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
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
Linux Mint 22 is now available. The release of the popular Linux distributions marks a good time for Windows users to consider switching to Linux.
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.
I switched my main gaming computer to Mint after testing it on a laptop. Being away from Windows is awesome. You know how everything always wants your attention on Windows? Your antivirus proudly announces its existence. Windows wants to know if it should remove some printers? Some PDF software needs updated RIGHT NOW. There's a license change please acknowledge this 20 page document. Animated attention grabbing everywhere. I always think FUCK OFF when presented with this bullshit.
You know what - Mint doesn't do that. I've not been internally shouting at my own computer since I went that way.
It is serene.
How has your gaming journey been so far? Games and general programs are the main reason why in still on Windows
I switched to Linux Mint a couple months ago and use Steam a lot. I've tried at least 10 games and all worked perfectly.
But I don't do competitive multiplayer. Those are more likely to have issues with anti-cheats. Although I did try Hell Let Loose and Helldivers very successfully and those are both major online titles.
Check https://protondb.com if you're worried about a specific game's compatibility. I've had silver rated games work perfectly though.
Edit: Apps - Photo editing and 3D CAD are the main areas I've struggled with on Linux. There's no good Adobe equivalent, and no good Fusion 360 equivalent. Free CAD exists, but that can gently fuck off.
Steam + Proton works for most games, but there are still rough edges that you need to be prepared to deal with. In my experience, it's typically older titles and games that use anti-cheat that have the most trouble. Most of the time it just works, I even ran the Battle.net installer as an external Steam game with Proton enabled and was able to play Blizzard titles right away.
The biggest gap IMO is VR. If you have a VR headset that you use on your desktop and it's important to you, stay on Windows. There is no realistic solution for VR integration in Linux yet. There are ways that you can kinda get something to work with ALVR, but it's incredibly janky and no dev will support it. There are rumors Steam Link is being ported to Linux, nothing official yet though.
On balance, I'm incredibly happy with Mint since I switched last year. However, I do a decent amount of personal software development, and I've used Linux for 2 decades as a professional developer. I wouldn't say the average Windows gamer would be happy dealing with the rough spots quite yet, but it's like 95% of the way there these days. Linux has really grown up a lot in the last few years.
Not the person you asked to but my gaming experience has been stellar. If you use Steam you don't have to do anything, it all works out of the box. If you don't play those multiplayer games with kernel level anti cheats you'll be fine.
I was expecting a bad time and was extremely impressed. Gaming in Linux is amazing.
Things with kernel anti-cheat aren't going to work unless they have a Linux version. So no Helldivers, Valorant, Apex Legends, etc.
Other than that, I have yet to find a game that doesn't work under Proton. They'll tell you it's Windows-only until you go into the game's steam compatibility settings and set it to Proton Experimental and then it just installs and runs no problem. Even things I didn't really expect to work, I booted and played Trepang2 under Proton just last night, not a problem in sight.
This is a great time to switch. I have Bazzite on a 2015 laptop and a Steam Deck with SteamOS, and I'm working on migrating my main gaming rig. 95% of my games run well, and the few that don't are often tiny indie projects. Most general use apps have Linux equivalents or Linux versions.
My recommendation is to try a few distros in VMs and see if you can set them up how you'd do it for real. Then, try out a few Live ISOs to identify any glaringly obvious hardware compatibility issues you might need to solve (rare, but it happens).
Try the common recommendations like Mint or Pop!_OS, and check out gaming-focused ones like Bazzite and Garuda.
I like the way Linux handles updating software better.
On Windows, every app is installed separately so each app is internally responsible for its own updates. So you sit down to do some work, open up your productivity software and "Autodobe After360 requires an update to continue. [Yes] [Yes]" This isn't impossible on Linux but it happens much less often.
As you say it doesn't throw itself under your wheels as often as Windows does.
You can do a lot with
chocolateyorwinget, but they can't update system software. Linux package management is just better.
That serenity is why I enjoy running Arch with basically nothing on it. My OS doesn't do shit and I love it
Linux Mint was my gateway drug to linux. It's simple and powerful! Now I'm a happy KDE user, but you never forget the first love
I ran a dual-boot for a month and a half when news about Windows Recall broke, but unfortunately, my Nvidia setup experienced a lot of bugs and proved to just be too incompatible.
So, when I upgrade to a new computer later this year, I'm going to make this machine a Linux-only machine with a different distro, and then have my other PC for all my gaming needs.
I use Plasma on Mint. Love my setup
Did you match the theme to look like cinnamon?
I’m really inexperienced with Linux but I’ve become interested since getting a steamdeck which uses KDE for its desktop, which I’ve enjoyed—so how do KDE and mint compare?
KDE: traditional desktop environment with focus on lots of customization, options, and features. Often aimed more towards enthusiasts or everyday users who want the latest features.
GNOME: non-traditional desktop focusing on simplicity. Designed to be used a very specific way to maximize productivity. Often aimed more towards corporate or professional users.
Mint uses their own desktop environment (cinnamon) which is somewhere between the two.
All of these are nice in their own way, you just need to find which one you like best!
I made the switch to mint a few months ago. Its astounding to me just how slowly windows boots and I never noticed until I made the switch.
You got me, Lemmy. I caught the Linux from you and I can't go back.
Mint boots SHOCKINGLY fast, like sub 2 seconds, on a couple of systems I have. Its basically as fast as “booting” one of my old Commodore computers!
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!)
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
Linux Mint is just great :)
Agreed. I managed to get my grandpa onto Linux using Mint on his old computer. He said the interface resembled classic Windows and was up and running in less than five minutes. I just had to show him how to use the software manager and that's it.
It's also got so many features that just make sense, like extending to separate monitors being automated, or when you download multiple files they're automatically zipped to conserve space.
I did love Mint.
I got my aunt's laptop on Mint. Was unusable with Win 10, like click the start button, wait 4 minutes and then the start menu opens. Took right to it, especially since she's been using an Android tablet for just about everything so she knew what an app store was. "Linux calls it a software manager" was all the training required.
I use mint btw 🌿
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
It's all about finding the distro that works for you. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
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?
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.
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
I've tried dozens over the years and I keep finding myself going back to kubuntu. It just works
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
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.
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.
I'd try fedora or pop os. I never really liked mint personally
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.
My old Microsoft Surface is running much better now that it's running Linux Mint.
Just switched after seeing how much of my Steam library I could play on my Deck. Just have to switch back for BF5 sometimes and I don't miss Windows at all. Very nice experience.
How much does it play and what about a GPU in terms of compatibility?
If it runs on proton it runs on mint
The only issues I've had are the companies who refuse to enable the Linux versions of their Anti-Cheat, everything else has run and run better than Windows
I use a 2080ti and even with that negative it only took about 15 minutes of fiddling to get my GPU working just fine in everything
Nvidia is less consistent, but there are distros that do the work to make it work reasonably. You do want to check for how well a distro supports nvidia before choosing it if that's you card, but my experience has been fine.
The biggest limitation game wise is multiplayer games with invasive anticheat, but you can check specific titles on protonDB to see how well they work. Non steam games (again, excluding anticheat) also mostly work, but other launchers can involve more setup compared to just using steam's built in translation.
Short answer because I'm drunk but I have to admit I'm somewhat older so I play a lot of indie titles. And one of the few triple A games that I play (BF5) forces me to boot into Windows but that is a fraction of what I play.
I use Discord, Steam and Firefox mainly and don't do much productivity wise so probably a biased experience.
My 6750XT was automatically installed and had no work from it whatsoever.
I revived a 15 year old laptop by installing Linux Mint on it (and replacing the hard drive for an old SSD I had kicking around). It does everything a modern laptop would do except play new games now.
Mint is so user friendly
Tbf, most distros work on older hardware.
Eh, depends how much older. My daily is a Thinkpad x201, and while I love Linux Mint, every once in a while I get curious about other distros. However, as many times as I've tried, there's a bunch of distros whose LiveUSBs just won't boot (for example Pop! OS).
I think, realistically, anything up to 10 years ago can run most distros. Some better than others, of course, because of the DE load.
I’ve got kde neon on a 2013 MacBook Air and it’s great. I also have put Ubuntu budgie and SDesk on an old HP Chromebook with 4gb of ram. And, obviously the 16gb disk is crippling, but it runs better than expected haha.
I wish I could get an x201 with an identical form factor and keyboard, indicator lights, etc, but otherwise upgraded components (cpu/ram/display/ports). That is my dream.
I also have an x201, but it runs too warm and too noisy for me to keep up with it. I now have an M1 Macbook which I use Asahi Linux and macOS on with about a 50/50 split. But the x201 feels better in the hand and on the desk.
Not entirely true in my case, I've got an old Inspiron 530 that I have been trying to figure out what to do with. Well it ran Vista from the factory so that's worthless now, so I figured I'd try putting Linux on it. Every single distro I tried installing just wouldn't get past the splash screen. Mint, Ubuntu, Arch (GUI and manual installer), Pop_OS, ChimeraOS, nothing. Trying different USB media writing methods did nothing or made it not even show as a bootable device. Finally got Xunbuntu to work on it and even that took 3 attempts to install.
I've got a more recent HP that was originally Win 7 that did have a much higher success rate and an old Acer laptop that straight up will not boot Linux without a high amount of errors or just completely borked graphics even with multiple distros.
But I'm also an idiot so it's probably me.
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.
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.
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.
Too bad Linux can’t run all my games yet. If it could I’d switch in a heart beat
Let me preach you the gospel of
A user friendly, steam OS like distro specifically made for gaming. About as difficult to set up as a new smartphone, and comes with all the goods needed for gaming preinstalled, like steam, wine (lutris), and various other compatibility features.
It is also an immutable distro, which essentially means you can't break your system*. If you mess something up you can simply roll back to an earlier configuration.
*you certainly still can, but you would have to actively try
Tried it this week, video signal would cut off as soon as there was a tiny bit of load on the GPU (like intro videos in a game would be too much)... I'll have to experiment some more but you can't blame people for using the option that just works when switching OS probably means troubleshooting for tens of hours...
I installed Bazzite earlier this month as a dual boot and have been very happy with it. A lot of stuff just worked on bootup, haven't installed a single driver, and that's including my AMD GPU, just installed a game, plugged in my controller, and it played. Most games seem to run better than Windows. Fullscreen mode is a lot less annoying to tab out of - there isn't the annoying momentary black screen, tab just happens. OBS seems to finally be on the level of Windows performance, although some of my favorite extensions are Windows-only. That's been something of an annoyance, a lot of stuff is Windows-only, but usually if I Google "[program] Linux" I'll get a workaround or substitute. I still leave Windows installed because of anti-cheat nonsense, but I rarely boot into Windows anymore.
Kind of meandering but that's my experience so far. Overall pretty satisfied.
Ive been willing to skip the like 2% of games I have that won't play on it, personally.
Which of your games doesn't work? Do they happen to be multiplayer?
Have you checked https://protondb.com?
Did I blink and miss something... Mint actually looks pretty modern compared to how I remember the release notes, kernel 6.8... I've never bothered with it as it just seemed like a distro to run on old hardware if you don't mind your core being 2 years out of date, where Debian v.xx with kde just made more sense
Interesting..
It's solid. I game all the time on it. I don't do much else on my home PC. Watch videos and movies. It's solid enough that I have abandoned Windows completely. I still deal with it with my work laptop, but I don't give a shit. It's not my money there.
I've got an older Latitude that I've nearly maxxed out on a shoestring budget, it runs LMDE 6 and is my dedicated Linux machine. I use it for online study, Zoom sessions, content consumption, and some Python here and there, LMDE is rock solid and hasn't given me any fuss at all.
Unless LM22 has undergone some significant changes, I would say LMDE 6 doesn't feel "modern" but it feels polished
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.
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
mintupgrade utility name
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
I love mint, and Fedora Cinnamon is my daily driver. My only problem with cinnamon is that wayland support is still being developed, so it lacks 1:1 touchpad gestures.
Also can't run 4k at 60hz on my system at least. That's a total nonstarter for me.
I researched this a few years ago, but is their a way to get SolidWorks, SpaceClaim etc working on Linux? Or do I have to run a virtual machine with windows?
Switching to Linux is almost always going to involve accepting that you may need to use alternative software compared to what you're used to. If that's unacceptable and you have mission critical work that can only be done on Windows compatible software, you may be better off staying put.
I was not successful running Solidworks under Linux and it even detects when it is running in a virtual machine and refuses to install completely!
Finally I have found an alternative that suits my needs, that has free account for hobby purposes: on-shape.com it's web-based, works flawlessly under Linux and Firefox. Workflow is very similar to Solidworks, and version-control is simple and nice.
Doesn't onshape originate from a bunch of SW engineers so that'd make sense!
Personally, I was paying for SW with a maker license but this year I've committed to Freecad, use realthunder's fork that has the topo naming fix + modern ui workbench for a more familiar layout.
I would call it totally useable, workflow for me ends up the same or similar to solidworks, I tried fusion because that's really popular but it didn't click with me while freecad did. I won't pretend it's flawless and doesn't have quirks but I'm willing to accept that for foss, need to spend a bit of time with it to get used to what it expects you to do but it's really powerful once you do.
Some people have run solidworks on Linux with limited success. Granted I have never personally done it, from what I understand they used wine which emulates windows anyway. So it depends on how much time you are willing to sink to get things working.
Not to be critical of your input but wine is not an emulator (which is wine's acronym), it's actually a translation layer that converts windows calls into Linux on the fly, which can be a lot faster than emulating windows. Add to the original person's question a quick Google led me to this project
Supported until 2029 (so 5 years) vs 10 years for Windows 10 + 3 years with ESU
Will continue working on older hardware after 2029... So does Windows 10 after the end of support?
Supported until 2029 (so 5 years) vs 10 years for Windows 10 + 3 years with ESU
This is a false comparison for most users.
For enterprise customers, Microsoft has released three or four versions of Win 10 they will support for 5 or 10 years basically to run things like ATMs or MRI machines or shit like that. You know how a lot of machinery still in use today relies on like Windows 95 because that's what was relevant when the machine was built, the software that ran the machine doesn't work on anything newer, and the machine still works? That's the kind of thing we're talking about here. If you have an MRI machine that runs on Windows 10 the OS is feature frozen and depending on which version may be supported until 2027 or 2029.
For us normal Home or Pro users, Windows 10 spent most of its life receiving mandatory twice-yearly feature updates. If you've got a normal PC that you use for productivity or gaming, you had no choice but to install those updates which often changed things about how the system looked and felt. If you wanted to keep Windows 10 Home edition version 20H1 from 2020, you either had to disconnect the machine from the internet or pull some other weird shenanigans. In this way it's more similar to MacOS and how they've been maintaining "version 10" for 25 years now.
Will continue working on older hardware after 2029… So does Windows 10 after the end of support?
I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to either force Win10 machines to upgrade to 11 or else brick themselves next October. They've done it before.
Linux Mint, like Ubuntu above it, releases on a 5-year LTS plan. They release a major (stable, feature-frozen) version every 2 years, with three minor "point releases" released approximately 6 months apart which contain some feature updates and such. Unlike Windows, these are optional. Someone somewhere is running a fully up to date and patched version of Linux Mint 20 Ulyana from 2020 and can continue to do so until next April. So if you need an older version of the software, or just like how it was in 2020 and don't want slight changes to the UI every 6 months, you can stick with it for 5 years and still get bug fixes and security patches. After those 5 years it will continue to run but the update utility will nag at you that you're out of support and it's time to upgrade. Meanwhile, the upgrade to Mint 21 or 22 isn't as onerous as the upgrade from Windows 10 to 11. The UI isn't as drastically different, it's not suddenly full of telemetry or dark patterns, the system requirements aren't vastly greater, etc.
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?
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.
Libreoffice, onlyoffice and ms office online mean that unless its a big part of your job, you dont need ms office
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.
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.
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.
"Stuck with"? I find open source alternatives far less infuriating to work with than anything Microsoft produces.
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
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.
Can it run steam and autocad?
Also amd gpu support. I had to abandon mint 5 years ago because of poor driver support.
Latest kernel is probably what you need if things work on other distros. There's a menu in the Mint update manager you can use to change to a slightly newer kernel and I would always advise that if it doesn't cause any other issues. Newer kernel usually means more and newer drivers.
Mint is ultimately based on Debian, but with a lot of newer software, although it's "stable" under the hood. That's why Mint is popular on personal home computers. The idea behind it is that it should give you all the updates you need, but not too often or in a way that breaks things. If your computer works on one version of Mint, it would hopefully never break from an update, but packages don't tend to be cutting-edge.
Steam is sort of an exception there. It works well on the vast majority of distros because Valve's CEO is a bit unusual in that he prefers people to be using Linux and has done a lot to keep it working well. If you don't use the flatpak for Steam (which I wouldn't suggest), then it runs in its own kind of custom runtime container that makes sure it works as it's supposed to in the vast majority of Linux distros.
I've never used Autocad, so I couldn't say too much about it. If a program doesn't work properly it could be due to incompatible dependency packages with different behaviour. Autocad would also be a graphics heavy program (similar to Blender, but also like videogames) so drivers could come in there too. The updated libraries might help, or it could just be your graphics drivers again. You can also try the flatpak version instead if it doesn't work, and vice versa.
If you can get your GPU to work on other distros, you shouldn't have many problems on this new major version of Mint, so long as the kernel is new enough, which I think it would be.
If you have a specific, very new, AMD GPU, there are actually public records of what the developers of the Linux kernel are doing to support newer hardware. Most people don't find these easy to check, but this would be a common question. There is a long wikipedia page giving a few of the most well-known optimisations, bug-fixes and hardware support improvements in specific versions of the Linux kernel.
By the way, there are lots of people on the official Linux Mint forums who are happy to answer specific questions about bugs or what's improving in Linux Mint, as posed by community members.
I've been using Mint exclusively for quite a few years now (outside of Android) and had minimal issues, outside of poorly refurbished laptops I got for cheap (like one with a physically broken keyboard that spammed one of the buttons, which I was able to fix easily with a simple script I copied from the web).
Sorry if that was too long an answer, but what I'm saying is there is a good chance it will just work out if you try to install this new major version (though there's some chance it might not). Also I believe they've decided to prioritise shipping a kernel with good hardware support now, rather than a more "stable" one (older/LTS) so a lot of more recent hardware will work, unlike 5 years ago.
Don't be afraid of following a few CLI guides if you have to either. Any distro is good enough if you know a few terminal commands, and any distro can be perfect if you're an absolute bash wizard.
Hope that helped.
Mint ships with 6.8 now
My bad. Autocad is commercial software that mainly supports Windows, so you would have to see if you can set it up through Wine (popular for running Windows software on Linux).
Autocad AFAIK doesn't run, I am trying to get something like nanocad to work, also any version of SAP2000, ETABS or Staad.
Steam & amd yes, autocad no
Not sure about AutoCAD, but I have Mint installed to the expansion card drive on my Frame.work and have been playing a fair amount of Inscryption, FTL, and Stronghold Crusader on it through Steam, so I would say yes?
I would try to run autoCAD by adding it to steam as a game and set it to use proton and look what happens 🤔
these days I recommend fedora kinoite to beginners from windows.
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.
After my old notebook died, I bought a $200 old, but refurbished, ThinkPad from NewEgg, put Mint on it, and I'm quite satisfied.
Oh, neat, I installed Mint on my home machine literally 3 days ago without knowing Mint 22 was coming. Time to upgrade lmao
ngl linux mint aint that bad but i dont like their desktop envoirment choices not saying cinnamon is bad its alr
Thank you Mint team, you rock!
Okay so as someone who's getting fed up with Windows and Microsoft as a whole, I'm interested in Linux.
I just wanna game and watch videos. Video calls n such with friends. Nothing too spectacular.
Now can someone who doesn't work on computers for a living, or even isn't a hobbyist programmer. Someone like me, who couldn't write a line of code on their own, answer me how difficult would it actually be?
My biggest fear is that I'm convinced by all the tech nerds here who can of course run this no problem and don't see why a beginner would struggle, and then my anxiety shoots through the roof while I have a breakdown because I just wanted to get home from work and relax and suddenly my PC is a paperweight.
Dead easy with Mint. I've been running it full time on my laptop for months now and my wife only recently came to find out it wasn't windows when I was explaining Linux to her (and she's not a technical personal - she's the person who yells at TV remotes when they don't work). Installation is super easy, much like installing windows - answer a few questions and off it goes. You can even install it alongside windows and pick what one you want to run on boot (I did this because of a couple windows-only apps I can't ditch just yet). If you can figure out Lemmy, Mint will be a breeze too.
Do you sacrifice anything performance-wise by having the dual-boot?
After not even two years my beast pc I have for work has started giving me BSODs, apps crash, etc. Tried a bunch of stuff to troubleshoot hardware side, software side, short of buying new expensive parts like ram etc to test, or reinstalling the OS.
I do mostly video editing, sound editing, and Photoshop+Lightroom mainly, with some 3D, vector and stuff like that here and there. I think most of my software runs on Linux except the Adobe stuff. I'm curious to try Linux see if it would solve some of the problems but afraid that even the dual booting stuff would still be a pain if I need to switch between PS+LR to other tools a lot.
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.
WiFi, BT and touchpads have IME always been wonky AF with Linux, and they still are. I had massive issues with my last thinkpad, and was never able to get BT or touchpad working consistently, but my "new" one (it's 6-7 years old) works just fine without a single driver issue whatsoever.
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.
I just did the upgrade this morning. Shocker: super easy, went seamlessly, and didn’t make my computer unusable for a chunk of time like big windows updates do.
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.
Mint's ok other than that ubun taint Years ago it was a one man show, not as much now?
I came & went from Mint 2010, I don't remember specifics, something about network sharesMy criteria is corporate or community?
Tinker or work?
Bleeding edge or just works
KDE/qt or Gnome/gtk, there are a few DE's forked from Gnome
I like the consistency across KDE apps of being able to have a custom toolbar & shortcutsI like community built, user friendly, KDE
Whatever you choose, install the meta package. You can add a DE, but you will have to chase weird crap & it will never be as good as a clean install
I like to install whatever I want to test on usb3 external nvme/sdd/hdd & use the Home [files] on the main machine or copy home as backup, best way to get the full effect of any distro
Just to be safe I like to have stuff from different parts of the linux world as backupsDebian MX just works, been good since they got over their init fixation, got all sorts of user friendly stuff, 6 month release cycle, enough community to keep it working
I just downloaded Spiral linux all the nice touches, but updates direct from debian, kind of like the various arch installers, but not quite so do it yourself
I don't really like synaptic, the text is too small, takes too longArch
Manjaro
As much arch as you want
Very user friendly, big community, Pamac [best package manager], rolling releaseRed hat Suze is having weirdness from corporate again
I'm on Mageia, a long history of user friendly [drak tools], stable, just works
Very good community, 18 month release cycle, nice online version upgrade, rpm packagesI hope Clem enjoys his successes on the backs of the many contributors he's ostracized over the years.
Could you elaborate on this? I'm still distro shopping and know basically nothing about Mint's development history.
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.
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.
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.