[PLUG] Linux Mint 17.3

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

Short version:
1) Linux Mint and Cinnamon are Cool
2) But you don't *automatically* get "point" releases like 17.0 to 17.3

Details:
I just learned that my assumption that if I was running Linux Mint 17
that I'd automatically get 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, etc. is wrong.  That *is*
how Debian and Redhat work, so to my mind this violates the principle of
least surprise, which Mint also violates by manually editing LSB files
thus causing perpetual file conflicts on updates.  But I digress...

So you have to do something like this to jump from 17.0 to 17.3:
`for list in $(grep -lR 'qiana' /etc/apt/*list*); do echo sed -i
's/qiana/rosa/' $list; done`

NOTE the "echo" you need to remove when you understand what that line is
doing and are sure it's correct for your system.

I also noticed that the default Ubuntu repo is
"http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu"; which may not be the best choice for
us here since it's in the UK.  The new mint 17.3 repo picker has a
really nice speed checker that sorts mirrors based on speed making it
trivially easy to change that in the GUI.

http://fullcirclemagazine.org/2015/12/02/linux-mint-17-3-rosa-is-now-available-for-download/
17.3 sounded sufficiently cool for me to go test it out in a 17.0 VM,
which is how I came to figure this out.  It looks pretty much the same,
no big surprises.  It does seem like some of the config settings are
slightly dumbed down, but on looking closer they just broke the settings
screens up more.  I'm thinking of "System Settings > Effects" and
"System Settings > Windows" in particular, which are more segmented in
17.3 than 17.0.

I *really* like Cinnamon.  When I first started using it it had
significant memory leaks to the point that I tracked it and scripted a
restart.  That vastly improved in Mint 17.0, though I still have a bit
of instability in long up-time and low-memory conditions and user
switching.  That said, when it crashes it just restarts and aside from
certain task bar items moving themselves around it just picks up where
it left off.  Nice!  I also experience periodic issues when moving
buttons around in the task bar, especially with many Firefox windows
open.  I'm really curious to see if the new Cinnamon fixes any of that.

Ironically:

http://linuxmint.com/
We’ll be back soon!
Sorry for the inconvenience. The Linux Mint website and the forums are
not available at the moment.
The team is aware of the issue and working hard on fixing the situation.
We expect to be back tomorrow.
— The Linux Mint Team

Later,
JP
--  -------------------------------------------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP | http://www.jpsdomain.org/ | http://bashcookbook.com/
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