Category: Linux

considering linux mint alternatives

whbeebe
Ubuntu 24.04 w/Cinnamon desktop environment

That didn’t take long. Behold Ubuntu 24.04 with the Cinnamon desktop. It’s a flavor/flavour of Ubuntu available from the Ubuntu website. I installed it as a VM hosted on my current Linux Mint system. Ubuntu Cinnamon uses the same version of the desktop that Linux Mint 21.3 currently uses, so there’s absolutely no difference as far as the GUI is concerned. And wonder of wonders, Ubuntu 24.04 no longer has brltty installed at all. As for all the little tweaks I like to add to my systems, it took all of twenty minutes to find and add everything I wanted. Am I satisfied, and more importantly, is this the path I believe I should go down? Maybe.

Linux Mint 22

One of the most powerful tools in my personal software arsenal is QEMU/KVM, which allows me to create Linux virtual machines hosted on my regular computer. Whenever I want to try something out such as a different distribution, or to try to do something I consider a risk with my current system, I spin up a VM sandbox for those purposes. Gone are the days I felt I had to keep separate machines around for that purpose.

I’ve already shown one VM running Ubuntu Cinnamon at the top. Here’s the second VM running Linux Mint 22. That VM started with Linux Mint 22 beta, and I’ve been installing all the updates until today it’s a full Linux Mint 22 final release. It has all the latest tools, kernel, and desktop environment. If we read what fast fetch shows on both, the Cinnamon DE on Ubuntu is version 6.0.4, which is what I currently run on my main desktop. The latest Cinnamon DE on Linux Mint 22 is 6.2.9. It might not seem like a large leap, but it is. The latest Cinnamon DE is as much about refinements as it is new features, and I would love to have it running as my daily driver. But I’ve already written what happened when I tried to install the upgrade from Linux Mint 21.3 to 22.

So, unless a miracle occurs and the Linux Mint team re-enables the ability to upgrade via Update Manager, that means a full installation of a Linux distribution. Which begs the question of: if you’re considering a new installation of Ubuntu Cinnamon, why not do a new install of Linux Mint 22?

Issues to consider. But I’m in no hurry to act.

it may be time for me to move on from linux mint

whbeebe1 Comment

I have always spoken highly of Linux Mint. I might stray from using it, but only for a short time. Then I’d reinstall it and get back to work using it as my daily driver. That’s all changed because of the latest Linux Mint update utility, Mint Upgrade.

I have tried twice to perform an upgrade to the latest Linux Mint release, version 22, and each time I’ve shut it down and restored my system from a Timeshift snapshot. Thank god that the Mint Upgrade tool insists on making a Timeshift snapshot of the system before it does anything. Timeshift returned my system back to the exact state it was before the upgrade utility started to muck around with it.

Here’s my problem with the current upgrade utility: it insists on downgrading and/or removing applications I depend on, because those up-to-date versions aren’t “compatible” with version 22. Things like cmake and fish (the friendly interactive shell), and the Paparus icon theme, just to name three. Folks, all of these are available via standard repos, nothing wild and crazy is going on. And you want to downgrade all my current stock applications I depend upon because your application’s blind adherence to whatever rules were built into the application say it must be this version and nothing newer, even if those up-to-date releases came from your very own controlled repos?

I’m now at an impasse. There’s nothing wrong with Linux Mint 21.3. It continues to perform just fine, and I can get all my work done using it as my daily driver. The problem is upgrading to the latest release that is causing me a fair bit of heartburn. I’ve never ever encountered a problem like this, either with Linux Mint or any other Linux distribution. Every prior Linux Mint version upgrade was kicked off with a menu selection via the Update Manager. This latest Upgrade application is absolute garbage.

I’m holding off making any major changes on my work system until later this year, sometime around October. That should give me a better idea as to what’s coming around the end of this year. In particular my interest has been piqued by System76’s Cosmic desktop running on top of Pop!_OS. I’ve run Pop!_OS in the past and liked it up until they released an upgrade where brltty was so deeply integrated into the system that trying to remove it would have broken the Pop!_OS graphical desktop. The application brltty interfered with my ability to work with development boards plugged into USB ports. I managed to find a way to disable brltty to finish a job I was working at the time, but once I found some idle time I stripped Pop!_OS off and installed Linux Mint, and that’s what I’ve been using until now.

Other alternatives to Linux Mint might be Fedora and Ubuntu. I have Ubuntu 24.04 installed on my Raspberry Pi 5, and it’s rather surprisingly working out just fine. Installing Ubuntu on this system would make sense and I might give Ubuntu with the KDE desktop a serious look. I’m no fan of Gnome, and the only reason I have Gnome Ubuntu 24.04 on my Raspberry Pi 5 is because that’s all that’s currently available.

Bottom line: I’m no longer recommending Linux Mint. And before 2024 comes to an end I expect to be off of Linux Mint and on another Linux distribution.