Linux Mint 17 codenamed “Qiana”

[solarcat]

Expectations are that Ubuntu 14.04, scheduled for release tomorrow, will have the Linux 3.13 kernel, because the 3.14 kernel was released just a little too late to make it in.

My question is will the Mint team include the 3.14 kernel in Mint 17? Or since Mint 17 will be built on Ubuntu 14.04, will Mint 17 have the older 3.13 kernel?

I have a very specific reason for wanting to know. I'm running Mint 16 on a newly built computer with an AMD Kaveri (A10-7850k) CPU. The 3.13 kernel does not support the Kaveri temperature sensors, while the 3.14 kernel does. It would be really nice to have that support without having to wait another six months (or two years if the next four Mint releases are all based on Ubuntu 14.04).

Yes, I've tried replacing the Mint 16 kernel with 3.14. The result was an unstable system. I'm not inclined to try it again.

Thanks!

[rosswmcgee]

Good question? I guess we will know tomorrow. I installed 16 petra today and also have a machine on Maya. Will the petra upgrade to Qiana?

[kmb42vt]

Good question? I guess we will know tomorrow. I installed 16 petra today and also have a machine on Maya. Will the petra upgrade to Qiana?

No, I'm afraid it won't. Linux Mint doesn't provide an upgrade path because the developers found out long ago that it causes way too many problems. Another reason is technologies behind Mint tend to change too much between releases, even 6 month releases.

That being said, LM16 will have approximately 4 more months to go at this point until EOL so you don't have to do a clean install of LM 17 LTS as soon as it's released (end of May) unless you want to. And once you do perform a clean install of LM 17 LTS you can effectively run it for a total 5 years until EOL with full support.

[rosswmcgee]

Hey thanks for the info. I was trying to explain to my wife my dilemma. Now today at this moment 0845 pst 4/172014 14.04lts has not been released. When it

is it may likely have some bugs. So waiting until May for LM 17 LTS is probably a wise idea. Mean while this week I tried on my spare computer Fedora desktop

Fedora mate, and PCLinux. Fortunately for me I could figure out a lot of the stuff, but a newbie to linux would be hopelessly lost. Just trying to set up my

old 1209 all in one hp printer took me three hours. Then I installed lm mate 16 and it did all that in a breeze. No wonder Mint leads the pack.

[solarcat]

Now it's confirmed that Ubuntu 14.04 was released with the 3.13 kernel. Can anyone say whether or not the Mint team will try to get the 3.14 kernel into Mint 17?

[primski]

is there a beta iso for lm 17 ?

[kmb42vt]

is there a beta iso for lm 17 ?

Afraid not. The developers only release RCs to the general public, not betas. That being said, you can check the following page in order to see how testing is going for Linux Mint 17:

http://community.linuxmint.com/iso

The first builds of the main editions of LM 17 to be tested aren't listed yet and won't be until somewhere around the first week of May.

[tape_ape]

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 with the nVidia driver in a laptop and had a dual monitor setup working for the first time on that optimus laptop. However, it was slower (and much uglier) than LM 16/KDE/nouveau(?) on the same machine.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[Brahim Salem]

is there a beta iso for lm 17 ?

there is no beta for Linux Mint 17 but if you want to run Cinnamon 2.2 nightly (unstable) on Ubuntu 14.04 follow this tutorial I made http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=165545

Enjoy the speed

[Brain Virus]

will this be a LTS release?

[Dean28]

will this be a LTS release?

Yes

Sent from my Xperia S using Tapatalk

[mr_raider]

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 with the nVidia driver in a laptop and had a dual monitor setup working for the first time on that optimus laptop. However, it was slower (and much uglier) than LM 16/KDE/nouveau(?) on the same machine.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

Have you tried Kubuntu 14.04? With some work and elbow grease, you can make it look and act 90% like Mint KDE. I'm trying it now currently on my laptop, but will wait for Mint 17 KDE to install on my desktop.

[mr_raider]

Expectations are that Ubuntu 14.04, scheduled for release tomorrow, will have the Linux 3.13 kernel, because the 3.14 kernel was released just a little too late to make it in.

My question is will the Mint team include the 3.14 kernel in Mint 17? Or since Mint 17 will be built on Ubuntu 14.04, will Mint 17 have the older 3.13 kernel?

I have a very specific reason for wanting to know. I'm running Mint 16 on a newly built computer with an AMD Kaveri (A10-7850k) CPU. The 3.13 kernel does not support the Kaveri temperature sensors, while the 3.14 kernel does. It would be really nice to have that support without having to wait another six months (or two years if the next four Mint releases are all based on Ubuntu 14.04).

Yes, I've tried replacing the Mint 16 kernel with 3.14. The result was an unstable system. I'm not inclined to try it again.

Thanks!

One thing to note is that since 12.04, Ubuntu, and therefore Mint, has a feature called hardware enablement stack.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack

This means that the LTS kernel (3.13) will have updates made available when new kernels are released for the non LTS versions. You could keep running Mint 16, until Ubuntu releases 14.04.1, then the new kernel could be backported.

BTW, I'm running 14.04 on an AMD 7870 GPu that uses the same GCN architecture as your Kaveri CPU. Both FGLRX and the radeon OSS driver work fine. Furthermore, the OSS driver has some excellent video acceleration features enabled via vdpau. If you are adventurous you can install 14.04 and update your radeon drivers and mesa stack manually.

[beachgardener]

pleae help me refresh my memory

i know that generally Mint likes fresh installs, but given that i have /home separate from / and given that i use the same username and p.w. can i install 17 on top of 16 and just not format /home and get a good result? Or is distro upgrade a better path to tread? Thanks.

[mr_raider]

pleae help me refresh my memory

i know that generally Mint likes fresh installs, but given that i have /home separate from / and given that i use the same username and p.w. can i install 17 on top of 16 and just not format /home and get a good result? Or is distro upgrade a better path to tread? Thanks.

I would suggest you wipe all the hidden files and directories that start with a . in your home directory. They contain config files that may fubar a new install.

[Spearmint2]

pleae help me refresh my memory

i know that generally Mint likes fresh installs, but given that i have /home separate from / and given that i use the same username and p.w. can i install 17 on top of 16 and just not format /home and get a good result? Or is distro upgrade a better path to tread? Thanks.

I would suggest you wipe all the hidden files and directories that start with a . in your home directory. They contain config files that may fubar a new install.

If he does, then he loses all his firefox and thunderbird settings and bookmarks and passwords, etc.

How I upgraded from 14 to 16 was to copy the /home folders to a FAT32 partition. Since I was changing my username also, (from mint14 to mint16) that helped strip "mint14" permissions from the files, which were restored to my new username when I added them back later. I fresh installed 16, copied it's home folders also to a FAT32. I then had my old folders and dot files overwrite the new home folders. You could also use CHOWN command then to be sure all permissions are correct. If not changing username, just simple copy back should suffice. I then chose ONLY the newer dot files I needed from mint16, which I'd backed up, (not mozilla and thunderbird and wine among others) and copied them back over the old dot home files in the new version 16. Everything worked fine then.

I detailed it here

[kmb42vt]

pleae help me refresh my memory

i know that generally Mint likes fresh installs, but given that i have /home separate from / and given that i use the same username and p.w. can i install 17 on top of 16 and just not format /home and get a good result? Or is distro upgrade a better path to tread? Thanks.

I would suggest you wipe all the hidden files and directories that start with a . in your home directory. They contain config files that may fubar a new install.

But not before you back up any of these hidden directories (.filename) that contain the profiles of applications you use first! For example:

.mozilla - Contains the Firefox profile
.thunderbird - Contains the Thunderbird profile
.googlearth - Contains the Google Earth settings and profile.
.filezilla - Contains all the settings for the program and the FTP settings for each site that's listed in Filezilla.
.Skype - Contains all settings for Skype.
.config/google-chrome - Contains the Google Chrome browser profile and settings.

Better yet, always back up all your data before any type of install.

The above are just examples and can be safely restored after a clean install so here's my advice.

Since Linux Mint doesn't really take all that time to install, back up all your data first which you should always do in any case. Then, during the installation procedure, make sure you do not format your existing "home" directory and go on with the rest of the installation with everything in your "home" directory still in place. If it works, then all you have to do is install your preferred applications and the settings and configurations should still be there--ideally.

With new releases comes new versions of (some) applications and some of these new versions don't take well to previous configurations. In those cases though, emptying the "profile" directories for any application that's having trouble and restarting the application is the equivalent to a fresh install.

And if it all goes south, you can perform a clean install and manually restore all your data that you wisely backed up in the first place?

I know of a few folks that keep the "home" partition intact during a new install and it works fine albeit after a bit of tweaking. I know others where it doesn't but each user's install is absolutely unique and results always vary. For myself, I always back up all my data and do a clean install every time. Takes less than 2 hours for me from backing up my data to a complete installation/restoration.

[javajeff]

I am excited for Linux Mint 17. Mint just gets it all right. I tried Ubuntu 14.04 today with Unity and Gnome, and they both made some improvements. BUT Mint still has way more features that feel right: Open Terminal here on right click context menu already installed, Window controls on the right, restricted extras already installed, Toggle location entry as a button on the interface, aesthetics, themes, and Cinnamon of course, etc. Feel free to add more to the list. Kudos to the Mint team! I have been using Mint for so long now that it is hard to use other distros.

[beachgardener]

Thank you for your replies, i am aware of those .directories for backing up, it does seem that a fresh install is still the best method and is what i have done in the past, just thought there might be an easier way, lets hope in future releases the upgrade could be smoother, cheers

I must add a very big thank you for all involved i really appreciate the work you do.

[javajeff]

I have always done fresh installs, and I do not know how it can get any easier providing people mount their /home on a separate partition. I think the entire fresh install process is like 10 minutes, and it keeps all my settings that are stored in my /home directory. For that reason, I have always done a fresh CUSTOM install with separate /, /home, and swap partitions. After I do the fresh install, I spend about 10 more minutes loading the software store with about 5 extra applications, adding my windows partition to FSTAB, and doing 3 manual installs. If I was to do this same process for Windows to get it where I need to be, it would be a 4-5 hour procedure installing programs, creating settings, and installing service packs...which is why a third party True Image program is a must for Windows.