6 Likes
Stool tribbles!! They detect Klingons, why didn’t Ryan and Zeb have a stool?
1 Like
Thanks for discussing Linux Mint 19.3 and at least somewhat addressing comments in the past that suggested Mint had disqualifying security vulnerabilities.
GIMP vs DRAWING
My daughter is a university trained graphic artist who taught Photoshop at the University after graduating. GIMP and Photoshop are powerful and competent programs. I’m not a graphic artist and her efforts to introduce me to how I could use layers to edit my photos, whether in GIMP or Photoshop, never took. I take pics to share around informally, and found I only used GIMP because of its ability to recognize photos taken on my phone that need rotation adjusted to email correctly. I much preferred the simpler Pinta which has a handy one click adjustment which will often correct white balance. Pinta seems, sadly, to be abandonware. I’m looking forward to trying Drawing when I upgrade my machines to 19.3 from 19.2 After all, GIMP is only a click-away to install, and I believe this comment from the “New Features” summary of 19.3 is quite accurate: “Gimp is an excellent application but it has a very steep learning curve and its user interface is quite intimidating for novice users.”
TimeShift
@zebedee.boss
TimeShift has separate sections for “System” and “Home.” I’ve used it to back up both even though most of my important files both at home and work are on Synologies. The beauty of TimeShift is once a backup of, e.g., “System” is made, it can be incrementally updated before a user mucks around, perhaps changing things by the old copy and paste of terminal commands from random websites, thn when a user has borked his install, he should be able to revert from a TimeShift backup. I have experimented with removing application software from my Mint system, then bringing it back from TimeShift. Worked like a charm, and came back configured as it was before I deleted it.
@kernellinux
Enterprise users? Seriously, this is Mint, a distribution designed to be user friendly, inviting to those fleeing Windows and even Mac, and while I’m confident a good number of Mint users are familiar with rsync most aren’t. I’ve mucked around with rsync and like any other command line tool, it’s frickin’ dangerous, potentially through incorrect and ignorant syntax leading to data destruction.
@zebedee.boss
Your statement that the only way not to be nagged by TimeShift is to uninstall it is incorrect. I believe in 19.2 Update Manager had a nag that could be dismissed. In 19.3 (I just installed a fresh test install) the only TimeShift nag I notice is in the “Welcome” Screen, which a user can choose to dismiss from always displaying.
Priority System vs. PPA
Michael:
Maybe Mint is protecting ignorant noobs from installing malware from “evil” PPAs by the priority system that puts Mint’s preemptively known-safe applications ahead of potentially random PPAs tossed out by a Google search.
@zebedee.boss “Quite shocking for a new user?” Zeb, one of the points of Mint is it is solid and reliable. I’m not sure when new users “graduate” to intermediate status, but new users should be staying safe in the arms of Mother Mint while they learn something of Linux and what it can do. New users should not be replacing PPAs.
Process vs. Threads
Michael
Your discussion of the difference between “Process” and “Thread” was informative and led me more deeply that I would normally go into reading up on the guts of Linux.
Best I can tell, the things I often hear about Gnome being a “single thread” do mean it is a single process. From what I could tell, that applies to all the GTK based Gnomish desktops, Gnome, Cinnamon, Mate, Budgie, Pantheon - the single process also seems to apply to xfce and the QT based LXQT and Plasma. X-11 / Xorg may not be perfect, but they do seem to handle the crash consequences of the single process (which would explain why Wayland wasn’t rolled forward into Ubuntu 18.04 after being tested in 17.10)
Firefox Profile
Michael
Have to say, I really don’t understand how users sharing a “Mint” Firefox profile is a problem in case of Firefox disaster. I presume that disaster would be a consequence of Firefox pushing down a bad update, or Mozilla failing to update certificates resulting in extensions not working? That kind of perfect storm affected every install of Firefox, regardless of the status of individual user profiles.
Would be interested in more info about the general topic.
3 Likes
RE: GIMP Replacement with DRAWING in Mint ISO
A further thought. The Mint team has apparently modified gThumb into PIX, a Mint application for viewing, managing, and editing photos. Between PIX and DRAWING most “amateur” photo editing needs are met with easy and user friendly tools.
As GIMP has been updating with increasing frequency, installing it as a direct from GIMP flatpak offers advantages over the slower updating Mint repository.
1 Like
I know you’re talking about Mint in today’s world, but when Mint was created it was more for people fleeing Ubuntu and Gnome’s GTK3 to the more stable and friendlier GTK2.
1 Like
I believe Cinnamon at 4.4 has moved past its origination as a way to preserve the benefits of Gnome 2 while avoiding the feature deprecation of Gnome 3.
Cinnamon in Mint 19.2 and 19.3 works, no drama, no weirdness. On a new install the only thing I find is a must-do since I’m now using 43" 4K TVs as monitors is to select 1920 x 1080 and also to adjust font size.
A “feature” which has (apparently) been recently added to Cinnamon is that it is possible to click on application icons in the panel and select which of possibly several windows are open. Very helpful in Nemo, LibreOffice, and Firefox.
Cinnamon is very adaptable, without needing the tweaks to just get going @MichaelTunnell and @dasgeek demonstrate in this helpful video:
My dabbling with Plasma distros (Kubuntu, Neon, others) foundered when I encountered crashes, difficulties with dual monitors, and the awful kludge that was Discovery trying to update after initial install (I understand that last one is now much improved, if not completely fixed).
The separate website Mint maintains for Cinnamon “Spices” - Themes, applets, desklets and extensions - is very handy.
These websites offer setup advice for Cinnamon features I’d have never discovered on my own. They’re not necessities, but do add to my enjoyment.
1 Like
Thanks everyone - very entertaining show again 
With Gnome on Wayland I have been using this is my daily driver on Debian 10 since the release of Debian 10 in July 2019. I am very happy to say I haven’t experienced a single crash as far as I recall, though Virtualbox did give me some trouble from time to time causing the mouse pointer to disappear in some cases, which I have written about in other threads on the discourse forum. As far as I recall I resolved this by killing virtualbox from a terminal using keyboard shortcuts and Gnome continued working as normal thereafter.
Life is Strange 2 sounds very different from most games usually mentioned and I think I’ll consider giving it a look.
When I resumed using Linux after an absence from it for some years (back in approximately 2013 I think) Mint was one of the first systems I used. I like it but quickly moved to the version based on Debian rather than Ubuntu, then to vanilla Debian. At the time there seemed to be some suggestions about security not being so strong as it was based on Testing branches of Debian, also apparently their forking some of the Gnome 3 applications (or libraries) was causing some bloat so I never really got into Mate or Cinammon and switched to XFCE instead.