There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Linux Mint 22 released: An attractive option for migrating away from Windows | Windows 11 system requirements block millions of PCs from upgrading, while Linux Mint continues to work on older hardware

The Linux Mint team has just released Linux Mint 22, a new major version of the free Linux distribution. With Windows 10’s end of support coming up quickly next year, at least some users may consider making the switch to Linux.

While there are other options, paying Microsoft for extended support or upgrading to Windows 11, these options are not available for all users or desirable.

Linux Mint 22 is a long-term service release. Means, it is supported until 2029. Unlike Microsoft, which made drastic changes to the system requirements of Windows 11 to lock out millions of devices from upgrading to the new version, Linux Mint will continue to work on older hardware, even after 2029.

Here are the core changes in Linux Mint 22:

  • Based on the new Ubuntu 24.04 package base.
  • Kernel version is 6.8.
  • Software Manager loads faster and has improved multi-threading.
  • Unverified Flatpaks are disabled by default.
  • Preinstalled Matrix Web App for using chat networks.
  • Improved language support removes any language not selected by the user after installation to save disk space.
  • Several under-the-hood changes that update libraries or software.
cheeseburger ,
@cheeseburger@lemmy.ca avatar

Mint is mint! I’m using Debian Edition of Mint; according to the Mint forums the package backports for LMDE6 will be worked on after everything with LM22 is complete, and LMDE7 is for when a new Debian comes out.

Buelldozer ,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

I didn’t realize that LMDE existed until I read your comment. Now that I know it does I’m going to try it as an alternative to LM 22. I gave LM22 a spin yesterday and I don’t like some of the changes, particularly around the Online Account manager. It’s not quite as fresh as LM22 but it is using a newer Kernel than 21.3 which would be nice.

Nugget ,

I tried Linux Mint on my old XPS laptop and the battery life is, unfortunately, a nonstarter for me. It lasts about 2 hours running Linux versus up to six on Windows (thanks to battery settings). It also doesn’t hibernate properly. I wish it had worked for me

Olgratin_Magmatoe ,

It may be worth doing more distro hoping. It sometimes takes a few to get it right for your needs/use case.

paraphrand ,

What’s the known good battery management distro? If there isn’t one, that seems like something that should be an area of focus.

kopasz7 ,

I heard even though Pop os is ubuntu based, they use different power management. I’m mainly a desktop user so I can’t quantitativly comment on battery life.

moontorchy ,

I was recently surprised by Debian 12. Tried it on my Dell laptop and getting better battery life than Pop!_os. Try this installer which makes life so much easier :)

Blisterexe ,

I use fedora with auto-cpufreq and it gives battery life that lines up with reviews of the device

minibyte ,

Zorin is another sexy option.

TrickDacy ,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

I’d try fedora or pop os. I never really liked mint personally

PanArab ,

That’s most likely a driver issue. I don’t know if this is something that’s easily fixed. Linux is better on open hardware.

CMahaff ,

I know for me, at least with gnome, toggling between performance, balanced, and battery saver modes dramatically changes my battery life on Ubuntu, so I have to toggle it manually to not drain my battery life if it’s mostly sitting there. I don’t know if Mint is the same, but just throwing out the “obvious” for anyone else running Linux on a laptop.

davetansley ,
@davetansley@lemmy.world avatar

For some reason, Mint doesn’t provide access to the power profiles out of the box… no idea why. I just install a Cinnamon applet called “Power Profiles” and it gives me the same systray switcher as Fedora.

Fresh install of Mint was giving me about 2 hours battery life. By switching to Power Saver profile, I can get up to about 6-8 hours. I mostly only need to go to Balanced or Performance when gaming.

plumbercraic ,
@plumbercraic@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Just did a timeshift then upgraded and it went perfectly. Had to disable a ppa but the upgrader even did that for me.

I only recently came over from Windows and am very impressed - most Windows upgrades go less smoothly than this.

laurelraven ,

Oh, there’s an upgrader? I’ve been looking for upgrade instructions since it was first announced released but all I’ve found is them saying they’ll put out instructions next week

elucubra ,

Maybe dist update and dist upgrade will work, but I’m going to let them iron out the kinks, and upgrade when they offer an official path, after a Timeshift snapshot.

Right now I don’t feel like experimenting. For that I have VMs

anon5621 ,

mintupgrade utility name

Squizzy ,

I had the linux mint usb boot and then when I did the full install, the wireless internet wouldnt work so I needed a usb adapter. Weird, not a deal breaker just odd.

Grippler ,

WiFi, BT and touchpads have IME always been wonky AF with Linux, and they still are. I had massive issues wi4h my last thinkpad, but my “new” one (it’s 6-7 years old) works just fine without a single driver issue whatsoever.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I’m currently dealing with a wonky WiFi issue, and the weird thing is that I have the exact same chip in two machines (openSUSE Leap and Tumbleweed), and the Leap one works fine and the Tumbleweed one is limited to something like 16mbps… And this is an Intel NIC, which are usually pretty good.

davetansley ,
@davetansley@lemmy.world avatar

Switched to Linux Mint about three years ago after being unable to take my perfectly good laptop from W10 to W11. Dual boot firstly, quickly becoming entirely Mint. It just worked. It was the first Linux distro I’d tried in about 20 years that I didn’t mess up in a week or so.

Recently bought a new laptop and decided to distro hop. Tried various flavours of Fedora, and a few others, but ultimately came back to Mint. None of the others worked quite as well as Mint does for me (though I really liked KDE Plasma, and Gnome surprised me once I finally discovered extensions!)

laurelraven ,

You can put Plasma on Mint, I’m running that right now myself

When I rebuilt my PC I was planning something similar, got two nvme drives to dual boot, but started with Linux Mint… And never wound up installing Windows on the other, never felt the need, so I finally last night formatted it for more room for all my games

davetansley ,
@davetansley@lemmy.world avatar

I did try running Plasma on Mint, but it was never quite as good as on Fedora or as smooth on Mint as Cinnamon.

Honestly, I think I just like the simple uniformity of Cinnamon. It’s dull and predicable, but really, really solid.

laurelraven ,

I really liked Cinnamon but switched mainly because I kept having occasional video problems that didn’t seem to affect KDE… But, that might have been the lack of a proper video driver, I’ve not tried switching back since fixing that

At this point, I’ve found enough with KDE that I like having in my workflow that I’ve been reluctant to try switching back

Cincinnatus ,

I tried Linux Mint for like a day or two when I left Windows, but then I tried Kubuntu and after that I didn’t have a need to try anything else

cRazi_man ,

It’s all about finding the distro that works for you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Thank you. That was what really pissed me off when I finally switched to Linux. Suddenly it went from OS wars to sub-OS wars.

Like the first day I installed Mint I asked a question and some guy told me that Mint sucked and I should use some other distro. You’ve all been trying to get people to switch to Linux for years and now you give them shit when they are using a distro you don’t like? The fuck?

cRazi_man ,

The Linux community really lives up to the meme sometimes.

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

Still waiting for someone to say “I use Arch btw”

I DON’T use Arch, btw. But I might accept the challenge of trying to install it one day, seems like a fun way to learn how Linux actually works.

skulblaka ,
@skulblaka@sh.itjust.works avatar

Arch is a bitch and a half to install on anything because it doesn’t come with anything. You want network drivers? Fucking install them yourself, asshole, Arch don’t do fuck all without being commanded to.

As a result, the only thing Arch actually does come prepackaged with is the sense of smug superiority you get upon completing a build with it.

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

The Arch users that say RTFM all the time.

At least it’s not Gentoo.

the_toast_is_gone ,

Those people are stupid. The entire point of having so many limits distros is so that every use case is covered. I’ve used Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Arch, Void, even dabbled in Gentoo, and I can tell you that there’s a valid reason to use pretty much all of them, and also valid reasons not to use any particular one of them. “You do you” should be the dogma of the Linux community, not “You do me.”

rozodru ,

that’s generally how it works with Mint. you install it, use it for a week or two and then move onto a distro that better suites your needs. Mint is a fantastic introduction and sure many will stick with it for awhile I think most move on from it fairly quickly.

elucubra ,

“most move on”?

Source? because I believe it’s quite the opposite.

rozodru ,

sorry I’m new to Linux but most of the people I’ve spoken to on various linux discords the consensus seemed to be that Mint was fantastic to start out on but most moved on to something else after awhile.

drphungky ,

most of the people I’ve spoken to on various linux discords

Might have a teensy sample selection problem there haha

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I have not moved on. I think most Linux distros would suit most people’s needs and I think a lot of Linux users greatly overestimate what the average person does with a computer, which mostly involves staying within a web browser. That’s why Chromebooks are still a thing. A cheap web browser is all a lot of people need. So if you get them to switch to Mint (or any distro), they don’t really have much of a reason to switch.

I’m not a big gamer, I’m not a coder, I’m just someone who wants a working web browser, an office suite and a way to play audio and video. Anything else is a bonus but not something I really need in a notebook. So Mint is fine for me.

Theharpyeagle ,

I’ve installed Mint on pretty much any old machine I can get my hands on. Right now I’m using it with KDE as my daily driver and couldn’t be happier.

I’d say for most people coming from windows, there’s little in the way of expected functionality that would be included in other distros.

  • signed, a Mint simp
Toes ,

I’ve tried dozens over the years and I keep finding myself going back to kubuntu. It just works

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

After my old notebook died, I bought a $200 old, but refurbished, ThinkPad from NewEgg, put Mint on it, and I’m quite satisfied.

realitista ,

What do people use to replace Microsoft Office these days? Have they got wine working well enough to run them yet or are you still stuck with open source alternatives?

dorythefish ,

Depends on your requirements. I am mostly able to get along with LibreOffice and I tried Collabora, though both suck in their own way. Winedb says that Office 95 and 2013 have “Gold” rating. Maybe I will try later next week to install the 2013 version.

wagoner ,

I know it’s bad to say but MS office is a real barrier. That and done other compatibility issues with Windows apps made me abandon Ubuntu for Windows after several months where I otherwise loved it.

ModerateImprovement ,
@ModerateImprovement@sh.itjust.works avatar

I am currently using windows, but Microsoft office could easily be replaced with WPS office on linux, there will be some niche features (Power query, Microsoft Access,… Etc) that will not work for linux but the rest is covered on linux.

FierySpectre ,

For me it’s that a game I regularly play really needs their rootkit to run before they allow me to start it… If that ever changes or I stop playing it I’ll take a long hard look at Linux.

Banshee ,

I’ve used OnlyOffice (FOSS, really modern) and Softmaker Office, which is a proprietary German alternative with native Linux support. It also has the best docx compatibility of the Microsoft alternatives.

kokesh ,
@kokesh@lemmy.world avatar

I ran OpenOffice (Libreoffice) around 2008 for two years (can’t remember exactly, but when I experienced Vista for the first time, I said nope and wiped my drive. It was fine back then, but those little incompatibilities drove me crazy

ikidd ,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

There are the FOSS ones, but when I’ve swapped people over from Windows or Mac and they want something familiar, I give them WPS Office. It’s pretty much a drop in replacement for Word/Office.

I want to say I’d put them on LibreOffice, but it’s too fucking weird and buggy for someone coming off of Office.

Blisterexe ,

Libreoffice, onlyoffice and ms office online mean that unless its a big part of your job, you dont need ms office

ZarkleFarkle ,

I’ve found that Libreoffice Calc in particular tends to deal with Excel files very well. It can do everything I’ve ever needed to do in Excel. The browser version of MS Office is good for full compatibility if you have access to it, but can be a bit annoying to use.

MS Word and Libreoffice Write never seemed to understand each other’s file formats well for me, especially if you insert equations in text. You can end up with weird formatting that’s laborious to correct. It might be best to avoid Libreoffice Write, especially for technical stuff, unless it’s improved a lot since then. The online MS Office could help you a lot there.

Latex is arguably the best for that sort of thing, but can be hard to use, since you have to learn it. Still, anyone should be able to open a pdf and get consistent results.

WPS Office is another option but I’ve never used it. It has official support for a surprising number of operating systems and seems to work well on different file formats. I’ve seen someone else use it with no complaints, and it does have official Linux support, even though it’s a commercial proprietary software, which can be inconvenient.

Blisterexe ,

I save in odt and my teachers havent had any issues with the libreoffice files ive sent them

01189998819991197253 ,
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

I sent an odt file to a teacher, and the response was, “don’t use open office, use Microsoft office for school” (I use libre office). I asked if he needed me to resend it, and he said that Ms office opens odt fine (¿_?). I started saving as docx in libre office, and he was never the wiser.

ZarkleFarkle ,

Seems like your file worked properly and they were just a bit initially confused by it, but obviously you should export as whatever file format you’re asked to if it’s been requested of you.

Did the document have lots of equations, pictures or tables in it? Do the documents you make tend to?

01189998819991197253 ,
@01189998819991197253@infosec.pub avatar

There were no communicated filetype requirements for the first assignment. Since I know MS office works with open doc formats, I wasn’t worried. He didn’t tell me to send MS office formats. Instead, he told me to use MS office. I wasn’t going to pay (even discounted) for a product that has (for me) been 100% replaced with libreoffice. So, I tried just sending him the files in MS office formats, which worked to appease his requirement. He later did send an email to the class, asking that we only use MS office and avoid foss office programs. I realized it was him misunderstanding how these software work, so I didn’t really sweat it. I’m assuming there was some incompatibility with their cheat-check saas that caused this requirement.

There were some embedded objects in nearly all of the docs, but no equations.

Malfeasant ,

“Stuck with”? I find open source alternatives far less infuriating to work with than anything Microsoft produces.

jsonjson ,

I hope Clem enjoys his successes on the backs of the many contributors he’s ostracized over the years.

blipcast ,

Could you elaborate on this? I’m still distro shopping and know basically nothing about Mint’s development history.

jsonjson ,

Sure he’s burned bridges with me and other people I’ve talked to. They have a habit of reverting people’s work and have a lot of back door conversations. Just because it’s open source doesn’t mean it’s collaborative or that anyone has any input in the actual result, regardless of how much work they contribute towards it themselves.

They also cut a lot of corners and do sloppy work, and when called out on it, that’s when they start ostracizing people. They work in bad faith in many situations with outsiders.

Which is fine we all like different things but what I said was true, take it or leave it, and you guys can fanboy downvote me and I can move on and not actually care either way.

For the people that really care about this distribution, they’re only doing a disservice to themselves by being in denial about Linux mint disappearing tomorrow if a single person goes away, because that’s the state of things.

blipcast ,

Thanks for the explanation. I’m sorry you had a bad experience working with them. Unfortunately, bad management and petty people problems don’t go away just because it’s open source. :(

Defaced ,

My main issue with mint has always been the reluctance to use a newer package base. Fortunately I think that’s changing since they’re adopting Wayland support and have their edge iso now. Currently running bazzite and it’s pretty rock solid with a couple quirks, but I’ve always thought about going back to mint when they start updating their package base.

drislands ,

I switched to Mint for my new PC a few months ago. There are a handful of games that don’t work on it, but they’re few and far between.

ModerateImprovement ,
@ModerateImprovement@sh.itjust.works avatar

Any Debian based distro is not really good to recommend for newbies, I think most beginners should start with Nobara linux, OpenSuse or if the PC is just for browsing the web a immutable distro(OpenSuse MicroOS, Fedora kryptonite,Elementary os,… Etc).

Clarification: The reason I don’t recommend Debian is that the package manager break things frequently.

LeFantome ,

Not sure what you are saying here.

Regular Mint is based on Ubuntu. It is perhaps the most user-friendly distro.

LMDE is Debian based but includes all the same user facing tools and features.

I do not use Mint ( not a newb ) but it is a great distribution and great for beginners.

Zink ,

Mint is my daily use OS at work, and will soon be taking over my windows machine at home that acts as a server.

I’m sure it’s a side effect of me being old and being busy all the damn time, but I love that it can literally be easier to install and use than windows, without losing any linux-ness. Big deal if it looks like I have a windows taskbar, I still have my screens taken up by Firefox, VSCode, terminal.

communist ,
@communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

these days I recommend fedora kinoite to beginners from windows.

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

their os-tree package manager sucks it somtimes will refuse to uninstall stuff

communist ,
@communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

You’re not supposed to use that, and in fact, when i give it to beginners, i don’t mention the package manager, I just use discover with flatpaks.

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

oh,but flatpacks are missing native hosting on some browsers but its mostly not a big problem and not all apps are on flatpack

communist ,
@communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

Nearly everything the average person needs is in flatpak.

I don’t know what you mean by “native hosting”

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

I don’t know what you mean by “native hosting”

I meant native messaging

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

Nearly everything the average person needs is in flatpak.

True tho

ommorsi ,
@ommorsi@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s a good distro and it is a lot harder to break on accident, but there are a lot more minor kinks than fedora workstation. It can also get confusing for newcomers on the somewhat regular occasion that you need a non-flatpak package.

communist ,
@communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

Can you give some examples of these kinks? I haven’t had any issues giving it to beginners.

ommorsi ,
@ommorsi@lemmy.ca avatar

Just from my own experience, many flatpak apps such as Steam, VSCode, or Kdenlive have a lot of issues, and many other flatpaks are maintained by third parties with poor quality control. This isn’t Silverblue/Kinoite’s fault, but it is still an issue that affects it. For certain machines where drivers aren’t included by default, it requires a lot more troubleshooting to install them compared to Linux Mint’s driver manager, or even just copying a few commands from the internet on a distro like Fedora.

communist ,
@communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

Ah, the driver thing is mitigated by me doing the installation for them.

As for flatpaks having issues, that makes sense, i try to stick to verified flatpaks and do tell them to avoid unverified ones. I just really haven’t had these problems, have you had them recently or historically?

ommorsi ,
@ommorsi@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s more of a historical problem, and I’ve always been able to solve it. Not everyone has the time or patience that I do though, especially when it involves changing permissions with flatseal. Overall though, the fedora atomic versions are solid, and it’s ok for beginners. It just adds a slight bit of complexity plus less resources for troubleshooting than linux mint or ubuntu.

suction ,

if you use unix with a GUI, you’re doing it wrong

Blisterexe ,

What???

suction ,

Ya heard me 👂🏾

Blisterexe ,

I mean, please ecplain why you said that, in genuinely curious

suction ,

Why? I’m just a random guy on the internet, don’t pay attention to me

AVengefulAxolotl ,

Collecting downvotes eh?

suction ,

Why not? It’s not like they count for anything IRL, just as their positive counterpart.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • lifeLocal
  • random
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •