Clement Lefebvre has announced a new release of Linux Mint. The new version, Linux Mint 18, is a long term support release which will receive support through to the year 2021. This release is based on Ubuntu 16.04 and is available in Cinnamon and MATE editions. There are several new features in this version, including an enhanced update manager which supports installing different versions of the Linux kernel. The update manager will also be easier to configure to offer a balance between security and stability. Linux Mint 18 further introduces X-Apps. "A new project called X-Apps was started and its goal is to produce generic applications for traditional GTK desktop environments. The idea behind this project is to replace applications which no longer integrate properly outside of a particular environment (this is the case for a growing number of GNOME applications) and to give our desktop environments the same set of core applications, so that each change, each new feature being developed, each little improvement made in one of them will benefit not just one environment, but all of them
Linux Mint 18 features Cinnamon 3.0, MDM 2.0, a Linux kernel 4.4 and an Ubuntu 16.04 package base.
Linux Mint 18 will receive security updates until 2021.
That arrived just in time, I was planning a full format over the weekend (want to move Mint to the NVMe drive and Winblows to a regular SSD). Looks like I'll be playing around with this one for a few days first.
Right now I'm running Win8.1 on that drive and Mint17.3 on a regular 850PRO. I've been using Windows so little lately that it's a whole lot of wasted performance really. So I figured it's time to let them swap places.
They have other contributors though who might not be on the main team for bug testing, administration, testing. Being based on Ubuntu means they effectively get a lot of other peoples contribution but its just downstream. As for money, they take between $8000 & $16,000 in donations every month and have over 50 sponsors and partners adding to that list aswell as advertising partners and also ship hardware Mint boxes ( by comparison Manjaro is getting around $800 a month last time i checked )
Am I the only one having massive issues with this version?
Abysmal gaming performance (nevermind the fact that SLI is a complete no-go), can't get my xbox controller to work even after manually installing the drivers (it's plug-and-play in 17.3), loads of DE crashes even on fresh installs. I've installed at least 10 times today, even downloaded again to make new installers.
I'll give it a shot today on a spare NVMe drive i've got. I also run SLI so will be interested to see if I get the same problems. SLI has been perfect in 17.3.
That must be rapid mode indeed. The 850 EVO tops out at around 550MB/s.
@Mora : I never got SLI to work on my dualscreen setup TBH. Single screen no problem though. On 18 however I wanted to try it, but even with only one monitor connected I couldn't get my 770s to SLI.
I'll be playing around more with it later when I have more time, but it'll be on a hotswapped SSD rather than the NVMe drive. I need the PC for work on Monday, so I can't keep wasting time. Time to revert to my old 17.3 + 8.1 setup.
What's new in Linux Mint 18? As far as I can tell, not much has changed, but I'm also not a Linux guru. Anything groundbreaking this release? Or is it just a tweak...
Lots of changes were made on the security side, as far as I'm aware. Cinnamon 3.0 was mostly bug fixes, but they changed how updates are handled and how you can manage kernels, which was always a con of using Linux Mint. They're also pushing their X-Apps, which are basically drop-in replacements for Gnome Apps and such.
Installation went smoothly here. No crashes so far.
On a fresh install, using the nvidia driver that it ships with Mint 18 I picked up a small fps increase on Heaven using a single gpu.
Enabling SLI using nvidia-xconfig --sli=On, gave me around half the performance I was getting on the one card though, and the whole system ran slower with a flickering screen- also got this in 17.3.
Both cards work without using the above terminal command though, as I can see them both at 98-99% utilization when rendering in Blender.
Maybe it has never worked in games for me, I always just assumed it did, as the 2nd card used to turn on in certain games, but stay powered down when sitting on the desktop. I might have to start playing around with it again.
Heaven 4. extreme settings. OpenGL- Mint 17.3 Single- 105.0 fps Mint 17.3 SLI- 54.7 fps
Mint 18.0 Single- 109.8 fps Mint 18.0 SLI- 54.3 fps
Windows 10- Single- 106.4 fps Windows 10 SLI- 186.5 fps
