Linux Mint 17.2 codenamed ‘Rafaela’

The second 17.x point release will be Linux Mint 17.2 codename ‘Rafaela’.

Rafaela is a feminine form of Raphael, which is of Hebrew origin and which meaning is “God has healed”.

The name Raphael is attested as far back as c. 1350 BCE. It was made popular by many illustrious characters and historical figures:

  • An archangel in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
  • An Italian master painter and architect in the High Renaissance
  • A Spanish tennis player
  • A Ninja Turtle 🙂

Linux Mint 17 and Linux Mint 17.1 users will have the choice to upgrade or not, and that upgrade will be both easy and safe.

144 comments

  1. Release date?

    Edit by Clem: It’s too soon to say. Usually it would happen around the end of May. Similar to 17.1 it should be a smooth release but it might be postponed to get more content/features. I’ll post updates when it’s clearer to us what goes into this release and what doesn’t.

  2. Are you going to update KDE from 4.14.2 to 4.14.3?

    And, please, don’t make wallpaper removing during update procedure! After update 17.0 => 17.1 it took so much time and nerves to find my previous wallpapers.

    Edit by Clem: We’ll try our best 🙂

  3. I can’t wait for the next release of Mint 17.2 . Please update/fix cinnamon. Currently it consumes too much memory.

    Edit by Clem: Resource usage is important to us. It’s funny you mention that, I was working on CPU calls and CPU usage per second today and I reviewed the C and JS layers of Cinnamon. We found a piece of code related to Edge Flipping which produced 4 calls per second. Once removed Cinnamon used less CPU per second (although that was already small compared to real user tasks) but more importantly it interrupted the CPU less than before.. and I think that is making a significant difference. We also look at MDM (the delay was removed between the moment when you switch-user/log back in and the moment where the lock screen is unlocked) and the first Cinnamon start sequence after a reboot, which was reduced significantly but which is unfortunately still pretty long.

  4. what’s new in Rafaela?
    i mean Kernel version, etc.
    thanks.

    Edit by Clem: We’ll probably use a 3.16 kernel, updated MESA stacks but it’s too soon to say which exact versions though.

  5. I hope you fix the bug with copying lots of files, it’s stop.. and takes to looong time when it’s freeze :/

    Edit by Clem: I’m suspecting synchronous calls to Gfvs/Gio in Cinnamon and/or Nemo personally. I’m planning to review this soon.

  6. Can’t wait for what major or minor changes they did! I based my Is off of this and I’m so excited

  7. i think its very important that there will be a blog entry, that goes into detail about LTS point releases and LTS Enablement Stacks. otherwise there will be a lot of confusion

  8. So whats going to happen when we reach the end of the alphabet for naming? Men’s names? Greek alphabet? Heaven forbid different types of candies!

  9. I’ve always enjoyed the naming scheme for the LinuxMint OS/Brand since my introduction to LinuxMint 6. I would be nice if the LinuxMint team could produce different howto’s/quick video tutorials for new Microsoft/PC users who have made the switch to LM. Keep up the outstanding work LM team.

  10. Great! Will it have a kernel from the 3.16 series or higher?

    That’s very desirable for hardware enablement: we’re already seeing people on the Mint forum with problems because of lack of new drivers in the 3.13 kernel series.

  11. @Pjotr @klu Well not everything in recent kernels are precisely good news, for example in my particular case, my laptop have many multimedia keys (pause, play, volume, stop) if I upgrade to any kernel > 3.14 these keys stop working; unfortunately I’ll see this will become the case on a recent future so I have to keep using a kernel 3.14 maximum.

    Laptop is a HP Pavilion DV2927la, I know is not something fixable by the team but I leave this as a info, don’t request for something that might not work for everyone

  12. Great. Looking forward to the new release.Installing new Os’es as they are released is a bit of a pain, so I am just going to upgrade to 17.2 freom 17.1 for the first time. hope it goes ok.

  13. BECAUSE THE NAME OF MY SON IS “RAFAEL” THIS RELEASE OF LINUX MINT SHALL BE SURE THE BEST ONE!!!!!

  14. @Sam Burgos
    In mint you should stick with a kernel series so for 17.1 stick with 3.13.x-xx
    I did upgraded to 3.16 and it killed my touchpad, supsend feature, usb recognition and many, many more things.

  15. Thanks for the news, Clem. You’re doing amazing work on Linux Mint. It’s really a great operating system. I’ve been so impressed with it. This morning I was actually just scripting a video I’m producing on why I ditched Windows for Linux Mint. I really appreciate all you’re doing.

  16. Nice!

    I’m a Mint user for a few years now, main and only OS in use (only have an old windows in vm for itunes).

    It’s amazing to see the evolution of mint and (from gnome) what Cinnamon has become so far!

    Seems like memory leaks on cinnamon and nemo are gone so thanks!

    Also i really liked your idea/experiment of developing these last mint distros on top of only one Ubuntu version (14.04), it made the transition to new mint versions easy, and it’s really cool to feel you are in the latest/updated version and at the same time in an LTS distro.

    Keep up this amazing work! <3

  17. P.S.: Can you update the “Mouse & Touchpad settings” to have more options like the package “gpointing-device-settings”?

    Gpointing has amazing options for touchpads like “Circular scrolling” and separate options for vertical and horizontal scrolling with one or two fingers. 🙂 (Which is good, because i like one finger with circular scrolling for vertical scrolling, but one finger for horizonta scrolling is a bit messy and messes with the navigation, so two fingers work good…. blablabla)

    TA 😉

    Edit by Clem: We’ll have a look.

  18. I’ve been using Linux Mint since Katya, and learned sometimes the hard way that it doesn’t get better than Mint. Thank you Clem; your distribution has kept my bald spot from getting bigger! Why is it that the maintainers of other distributions don’t understand such simple concepts as maintaining system stability, or NOT shoving everything including the kitchen sink down your throat whenever you want to install something? Well I’M not going with a sloppy comb-over, darn it! I’m sticking with Linux Mint and spare myself the agony!

    I’m a member of the Linux Mint Hair Club for Men, and I vote Clem for President.

  19. I hope the upgrade to 17.2 to be safe, because I don’t have a good memory of updating from 17 to 17.1; so many problems that forced me to a new installation

  20. Dear Clem,

    welcoming news indeed. I hope first opening of folders and alike can still be sped up a bit on an SSD and no new annoying bugs are introduced 😉

    To All:
    Owners of a “LENOVO G700” with the Broadcom BlueTooth Combo problem: A fix is now available… meinlenovo.blogspot.com (German), http://bit.ly/1Itgw3o (English)

  21. Clem, please make sure, that these issues with the 17.1 Mate 32bit Live-CD are getting fixed:

    – Character Map is missing. Please add it again.

    – Caja: ‘Edit’ -> ‘Preferences’ -> ‘List Columns’: apparently starting with Mint 15 and ever since, the ‘List Columns’ window shrunk to barely usable ridiculous only 4 and 1/2 Lines high. Please enlarge it back to the usable way it was with Mint 14 and prior.

    – Caja: double clicking on a media file (f.e. avi, mp4) does not open up VLC, when VLC is associated with that type of file. VLC has to be started manually from the Menu and then the file can be dragged over from Caja.

    – when ‘nomodeset’ is required to avoid catastrophic system freeze, why does its use affect the media players (Totem, VLC, Banshee) with a 100% CPU load and basically renders those useless (Athlon XP, nForce2 Ultra 400, AMD/ATI’s RV350 or R420) or on Presario 900/9-06 (ALi M1535+, ATI Radeon IGP 320M (RS100)), when used there for comparison testing with ‘nomodeset’?

    According to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver AMD/ATI’s RV350 and R420 are “Fully Supported. All these Radeon(HD) cards and derivatives have good 3D acceleration support”. Yet in order to prevent my PCs from locking up after the switch from the text mode boot messages (kernel boot options: ‘quiet’ removed & ‘nosplash’) to the graphical GUI desktop, I must use ‘nomodeset’ (Athlon XP with nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset). Why is that and what is the fix?

    – why does VLC on Presario 900/906 exhibit these weird artifacts http://imgur.com/a/KbEuK and frequently remains without audio after the use of any of the Tools -> Preferences -> Hotkeys to perform a [very short|short|medium|long] [forward|backwards] jump within the video? Vintage Helena never had any of those VLC problems.

  22. Hi clem,

    There is an issue when I copy files from my computer and paste to the USB drive.
    After the copy is “finished”, and then I eject the USB drive, sometimes it will pop up an extra “writing… to… ” notification but sometimes will not.
    Since the notification will delay 1-2 sec after I click “eject” and it is not consistent if the notification will show or not, sometimes I will make the mistake pulling out the drive too soon and damage the files.
    It is also very awkward to always wait several seconds after clicking “eject” since the whole process might take more time than startup the system.
    Hopefully files can really finish “writing” as the status of copy shows “finish”.

    Thank you!

    Steven

  23. LOL, I love that you referenced a Ninja Turtle as one of the many instances of the name Raphael. It’s the little (nerdy) things like this that make Linux even more fun to use, LOL. 😀 Also, I had a Raphael action figure when I was a kid, back during the days of the original Ninja Turtles cartoon on TV.

    Keep up the good work Clem, your distro truly is a pleasure to use and works great. Any chance that Cinnamon will gain high DPI support? I have a new Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro with an insanely high screen res that doesn’t play well with Linux DE’s. I really really want to be able to dual boot Mint Cinnamon onto it, so that I’m not stuck in Win8 when I’m not using a Windows-specific program. All Googling seems to point to my Yoga 2 Pro as not being a good Linux laptop because of it’s high res screen. D’oh. 🙁

    >>#17: Mark R Says:
    April 8th, 2015 at 2:01 pm

    So whats going to happen when we reach the end of the alphabet for naming? Men’s names? Greek alphabet? Heaven forbid different types of candies!<<

    Mark, if they go to a candy theme after names, I will have to permanently stick my husband onto the M&M edition, because that's his favorite candy. LOL. Other theme ideas for the future would be constellations/space stuff, plants/flowers, foods (spices, veggies, or dishes like Enchilada/Curry/Ice Cream/etc Edition), various animals like Ubuntu is doing (Wolf/Hummingbird/Mink/etc Edition), even great books (of history or current/past scifi, or something)… the options are endless. 🙂

  24. Is there any way that the Mint repo for Gimp can rename or rebrand it so I can use Mint in the schools around Austin. They are not allowing it to be considered over photoshop because the name is offensive. Gimp marketing is terrible and it’s killing Linux in the art communities because a product called gimp can’t be in schools or public institutions. That also means that art schools and communities are forced to Mac. Make Mint the art community Linux distro and we’ll start pull in new users.

  25. I thought GIMP was an acronym of sorts. Don’t have the foggiest what it stands for, though. I am having a problem with browsers (Firefox, Opera) ‘pausing’ (hanging, stalling, freezing) while browsing. I figure it’s because I am running Mint on a USB stick (4GB, but with about 2GB free, with persistence). Could there be other reasons? Anyway, of all the Linux distros extant, I prefer Mint. Dennis

  26. I think the reputation of MINT 17 and 17.1 was tarnished by the lack of and upgrade (in the ISO and via patching) the 3.16 kernel. My new laptop was a nightmare of hacks and broken features until I installed Ubuntu and it auto upgraded me to 3.16 and bingo everything worked.. I learned about the kernel (reading) and updated MINT to 3.16.0-33 and every single issue I had was fixed.

    Not everyone is a MINT or linux expert and not actively providing updates or recognizing new CPU releases and recommending an upgrade is a real failing…

    Beyond that everything else the MINT project does is appreciated.

  27. I can’t wait for kde 5. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. Oh and please look into compatibility issues with Samsung modems. My internet connection is dropping faster than a $5 hooker. The problem only occurs with Mint distros.

  28. @40 Fuzzy Penguin – Cinnamon has had full hi-dpi support since 2.2. If it isn’t autodetected correctly, you can force hidpi mode in Cinnamon Settings->General->Desktop Scaling.

    The only things that don’t look 100% are programs utilizing certain toolkits, and they’re generally completely usable, but certain drawn elements and icons may not be scaled correctly.

  29. @post #4 – Menak Vishap/Clem.

    I am breaking my head here…

    My 17.1 distro still is on KDE SC Version: 4.13.2 and on OS Version: Linux 3.13.0-37-generic.

    Shouldn’t the Update Manager update/upgrade my LM 17.1 update/upgrade to a more recent version?

  30. I did a quick test of Windows 10 and don’t see any reason to continue with it. When it is done I don’t think it will be much anyway. However, there is ONE thing I was happy with. I use a very long and complex password and there was an option on the login screen to show the password after it was typed. Is something like this possible for Rafaela? I am 70 years old and think this might be a useful option for unsure fingers.

  31. @43 Michael Webster-

    Cool, thanks for the info! I wonder why nobody has mentioned using a distro with Cinnamon DE if it works in high DPI while the other DE’s don’t? Weird. Oh well, their loss. Now I will finally be able to enjoy my laptop. It really is a great piece of hardware, it’s just that Win8 completely ruins the experience. 🙁

  32. Yeah, LM 17.1 is rife with bugs right now. On my DELL XPS 8700 I have an ATI video card. I cannot run the proprietary drivers without a 2GB/hour memory leak. I am forced to run the X.org drivers, without much issue. I do get less 3D performance in games. Also, MIDI support is non existent.

    Cinnamon has memory leaks, gvfsd-metadata will sometimes take up 300MB (usually uses ~1.5MB). Sometimes the keyboard will become unresponsive if I let the screen go blank after a period of time. To combat this, I configured the screen to never go dark. But, now my screen is on a lot more. Oh, and sometimes Cinnamon will freeze up. The only way to fix it is to close a program on the taskbar by right clicking and selecting close. There are a few other issues I can’t remember right now… but 17.1 was buggy as hell. I still run 17.1 Cinnamon as my daily driver. I just had to make some odd configurations in order to deal with the bugs.

    I did obtain a 28 day uptime on a machine I used heavily as daily desktop. I only rebooted because my keyboard died (spilled freakin beer on it).

    Please, please make 17.2 as stable as 17.0. I will use Mint anyway, but I’d enjoy it much more without the odd bugs, memory leaks and other random issues!

  33. @46 NewGeo64:
    It is the vagaries and consequences of living in a time with so much choice. I am currently running 17.1 on

    Dell E6530: can pretty much do anything – suspend, hibernate, close the lid, rush off, plug in (almost?) any projector / second screen, etc with no issue. (except sometimes I cannot get the apps open on the 2nd screen to come back to main if I am not careful)

    Dell E6520: (nVidia) cannot suspend without the risk of having to reboot.

    Dell XPS M1530: cannot suspend or any of those things.

    Still, all work for fine for doing normal business / home stuff.

    Compared to 2009, when I first started using Ubuntu on a Dell D630, the difference is like night and day. As someone who pre-dated MS and has lived through EVERY edition of DOS and Windows, I can tell you I love love love the consistency, adherence to standards and the fact that only with Linux can I open old documents that MS will no longer open.

    If I think back to the hundreds of stiff disks that had backed up documents on them, that I could not restore after the next DOS upgrade … Today I routinely still go back to documents I created in 1998 (sadly, the ones older than that are on media that I can no longer read.)

    The best is MS Project: If you get a 2010 file and you only have 2007, it tells you, “go get a filter”, when you try, it tells you, “sorry, no filter, tell your source to save in a lower format”. And don’t even try to open a file older than 2000 or 2003, there you are simply stuck (you need to install that older version of MSPJ, and of course, you may not be able to do that because of the architecture changes). But here is where it gets hilarious: even though it might not have glitz, ProjectLibre will open the MSPJ 2010 files, and older ones.

    The good people at MS are a law unto themselves. For shame.

    They are, you may recall, when criticised, the ones who invented the term “good enough software” and then spent the money on convincing us that was what we really want. Like Tigger, you soon find out that that is a sham.

    Respec to all the Linux buddies who do it for whatever motivates them (usually money is low on the list).

    When the last light goes out at MS, there will still be Linux.

  34. @NeoGeo64 — might I suggest that the stability of 17.2, when it arrives, may prove to be in direct correlation to the amount of freakin’ beer you spill on the computer that runs it..?

  35. I have an old computer which runs Linux Mint LXDE.
    I really love LXDE and I prefer it over XFCE.
    I wonder why the team stopped releasing LXDE editions.
    It would be great if they are made available again.

  36. There is some unpleasant issue in Mint 17.1 KDE: the Pale Moon browser has a problem, when oxygen-gtk theme is set for gtk2 applications: all menus have translucent background and unreadable, and sometimes Pale Moon falls down. With another available gtk themes it works OK, but they all are quite ugly. It seems, that it is bug of oxygen-gtk theme.In Mint 13 everything OK with oxygen-gtk.
    Please, try to fix this problem.

  37. Hi,
    can the issue with wireless power sawing when on battery be resolved
    at the moment I have to run sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off every time I want to use laptop on battery alone, otherwise wireless preforms very badly.

  38. Bonjour Clem.

    Une petite requête pour cette nouvelle version (à propos, bravo pour le travail réalisé sur la 17.1). Serait-il possible d’avoir l’écran de sélection de la langue et du clavier en PREMIER dans le processus d’installation (juste histoire de ne pas se taper la configuration disque en QWERTY) ?

  39. I had 17.0 Cinnamon installed on t440p and it was running fine for a few days. Then I noticed that during the boot it stays in splash screen with a note on top: checking disk, press c to cancel, f to fix etc..

    It did not boot no matter I keep waiting or press any button. I needed to restart it. After that time it got stuck on splash screen quite frequently. Then I had to replace the OS. Please be aware that this issue may still exist in 17.2 if no bugfix was made so far.

  40. fyi, kernel 3.16.x (on .33 now) has been working great for all of my machines that are standard i386 32bit or amd64 so that should mostly be a good move. But I also now have 3.19.3 for 64b ubuntu 14.10 on one with radeon apu and the standard drivers are pretty good so…?

  41. Thank you for the news. So far I have been content with 32bit 17.1 MATE which fixed version 17.0 problems and which is also happy with restored from LinuxMint13 “obsolete” PySDM, so hopefully that will continue?

  42. please add K3b instead of brasero & add remote desktop connection application KRDC in mate & cinnamon edition

  43. @Simon, I only spilled it onto the keyboard. Beer spill on keyboard =! memory leaks and other software glitches.

  44. First thanks for LM Cinnamon 17.x. I know it doesnt really belong to the cinnamon-DE but: It would be nice to integrate basic startup progs e.g cups, samba, bluetooth, modem, loginterms and so on into settings autostart. I use a PC at home, only with a DSL-box, no printer, no special usbdevs, no wireless, no firewire, no W*-network etc. As i altered some etcfiles, startup becomes a lot faster!!!! The less procs are running the faster perform my system. Thank you for reading.
    And at last: Sorry, english is not my first language 😉

  45. As much as I am happy with the new release I would also like to see Linux Mint default theme to get a visual overhaul. The current theme, doesn’t really suit the modern “styles”. Don’t get me wrong, I really want to see Linux Mint have a brand new face!

    Regards 🙂

  46. First thanks for LM Cinnamon 17.x.
    I know it doesnt really belong to the cinnamon-DE but: It would be nice to integrate basic startup progs e.g cups, samba, bluetooth, modem, loginterms and so on into settings:autostart. I use a PC at home, only with a DSL-box, no printer, no special usbdevs, no wireless, no firewire, no W*-network etc thinking i am not the only one. As i altered some etcfiles, startup becomes a lot faster!!! The less procs are running the faster performs my system!
    Thank you for reading.
    And at least: Sorry, english is not my first language 😉

  47. Hii kitu nahisi itakuwa poa sana na vile niko na rafiki anayeitwa Raphael basi wacha tungojee.

  48. How nice to hear good news on Linux especially new distribution release him now we can’t wait much longer

  49. Please, if possible, could the latest version of AbiWord (3.0.1) be included, especially in the Xfce edition?

    Thank you very much.

  50. Can you do the upgrade Mint from a DVD, locally, rather than via a download from the internet? It would be very convenient to be able to upgrade Linux Mint 17.x to a later version from a disk rather than through the Update Manager. Is this possible?

  51. #80 Todger there is a website that is advertised on distrowatch called osdisc.com they sell disks of operating systems. I sure they can sell you mint 17.2 when it comes available. you could use that to update. I hope this helps

  52. I had a very smooth upgrade from Maya-13 to Qiana-17 to Rebecca-17.1, so I have full confidence in the next release. I will be watching them wallpapers (for mine) and I’m finally not alone – upgraded some family to the best Linux distro on the planet, Mint.

  53. Boa Noite Clem, gostaria de sugerir que você desse mais suporte para o pacote da Adobe suite CS e para corel draw se possivel. Obrigado

    Good Night Clem, I would suggest you to give more support to the Adobe CS suite package and corel draw if possible. thanks You

  54. I noticed an additional issue with LM 17.1 (& LMDE 2 RC) Mate 32b Live-mode, which please be addressed in the upcoming new release.

    When run as “root(as superuser)” in contrast to regular user “mint”, Caja:

    – fails to display “Computer”
    “Could not display ‘computer:”. Caja cannot handle “computer” locations”

    – does not offer “Volume is busy. Unmount anyway”, when a (read-only) file is still open/being accessed on a USB flash drive, one wishes to unmount anyway.
    Instead one gets: “Unable to unmount xyz. unmount /media/mint/xyz:target is busy” and an additional:
    “”Could not display ‘computer:”. Caja cannot handle “computer” locations”.
    Why is it possible to enforce the unmount as regular user, but strangely not as superuser?

    – switches back to the default “Icon View” upon “Reload the current location”, despite having previously chosen “List View” or “Compact View” from the Menu, which is rather annoying.

  55. No complaints about Mint 17.1…except….I’d like to see a fix for the bug where the remaining battery percentage is inaccurately displayed.

  56. I love it. From my day-to-day I.T. needs to fixing my Grandmother’s failing WinXP laptop, it just works! 🙂

  57. I appreciate the update and am looking forward to using it.

    For those who are not aware of GNU’s method of naming things, they will often use some acronym often recursive. GIMP is one such. GNU Image Manipulation Program. Richard Stallman working from the MIT Labs originally called the entire project: GNU is Not Unix. LOL a recursive acronym.

    Just FYI.

    Ken

    Edit by Clem: True. “MDM” is another, it stands for the “MDM Display Manager”.

  58. rebecca.rafaela.hebrew names.i thought Mr. Lefebvre hates jews.

    Edit by Clem: Wow.. you’re obviously very confused. Years ago, I pointed the finger at the Israeli army. Many smart people reminded me I was biaised, the conflict was more complex than I thought and my opinion had nothing to do with Linux Mint. They were right, I’ve been apologizing since and I’m still happy to apologize to anyone I offended. Some less-smart people decided to go all communitarist on me and to accuse me of the more ridiculous things, including racism (which is both stupid and illegal here) and nazism (yeah, I’m French by the way.. so we’re talking about those guys who invaded the country I grew up in.. the same my grand-parents hated so much.. anyway, let’s move on). For the record I care very little about religion. There’s actually 4 different beliefs represented within my own family (plenty of Catholics, a few Atheists, one Agnostic and one Jewish family member). I don’t even know what religion most of my friends are, nor do I care much. As for History, it’s “our” History. We’re all sharing that heritage. Don’t be fooled by those who like to divide people, put them in boxes, talk about “us” and “them”. There’s a communication war going on, and I guess it’s normal since there is an actual very violent conflict going on. I don’t do politics, racism or religion though… in fact I don’t do much “hating” at all. I much prefer to have fun with my life and focus on things I enjoy.. history being one of them. I hope that puts things in perspective for you. Raphael is obviously a really good name, it’s interesting it’s of Hebrew origin mostly for historical reasons, and you like to associate that to a particular religion, then good for you. I remember people disliking the fact that we chose “Isadora” as a codename, the Epyptian origin and/or meaning “Gift from Isis” made people who took religion seriously a little uneasy.. see, I don’t think that’s relevant. This isn’t “your” or “my” history or heritage. We’re all coming from all of that and we should in fact all be very proud of the diversity of our ancestors rather than choosing the ones which conveniently reflect our current beliefs.

  59. I hope that the update will at least have kernel 3.18 or 4.0 (it should get released next week or the week after) so as to make use of improvements in drivers, filesystems, etc.

  60. I just bought me an Acer Aspire VN7-571G-51WH notebook and installed Rebecca. Now I had to realize that the WLAN (Qualcomm Atheros) is not supported. So this new release gives me hope that my problem will be fixed in the new kernel!?

  61. Clem, thanks for your kind defence against anti-Semitism and all sorts of -isms. You’re a good man. I’m an observant evangelical Christian and strongly support the Jewish people, but it never occurred to me that you disliked Jews or secretly worshipped ancient Egyptian deities. I just thought that you put out great software.

    Back to the real topic: will the next release provide better support for wireless mice and keyboards from Logitech and other vendors?

    Edit by Clem: Thanks, I don’t actually have a religion. Being good and being fair is quite important to me though. My wife and kids are Catholic and my mum’s husband is Jewish. We all like McDonalds, good movies and chocolate and we all get along fine 🙂

  62. @Jerry

    Thanks for the reply.

    So am I right in thinking that I can upgrade from Linux Mint 17.x to a later version from a DVD (rather than by an upgrade download in the Update Manager) WITHOUT having to do a full re-install and lose all my current software and settings?

  63. For info regarding the kernel version as I see you plan to use a 3.16 in Mint 17.2

    I am currently running Mint 17.1 with the kernel 3.16.0-31 on 2 laptops (Asus N61Jv and Acer VN7-791G) without any problem.
    I had to upgrade from 3.13 to 3.16 because the touchpad of the Acer wasn’t working with 3.13 (see https://askubuntu.com/questions/531360/touch-pad-not-detected-on-acer-aspire-vn7-591g-ubuntu-14-04).

    Regarding the default softwares shipped with Mint, I still do not understand why you keep on pre-install Brasero (see how bad it is rated : https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/brasero/). Isn’t it possible to have something better as default software… I don’t know perhaps something like k3b ?

    Another soft that could be nice add is Krita (alternative more user-friendly to GIMP). It would be cool if Mint team could add such nice software in the default repositories to offer some more advantages compared to Ubuntu.

    A French University of Arts & Technology has decided to use it instead of PhotoShop : https://krita.org/item/goodbye-photoshop-and-hello-krita-at-university-paris-8/

  64. It is possible and it is worth to upgrade with a jump from 17 to 17.2?

    Edit by Clem: It will be possible yes.

  65. to 96. Pierre
    Apology in advance if my comments look offensive.
    I have used brasero more then 50 times to prepare dvds and it never failed me.
    Are you suggesting removal of brasero on your experience or on basis of somone’s rating.
    I ask because i have same arguments on fedoraforum. Is there anti-movement against brasero?

  66. I found absolutely horrible battery drain on my Lenovo X220 (i3) using Kernel 3.16 .. had to revert to 3.13 for this reason. Some blog posts suggesting regressions relating to “frame buffer compression” for Intel graphics to blame.

    I would be wary of updating to 17.2 for this reason. Any clue as to whether this will be addressed for LM?

  67. It’s time to ditch Windows and everyone can switch to Linux Mint. As the Galaxy Samsung pushes its everywhere. This has to do also with Linux Mint
    I’m still stuck with Mandriva Linux. I pass now to Linux Mint

  68. Hi kksheth,

    Actually I haven’t got a very positive experience with brasero: I did erase a rewritable disk with brasero and then it was not detected anymore. The other problem I had was brasero failing to write an iso to a disk (several attempts).
    I seldom use this kind of software. As a workaround I installed xfburn which did everything fine with the same disk and iso file. In all cases I left the default parameters.
    Now I have time, I did some search to find out a solution for the brasero problems I encountered because I prefer keeping the default software for the applications I seldom use and I don’t like installing many applications that does the same thing and I saw all these negative feedbacks (when you search for solutions to a problem, you always read people complaining, but in this case I had the feeling that it was above the average).
    I read a few reviews of burning applications on linux and Brasero was never the favorite.
    Of course it doesn’t mean it is a bad application and of course it is certainly working fine for a majority of the users BUT if it’s there ONLY because it is inherited from Gnome or Ubuntu then it would perhaps be a good thing to consider an alternative application as default !

  69. to Clem’s edit to 90:
    “we should in fact all be very proud of the diversity of our ancestors”

    You haven’t met my ancestors 🙂

    I look forward to the new release as I continue to be deeply impressed by your releases so far…

  70. With the issue 17 = Q___a but 17.1 = R____a I first thought it was because first version with the same base number should be QA____a, second with QE____a, and so on, as it was the case Barbara, Bea, Bianca. So as Qiana was already QI___a you made it to change the initial letter for each version no matter if it was before or after the dot.

    However, now we find that you have broken the alphabetic order of versions. The name, I really like it, but it kinda bothers me that REbecca came before RAphaela.

    This is no more than an opinion from a user, but it made sense.

  71. Hi Clem,
    Will Rafaela feature a new version of libreoffice or it will be necessary to use PPAs like now ?
    Otherwise, take your time to release this new version, now that Ubuntu release cycle does not dictate the rhythm of your releases you can take time to make something even better than now !

  72. I’ve installed 17.1 Cinnamon on iMac 5.2 (c2d 1.83, 2GB RAM http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-2-duo-1.83-17-inch-specs.html ) and found out that after login there is black screen with mouse cursor which stays for about 30 seconds, and then desktop appears. Reduce this lag in 17.2, please. Second thing is, that 64bit Mint doesn’t boot properly on this Mac, so for now only 32bit is possible. When trying to boot from 64bit Mint CD, black screen appears with something like “select type of CD… 1 , 2”, but there’s no way to choose one of them, because keyboard is not working (EFI related problem?). There are lots of fine Apple Mac cpomputers, without modern OS, because Apple just abandoned them in recent OS X releases. I thik it is great potential to run Mint on these Macs, and there are plenty of them in schools etc. So it’ll be great if you can polish Mint to run smooth on some older Macs with Intel c2d CPUs.

  73. why are you not adding this release to the Update Manager, really is a hassle to burn a CD for every release..

    NiteRyder

  74. @Clem Hi Clem, can you please look at this:
    Config: Mint Cinnamon 17.1 Dell D6530
    this occurs when I have an external monitor attached.
    1. I believe there used to be a function to move a window from the 2nd monitor to the primary monitor when one RCLK (Right Click) the icon on the panel. It would be nice to have that function back.
    2. If activate sleep (close lid) whilst the external monitor is not switched on but connected, for some reason, all windows in all desktops are moved to the 2nd (external) monitor. Thus nothing is visible when unSleep again. Disconnecting the monitor / detecting displays in Display settings returns everything to primary monitor – but when under pressure, my first reaction tends to be that something more serious went wrong and I want to reboot.

    Thank you.

  75. Now, more then ever, Linux Mint is the only option…! Before, when Windows-XP was THE Windows, I could consider, but now? forget it.

    These days I install Linux Mint 17.1 MATE for all those poor Windows-8 refugees around me.

    Thank you for your great vision and work. Hopefully more people will climb to the boat.

  76. YOU ARE FUCKEN ADMINISTRATORS THIS SIDE, WHERE IS MY COMMENT WHICH I’V WRITTEN SOME DAYS BEFORE!?

    Edit by Clem: Hi. We use manual moderation as well as automated antispam. If we didn’t this comment section would be filled with spam. Instead it’s filled with constructive comments, and now and then we get reaction like the one you just had. It’s ok though, we’re all only human 🙂

  77. You can install drivers for video cards and such like inside Linux Mint direct from a DVD, right? Well, is it possible to upgrade from one version of Linux Mint from a DVD without having to do a new install and lose all your software and settings in the process? Can you upgrade Linux Mint from one version to another non-destructively in the way you can with Windows? It would really be fantastic if you could.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Hubert, you can upgrade Mint 17 to 17.1, 17 to 17.2 and 17.1 to 17.2. After 17.2 is out as a stable release it will become an upgrade option in the update manager.

  78. Dear Clem,
    when you update ´title=Linux Mint 17.1´ in lib/plymouth/themes/mint-text
    /mint-text.plymouth to 17.2, please alter ´white=0x000000´ to 0xffffff
    else Rafaela would be as invisible as Rebecca was 😉

    Edit by Clem: Hi Ama, it’s a bit stupid.. but the coordinates are hardcoded in C in the ubuntu-text plugin and the point release info means the text is no longer centered. We also think it looks better without anything written. So rather than pinning the plugin we just configured it to be black so it wouldn’t show up.

  79. @elmar — the problem with your #2 is that when you close the lid of your laptop with an external monitor connected, your computer doesn’t go to sleep (since there is still a viable display), it merely turns off the built-in display. Many people use their laptops this way, commonly with a docking station. If you put your computer to sleep using the menu options (or disable the external display before closing the lid), you shouldn’t have this problem.

  80. Wrote in spanish, sorry 🙂
    El problema de usar una versión LTS, es que no actualiza la versión de las aplicaciones. Un ejemplo, del que va escribí cuando apareció LM17, El programa VINAGRE tiene un problema de visión, que se arrastra desde LM17, ese problema consiste en que no dibuja correctamente los graficos del escritorio remoto, hasta el punto que deja de verse nada coherente.
    Ese problema también es evidente en LM17.1, y deberia verificarse si continua en LM17.2
    Además, he tenido muchos problemas con actualizaciones, algunas de las cuales provocaban errores en aplicaciones que hasta ese momento funcionaban correctamente, como Pulseaudio, o Firefox, que en las versiones posteriores a la 28, no acaban de funcionar bien con pulseadio.
    Por todas esas razones, es por lo que sigo trabajando con Linux Mint 16, hasta que aparezca un Linux Mint totalmente renovado (Linux Mint 18?)
    Thanks for read me 😀

  81. Hi, I just thought I’d add my personal opinion on this issue of naming Linux Mint 17.2. I don’t care what you call it, as long as it performs to my expectations. Linux Mint is the finest OS I’ve ever used. I have been using Linux since I became fed up with Windows Vista. I have personally installed Ubuntu, Fedora, Zorin, and countless others, Linux Mint is the only one that performs on all kinds of hardware and makes any platform run as a super computer! I’ve used it on an old GA-K8NF-Ultra-9 Motherboard and it installed all the drivers automatically. I’m impressed with the fine work all of you have contributed. This is truly the best operating system money can’t buy!

  82. I have been an alcoholic with WinX for years. last Sept, Oct, Nov,.. Win Update decided to throw in a bit of confusion into my computer, (and a few others also). I was tired of fighting every time an update arrived. I had Ubuntu, but I was not very terminal in the gud, and I poked around with it for a while. In December I decided to find an alternative to WinX and read about Mint 17.1. The install went great without any hiccups and I have enjoyed the terminal experience. All I can say this is a good program, I am HOOKED, and I may never go back to WINX. My question here is, is there any reading material on the market that has terminal language that one can study? Just so one knows, this desktop is home built…there isn’t anything on it or in it that was pre-built. I’m happy as heck…

  83. I’ve also hoped that, at least in GTK centric releases like MATE, brasero would be replaced by xfburn. IMO many GNOME ‘apps’ are stagnant and neglected; in the case of brasero it can’t even burn R/W discs (my top requirement). Even worse, the GNOME devs are hijacking common words like ‘Files’ to replace nautilus.

    K3B seems to have the most CD/DVD related functionality and I prefer it, but I understand why it isn’t included by default.

    Looking forward to the stable world of 17.2 XFCE. Recently I’ve been checking out MATE and Cinnamon but still find them quite deficient in the Panel customizability area :-(.

  84. Please explain the point (bad pun intended) for point releases?

    Do they serve a particular purpose?
    Do I need to run out and d/l and install the latest and greatest?
    I’ve installed 17 and 17.1 across 2 different boxes and don’t see a lot of difference or improvements to look and feel…

    Edit by Clem: You don’t have to. You can also simply upgrade from one to another. Here’s what was new in 17.1 compared to 17: http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_rebecca_cinnamon_whatsnew.php

  85. Hi Clem,

    Thanks for this wonderful distro, but I must say that the Cinnamon is still slow at bootup / login, when compared to other disros like Zorin and elementary OS. I am using all the 3 side by side on the same laptop – Dell Inspiron 15r touchscreen

  86. Newby here…
    Wondering which would be the most stable version to move into: 17, 17.1 or wait for 17.2?
    I was just about ready to go for Rebecca, until I read some of the bugs mentioned above in the first few comments…
    I am currently still on Maya (13) and really need MTP support…
    Thanks for all your efforts!

    Edit by Clem: You don’t need to wait for 17.2, upgrading from either 17 or 17.1 will be easy.

  87. Thanks Clem for your answer to my black&white plymouth statement.

    Its only for me the problem that the 3rd line is also blanked (messages about fs-checks).
    Inside my PC are 2 hd´s each with 45 partitions and when i am in hurry i can enter ´c´ to abort checks.
    No problem: I alter in initrd “title=- myMint64 -” in sda3 and “title=- myMint32 -” in b3.

    By the way: Cinnamon-DE in Snowubu, Korora, Royal, Mageia, Manjaro, Mexton, Ubupack, Antergos, Fedora, Suse, Sabayon, Hybryde, Guada, Ultimamint, Makulu, Siduction, Mintdebian+Mint(ubu) hd-installed plus a lot of live iso (845!!!) in sda+b-44+45 bootable from sda1+b1.
    If you can´t believe i will email whatever you want (grubcfgs etc).

    Thank you and your team for LinuxMint and especially for cinnamon !!!

    A last idea: Some folks reclaime slow start of LM-cinnamon. I see time is wasted before cinnamon start!
    At the long run it may be best to spend brain power (ubuntus/debian´s startup is slow, not yours).
    What about an own startup script for lets say 17.99?. Only my experiment: I rm mostly modules from initrd
    and all unneeded daemons and bootup is now faster than above mentioned Zorin and Eos!

    Nevertheless, LM ist best because you pay attention to your user – Thats wonderful!!!

  88. sorry… if it is not well written, I used google translator to translate from Spanish 🙂
    Is it possible that ‘mate’ is losing compatibility with applications, as these are developed for GNOME 3? Is is becoming outdated MATE?
    I think this may be why I’m having problems with some applications and updates. I’ll try Linux Mint’cinnamon’ for a while, to see how well it works compared to ‘mate’.
    I like ‘mate’ for simplicity and requiring few resources to run (something that should be worked on ‘cinnamon’. But maybe the time has passed, as he ended the era of GNOME 2.
    Thanks for your work!!!!

  89. In Linux Mint 17.1 MATE

    Vinagre, from LM17 has never worked properly. Can be a problem MATE graphics?
    Since version 30 of Firefox, the new audio system does not work properly with Pulseaudio (volume always returns to 100%, when a new sound source is opened in the browser). I do not know if the problem is Firefox or system. Solution… back to Firefox 28.
    After any updates (I can not specify that updates were, or in that moment happened):
    Pavucontrol Crash.
    Pipelight (Wine?) stopped working

    Solution taken temporarily: Retrieve original system image, and stop installing updates. (It’s a shame in a LTS edition).
    Final Solution: Back to Linux Mint 16
    So I decided to try it today with Cinnamon, but MATE is easier to use for me.

  90. Ship it with Kernel 4 and Xfce 4.12!
    And please fix the DNS situation on Mint Xfce, not a single guide (not one! every single one fails. I’m tech savvy enough to find a solution in long man pages and that’s what I tried, but it didn’t work as intended by the text in the man page) out there works for changing the default DNS servers. The reason seems to be that not a lot of people want to change their DNS servers in the first place and that the whole linux startup process got changed slightly (new stuff like systemd or /run etc. this makes old guides, tips and even scripts useless).

    The only reason I could fix my DNS settings was by writing a personal script that runs at boot and adds the servers to a file that gets written at every boot up by a daemon (that’s the reason why no DNS server settings stay after a single reboot). I haven’t finished it yet though, as I had to use another machine again.

    This situation is a mess, but I guess(!) the whole DNS principle is. Just recently there were some old security flaws of DNS that came to the surface of the tech world again (at least that’s what I read in the news) and also Apple fiddles with its DNS implementation in Mac OS X for nearly every release of Mac OS X (10.10 has something new again, now 2 types, MDNS and UDNS). DNS leakage is also a thing and having a quick and uncensored DNS server is neither that easy.

    Besides this issue: Awesome work you guys. Thank you very much for your time and effort so that we can enjoy lean and simple linux machines!

  91. I am looking forward to Rafaela and I hope that the kernel will contain the driver for the WiFi chip Qualcomm Atheros Device [168c:003e] (rev 20). This chip is used i.e. by Acer in the Acer Aspire VN7-571G-51WH.

  92. allo everybody.

    super le mint 17.1 ,bravo , c,est une réusite..
    it is excellent for replace the windows 7
    Merci ( thanks you all )

  93. Well, I can see you already have lots of proposals, a lot of things to consider! I’m not sure if kernel 4.0 is a good idea without completely new graphics stack as well. Anyway, I wanted to know if the Linux Mint team had considered setting the ‘cfq’ I/O scheduler as default instead of ‘deadline’. Most of us have HDDs and the performance, in my experience, is better.

    Thank you very much for your hard work and for everything you do. Whichever the default kernel, graphics stack and the rest, I can see there is a great work behind and you will choose it for a reason. Congrats to everybody in the team!

  94. Any plans to implement systemd? I noticed 17.1 uses upstart and it kinda bugs me that we will be waiting another year for it.

    Edit by Clem: Hi, we’ll stick to upstart/sysvinit until Linux Mint 18. Systemd is promising and upstream developers are converging towards it, but there’s no hurry to migrate to it just yet.

  95. My new HP 100-529 comes with windows 8.1 pre installed.
    I can not install Mint 17.1 since Widows does not boot the ISO CD.
    Will Mint 17.2 be installable and replace Windows 8.1.?
    Gaetano Arena

  96. Thanks for this! I’m also rooting for KDE Plasma 5 in Mint 17.2, although I guess that makes an update path from 17.1 to 17.2 kde virtually impossible.

  97. Dear Clem:

    I have been Useing Linux Mint since the 13 LTS. Since then Cinnamon has gotten better and better compared to Gnome 3 and Unity. I am currently running the Cinnamon version of 17.1 on my HP laptop and on a HP Stream PC. I have noticed that recently that their have been changes in Cinnamon’s dependacys. You see I am a gamer and I play most of my games on emmulators. I noticed that the changes and most of the dependacys had to do with messa and cinnamon. Also I would love if you could make nemo indipentant. I love useing XFCE but I hate the defult file manager and I know alot of us would love to use Nemo without having to install cinnamon.

    Thanks a long time user

    JFL.

  98. Mint is the best! I run Cinnamon 64 bit on about 5 computers around the home. All my workflow runs through Linux now.
    Anyway – some time ago some brilliant young dev did some work on tesselations for the Cinnamon menu. Until now there is still no place in the preferences (that I could find, but maybe I’m blind) to change the background pattern / tesselation, load new tiles or anything. Can this please get on the radar for some future work in Cinnamon?

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