I continued working with Linux Mint 22 beta today, changing the icons and setting up Python to my personal tastes. Here are a few interesting discoveries so far.

• I tried to install Papirus Icon Theme only to discover it’s already there. I then went into Configure, Themes and changed the application icons to Papirus.
• Python 3.12.3 is installed by default. That’s great. The version on LM 22β is only one minor point release behind official 3.12.4 Python. I did install the package python-is-python3 to be able to use bare python at the command line instead of python3. It’s time to move on from not having this as part of the default distribution. The only reason this was added was to support systems and users who had Python 2 still on their systems. Well, folks, Python 2 was sunset 1 January 2020, four-and-a-half years ago. It really is time to move on.
• I needed to install pip with the apt package python3-pip because pip isn’t part of the default installation. Why?
• My first attempt to install a Python package via pip produced that damned “This is an EXTERNALLY MANAGED” Python message. Who the hell thinks they can externally managed my personal system? I didn’t give anyone permission to do that. In any event I deleted the file /usr/lib/python3.12/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED, then installed the Python packages I wanted and needed. You know what pip did? It issued a message saying it installed the packages locally because I didn’t have rights to the global site-packages, which is what it should do. And I want those Python packages local, because when you install a Python package globally that’s broken then it causes all sorts of grief.
• Speaking of broken Python global packages, powerline-status is broken in the Linux Mint base install, and has been for some time. You need to use sudo to pip uninstall poweline-status from the system site-package directory, then pip install poweline-status (no sudo!) to get a working copy locally installed. The correct and up-to-date powerline-status package will be installed down $HOME/.local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/powerline, and underneath that you’ll find bindings/fish/poweline-setup.fish (or bash/powerline-setup.sh for bash) that you can then source when an instance of your shell starts.

Before somebody in the peanut gallery pipes up that Linux is too hard, fine, it’s too hard for you. I live in Linux (and Unix) and can think of no other environment that’s any better, not even macOS, and certainly not Windows. I have written this ad nauseum but a bad day with Linux is far better than a good day with Windows, and as far as I’m concerned, there are no bad days with Linux unless I personally, royally, fucked up a Linux installation. And I have done that on occasion. Just read the second link below. But at least with Linux I could correct my royal fuck ups.

I haven’t seen anything at all in the beta I would consider a show stopper, or even a regular aggravation. The problems and issues I’ve encountered are easily overcome. I just wish I could get a version that ran on the Raspberry Pi 5.

Links

my linux mint 22 beta local installation

i did a very stupid thing and broke my linux mint graphical desktop