Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon Beta

[Beerislife]

Earlier I installed the Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon Beta on my old ThinkPad test machine! So far I haven't run into any problems or bugs, it Just Works (tm)

Even on that old machine, which must be about 14 years old, it runs very smoothly!

I'm looking forward to the final release to update my Beelink Mini. The newer kernel in this release has better WiFi/Bluetooth support for that machine!

Test machine specs:

ThinkPad Edge 14 0578CTO
Core i5 520M
8b RAM
500Gb Transcend SATA SSD
14 型(インチ) WXGA (1366x768)

[oshunluvr]

IMO, setting aside my love of Plasma, Cinnamon is probably the best DE for general use. I heard a very experienced user describe it as "not getting in the way of the work I need to do..."

[jglen490]

I used Mint for a couple of years. Yeah, Cinnamon worked (then) and it (and Mint) never got in the way. It was totally unimpressive (then), but I haven't tried it since then. I'm not burning with desire to change from Plasma/KDE, which is not only easy on the eyes but also completely reliable - from my point of view.

[oshunluvr]

Yeah, I really like all that Plasma has to offer, but I wouldn't hesitate to suggest Cinnamon to someone looking for a really usable DE.

[Beerislife]

I run KDE Neon on this machine and Mint Cinnamon on a Beelink Mini PC that I have downstairs. Different use
cases so different desktops and choice of software. I could get away with just having LibreElec on that PC
though!

[Beerislife]

The great thing about the 6.8 kernel in this release is that I don't have to install the RTL8821C driver for my WiFi,
it's now baked right into the kernel!

[pknox]

I just came back to Kubuntu from Mint literally a couple of hours ago. Was on 21.3 and tried the 22 beta in a VM. Totally agree that Mint is stable, but I missed Plasma. I know it can be installed unofficially but that's a headache I don't want. Part of the reason I came back to Kubuntu was to reduce the headaches - was playing with Fedora for a bit as well and while Plasma 6 is nice, they call it the cutting edge for a reason - I'd rather have a stable 5 than a buggy 6 - happy to wait until October, and if I feel like seeing what's coming, fire up Neon in a VM. Not sure if my wanting to be more stable is maturity or laziness

[jglen490]

I like stable, too. It's not necessarily either mature or lazy. To me, it just makes sense. Why subject yourself to an unpredictable platform, on purpose?

[pknox]

I like stable, too. It's not necessarily either mature or lazy. To me, it just makes sense. Why subject yourself to an unpredictable platform, on purpose?

Totally agree...it's funny how there's almost a pattern for quite a few folks:
1. Start with a beginner distro (Mint, Ubuntu, etc.)
2. Decide that a beginner distro is too "newbie", so delve off into more cutting edge ones, possibly ending up in rolling release land (for me this was Fedora, and OpenSUSE TW)
3. Struggle with the bleeding edge and wonder why there are always little things going wrong
4. Ultimately decide that stability and your distro "just working" is more important than always having new and shiny (and being able to say you use a particular distro btw ), and return to stability. (for me, that's Kubuntu, and if that becomes too unstable, Debian)

Of course not everyone goes through all the steps, and some people just love to be on the latest and greatest however much it might hurt. And taking the journey is probably worth it because you learn a bit along the way, especially about different DEs and such. I'm now way more comfortable with fixing little things that come up because of it, which I think is useful.

[Beerislife]

There are some things that Mint does right, like Google Drive integration. kio-gdrive is always breaking on KDE Neon,
I can't remember the last time that it worked!

[claydoh]

Of course not everyone goes through all the steps

Yes they do they just don't admit it. Once someone realizes that the 15th distro in a row they have installed is quite literally the exact same OS as the other 14, and that the pointy-clicky GUI is not the operating system at all, that is usually when they decide to dig a little under the shiny surface, and maybe find the

kio-gdrive is always breaking on KDE Neon,

Not just neon, if the issue is still the signon-ui thing. I don't think it is, though, since neon and Fedora switched to a different fork and/or patched things to update them.
Fedora was broken fairly recently., and I think there are recent bug comments from Opensuse users.

Mint, or Cinnamon at least (and Ubuntu for that matter), are leaning heavily on whatever Gnome uses that is specific to Gnome/Gtk, and probably has a maintainer, cuz you know RH needs that stuff, and sharing in a cross desktop manner is.....