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We are getting closer in now .... the Ubuntu base program has been released this past week and the Mint folks are busily debugging and modifying it.

Mint has made an announced change in what they will do going forward.   Since Ubuntu seems to be thrashing about a bit lately in its direction Mint is only going to use the LTS versions of Ubuntu as the base of all future Mint releases.  

They will separate out the most stable and usable Ubuntu LTS releases and rework them for their LTS release (and any development sub- release they may choose to do).

Mint will likely break with the Ubuntu 6 month cycle since where Ubuntu is going with these 6 month changes isn't where Mint is going at all any more.

This is sensible since the Ubuntu 6 month stutter burps have become less and less meaningful change-wise and the bugs Ubuntu is leaving in each 6 month release are increasing in number and severity.

Ubuntu has a dream of being the first convergent OS that is same same on all platforms and in chasing that dream they are moving further and further away from being a desktop system.

Mint uses Ubuntu as a base to get the good things from Ubuntu like the installer and the repositories and the Steam support and, well, there are many many good things that Ubuntu adds to Debian to make Debian more user friendly.

What Mint adds to the party is a complete focus on making a polished desktop experience, not giving up anything in trying to be a tablet or a phone OS.   And yes, as Ubuntu moves further into the phone/table world the differences between Mint and Ubuntu will get bigger and wider.

Mint has to constantly clean up the Ubuntu development bugs created in Ubuntu's frantic attempt to be a convergent OS, and Mint puts the only the most stable desktop interfaces back on top of the core OS system that remains.

Mint itself is used as the base system for several different distros who choose to use Mint as it is twice refined and bug corrected.   Peppermint is the Mint-based distro I have mentioned before for folks with very old machines that only have CD reader drives.

Right now, Mint is actually more popular than Ubuntu and has been for the last 4 years.

I changed over to Mint when Ubuntu went after tablets and phones as the interface needed to do that is really biased towards touch and I use a keyboard and mouse.  

Both work, Mint just is a lot more like XP to somebody changing over for the first time.

Mint Mate is the most XP like Linux platform out there, so that is why we are using Mint Mate 17 LTS as our jump off point.

Exceptions to the 20 gig space requirements


(in other words, I found a reason for you to want a lot of space on your Mint drive)


STEAM !!!

Steam has begun to shift the good old games over to Linux, the ones I played and LIKED back in the day, and their many many successors.

Examples, Alice and Alice the Madness Returns and Longest Journey and Siberia and Siberia 2  (each of them for $2.99 each on sale)

Now, I am not normally much of a gamer but I find as a budding old fart I have lots of time to kill and TV isn't cutting it, so I am gaming more than I used to.

GAMES TAKE UP A LOT OF ROOM, and even if you use the Steam trick of un-installing them when you aren't using them then re-installing them when you want them again, the fact you have more games lying around means you will use a lot more room on your Linux drive.

Each game is like 10-15 gigs ....  occasionally a biggie takes 20 gigs all by itself.

Steam makes gaming sooooo easy -- you can log into your account on multiple machines and keep some windows games over there on the wife's machine and keep your Linux games on your own machine.

Sneaky, huh?   Move your headphones and mouse over to her machine and do Siberia while she sleeps .....

She may wonder why you left a different mouse on her machine, that's because you game better with your best mouse type and a roller ball trackball mouse isn't always optimal for fast first person shooter work.  A regular optical "jest move it" mouse works better sometimes.

Note:  if you prefer to do your gaming on Windows on your old partitions, leave enough room there for your game collection to expand.


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Fair Warning about the Longest Journey and the Siberia games, the French/Russian sense of a "walk around and find/do things" game is extremely convoluted -- you will need a walk through to help you make progress, or else you will go crazy.         23 pages of complex puzzles that with the walk through are still tough to do.   French/Russians are a complex people and even their modern mythology is feature rich -- and you sense that they have a sense of lasting pride in Russia, no matter if Czarist or Communist at the moment.

Even the rusting ruins of a steam punk Communism are kinda impressive and sad ....

My wife loves those types of games... and downloads the "cheats" for them all the time.
LOL, she gets just as frustrated playing one of those as I do when i'm putting something together and it ain't working.

You are running off the CD?

Click on the Mint Menu in the bottom left corner of the screen > bottom left Quit > Restart or Shut down -- it will exit the CD and eject it as part of the process.

What, you thought it was going to be hard?

 

Mint ain't hard ....   operates almost exactly like XP did.

Fair warning --- Alice comes next .....

Alice bends your mind some -- it does something to you to be throwing them fire spewing jack-in-the-boxes around those blind corners at the bushwhacker guys and listening to them flammable card guys scream and shriek as they burn, especially the determined ones that actually manage to stumble around the corner all on fire & all thrashing and dancing and shrieking just trying so desperately to grab on to you to share the pain with you before they succumb.

Alice is mad as a hatter, make no mistake about it -- and guess who you are when you play this game?   Talking about playing with sharp knives .... and long thorned jacks, and blaster wands, and firepots.

Toymaker would love it ....    

Alice is a LONG and Complex game -- the dense terse text guide is 55 pages long on just how to get around the levels.   There are items to collect and things to find and things you must do to open up hidden stuff to find all your lost memories, the check list of this sort of stuff is 54 pages long.

If you do it all right, you can regain your sanity (pending Allce 3 coming out in a year or so anyway)


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Mint 16 is a stutter-bump release, so it might have been somewhat buggy when they turned it loose -- but that was 6 months ago so I would think all the things got fixed as they carefully prepped for the LTS release this month.  

Check the dates on your posts in the forums and compare it to the release date for the stutter-bump.

Lastly, this is why I only use LTS releases -- they are very stable and complete when released compared to a stutter-bump.   Some very cautious folks wait 6 months after the LTS is released so they have assurance that all has proven itself out to be all stable and and done by the time they touch it.   I never found that to be necessary.

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2616

Current Ubuntu bug list is here:          https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/trusty/+bugs

Please read the current Ubuntu bug list for critical defects still unfixed (8 out of 12 unfixed) and understand that until Ubuntu fixes the items under their control Linux Mint won't release the final stable release.

BUT ---- in order to get a leg up on the items that belong to Mint that Mint CAN fix, the Linux Mint 17 release candidate #2 hit the mirrors today and the fun has begun .... most of what has been reported are the already known Ubuntu bugs but some are new and unique to Linux Mint and are in the Mint process of reporting and bug fixing at this time.

We will NOT SEE A FINALIZED STABLE RELEASE ON LINUX MINT 17 UNTIL NEXT MONTH, possibly even later on into next month.

If you want to take a risk that your machine does not have the hardware that fires off one of the Ubuntu bug issues (or you don't use German, etc) then please feel free to become a Linux Mint 17 final release candidate beta tester.

Your final 17 beta software level will get updated with the fixes when identified and it will roll up into the stable release condition just as soon as these fixes hit the repositories.    You will only have to install it once and then put up with a month or two of messing about while the roaches get stomped.

Just don't be surprised if you do hit a snag or two right off the bat and DON't be quiet about it if it happens -- that is what Beta testing is all about.  Go on the Mint forums and tell them about your issues.

I will tell everyone when it is time to load up on the completed stable release (sometimes in June maybe).

      Me, I will wait for the full stable release to come out, thank you very much.

What does the word "triaged" really mean in Ubuntu speak?  

Not as important or urgent, perhaps might be left for the next 6 month "full redesign" release to design it out, ie. to make it completely "overcome by events'.  

Situationally unusual or relatively rare bugs that really aren't clear yet can get triaged until more repeated episodes are more thoroughly and understandably reported.

45 min later..... mint 17 loaded and running!

Now how do I "uninstall" mint 15??

I will read up on it...but if someone gets me the answer first...i'll be happy...

Oldrider,

Having reloaded a Windows OS and a Mint lately, can you tell us in your own words which one is easier/better and why?

Nothing like having someone who has just done it for the first time to tell you all about it (same reason the newbie gets to report the mountain trips -- it is all fresh and new to them).