. Best of luck

[Doctor Syntax]

I'm still running Plama 6.3.6 over X11.

[Havin_it]

"Betray"? Get off your cross, we need the wood. Nobody promised you anything. Devs don't want to dev two stacks, and they picked the other one. The code's all still there if you feel like picking it up and carrying it forward.

[captain veg]

painless

Ran the upgrade today. Uncannily quick and totally painless, about as far away from the Microsoft Windows experience as you can get.

The desktop changes are immediately apparent, but haven't yet provoked any frustration of annoyance -- again, very un-Microsoft-like.

My only complaint is that I was hoping for a newer version of VirtualBox to improve nested virtualisation for Windows clients, but it's still the same 7.0, presumably because the underlying Ubuntu base is the same.

Might try Wayland again. The lack of keyboard layout support did for it previously. Not sure if I can live without X11vnc, though.

-A.

[mickaroo]

Re: virtualbox painless

I, too, became annoyed that the packaged VBox was always a couple (or three) versions behind the current release candidate. Now I download and update from the Oracle-VBox website.

They notify when there's a newer version, and the update has always gone swimmingly.

[captain veg]

Re: virtualbox painless

I have done that in the past, but recently I was obliged to virtualise an instance of corporately locked down Windows 11 with bitlocker drive encryption. It simply refused to unlock the disk image on the Oracle-sourced VirtualBox, presumably because the virtual hardware had changed in some unacceptable way. Either way I reverted pronto because I had work to do.

-A.

[oyoun]

Re: virtualbox painless

You can add the virtualbox-repository as well so you dont need to download rpm/deb packages.

[captain veg]

Re: virtualbox painless

That's exactly what I did.

The problem was that the VM created in the Mint/Ubuntu VirtualBox wouldn't boot in the Oracle one.

-A.

[wolfetone]

Re: virtualbox painless

Not sure if you know, but please check the terms of VirtualBox.

Oracle changed them not long ago and they are draconian.

[Adair]

Not so painless

Maybe just my setup, BUT this update has played havoc with my keyboard layouts. 'English-UK' has transmogrified into something else. It still says its 'English-UK', but that's not the mapping it's showing. Haven't figured out what, but it uses lots of diacritics. Other keyboard randomness is also occurring. Not show stopping, but definitely unwanted and not what I've come to expect from a Mint upgrade. BTW, 'English-NZ' works just fine. :-P

[David 132]

Re: Not so painless

I installed this version of Mint from the ISO using Ventoy last night, onto a Thinkpad T14 whose installation of Windows 10 has been sickly for a while; from the Live CD desktop I used Gdisk to shrink the Windows partition, then installed. All went flawlessly.

The only oddity I noticed is that, when Setup asked me to choose my location, several of the entries in the list were curiously-formed - for example, “Portland i Oregon” [sic] was selectable, but the adjacent “Portland Oregon” wasn’t. A minor glitch.

[Adair]

Re: Not so painless

Problem resolved. Turns out the upgrade lost/deleted all my mapping customisations, a few of which were so old I'd forgotten what they were! Rationality has now been restored, but it would still be good if the the upgrade retained keyboard user settings, rather than writing over them, as they appear to have been in my case.

[frankvw]

Re: painless

"...I was hoping for a newer version of VirtualBox..."

Agreed, but even more vexing is the fact that the most recent WINE version you get from the Software Manager (i.e. the Ubuntu repo) is still 9.0. That's two major stable releases behind the times. Upgrading to WINE 11 involves manually downloading and installing a signing key and repo source. And that's about as far from being un-nerdy as it gets.

These are essentially repo issues, not Mint issues, but still.

[David 132]

Re: painless

I did exactly this, but found that everything I tried to run in Wine 11 - all game titles rated “Platinum” on the Wine app compatibility database - crashed with an Unexpected Error.

Very odd.

Civilization in DOSBox works perfectly, though :)

[Liam Proven]

Re: painless

> the most recent WINE version you get from the Software Manager (i.e. the Ubuntu repo) is still 9.0.

Mint draws packages from Ubuntu.

Ubuntu draws packages from Debian.

Debian is famously slow-moving and only updates its component packages to major new versions every 2 years.

Direct version-to-version comparisons are pointless because Ubuntu draws upon Debian Unstable, but even so, for illustration...

Mint 22 is based on Ubuntu 24.04. That predates Debian 13 and WINE

Debian 13: August 2025.

WINE 11: January 2026.

Nope, much too new.

*f/x: pages swirling off a desktop calendar*

Debian 12: June 2023

Plausible... but let's look...

WINE 10: January 2025

Ah, no. Way too new.

WINE 9: January 2024.

Aha! And bingo, now we are old enough that this package would have made it into the upstream.

Debian 11's release date was August 2021, but that is incidental now. We've traced what happened when.

If Ubuntu didn't grab newer versions of some things, you'd be on the Debian 11 version of WINE. When Debian 11 came out, the newest major version of WINE was WINE 6, released February 2021, and that might be too close for Debian, so you'd have got WINE 5 from January 2020.

If you just trace the lines of inheritance, it's fairly clear and obvious why the overlapping release schedules mean you get what ostensibly seems like an old version.

Debian would not rush to upgrade something like WINE: nothing in Debian is likely to depend on Windows binaries, and the sort of hair-shirt wearers who put up with all the little papercuts in Debian are not likely to run Windows programs under emulation. That's kid stuff. So Debian would be likely to play it safe and use the older, stabler, tried-and-tested version from 2020 than risk something that only came out about 6 months earlier -- almost an eyeblink in Debian schedule terms.

[blu3b3rry]

Impressed

I'm impressed with the tweaks on both the cinnamon and XFCE versions. I wasn't sure when I first saw screenshots of the new menu but so far I like it. It feels snappier than the previous menu iteration and has a nice comfy W7-esque feel.

Been using it since W10 went EOL including on my gaming rig with no regrets.

[Boothy]

Re: Impressed

Also just updated here, and so far I like the changes, nothing too radical, and everything still intuitive. Plus the update itself was quick and painless (a few seconds to run in the background, then a restart that was as fast as a normal restart).

The only (minor) issues I found so far was while looking in the updated System Information panel, specifically on the new GPU tab, the Name entry is blank for some reason, despite showing 9070 XT on the first System Information tab, and the GPU>Hardware Acceleration section showed Video Playback as being disabled and in Software mode, which I was sure was not the actual case.

A quick DDG and it seems the new System Information has a soft dependency on vainfo, which is not included in Mint by default (no idea if this is different now with a fresh install).

A quick...

sudo apt install vainfo

and a relaunch of System Information app and GPU>Hardware Acceleration>Video Playback now shows Enabled (VA-API) as it should.

Seems without vainfo installed, it just assumes Hardware Acceleration is disabled, rather than showing an NA or similar!

Edit: Clarity

[blu3b3rry]

Re: Impressed

Have an upvote, thankyou for that. Another jotting for the notebook!

[Liam Proven]

Re: Impressed

> the new System Information has a soft dependency on vainfo, which is not included in Mint by default

Excellent sleuthing.

Please do let them know about this.

https://projects.linuxmint.com/reporting-an-issue.html

I can't find the repo for the System Reports or System Information tool, so probably in the forums.

[Boothy]

Re: Impressed

Thanks Liam. I followed the link and then did a search, seems other people had also noticed the same issue during earlier upgrades a few days to a couple of weeks back.

Initially here under Cinnamon (now closed): https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/13312

But copied over to here as a Mint issue (Open): https://github.com/linuxmint/mintreport/issues/110

One of the comments in the 2nd link states:

In short, vainfo needs to be added to the depends list. This seems like something that should be done prior to Mint 22.3, so that the full capabilities of mintreport can be used from the installation medium as well.

The 2nd Open issue hasn't been assigned to anyone yet, so perhaps needs a few up-votes or 'Me too' comments adding to the thread to get it noticed.

[NATTtrash]

Re: Impressed

I too updated the box of the missus that has Mint xfce running on it. Pretty painless and quick. Ran into only 2 issues (jotted down for general benefit ;)

[1] The update can be done with the Update Manager > Edit (only GUI, no cli. Boohoo!). When clicked it came back

Please switch to another Linux Mint mirror - Your APT configuration is corrupt.

This is probably because the missus doesn't use this Update Manager, but uses apt and nala in cli. To solve, just do

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/* -vf; sudo apt clean; sudo apt update

...and click the update option again in the Update Manager > Edit

[2] Because she has no use for it, and since it takes up quite some root partition space, the missus removed some mint theming and artwork. However, when prompting the update, mint will only update after reinstall these rather large packages (close to 1GB). This is done automatically, no additional user action needed. After update, removing again if that is your preference is not an issue:

mint-core-xfce mint-meta-core mint-backgrounds mint-cursor-themes mint-themes mint-X-icons mint-Y-icons

[Anonymous Coward]

Just revived a perfectly good old Thinkpad which W10/11 deemed obsolete. Lovely how fast it now runs again with the Micro$oft infestation gone.

[williamyf]

Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

TL;DRL 32 Bit Support from Linux Mint is out, use AntiX25 instead.

Linux Mint was the last man standing amongst the two main "Distros for Windows refugees * " to still support 32 bit architectures. But alas, that support ran out Jan 01 when LMDE 6 Faye 32bit stoped being supported.

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?m=202511

I live in Venezuela, and have a bunch of Laptops based on the venerable Intel T2080, that, while it could run Windows 10 IoT 21H2 until 2031, the experience is painful at best (and illegal, or grey at worst). And also have some Pentium 4s 552 Laptops as well (these P4s top at Win7, no Win10 for those). While these laptops will not be adequate for Solidworks or Maya, or running Doom the Dark Ages, heck, even Youtube will be a slideshow with smooth audio, at least these allow people to interact with banks and eGovt, browse news on the net about the fast moving political landscape here, and write/read a letter, presentation, or basic spreadsheet, or some edcuational/edutaintment software.

My intention was to donate them to people in need. Plenty of Venezuelans or Cubans (phisotherapists most of them) with no computers whatsoever in my proximity.

Enter AntiX 25 Beta 2.

https://antixlinux.com/antix-25-full-beta2-for-public-testing/

Better performance** than Win10 IoT 21H2, and the AintiX people are pledging to support it equaly (or even longer) than BookWorm (Jun 30, 2028).

https://mxlinux.org/blog/changes-coming-with-mx-25/

Note: MX Linux is closely related to AntiX Linux as it is a combination of MEPIS and AntiX.

https://mxlinux.org/about-us/

The AntiX 25-beta-2 is still rough, but the expectation is to be able to upgrade to stable from the Repos, instead of a clean install. The GUI is not as polished as the Cinammon desktop, but is serviceable, and more or less familiar enough for windows refugees***.

I'll be donating 3 of those Laptops next week, with a few more to come.

¿Is this ideal? No, AntiX is a great distro, I've known it since 2022 (when I started using the core-non-GUI version for some thinkering), but is not what you would call non-Linux-saavy-friendly. And Even among Linux enthusiasts is an obscure Distro. But I am gratefull for the effort of the AntiX maintainers to give us the option.

If I can keep these laptops out of the landfill for 3~5 more years, and give the recipients 3~5 more years to save money for a laptop of their choosing, now that the economic and political situation here is slowy improving: ¡So be it! That's a win in my book.

¡So thank you Linux Mint and thank you AntiX!

* People who do not want to leave Windows. They may even be happy using Windows 11, but are forced to abandon the Windows Ecosystem for whatever reason. The other highly recomended distro for Windows refugees is ZorinOS.

** Not Slightly better, not significantly better, just better

*** Ugly and small start button on the bottom left corner, ugly and small pinned Icons, ugly and huge icons for runnig applications, icons do not resemble Windows in the slightless, bunch of confusing extras in the task bar.

[Taliesinawen]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

> Enter AntiX 25 Beta 2

Proudly anti-fascist "antiX Magic" in an environment suitable for old and new computers.

I hadn't realized one had to subscribe to a political philosophy in order to use a computer.

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

I'm old enough to remember when anti-fascist was the default for most of humanity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

Really? I’m old enough to remember when “fascist” and “nazi” actually referred to a specific set of hateful ideologies, and weren’t merely slurs thrown around by lazy non-thinkers who apply them to anyone who’s politically to the right of Bernie Sanders/Jeremy Corbyn.

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

Found the nazi...

[williamyf]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

While I do not 100% agree with AntiX ideology, i Do not disagree 100% either.

I was able to download the ISO like any other non-ideologicaly minded distribution and use it, no questions asked.

Here in Venezuela (and in LatAm) is typical of some company owners to put biblical quotes in products. Me being an eastern orthodox could not care less, and no one is checking at the till if I am a trus believer, or just a non-practicing one...

[keithpeter]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

@Taliesinawen

"I hadn't realized one had to subscribe to a political philosophy in order to use a computer."

You don't. AntiX is gpl licenced including the tools and scripts. It is free software. There are also plenty of other Linux distributions to choose from and some BSD* derived operating systems with different licencing.

@williamyf

Thanks for an interesting post and best of luck with it all

[m4r35n357]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

On a vaguley related note, MX seem to have returned to supporting init choice, on a single ISO: https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-25-1-infinity-beta-1-isos-now-available-for-testing-purposes/

Looks like they had a quiet word with the antiX guys, and changed their mind ;)

"The current system is thanks to @ProwlerGr and their “init-diversity” work with the antiX distribution."

[williamyf]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

Good to know.

Having said that, I am in the camp that does not care an ιώτα about their Init system, and, since most of my Linux-ing is done on the Cloud Side* (My last job was technical trainer for OpenStack) I have positive feelings about systemd.

* I tried client side Linux on and off from '96 til the mid '00s, I was not impressed, OS/2 Warp Impressed me more (still have the manuals), yet I remained on Windows for the Software (is the software, is always the software, the OS is just a means to run the software). In my old age, I was/am on Mac from '09 till '28. In '28 I'll decide between Win11 or Linux.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

"Ugly and small start button on the bottom left corner, ugly and small pinned Icons, ugly and huge icons for runnig applications, icons do not resemble Windows in the slightless, bunch of confusing extras in the task bar."

If KDE is an option you could try that. There's a lot of downloadable themes, icon sets etc. for all manner of of Windows UIs.

[williamyf]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

«If KDE is an option you could try that. There's a lot of downloadable themes, icon sets etc. for all manner of of Windows UIs.»

KDE is not an option, and even if it were, when I prepare machines for donation, I give them with a stock distro.

Is bad enough for these people not to have Windows (remember, they are "Windows REFUGEES", they do not want to use Linux, they are forced into it), to also have to take care and track icon packs and such when they "self support" (for, in most cases, as soon as I give the machine, I am done, doubly so with the cubans, who take their machines with them when they return).

Also, on my end, I do not want to spend more time and energy on these machines except the minimum indespensable, so, the stock distro it is.

That was/is the beauty of Linux Mint and ZorinOS, the stock experience was tailored to mimic Windows as mucha as possible, Ideal for "Windows Refugees".

When, Inebitably, in a few years*, 64bit capable machines start to appear for donation, I'll return to Mint or ZorinOS.

* Here in Venezuela, people could not care less about Win10 security patches, is when software they want to run stops running, only then, the machines will be discarded, so I can donate them, and each ISV has different plans on Win10 Support, and many of those are not public at the moment.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

> Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits.

They can't easily keep it going if Debian doesn't.

Mageia still supports 32-bit.

[williamyf]

Re: Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits. Welcome AntiX 25 32 Bits.

«> Thank you mint for LMDE 32 Bits.

They can't easily keep it going if Debian doesn't.»

Yet, AntiX is based on Debian too, and they persevered on 32 bit support.

«Mageia still supports 32-bit.»

Good to know.

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus 1 for Xfce and Thunar

I only prefer Xfce due to its low resource use and the Thunar file manager.

I created several custom Thunar actions that lets me view md5/sha1 sums, stat and strings in a custom Zenity window just by right clicking on a file and selecting my custom actions from the drop down menu.

I haven't tried to see if Nemo allows for custom actions as well.

[brainwrong]

'or "i18n" for short'

What's this? Are you going to start writing articles in C, rather than a human readable language?

[Bebu sa Ware]

"i18n for short"

What's this?

Decades and decades ago when "Internationalisation" was becoming a thing in proprietary Unix, I recall talk at conference by a chap from Sun who pretty much started off by stating "internationalisation is really about localisation" which made sense to me at the time. Since then I18n and L10n are more precisely defined as two parts of the overall process. The abbreviations remove the need to choose between 'z' and 's'. ;)

I suspect all the i18n etc libraries are actually coded in C or C++ but I do encourage the Rust community to reimplement them. ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "i18n for short"

For most people, it is indeed a foreign language

In reality, it and the ISO Standard allows all sorts of different languages and dialects to work. The days of 7-BIT ASCII are long gone (thankfully)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859

It can be confusing at first with needing to know the endian for multi-byte character sets and all that stuff but the OS designers have catered for it decades ago.

Yes the days of single byte character strings were much easier to debug but that was a dead end and had to go although I still encounter some people from the USA who refuse to admit it/accept it.

Sigh.

I worked with a guy from DEC Geneva who was on the ISO standards committee back in the late 1980's. He later helped us get languages like Kazak supported in the ATM network that we installed in Almaty.

[frankvw]

Re: "i18n for short"

"...I18n and L10n are more precisely defined..."

Be that as it may, I'm still struggling to see how I should read that as "internationalisation" and "localisation". What happened to using words instead of SMS/chatroom shorthand in real life? (Oh, wait, that should be "IRL".)

Maybe I'm just getting too old.

[Richard 12]

Re: "i18n for short"

The abbreviations are common because they're very long words, relatively difficult to spell, and have at least two different spellings in the various dialects of English.

The somewhat odd i18n and L10n are also very easy to search for, because they're somewhat odd.

It also avoids the term "translation", which is a small part of the whole - that some US-based project managers and developers seem to think is the entire thing - while most simply ignore everything outside US-English, sadly.

[ecofeco]

Just updated this week.

Works great. Fast update. Not much change to the UI except it seems, I dunno, a little, tighter? Zero update issues.

It's only my casual PC as I use a different PC for daily driving and work, so I never have any reason to flog it and find its limits. But it makes my 10 year old PC run like new.

[frankyunderwood123]

great option for experienced users too

I’ve been using Linux on and off since 1996 and have always had a linux box nearby since then, occasionally it’s been my primary system, but more often a secondary one. These days it’s my gaming and AI dabbling rig which I use daily. (macOS is my primary system)

I’ve tried so many distros over the years, but keep coming back to mint.

It just works for me in terms of competently keeping out of my way and not looking like it was designed by a committee of grey beards or kids on shrooms.

It’s not just a newbs distribution - why wouldn’t anyone want an OS which is easy to use?

[desht]

Re: great option for experienced users too

Same here, and I started with SLS Linux in... 1992? Mint has been my choice for the last 10+ years 'cos it's been solid and reliable.

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Re: great option for experienced users too

As you stated, it certainly is not just an OS for beginners.

Nearly 11 years of happily using it here.

Windows? I've heard of it.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: great option for experienced users too

As a matter of curiosity, what does an OS designed by a committee of grey-beards look like?

[Liam Proven]

Re: great option for experienced users too

> As a matter of curiosity, what does an OS designed by a committee of grey-beards look like?

OpenBSD?

[Doctor Syntax]

"When Canonical switched Ubuntu's default desktop to Unity in 2011, many people found the new Mac-like desktop strange and unfamiliar. Mint offered a Windows-like alternative"

You need to specify which Windows because IIRC Unity was more akin to W8 which came out shortly afterwards.

[Liam Proven]

No. Unity shipped approximately 18 months before Windows 8.0.

Personally, I am still running Unity. My work laptop has Ubuntu Unity, because it was installed afresh in 2021. My personal laptops mostly run a very old copy of Ubuntu which was originally installed about 13 or 14 years ago, so they originally came with the Unity desktop.

I would strongly dispute that there is any conspicuous resemblance between Windows 8 and the Unity desktop. Windows 8 uses a relatively conventional taskbar, by default at the bottom of the screen. In contrast, Unity uses a dock like panel which is by default placed at the left edge of the screen, a position where Windows 11 no longer permits it to be placed. Windows 8 uses menus inside windows, like every other version of Windows, whereas Unity uses a global menu bar at the top of the screen like macOS. Windows 8 uses a full screen app browser, whereas Unity uses a search driven app and file browser which more closely resembles macOS's Spotlight.

So, no, I disagree, and dispute that. I look at the Unity desktop virtually every day of the week, and it remains my personal favourite desktop for the Linux operating system that has ever been released, and I don't think that it has very much in common with the Windows 8 desktop that didn't appear until a year and a half after Unity was first released.

[Doctor Syntax]

When you get to my age 18 months is "shortly after"!

As far as I could make out - and remember - both attempted to look like mobile phone UIs and Unity had a thing about not being able to place files on the desktop,

[Liam Proven]

> As far as I could make out - and remember - both attempted to look like mobile phone UIs

TBH I think it's fairer to say that while Win8 was touch-led, Unity was derived from the Netbook Launcher and was designed for small-screen efficiency.

https://www.theregister.com/2010/10/25/ubuntu_demotes_gnome/

Unity was Ubuntu's response to Microsoft threatening legal action:

https://www.theregister.com/2007/05/15/torvalds_microsoft_patents/

I wrote a long piece on this.

https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/

And very little has got me so much abuse online from so many people. I find this amusing and choose to take angry denials as a sort of confirmation. As Mandy Rice-Davis said: "Well they _would_ say that, wouldn't they?"

If Ubuntu and Red Hat _didn't_ deny any Win9x influence in their desktops, then that would be confirmation and acceptance. SUSE didn't even try to fight: SUSE just paid and made a patent-sharing deal.

One of the things SUSE got from the MS deal was that SUSE let customers "spend" paid Microsoft support credits on support for SLE. I think -- don't know -- SUSE could redeem these with MS for $.

For a while, big MS customers with expensive support contracts who needed Linux went with SLE because the support was effectively free: it was prepaid.

SUSE thought it was BFFs with MS... like anyone can be trusted allies with a rabid honey badger. It came as a nasty shock to SUSE that when WSL launched it featured Ubuntu not openSUSE.

The chronology is this:

2004: Ubuntu does the first more-or-less consumer-quality _desktop_ Linux that is 100% free of charge. No paid version. It uses the current best of breed FOSS components and they choose GNOME 2, Mozilla, and OpenOffice.

By 2006 Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper Drake" comes out, the first LTS. It is catching on a bit.

Fedora Core 6 and RHEL 4 are also getting established, and both use GNOME 2. Every major distro offers GNOME 2, even KDE-centric ones like SUSE. Paid distros like Mandriva and SUSE as starting to get in some trouble -- why pay when Ubuntu does the job?

Even Solaris uses GNOME 2.

2006-2007, MS is getting worried and starts talking about suing. It doesn't know who yet so it just starts saying intentionally not-vague-at-all things like the Linux desktop infringes "about 265 patents".

This is visibly true if you are 35-40 years old: if you remember desktop GUI OSes before 1995, they were all over the place. Most had desktop drive icons. Most had a global menu bar at the top. This is because most copied MacOS. Windows was an ugly mess and only lunatics copied that. (Enter the Open Group with Motif.)

But then came Win95. Huge hit.

After 1995, every GUI gets a task bar, it gets buttons for apps, even window managers like Fvwm95 and soon after IceWM. QNX Neutrino looks like it. OS/2 Warp 4 looks like it. Everyone copies it.

Around the time NT 4 is out and Win98 is taking shape, both KDE and GNOME get going and copy the Win9x look and feel. Xfce dumps its CDE look and feel, goes FOSS, and becomes a Win95 copy.

MS _had a case_. Everyone _had_ copied them. MS is not stupid and it's been sued lots of times. You betya it patented everything and kept the receipts. The only problem it has is: who does it sue?

RH says no. GNOME 3 says "oh noes our industry leading GU is, er, yeah, stale, it's stagnant, it's not changing, so what we're gonna do is rip it up and start again! With no taskbar and no hierarchical start menu and no menu bars in windows and no OK and CANCEL buttons at the bottom" and all the other things that they can identify that are from Win9x.

GNOME is mainly sponsored by Red Hat.

Canonical tries to get involved; RH says fsck off. It can't use KDE, that's visibly a ripoff. Ditto Xfce, Enlightenment, etc. LXDE doesn't exist yet.

So it does its own thing based on the Netbook Launcher. If it daren't imitate Windows then what's the leading other candidate? This Mac OS X thing is taking off. It has borrowed some stuff from Windwos like Cmd+Tab and Fast User Switching and stuff and got away with it. Let's do that, then.

SUSE just wearily says "OK, how much? Where do we sigh?"

> and Unity had a thing about not being able to place files on the desktop,

Not true. It's always allowed desktop icons.

The convergence stuff happened later, after the iPhone (2007) and Android (2008) and iPad (2010) were big hits.

[Fluffy Cactus]

None of this is helpful to newbies!

[keithpeter]

"My personal laptops mostly run a very old copy of Ubuntu which was originally installed about 13 or 14 years ago, so they originally came with the Unity desktop."

Pretty ancient TLS versions then unless you have updated the system and kept the DE. Best of luck.

[Boothy]

Noticed another change in Cinnamon Nemo

Just in case anyone else notices this change and wants to revert it.

Previous Nemo showed a tree view for directories/folders in the main right hand window of Nemo, via little arrows that you click on the expand the view into the folders. For some reason after updating Mint, the tree view was now disabled.

Personally I quiet like this tree view, such as being able to look in more than one directory at the same time in the same window. Without it, you have to double-click folders, and can only view the contents of one at a time (in the same window).

Turns out it's an option (of course it is!): Edit menu > Preferences > Views > List View Defaults > Tick box: Show folder expanders

[Fluffy Cactus]

Re: Noticed another change in Cinnamon Nemo

How do you quiet like something?

[chroot]

LDME

It's fun that Linux Mint still provides the Ubuntu-based distributions, but I don't get it. Linux Mint has LDME for many years, cutting out the commercial middle-man. What am I missing?

[blu3b3rry]

Re: LDME

Huh. Took me 30, no, 10 seconds to look at the page for it on their website: https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

The website even tells you at the top of the page:

"What is LMDE?

LMDE is a Linux Mint project which stands for "Linux Mint Debian Edition".

Its goal is to ensure Linux Mint can continue to deliver the same user experience if Ubuntu was ever to disappear. It allows us to assess how much we depend on Ubuntu and how much work would be involved in such an event. LMDE is also one of our development targets, as such it guarantees the software we develop is compatible outside of Ubuntu."

Effectively a backup project, I guess the developer effort to keep it maintained is fairly minimal given Ubuntu's parentage.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: LDME

It still doesn't answer the question of why have the Ubuntu-based version.

[Col_Panek]

Re: LDME

In case Ubuntu, say, gets bought out by that other crazy guy from South Africa., and goes downhill like Cybertruck sales.

[Fluffy Cactus]

Re: LDME

None of this is helpful to newbies!

How about starting at the beginning!

Like when you were 5 years old and knew nothing about LINUX!

Because that is what is needed to attract any newbie!

[Dunstan Vavasour]

Lost my keyboard mappings

I use a couple of keyboard remappings (put the Ctrl key to the left of A where God meant it to be; swap Alt and Windows because my keyboard's broken). The upgrade lost these remappings so I had to reapply them.

Thanks, as ever, to the Mint team. Having retired last April, I've been able to go Microslop free, which is delightful.

[SuperGeek]

It's great to see...

How far Linux Mint has come in its life. I've been using it since v2.2 (Bianca) it just gets better and better!

Liam, instead of calling yourself the FOSS "desk", why not call yourself the FOSS Guru? You are! I enjoy reading your articles and have learnt a lot :)

There is just you alone doing Linux and FOSS at the Reg, correct? Or are there backend guys?

[Liam Proven]

Re: It's great to see...

> Liam, instead of calling yourself the FOSS "desk", why not call yourself the FOSS Guru? You are! I enjoy reading your articles and have learnt a lot :)

Thank you very much indeed!

A long long time ago, I think I used that phrase or something like it in my bio somewhere. :-)

But I am (very happily) quite far removed from the sharp end, from deploying it in production on the public internet, and that...

1. makes me very happy.

2. inspires respect in those who do so

3. makes me far from any omniscient guru, so I dropped it.

> There is just you alone doing Linux and FOSS at the Reg, correct? Or are there backend guys?

I am a rather slow writer, sadly, and others on the team do often pick up news stories and get the coverage out there while I'm still researching something else.

And we have a very hard-working back-end team, and I don't contribute to that at all. Which is probably why the site stays up...

[Col_Panek]

Re: It's great to see...

I keep coming back to Mint since ... 9? I dunno. It Just Works.

If it had KDE it would be perfect. Now I just bounce back and forth between Neon, MX, and Mint. My wife runs Mint, but thinks it's just an upgraded Windows 7.

[Ropewash]

re-install

"If you're on Mint 20.. you might want to re-install"

Or don't. It's not like it will cease to function just because it's a bit old.

[harrys]

dual boot mode.....

find any "normy", shrink windows partition in disk manager then install it on a their windows pc in dual boot mode, mint install sets itself up as default in grub

tell them about how to select windows at startup if they have any problems

you never hear back from them, especially (hate to say this) if you install chrome as default browser :(

few weeks/months later delete the windows entry in grub!

for every power user .... there's fedora kde for a similar dual boot experience!

[Fluffy Cactus]

Re: dual boot mode.....

None of this is helpful to newbies!

How about starting at the beginning!

Like when you were 5 years old and knew nothing about LINUX!

Because that is what is needed to attract any newbie!

[Cubbie Roo]

The use of ATP is still the biggest reason for me to avoid Mint/Debian etc . . . . pacman in CachyOS is simply better

[frankvw]

"...I18n and L10n are TOO precisely defined..."

I installed the upgrade, which was painless, with one small exception: my keyboard layout was set to "US Int'l with dead keys" but the upgrade replaced it with "South Africa" which is correct for my locale (that is where I live) but has no dead key support. I had to restore it manually.

No biggie, but still one wonders why, without so much as a by-your-leave, the upgrade removes things like dead key support. Oh well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "...I18n and L10n are TOO precisely defined..."

US Intl w/ dead keys is the only proper layout. Death to AZERTY !

[[e-mail]]

Great on older hardware but...

Linux Mint is great on older hardware. It is definitely easy to transition from the Windows user interface, since Cinnamon feels a lot like Windows 10. On the other hand, I have found that installing it on newer hardware (Razerblade 15, 2025). Ubuntu just worked. Have others seen the same thing?

[8bitHero]

Re: Great on older hardware but...

Unfortunately no. I have an nVida graphics card in my laptop which even after installing the correct drivers invokes a bug in the file chooser pop-up which displaces the location of the mouse roughly 3/4's of a line down from where it is visually displaying. (I have to click on the row above an item to get it to click on that item). This appears to be an issue with Wayland which has yet to be resolved. I am living with it for now, curious if it shows up in Mint as well?

[Col_Panek]

Torrent = trickle

I'd torrent Mint to do my part, but my cable upload speeds are slower than 10 WPM Morse Code.

[Fluffy Cactus]

Questions about Linux

Does anyone of you super geniuses remember that time WHEN YOU KNEW NOTHING ABOUT LINUX?

YES? NO?

If you remember, then PLEASE TELL US REFUGEES FROM MSFT:

1) Which book would you recommend to first explain and learn the secrets of Linux?

Anyone here have the tiniest sense of humanity (Golden Rule, etc) left to be able to

answer a question? And to do that with careful measured words, without getting either

into a weird political rant about "Harshware Nazis" (I hate em too!)

nor getting into a strange sporting event about "Who knows more about Linux, without being able to explain the first thing about it"!

2) Who, like what company or person, would you recommend to be of DEFINITE HELP in this changeover from MSFT TO LINUX? Is there such a person?

I do not know a single person on this site, who is willing and able to explain ANYTHING about LINUX? How come?

For example "What TF does SUDO mean?

Or: Apart from the Pope of LINUX (The Magical, the amazing and fantastic Thorwald) is there ANYONE else who feels the least bit responsible for

what LINUX does, or is, or can do, or not can do?

3) Given the fact that Windows is a monopoly, the majority of people are used to windows programs! THEREFORE, yes, THEREFORE, they all want

to know the secret of HOW TO RUN WINDOWS PROGRAMS on LINUX. It is not because we WANT TO, it's because absolutely no one knows a

company that makes programs for LINUX. We would love it if there was such a company|!

But, I challenge everyone of you commenters here: DO YOU KNOW A SINGLE COMPANY THAT MAKES WINDOWS SOFTWARE RUN ON LINUX?

IF YES, THEN I CHALLENGE YOU: Make a list of them, with websites, emails, and addresses, and phone numbers!

If you guys cannot answer these questions, then one thing is certain: "You love to be a boys in a treehouse club, and you love your secret handshakes,

your secret codes, and you love to invite NO ONE into your club!

That's my challenge to the lot of you! I will check back in a month, and see what you got!

[Fluffy Cactus]

Anyone here know people who know how to explain Linux?

Are there books?

Are there companies or people, that explain things?

Are there known and tested ways about how to run Windows based software on LInux? (I would not ask, because, nobody makes software for Linux!)

Is there ANYONE AT ALL who feels that the LINUX CLUB is like a secret boys in a tree-house deal, with secret handshakes and codes?

And no one totally tired of the shit MSFT does, is even invited.

Is there a way to buy a new computer that does not make me pay for Windows?

Nobody on this absurd planet is born knowing everything about LINUX! How did you learn its secrets?

We would like to know! ANYONE?

I will check back here in a month, and see whether a LINUX PERSON, who wants to explain things to newbies. even exists.