Linux Mint Blog

From the Linux Mint blog (https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4675), it seems this is the crucial issue. "They will integrate well. If we let you choose a desktop theme, ALL installed applications will support it." So it seems like these Xapps will be built for Mint's desktop themes instead of the Gnome design language. Hopefully the work will be worth it for the Mint project.

I've seen this in the Linux Mint project [1] with donations coming from carpet cleaning and light fixtures cos. Sometimes you'll see law firms and I.T. consultants. It's a pretty great idea. Counts as a win-win in my books, as long as the biz is legit. [1] https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4466

Nothing will change for Mint. They are committed to continue distributing Firefox as a .deb package, following upstream as closely as possible. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244

From the linked announcement: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906 > Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can’t audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store. You’ve as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you. This is a great summary of why people rightfully feel nervous about Snap. People run linux because they want visibility and control into what is happening on their systems. Canonical seems to want to take away that visibility and control from their users.

> Last time I looked on Mint there was no support for upgrading the system. Some years ago, the recommended way to upgrade Mint was indeed to do a full reinstall [1]. For a couple past years, there has been a simpler way, involving a bit of command line acrobatics [2]. Still not good for your mother-in-law. Apparently [3] only in 2015 Mint finally started to have the "normal" way, where you just click on an upgrade button, and the system upgrades itself. But even now, this does not upgrade the kernel. Weird. [1] http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2 [2] https://gist.github.com/hgomez/7074150 [3] http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2871

While it's not possible to get the computer without the OS installed, you're allowed to decline the Windows license and get a refund from Dell. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1073 Of course, it's not as convenient as the ideal circumstance of not having Windows installed by default, but it's the next best alternative nonetheless.

Linux Mint 11 and 12 are great alternatives. The Mint team has also made Cinnamon[1] which is also a great alternative to the default GNOME3 interface. If you don't want to reinstall Linux, Cinnamon is available for lots of the major distros, or you can compile it yourself. [1] http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910

I recently changed from Xubuntu to Mint XFCE and really like it: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1725 Xubuntu is still an excellent choice though.

If it's to avoid this kind of aberrations https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864985 it's totally understandable, but in practice, it doesn't work that smoothly unfortunately, not to mention the potential vendor lockdown, or as the Mint team phrased it: > If you’re a Fedora user and you want to install Spotify, you’re told to go to https://snapcraft.io/spotify. Spotify doesn’t distribute RPM packages, appimage, Flatpak or anything useful to a Fedora user who wants to download it, or to a Fedora maintainer who wants to add it to a repository. Fedora users are told to go to what is essentially a commercial store operated by a RedHat competitor where stats tell them their distribution is only 7th best. > We’re in luck, we can still download the .deb. If Spotify stops caring, what do we do? We move to snap because we have to? Will the snap store continue to let people download actual .snap files in the future or will that get locked down ? Will the snap store continue to operate without an Ubuntu One account or will we get vendor-locked ? https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3766

This was 9 years ago... Read the official blog with installation instructions. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4882

OP mentioned stability and long-term supported as what he’s looking for. The Linux Mint team have stated LMDE is more for themselves to gather info and not a priority. So I would stay away if looking for stability and long-term support. “We work on LMDE primarily for us, to get that information. It is not a priority, certainly not compared to Linux Mint itself…” https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4276

Apparently, straight from Mozilla, thanks to a special deal. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244

They're against it; see for example https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906

Conversely Linux Mint has agreed for Mozilla to provide debs directly for Mint. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244

Is this related to the Linux Mint partnership? https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244 I'm specifically wondering if the impacted users are Mint users who had DDG has their default search engine.

the developers are paid nothing to make it Isn't Mint the second most used Linux distro or so? Shouldn't selling the default search engine alone bring in a boatload of money? On their blog they say: Search engines who do not share the income generated by our users, are removed from Linux Mint and might get their ads blocked. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851

It's really interesting that Mozilla doesn't funnel donations to software development interests. There are successful open source projects that do so, such as Linux Mint [0]. Maybe what's really broken is the idea that a browser needs a backing corporation to fund it? Personally, I can see no better way to keep an open internet than through the development of meaningful software that serves that purpose. [0] "Donations are usually quite high after a release and Linux Mint 20 is no exception." https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3953

It's not for nothing that Snap is considered dangerous by SUSE and is not officially supported. They even fail basic upstream responsibilities. https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906 > A year later, in the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, the Chromium package is indeed empty and acting, without your consent, as a backdoor by connecting your computer to the Ubuntu Store. Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can’t audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store. You’ve as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you. > First, I’m happy to confirm that Linux Mint 20, like previous Mint releases will not ship with any snaps or snapd installed.

Better link that also makes it obvious this is a beta release: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3773

The actual update can be viewed here: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3736

Linux Mint was breached some time ago: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2994

That's no longer the case, you can dist-upgrade to 18.2 from 18.1 or 18.0. See: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3306 for the how-to.

OpenBSD has a much larger market share than most fringe Linux distributions. They also have a focus on security and many high-profile experts. Example: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2994

The bigger issue is that the installer .iso images for Linux Mint were backdoored this weekend: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2994

"Edit by Clem: We shut down the server until we find the source of the second intrusion (probably something left by the first)." http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2994

I was referring to their use of OpenDNS http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=128529 And hijacking Google search on Firefox, http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=142

There's also the mate version - http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2627

Linux Mint also uses Mate. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2366 Cinnamon is listed first, but Mate is much more of an equal player here than something like xubuntu is compared to ubuntu.

Our goal is to give users a good search experience while funding ourselves by receiving a share of this income. Search engines who do not share the income generated by our users, are removed from Linux Mint and might get their ads blocked. ... It won’t only be down to donations and sponsorships anymore, your activity on the web, every search query you make and product you buy will help fund our project. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851 * * * Try Trisquel http://trisquel.info/ which based on Ubuntu, with non-free software removed.

Ubuntu: Unity Mint: KDE, Xfce, MATE, or Maya [1] 1. http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2031