So, how do you like Mint 20 “Ulyana”?

Topic

New Reply

[OscarCP]

OK, Mint 20 is out and even has a name: “Ulyana” What is an Ulyana? Well, let’s ponder this question as it deserves to be pondered.

While we do that and to keep going, not waiting until that tricky question is authoritatively answered: now it is a time when reviews are coming out and, I hope, some of those interested in this variant of LINUX might also contribute here information and comments on what to make of this new version of Mint.

For a start, here are two opinions, mainly on the GUI:

One positive:

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/03/linux-mint-20-release-features

Another… not so sure about that:

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-mint-ulyana-xfce.html

As to my own opinion,? Well, as far as the Desktop goes, it is a primal scream of overwhelming delight: the fractional adjustment of the icons and other objects shown on screen is now a reality!

Next stop: your own contributed wisdom.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

• This topic was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by OscarCP.

2 users thanked author for this post.

HiFlyer, Lars220

Reply | Quote

Replies

“OK, Mint 20 is out and even has a name: “Ulyana” What is an Ulyana? Well, let’s ponder this question as it deserves to be pondered.”

This site covers the name extensively

https://www.babynamewizard.com/baby-name/girl/ulyana

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

OscarCP

Reply | Quote

So far, it’s quite good.

Just got done upgrading my G3 from 19.3 to 20, and it’s working nicely.

All of the older versions of Mint Cinnamon I used had severe performance problems enumerating certain directories containing many (tens of thousands) image files, using the file manager, Nemo, a thing that KDE’s Dolphin handles like it’s nothing. Even Windows 7 had problems with the NTFS versions of these folders, sometimes hanging a minute before it would let me see the directory contents.

The issue in Mint Cinnamon 19.x and older probably had to do with the generation of image thumbnails, which for some reason it apparently prioritized above letting me actually view any of the images. There is still a tiny bit of a delay, but it’s no longer a huge issue. Now it’s less than Windows 7 made me wait, by far.  It’s a huge improvement.  I’d seen the changes that were coming in the upcoming Cinnamon version when it was in the tech websites some months ago, and I wanted to see if it would address the problem I had. I’ve only used it a little bit, but it seems that the problem is mostly solved now.

The rest of things are just working smoothly, and it feels quite responsive and snappy. No problems so far, though my beloved Pulseaudio-equalizer no longer works (not the one in the Ubuntu repo, even though it has the same name). I already knew that was going to be the case from trying it in Kubuntu 20.04, though. Soon Neon will rebase to 20.04 also, and I will have to find a replacement for the equalizer.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

Reply | Quote

The frequency equalizer: finding one never has been easy for me, whether it was for Windows or for the Mac. One has to be lucky enough to get in touch with someone that knows of an application for this that works well for one’s particular OS. Anyone who knows of good frequency response equalizers for Mint 20 is most welcome to share their wisdom with the rest of us here.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

1 user thanked author for this post.

Fred

Reply | Quote

Oscar,

I just came back to this post when I saw the new post from Microfix, and I saw your message. I think PulseEffects is going to be the best bet for an EQ for a Linux system. The program I used before with derivatives of Ubuntu 18.04 does not work with any of the offspring of 20.04, and the one included in the Ubuntu repo (pulseaudio-equalizer) sort of works, but with some programs it results in terribly garbled sound, and I found it overall to be pretty unusable because of that.

PulseEffects works nicely, though. Note that after it is installed from the Ubuntu repo, you will be able to see the equalizer, but not turn it on. It turns out that some files needed are not installed. If you have Synaptic set up to install recommends, it might get them, but otherwise, you will have to install them manually. I can’t look and see what they are at the moment, as I am on Fedora (which also has PulseEffects in the repo, only this time it worked nicely as installed. It could be because the graphical package manager in Fedora is less powerful than Synaptic and doesn’t allow NOT installing recommends).

I’ll look up those additional things needed for making the EQ work and post it in a followup here. If I forget, please give me a poke (I’ll really try not to though).

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

2 users thanked author for this post.

Fred, OscarCP

Reply | Quote

Mint Mate 20.04 – HP G60 (2008) 2GHz C2Duo; 4Gb Ram; SSD

I’ve now been testing this over the last five days and..I find it pleasing and comfortable to work with compared to other distro’s I’ve tried, yes I’ve tried a lot over the years lol
Funny thing is, I’m not missing windows at all whilst using this distro, it just works!

Nice colourful default iconset (with no duplicates for different apps)
Well arranged and collated functions in easy to find places.
Mate panel is so easy to use and is tweakable by default (no terminal tweaks required)
File manager ‘caja’ is clean and not overly cluttered, even has the’run as administrator’ plugin where some developers leave it out by default.
Apps cover most peoples needs although I did add a few more for mine.

I was expecting Exhaile music player to be shipped (as it’s Mate derived) and found the Mint team had changed to Rhythmbox, which is ok, I suppose, although this can be changed at any time. Exhaile is not in the Mint repo’s either- conflict or ?
Didn’t like celluloid and switched it for SMPlayer which I’ve used for years.

Errorwise, not much other than 2 fingerscrolling bug with some touchpads (disabled, as I use a mouse) Sound glitch, fixed with an installation of pavucontrol and the system sounds work as intended now.

Two things I came across which bugged me:
1. hibernate/standby – froze my system
2. size of the system notification icons (too big!!) relative to others on the Mate panel

both simple enough fixes, just masked the hibernate/standby and
edited the mate-xapp-status-applet to force a reduction in notification icon size.

I can live with those and find this distro difficult to fault, so much so, I’m hanging onto this for a while longer. Solid release with a few of bugs (as of date posted)
now for a desktop screenshot with plank docker (wallpaper from solus mate) 🙂

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

3 users thanked author for this post.

Fred, OscarCP, Lars220

Reply | Quote

Microfix wrote:

Errorwise, not much other than 2 fingerscrolling bug with some touchpads (disabled, as I use a mouse)

I believe that Mint 20, like other Ubuntu 20.04 derivatives, uses libinput for the touchpad driver. Libinput is meant to be a universal input driver for everything… mouse, keyboard, touchpad, whatever you have.  It’s getting better over time, but I still prefer the older Synaptics driver (not to be confused with Synaptic, the package manager), which works well even with non-Synaptics branded touchpads, like the Elan pad in my Swift. If you did use the touchpad, you might like the Synaptics one better too (and this comment is also for those who read this later after searching for info).

Synaptic has more options in KDE’s settings dialog (not sure about Mate), making it much easier to fine tune the feel.  It does not have the “dead” zone around the perimeter of the touchpad where if you put your finger down there and move it to move the arrow, it won’t respond. You have to start a touch closer to the center of the touchpad to have it work. Once a touch is started, you can use the full area of the pad to move the arrow… you just can’t start at the edge.

This is a deliberate thing in libinput, part of the palm detection feature that is meant to keep the arrow from moving all over the place (or worse) when you type with today’s large touchpads. I have tap to click turned off (I use the clickpad clicks), but if you like tap to click, libinput may be the better bet, as the accidental touches while typing could send clicks or click-drags as you type, and that could be considerably worse than just moving the arrow around. It’s not hard to get used to not starting a touch at the edge of the pad. The libinput devs have reduced the size of the dead zone since libinput first became the Ubuntu standard, so it’s a lot less annoying now than it used to be.

I can see how it is a useful feature, but it should be something you can turn off. The last time I looked into it, the dead zone could not be turned off, though that might have changed in the year or so since I last looked.

Unlike the libinput driver, Synaptics allows coasting on scroll (which I use a lot).

If you wanted to use the Synaptics driver, you’d need to install the package from the repo. The package name is xserver-xorg-input-synaptics for Ubuntu and derivatives. For people using a recent derivative of 18.04, like Mint 19.3, you’d need xserver-xorg-input-synaptics-hwe-18.04, since the HWE stack is in use in later versions of 18.04 (HWE stands for HardWare Enablement).

After that is installed, you will still need to tell the OS to use the new driver.  In /etc/Xorg.conf.d, create a text file (you will need root privileges, of course) called something like 60-synaptics.conf. As long as it has a .conf extension, it will work. In *nix systems, it is customary to use the number at the beginning of the filename to tell the OS the order in which to parse the files. It won’t matter in this case, but it does it in alphabetical order (which means numeric order too for those that start with a number). In the file, enter:

Section “InputClass”
Identifier “touchpad catchall”
MatchIsTouchpad “on”
MatchDevicePath “/dev/input/event*”
Driver “synaptics”
EndSection

and save the file. The next time you boot the system, the new driver will be in use.

There are more options than you will see in the touchpad settings UI, and to use those, you would add an Option line before the EndSection line.  You can find these by searching the name of the driver and “options,” and perhaps “Xorg.conf.” You can see them with xinput also (just type ‘xinput’ and hit enter in the terminal, find the device you want to know about in the info that appears, then type ‘xinput list-props 10’ and enter (but replace the 10 with the number next to the device you want to know about).

As an example, I use this one to get rid of the right-click event by pressing the lower right corner of the touchpad (I use the option for two-finger click for right click, so the interpretation of a single finger click in the right lower corner is redundant and annoying when I actually mean to single click):

Option “SoftButtonAreas” “0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0”

Libinput also has more options available than what you see in the UI, like finer-grained control over sensitivity and acceleration, and you could change them in the same way. Just make sure the “synaptics” bit is changed to “libinput” in the file above. You could change the filename to reflect that it is talking about libinput if it helps you remember, but the OS doesn’t actually care about that. It will parse everything with a .conf extension in that directory, and it’s the code inside the file that tells the OS what is being configured, not the filename.

1. hibernate/standby – froze my system

When you say you masked it, did you mean you removed the option from the menu? If you do not intend to use hibernation, that’s one solution, and it’s the one that Ubuntu itself has been using on recent releases (apparently, Mint brought it back).  Still, there are configuration changes that can sometimes get hibernate to work on systems that have problems with the default method. The Ubuntu devs removed it to avoid the complaints from people that it does not work properly, but then they get them from customers that want to know where a feature that worked for them went (as it does work for a lot of people). Either way, some subset of users are going to be annoyed.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lars220

Reply | Quote

Ascaris, It looks like Synaptics must have evolved a lot in the 10 years since I bought in 2011my then new HP Pavillion laptop, where now I have Mint in dual-boot with Windows 7. That was the touchpad software that PC came with. Typing on the built-in keyboard often caused the cursor, most disconcertingly and annoyingly, to jump to some random previous location, so one would continue typing somewhere else, messing up the text. The solution was: (a) to be very vigilante as well as patient and fix the problem as it happened by cutting the wrongly placed string of text and pasting it back where it belonged, then keep going, or (b) using an external keyboard, or (c) using a mouse, as Microfix does.  But I prefer using the touchpad for most things. I fiddled with the settings, reducing the sensitivity of the touchpad and creating a large dead zone. That mitigated the problem but did not fix it completely.

Now, since I have Mint on Win 7 in the same old laptop, I wonder if I can install the new and, it seems, improved Synaptics driver on the Linux partition and it will not conflict with the old Synaptics installed on Windows when I use Windows. Or if the touchpad  will work at all. Or perhaps I have to replace the old Synaptics with the new one on Window before doing anything else? *Same question for Libinput.* I have been particularly busy and using mostly the Mac, my current workhorse for things that require much typing and not done much of it when using Linux in the old PC, but then have not really noticed those cursor jumps. However, from past experience, it does take a while typing before they start to happen, so that might be why.

On the various ways of scrolling: using the up or down arrow keys works for me with a number of applications.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

Reply | Quote

The kind of behavior with the cursor moving and highlighting stuff is an inherent problem with all touchpads that are located between the keyboard and the user (a small number have the touchpad above the keyboard, not under it). The act of typing causes the wrists or hands to brush the touchpad, and the touchpad does as it is meant to… it interprets those as movements and taps, which is bad any time they were not intended as such. It doesn’t indicate a problem with the touchpad or driver other than the lack of an effective palm detection strategy to ignore the false inputs.

Synaptics is the biggest manufacturer of touchpads for laptops, so most laptops will have one of their pads installed. As is the norm in Windows, the drivers are closed-source, proprietary drivers provided by the hardware manufacturer, so naturally, a Synaptics touchpad will have a Synaptics driver.

In Linux, the Synaptics driver is open source, and is not maintained or developed by the Synaptics company that I am aware of. It’s not the same animal at all, though a lot of the same features are implemented in both.

You can change the drivers Linux and it won’t have any effect on Windows, and vice versa. The drivers are part of the OS, more or less, not the hardware.

If you are happy with the way the touchpad works in Linux now, you might as well keep the driver it is using now, unless you just like to experiment and see how they differ (the kind of thing I like to do!). Libinput should be better than Synaptics for filtering out the odd palm touches, but I like the fine-grained acceleration control (from the GUI) and coasting enough to make me prefer the Synaptics driver. The gap between them in feel is getting smaller, though.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

1 user thanked author for this post.

OscarCP

Reply | Quote

… one reason why I like the “stick” type pointing devices, Trackpoint or whatever it was officially called…

Lenovo Thinkpads usually have that as a standard part and many other brands offer them on at least high-end models.

(That is one of the several reasons why I often second-hand laptops… only way to get that on a budget, heh.)

1 user thanked author for this post.

OscarCP

Reply | Quote

mn- : “… one reason why I like the “stick” type pointing devices, Trackpoint or whatever it was officially called…”

The “”stick” type pointing device”, if I read you correctly, is a sort of small stub that protrudes in the middle of the keyboard and one pushes with a finger this way and that to move the cursor around the screen. I liked it very much in my 2005 Windows XP IBM “Think Pad” laptop (made by Lenovo in China, before Lenovo bought the business from IBM and IBM laptops became Lenovo laptops). Unfortunately, after pushing that little stub with my left index finger (I am left-handed) for more than a year I developed a painful case of muscle strain in my hand that only got better, over time, when I stopped using the stub and switched over to the small built-in trackpad. And learned to love trackpads. Sigh.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

Reply | Quote

Ascaris: “The kind of behavior with the cursor moving and highlighting stuff is an inherent problem with all touchpads that are located between the keyboard and the user”

Actually, my MacBook Pro laptop has a rather large touchpad between me and the keyboard, but does not have this jumping cursor problem: I can type quite fast a for long periods of time without this ever happening. It has some other annoying quirks, but not this one, and those it has, for me, are much less of a problem.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

Reply | Quote

It’s an inherent problem just by virtue of the mechanics… a touchpad located where your wrists rest while typing will probably be touched at times, and it’s meant to respond to touches by registering tap (click) events or mouse movements.

There are ways that the driver or OS can recognize errant touches and filter them out, which is what libinput tries to do with its edge detection. It’s hard to have a one-size-fits-all driver-level solution when there are so many touchpads with so many different characteristics, which is a problem that Linux and Windows have, but not the Mac. Apple can fine-tune the parameters for the exact device in question in a way that Microsoft and Synaptics cannot for any Windows device (and that the hardware vendor probably will not).

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

1 user thanked author for this post.

OscarCP

Reply | Quote

Interesting the comments about touchpads.  The Forum Faithfuls often respond “I use a mouse, why bother with touchpads, they don’t work anyway” or something similar.

Well, IDK, maybe because touchpads are part of the portability of laptops?  They can be tuned to work well, some are just as good as a mouse, others aren’t.  The more expensive a laptop is, usually the better the touchpad.

Poor touchpad and poor Nvidia graphics support are the two biggest liabilities someone with fairly deep knowledge of Windows encounters when attempting Linux.  Neither one of these are trivial.  Being able to see clearly what you’re doing when performing complex tasks (image and video viewing and especially editing, e.g.) and having your inputs do what you intend are very, very basic.

Mint’s touchpad support is poor.  Nvidia support, no better.  Forum help, although genuine, didn’t help me.  Otherwise, the distro is fine, as is any distro I’ve used from the three main branches.  There are so many choices, I’ve tried over a dozen, may as well pick a distro that performs smoothly.

Ended up with minimal Ubuntu installs.  I can’t stand gnome but with extensions it can be made to behave more conventionally and minimals are not hogs by any means.   Touchpad performance using Smooth Touchpad Gestures extension is fine, the only desktop that achieved that:

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/3127/smooth-gestures/

One of my Linux test devices is a 2010 vintage laptop, a good laptop, just dated.  Its touchpad isn’t very good but can be tuned to work OK with Windows.  It will run any distro I’ve tried but a jerky touchpad and blurry, tearing or lagging graphics aren’t things that need to be endured.

The other test device is a new desktop/server with Xeon processor.  It’s Linux performance overall is better, of course but oddly distro performance mirrors the laptop fairly closely.

I wonder if the Mint developers have ceased their war against Ubuntu supposedly telling them what to do.  Weird, it’s an Ubuntu fork; if Mint has the resources to do their own thing, fine, I guess.

Regardless, it’s still nice to have all these free distros to experiment with as completely viable options to Windows, the managers of which work more for themselves than customers every day. 🙂

Reply | Quote

anon wrote:
I wonder if the Mint developers have ceased their war against Ubuntu supposedly telling them what to do.

Nope. See this Snap Store link and the Snap/Chromium discussion in this Monthly News – May 2020 blog post.

Hope this helps.

Reply | Quote

anonymous wrote:

The Forum Faithfuls often respond “I use a mouse, why bother with touchpads, they don’t work anyway” or something similar. Well, IDK, maybe because touchpads are part of the portability of laptops? They can be tuned to work well, some are just as good as a mouse, others aren’t. The more expensive a laptop is, usually the better the touchpad.

I agree… touchpads are essential. I use my touchpads a lot on my laptops. I’m using the one on my Dell G3 now as I write this (well, not using it at the exact moment I am typing, but you know what I mean), and I have a spare mouse sitting on my desk just a foot away. Not worth the bother to reach over and plug it in when the touchpad works just fine for regular stuff.

For anything beyond the most casual gaming, I use a mouse, and all of its extra buttons (the mouse I have has twelve buttons in addition to the regular two and the click-wheel for the middle).

anonymous wrote:

Poor touchpad and poor Nvidia graphics support are the two biggest liabilities someone with fairly deep knowledge of Windows encounters when attempting Linux.

Well, of course, not everyone who tries Linux is using a touchpad or nVidia graphics. I’d guess that most, by far, would be using Intel integrated graphics, so they’re surely not concerned about the state of nVidia support. Laptops are the most popular form factor for PCs these days, but a lot of people (as you noted) just use a mouse anyway, and others (like me) find the touchpad function to be quite good.

The Dell G3 I mentioned that I use the touchpad on a lot runs Linux, and it also has an nVidia GPU (though the discrete GPU is inactive at the moment with nVidia Prime). In addition, my desktop PC that is right beside me (playing a video, which is why I am typing this on the Dell) also uses an nVidia GPU. I also use the touchpad on my Acer Swift a lot, and it’s my go-to out and about laptop, and I’m not hauling a mouse around to make it easier to use.  I find the touchpads and nVidia GPUs on my PCs to work well under Linux.

Now, it is true that there are some things that the nVidia drivers don’t have in Linux, like GeForce Experience, which many people prefer not to install anyway.

On laptops, the Prime render offload (the Linux version of Optimus) isn’t up to the Windows level yet, but it’s good enough that I can just use the PC and not think about the GPU in use, and the system just handles it all for me, now that I’ve configured it.

On the Windows games I have played in Linux (WINE/Proton), the Linux nVidia driver running with DXVK has given me frame rates quite comparable to those while running natively in Windows on the same hardware, and some published benchmarks have shown Linux running some Windows games faster than Windows (usually with nVidia hardware).

As for the touchpad… It’s Windows that drives me nuts with the touchpad in those brief, annoying forays I make for various testing purposes. In Windows 10, the feel of the touchpad on the G3 is terrible, and since it’s a “precision” touchpad, it’s handled by Windows rather than a discrete Synaptics configuration utility that comes with the driver. Or at least that’s how it was with a very similar Dell that I tried out before this one, probably with the same model of touchpad.  I never really looked into it, as I don’t intend to be spending much time in Windows anyway. I might be able to tweak it with registry settings, but I don’t care enough to find out.

anonymous wrote:

It will run any distro I’ve tried but a jerky touchpad and blurry, tearing or lagging graphics aren’t things that need to be endured.

Couldn’t agree more. I’m quite sensitive to things like that, but I’ve seen very little of them in Linux, and that which I have seen, I have been able to figure out how to get rid of.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

Reply | Quote

That would be LMDE and a direct downstream from Debian, sans any Ubuntu dependency, and insurance against things becoming untenable. LMDE is Linux Mint Debian Edition and that name says it all.

Reply | Quote

I upgraded from 19.3 rather than doing a clean install. I do have a rare boot/usb issue that may be a holdover from my initial install but overall things have improved. Things feel a bit snappier and some of my commonly used programs have had slight UI improvements.

I think its a great update.

Reply | Quote

4 laptops updated from Mint 19.3 to Mint 20, and some applications updated as well and that’s mostly worked fine for Gimp, Krita, Inkscape, and Blender 3D 2.82a on any of my Sandy Bridge or later generation Intel core i series mobile processor based laptops. I’ve got one pre Sandy Bridge Intel core i3 (Arrandale) based laptop that will not/can not run Blender 3D 2.8/Later editions owing to the more recent OpenGL feature level requirement of the Blender 2.8/later editions.

So I’ve had to uninstall the Blender 2.82a that came with the Mint 20 update and have had to download the Blender 2.79b tar/archive and extract that into a folder and create my on launcher in the Mint Menu that points to the Blender 2.79b executable and run Blender 2.79b that way in order to at least have some version of Blender that will work on that Intel Core i3/Arrandale mobile  processor and Blender 2.79b has an older OpenGL feature level requirement and does work fine on that first generation Intel Core i series laptop’s integrated graphics.

But Older hardware can not be expected to work with the newest software and that’s just how that is and I did try and look for a Blender 2.79b Flat Pack but the one listed in Mint 20’s offering was also Blender 2.82a so that’s why I just downloaded the archive of 2.79b from the Blender website with some very limited plumbing in of a launcher entry in Mint’s Menu editor. And that’s the method that I use when evaluating newer application versions than are currently offered via the Mint Software manager’s normal channels so it works for older applications as well.

That was my first time updating to a newer Mint version and I did not expect that any of my application software would get updated along with Linux Mint so I’ll have to research and see how Mint’s OS updates are with respect to Applications and how that’s maintained and serviced under Mint.

Reply | Quote

Mint’s repo only contains the subset of files that they develop, or that are required for the feature level they are providing. The rest of it is Ubuntu, straight from the Ubuntu repo (Mint doesn’t mirror the packages). Nearly all application packages you get from the default repo setup in Mint are provided by Ubuntu, and Blender is one of those.

So, that in mind, you could try to install the Blender version from the Bionic (18.04) repo:

https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/amd64/blender/download

That’s the same package you would have been using prior to the update (in Mint 19.3). It may or may not work in 20.04… sometimes older or newer packages work with minimal effort, other times not. It depends on whether the dependencies of the package are satisfiable with what Mint 20 has available in its repos.

Just an option, if you’d rather do it that way. You’d have to go into Synaptic afterwards and lock the version to prevent it from requesting to update it to 2.82 again, but that’s easy enough. (If anyone reading this is not sure how, just go into Synaptic, search for the package, highlight it, then go Package/ Lock version).

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

1 user thanked author for this post.

OscarCP

Reply | Quote

That’s why I looked for a Flat Pack for Blender 2.79b but there was only one for Blender 2.82a but with this deb file from Ubuntu(Bionic Base) will that install itself properly and how is that done. Do I have to create a PPA that links to this deb/repo and will that handle the dependencies and maintenance as well.

Currently on that Old Intel Arrandale core i3 laptop I have just downloaded  the Blender 2.79b 64 bit Linux edition from  the Blender Foundation’s Blender website and I extracted that  tar/archive into a folder and created a launcher in the Mint 20 Menu that points to the Blender executable and that does work but it’s more of a stand alone set up that’s not managed like a PPA.

I’m still new to Linux and there is a learning curve and I did search the synaptic package manager under Mint 20 for Blender but only found Blender 2.82a, so how do I add the older Ubuntu base to Synaptic and not mess up any current Mint 20 references to the newest Ubuntu base.

I did see that lock option in Synaptic after I had already updated to Mint 20 so that’s after the fact now but I’m currently OK with just running Blender 2.79b in that sort of stand alone way on that older laptop. But really I wish that the Blender Foundation and the Linux folks would have coordinated better once Blender 2.8/Later was released because the Blender foundation knew that Blender 2.8/later was going to obsolete a large amount of older laptop hardware to a greater degree and maybe had some Blender Legacy 2.79b flat pack/other full package plus dependencies for legacy hardware usage.

Blender 3D and the Blender foundation is getting a lot more support from the Studios and games/graphics producers so I’ll expect that Blender 3d will more rapidly advance even past the OpenGL support level that’s provided on the Intel Sandy Bridge generation of processors and currently Blender 2.8/Above is only listed by the Blender Foundation as being mostly problem free with Intel Haswell Generation processors and later. But I’m having no issues that I have currently found on my Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge Intel core i series mobile processor based laptops under Mint 20, or Mint 19.3.

I’ve got a new Laptop(AMD Ryzen 3550H/Vega 8 integrated graphics and RX 560X discrete mobile GPU) that’s currently running 10 1909 home that’s having to wait for Linux kernel 5.6/Later before I can install Mint 20.1(Hopefully) and that will be based on Ubuntu Groovy Gorilla that’s maybe shipping with Linux Kernel 5.8(?). so that’s going to include the kernel 5.6/later fan driver patch for my newer laptop so the laptop will not overheat when booted into Linux.

I’m going to dual boot Windows 10 with Mint just as I dual boot 7/EOL with Mint on all my older laptops. And 7/EOL’s OpenGL feature level support will not allow for Blender 2.8/above on any of my old laptops when they are booted into 7(offline usage only because 7’s EOL).  So at lest under Linux Mint I’m able to use Blender 2.8/above on my Sandy Bridge and Ivy bridge generations of Intel Core i series old laptops.

 

Reply | Quote

You can download the Blender package from that link. Just pick a mirror (I always just use the first one) and download the deb, which you can then install by double-clicking it in the file manager. If the dependencies can be satisfied with the 20.04 repo, it will just install normally… if not, it will give an error message. This is pretty safe, as the installation will either work (and the program will probably run just fine), or it will fail with a dependency error, in which case no change will have been made, so you’re still okay.

It is possible to add the 18.04 repo to Mint 20, though adding a repo that is not intended for the distro and version you’re using is risky. I’ve done this a bunch of times, but it’s something that I wouldn’t play with if I didn’t have backups (from Timeshift and Veeam). That way, I know I can go back to a known good configuration if things get messed up.

The normal way that apt and Synaptic work is to always use the newest version of any package, so simply adding an older repo like Bionic (18.04) normally won’t do anything, since the packages in the regular repo (Focal, 20.04) will be newer, or they’ll be the same (in which case it will prefer the version it is already using). You could then use Synaptic’s “force version” option to mark the older version of Blender for installation. Doing it that way allows the package manager to pull in the specific versions of the packages it needs to install the package you intend, but this kind of thing very often ends with big dependency issues. You’ll need to resolve these manually, if it is possible at all.

The way I add a new version of the Ubuntu repo is to look for the entry for the normal Ubuntu repo in Synaptic’s sources dialog, select and copy the URL, then create a new entry. Paste the URL into the appropriate field, then change ‘focal’ to ‘bionic’, and in the section field, enter ‘main restricted multiverse universe’ to have the widest possible scope, or if you know what section the package you want belongs to, you could just enter that.

After that, it should ask you if you want to reload the package lists, and after that, nothing should happen. You’d have to look for ‘blender’ in the package list, then select it and click “force version” in the package menu. That will show you a list of the versions available (should be at least two… the focal one and the bionic one). Forcing the version to the bionic one will mark that one for installation, and if it works, lock the version as soon as it is done.

There’s not really a good reason to do this if you already have it working, unless you’re like me and you like to mess around with things. The versions of Linux programs that you install from .run, .tar.gz, or (less commonly) .zip files won’t show up in the package manager even if they are present and properly set up. The package manager (Synaptic/apt/apt-get) only knows about packages that are installed via the repo or a .deb file (the repo downloads are .debs too, but you don’t usually see this, as it handles it all for you).

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

Reply | Quote

The learning curve for that is longer to be able to not mess things up so I’ll probably just stay with the downloaded from the Blender foundation extracted Blender 2.79b tar/archive and that minimal plumbing in the Mint 20 Menu that points to the extracted Blender executable with that added launcher(Shortcut) link in the Mint 20 Cinnamon Menu.

It’s not like I’m without alternative laptops that work with Blender 2.82a under Linux as the 2 Sandy Bridge and 1 Ivy Bridge Intel core i series processor laptops that I have work fine with Mint 20/Blender 2.82a currently and  the oldest Arrandale core i3 laptop that’s hardware/OpenGL version support obsolete for Blender 2.8, and above, will have to stay at 2.79b.

The Blender Foundation’s hardware requirements for Blender 2.8/Above state Intel Haswell generation and later graphics anyways for Windows  and it’s just that Linux has better and continued support for older hardware, and hardware that MS/Windows has long since abandoned for the most part. So really Blender 3D 2.8 and above editions are not really making the official Blender Foundation support requirements for Blender 2.8/Above on Ivy Bridge/earlier Intel Integrated Graphics under Windows  but for Linux it appears that my Intel Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge core i series processor based laptops will at least be usable with Blender 2.82a when booted into Mint 20.

My newest AMD Ryzen 3550H based laptop with integrated Vega Graphics will have the longest support anyways owing to the fact that 4 generations of Ryzen APUs will be using Vega integrated graphics and the laptop’s RX 560X discrete mobile GPU is one generation behind with the Polaris GPU micro-architecture. So that’s the laptop with the Better Blender 3D 2.8/Above support and that will be ongoing for many years looking at the actual numbers of AMD APUs that will have shipped with Integrated Vega Graphics that probably will not be replaced on APUs until 2021 with some RDNA/RDNA2 integrated graphics micro-architecture based APUs/integrated graphics.

I’m also researching Chroot as a possible solution as well on the older laptops with Mint 20 if Blender editions later than 2.82a have issues on the older laptop hardware but that’s another learning curve that going to take time. That way I can have Linux Mint 19.3 dependencies in the Chroot prison and that all isolated. And one of the uses of Chroot, according to How-To geek is running deprecated software.

Blender 2.8 and above editions are a more radical departure from the Blender 2.79b and earlier editions but Blender 2.8’s work-spaces and other improvements are really better for getting things done anyways and that’s the reason that I purchased the newer laptop and I’m waiting for Ubuntu Groovy Gorilla/Kernel 5.8(rumored to be using)  to arrive and the Mint Maintainers downstream of Ubuntu getting Mint 20.1 released and I can get that new laptop with Mint/Windows 10 dual booted. I’ve got to have Linux Kernel 5.6/Later for that newest laptop’s needed fan driver/profile fix to be in the kernel and the laptop’s fans working at the proper RPM so the laptop will not become thermally throttled.

It’s nice to see that Lenovo will be shipping Linux OS laptops with Preinstalled Linux OS distro options and that’s big news. But my newest laptop was purchased because it was on special sale for $499(Feb 2020) because after the pandemic all laptop’s at discounted prices disappeared fast from the retailers’ inventories. So I’m mostly good for having more up to date laptop hardware with my newest laptop for at lest 5+ years before things start to get long in the tooth once again.

Reply | Quote

Anonymous: “It’s nice to see that Lenovo will be shipping Linux OS laptops with Preinstalled Linux OS distro options and that’s big news.”   Yes indeed!

Right now, according to the recent article below, the laptops ship with Fedora and no other options. But these are early days; the option to choose another distro may become available later on. Prices are pretty steep, particular if one wants more RAM or a larger capacity SSD than the basic 8 GB and 256 GB, respectively. But in these COVID-19 days, with so many staying mostly at home and working from there and, or streaming videos to pass the time, laptops are in short supply and probably will come down in price as the pandemic recedes.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-releases-first-fedora-linux-thinkpad-laptop/

 

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

Reply | Quote

Even if you don’t like the distro a laptop comes with, at least you have a reasonable expectation that everything on the laptop will work reasonably well with Linux in general. The drivers available for any given hardware device are the same regardless of distro, so if it works with Fedora, it should be fine with others that use components of the same age.

And, as I now know, Fedora ain’t too bad, as long as there are no GNOMEs around. Overall, I still think the Ubuntu family is a better choice for a few reasons (Fedora has no decent graphical package manager, not great support for having multiple kernels installed at once, and if a given program is only going to be packaged for any one distro, it probably will be Ubuntu), but as long as KDE Connect does not work on Ubuntu 20.04 or any of its derivatives, the plan is to remain on Fedora.

I’m guessing the version of Fedora in question is riddled with GNOMEs, so I’d have to fix that right off the bat.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

1 user thanked author for this post.

OscarCP

Reply | Quote

I installed Linux Mint 20 shortly after it was released.  I had a whole bunch of DNS issues, and finally just went back to 19.3.  Been a little gun shy about trying it again.

At some point, I’ll give it another shot and if I still have problems, I’ll post specifics.

1 user thanked author for this post.

OscarCP

Reply | Quote

Tried upgrading from Linux Mint 19.3 to 20 again today.  Worked without any issues, and I don’t have DNS issues after the upgrade.  Also, things just seem snappier.

1 user thanked author for this post.

OscarCP

Reply | Quote