Linux Mint 21.3 EDGE ISOs Now Available For Running On Linux 6.5

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Mint 21.3 EDGE ISOs Now Available For Running On Linux 6.5

Released earlier this month was Linux Mint 21.3 and out-of-the-box it continues to run on the Linux 5.15 LTS kernel... Quite old at this point and was the Ubuntu 22.04 default for which Linunx Mint 21 is based. For those unable to boot Linux Mint 21.3 due to running on newer AMD/Intel hardware or other platform compatibility issues, the Linux Mint 21.3 EDGE ISOs are now published that utilize Linux 6.5 by default...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Mint-21.3-EDGE-ISOs

[Danny3]

Still Ubuntu-based and no support for modern DEs like KDE Plasma and Gnome?
No thanks!
There are many other distros out there better than Linux Mint.

[billyswong]

Still Ubuntu-based and no support for modern DEs like KDE Plasma and Gnome?
No thanks!
There are many other distros out there better than Linux Mint.

Linux Mint has been positioned as a distro for people who don't like the 2 mainstream DEs, but rather want a traditional-ish GTK-based Linux desktop experience instead. Maybe not so at the beginning distant past, but it is such now. I remember there are about 1/6 of market share in Linux DE if one combine Cinnamon, Mate and Xfce, big enough for a small development team to target for.

[DanL]

Still Ubuntu-based and no support for modern DEs like KDE Plasma and Gnome?
No thanks!

I'm sure Linux Mint's limited development team will note this and completely rearrange their desktop support to suit your preference.

[User29]

Still Ubuntu-based and no support for modern DEs like KDE Plasma and Gnome?
No thanks!
There are many other distros out there better than Linux Mint.

LOL, the main reason of Mint is to get rid of the bloated DEs. MATE (or Cinnamon) are just perfect DEs (I've almost wrote "compromise", but they aren't at all).

[Dukenukemx]

Still Ubuntu-based and no support for modern DEs like KDE Plasma and Gnome?
No thanks!
There are many other distros out there better than Linux Mint.

I don't get the distro hating I see in the Linux community. Yes, it's Ubuntu based and yes they don't offer KDE Plasma. I don't see the problem. What distro should I use? Arch? The only difference between distros is how much time you wanna waste setting everything up. Ubuntu is not a rolling release like Arch, but some people want that, and for good reasons. I use Linux Mint because I don't have to do too much when I'm done installing it. I like Cinnamon, I like the preinstalled apps, and I like it's based on Ubuntu because it's popular and that means if I have a problem I can usually Google it to fix it. If the Linux Mint guys block PPA's or do something stupid, then I'd go to Kubuntu. If dealing with outdated apps is a problen, then I'd use Manjaro with KDE Plasma. Right now, Linux Mint haven't screwed up. This edge ISO is a good thing, and they started working on Wayland support. I wouldn't use Wayland yet on Linux Mint, it's experimentally buggy.

If you want to distro shame, go after Barbie Linux and Uwuntu. Especially Uwuntu guys, with a distro that has that name lacking big fat anime tiddy. I was fully expecting that.

[Danny3]

Linux Mint has been positioned as a distro for people who don't like the 2 mainstream DEs, but rather want a traditional-ish GTK-based Linux desktop experience instead. Maybe not so at the beginning distant past, but it is such now. I remember there are about 1/6 of market share in Linux DE if one combine Cinnamon, Mate and Xfce, big enough for a small development team to target for.

Well if we look here:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics/#DesktopEnvironment-top

We see that besides the fact that Cinnamon has about 5 times less users than KDE Plasma and about 3.7 timess less users than Gnome, if:
We add the users of Cinnamon + XFCE + MATE, we get 198 + 184 + 57 = 439
We add the users of KDE Plasma + Gnome, we get 986 + 729 = 1715
So all three of them combined can't even get to half of KDE Plasma users.
The three of them combined can get past half of Gnome users, but let's not forget we are comparing with half the users of a DE and that DE is pretty hated in a lot of circles.
So what are they actually trying to achieve here, mediocrity?
Quantity over quality?
We don't give you a very good or even a good DE, but we give you three DEs from the past, that are OK-is?

I'm sure Linux Mint's limited development team will note this and completely rearrange their desktop support to suit your preference.

Well, they haven't listened to my feedback in 10 years, so I'm sure they will not start now, you can't expect deaf people to listen to you or people who don't care about how many users they have or if their users have good privacy and security.
Who still forces their users to use only DEs without Wayland support, if it's not the developers who don't care about people's privacy and security?

LOL, the main reason of Mint is to get rid of the bloated DEs. MATE (or Cinnamon) are just perfect DEs (I've almost wrote "compromise", but they aren't at all).

No Wayland support, which means better privacy, security, scaling, multi-monitor, multi-GPU is not a compromise?
No Adaptive sync (Freesync / VRR), color management, HDR support is not a compromise?
No big community support around any of the DEs is not a compromise?

I don't get the distro hating I see in the Linux community. Yes, it's Ubuntu based and yes they don't offer KDE Plasma. I don't see the problem. What distro should I use? Arch? The only difference between distros is how much time you wanna waste setting everything up. Ubuntu is not a rolling release like Arch, but some people want that, and for good reasons. I use Linux Mint because I don't have to do too much when I'm done installing it. I like Cinnamon, I like the preinstalled apps, and I like it's based on Ubuntu because it's popular and that means if I have a problem I can usually Google it to fix it. If the Linux Mint guys block PPA's or do something stupid, then I'd go to Kubuntu. If dealing with outdated apps is a problen, then I'd use Manjaro with KDE Plasma. Right now, Linux Mint haven't screwed up. This edge ISO is a good thing, and they started working on Wayland support. I wouldn't use Wayland yet on Linux Mint, it's experimentally buggy.

If you want to distro shame, go after Barbie Linux and Uwuntu. Especially Uwuntu guys, with a distro that has that name lacking big fat anime tiddy. I was fully expecting that.

There's no distro hating, it's just the fact that some of us have higher standards!
When it comes to privacy and security, where its very clear that X cannot compare with Wayland or have you missed the tens of news about X vulnerabilities, only for the past year?
When it comes to good hardware support, like 4K displays, 10-12 bit displays, high refresh rates, Adaptive sync capable displays, its clear that Wayland and of course KDE Plasma and Gnome supports them better.
When it comes to power efficiency, Wayland capable DEs of course offer better power efficiency and there are benchmarks even here on Phoronix to prove that.

Anyway, there's no hate, I just find it stupid to have very well developed DEs that are modern and with huge community support behind them and not use them, for lame reasons.
And I refuse to use such a distro like Linux Mint, which is the only major one that refuses to support any modern DE.
At the same time I refuse to use it on my computers, my family compouters and on my friends computers who ask me to install Linux on their computers as I care about their privacy, security, power efficiency and the health of their eyes.

If there's any hate, then that's from Linux Mint developers who hate people with high quality and security standards.

Luckily, better distros like Debian (along with its derivatives Siduction, MX Linux), Nobara / Fedora, OpenSUSE, Solus, Garuda, KDE Neon, Tuxedo exists!

[MarkG]

I just looked again, and (so far?) only the Cinnamon flavor of Mint 21.3 Edge has been released. I have an Ubuntu 20.04 machine that needs a reinstall, but I very much prefer MATE to Cinnamon.

Though I must admit that Clem may be right in sticking to 5.15 for the default (non-Edge) release. This morning, I updated my old Dell Precision 5510 laptop to 21.3, removed all kernels older than 6.5 (using their Update Manager), rebooted and found that the laptop's sound would no longer work regardless of what settings (including the "correct" ones) were selected in the Sound Preferences applet. I plan to trouble-shoot why tomorrow morning, but I reinstalled the 5.15 kernel, and now sound works whether I boot 6.5 or 5.15. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Clearly something flaky or subtle is happening, and my next step is to remove 5.15 again, boot to 6.5 and see if the sound breaks again.

Edit: I didn't notice at first but the laptop's WiFi was similarly broken with just 6.5 installed, but the same shenanigans (i.e., just reinstalling 5.15 whether booting 6.5 or 5.15) fixed the WiFi too.

[Dukenukemx]

Well if we look here:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics/#DesktopEnvironment-top

We see that besides the fact that Cinnamon has about 5 times less users than KDE Plasma and about 3.7 timess less users than Gnome, if:
We add the users of Cinnamon + XFCE + MATE, we get 198 + 184 + 57 = 439
We add the users of KDE Plasma + Gnome, we get 986 + 729 = 1715
So all three of them combined can't even get to half of KDE Plasma users.
The three of them combined can get past half of Gnome users, but let's not forget we are comparing with half the users of a DE and that DE is pretty hated in a lot of circles.
So what are they actually trying to achieve here, mediocrity?
Quantity over quality?
We don't give you a very good or even a good DE, but we give you three DEs from the past, that are OK-is?

If we look here, Linux Mint is #2 distro, and therefore Cinnamon. What's that? You saying that distrowatch isn't accurate? How accurate you think gamingonlinux is?

https://distrowatch.com/

There's no distro hating, it's just the fact that some of us have higher standards!
When it comes to privacy and security, where its very clear that X cannot compare with Wayland or have you missed the tens of news about X vulnerabilities, only for the past year?
When it comes to good hardware support, like 4K displays, 10-12 bit displays, high refresh rates, Adaptive sync capable displays, its clear that Wayland and of course KDE Plasma and Gnome supports them better.
When it comes to power efficiency, Wayland capable DEs of course offer better power efficiency and there are benchmarks even here on Phoronix to prove that.

Does Wayland actually fully work? Last I heard it didn't work 100%. Just seems like Wayland support is just now trickling in. I feel Wayland is like Pipewire, in that people say it works perfectly when it really doesn't. Lately Pipewire has worked fine, but it started to cause problems last year.

Anyway, there's no hate, I just find it stupid to have very well developed DEs that are modern and with huge community support behind them and not use them, for lame reasons.
And I refuse to use such a distro like Linux Mint, which is the only major one that refuses to support any modern DE.

As a gamer, KDE Plasma sounds attractive so I also wish for a KDE Mint version. At the same time what other distro should I install what won't force me to spend time installing apps I want? Debian has a lot of outdated stuff, though I'm sure Pronterface probably works. My concern with Arch is if it breaks something when I update it. Things break sometimes with Linux Mint as is. Remember that issue where Linus did a thing that broke his PopOS install? Yep, I've had that problem with Linux Mint. A lot of it is due to me using Kisak or Oibaf PPA's.

At the same time I refuse to use it on my computers, my family compouters and on my friends computers who ask me to install Linux on their computers as I care about their privacy, security, power efficiency and the health of their eyes.

Your family won't get hacked because of X11. If you're like me, they shouldn't even know they're on Linux. I've put Linux Mint on a 2012 Macbook Air and made it look like MacOS, because they wouldn't touch Linux. Same thing with making it look like Windows 10. I even change the boot animation and sound effects, while also installing Edge. Gotta make it convincing.

If there's any hate, then that's from Linux Mint developers who hate people with high quality and security standards.

If there's any hate, it's the forum moderators. Particularly their moderator SMG who doesn't like seeing people with PPA's and custom kernels like Xanmod. If there's a reason I'd switch to another distro, that would be it.

[Operius73]

[QUOTE=Danny3;n1438144]
Well if we look here:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics/#DesktopEnvironment-top

We see that.../QUOTE]

...only about 3000 people worldwide participated in the questionnaire, and therefore doesn't mean anything.