Category: Mint

installing linux mint 21

whbeebe
My Linux Mint desktop. I’ve come home to stay.

Linux Mint 21 Final was released on 31 July. I’d been testing the beta for several weeks, both in a Parallels VM as well as from a USB stick directly on the machine. I was very happy with it. Very happy. Today I installed Linux Mint 21, moved my complete development environment over and got back to work. It took about two hours (more or less), with some life interruptions in the middle of it all.

I prepared for the transition from Fedora 36 to Linux Mint 21 by installing the Cinnamon desktop environment on Fedora. I could compare Fedora’s Cinnamon desktop with the Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon in the virtual machine. I would try something out in the VM, and then perform the same action on Fedora and Cinnamon. When I felt comfortable with Cinnamon, I used Balena Etcher on my Mac to copy the Linux Mint 21 ISO onto one of my many USB drives I have lying around (an old Sandisk Cruzer 4GB). Then I copied my entire home directory onto a spare Micron 500 GB SSD (CT500MX500SSD). I pulled out the M.2 SSD that the Fedora 36 was installed on, replacing it with a spare I have (and that still had Pop!_OS 22.04 still on it). I switch drives around when I change operating systems, rather than wipe out the existing installation. That way if it really goes south I can drop the older working operating system back into my computer and I’m back up and running again. With the replacement boot drive in place and my home environment copied, I installed Linux Mint 21.

Right after installation I sudoed to root and created a transfer directory in /home. I set ownership to the new Mint login account and exited root. As the non-root account I then recursively copied my saved home environment into this transfer directory. As it turns out, the ownership and group ID number are the same these days across distributions. That meant the Fedora 36 home directory with all its files was also effectively owned by the new Mint login account.

Once all the files were in the transfer folder I sudoed back to root. From there I renamed the original home account directory to an alternate name, then moved the copied home directory out of the transfer folder into /home, made sure it was properly named after the login account name, and then exited root. I was back in my full home directory with all my folders and files from Fedora 36. By the way, this is the same basic workflow I used to move from Pop!_OS to Fedora 36.

With everything in place I installed Vivaldi, Visual Studio Code, git, cmake and the build-essential package.

I was able to test building ESP-IDF code and it all continued to work.

My biggest problem was my Python virtual environment. I didn’t realize it until I tried to activate it that my old home directory was hard coded into the entire environment. I’d already create a list of all the Python packages I’d installed in that virtual environment, so I deleted the virtual environment and re-created it from my package list. I basically followed the second half of my post here: /2022/05/20/migrating-a-python-3-9-virtual-environment-to-python-3-10/. The virtual environment is back as are all my tools that depend on it.

A second smaller problem is that the brltty package comes pre-installed. I knew this would (probably) happen because Ubuntu 22.04 has it as well. A quick sudo apt purge brltty took care of the problem. Now I can plug all my Espressif and Raspberry Pi Pico boards into my USB ports and program them to my heart’s content.

It’s interesting how clean this environment is. For example I needed to print a letter I’d written in LibreOffice Writer. Out of habit I hit the print button, and then regretted it because I thought the print would fail. It didn’t. Linux Mint had found the HP printer during installation and automatically set it up. This was a far cry from getting it to work with Fedora 36. Another little surprise was when I wrote this post. The screen shot at the top was dropped into place via drag-and-drop from the folder it was saved to. Under Fedora, drag-and-drop didn’t work very well with Vivaldi.

I can also build a full Python again. I built and installed Python 3.11 beta 5, and created a second virtual environment. I never did get everything to build under Fedora.

I’m done distribution chasing. I appreciate the experiences, and I’ve come away with a better appreciation of various Linux distributions. Linux Mint suits me. As far as I’m concerned it’s the gold standard for Linux distributions.

linux mint 21 cinnamon beta

whbeebe3 Comments

I downloaded and installed Linux Mint’s latest release beta ( I used a mirror at the Open Computing Facility at UC Berkeley https://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/linux-mint/testing/ ) as a Parallels VM. If this is a beta, then it’s a very polished beta, as good as many a distribution’s final release. I have come to appreciate Mint’s Cinnamon desktop, and yes, it’s because it operates like Windows’ start menu going back to at least Windows 7. Microsoft’s attempt to fiddle with the start menu in Windows 8, and then again in Windows 11, has generated considerable pushback from the legions of Windows users.

In general, every time someone comes up with a Better Desktop Environment™ we all get to suffer while those who foisted this Better Desktop Environment™ on us celebrate how brilliant they are and browbeat those of us who can’t stand it. At which point the malcontents march off to find another distribution with a more Sane and Rational Desktop Environment™, like any of the Linux Mint distributions.

The great pleasure of installing a distribution like Linux Mint is how easy it is to get it installed, followed by how easy it is to get to work with a desktop that doesn’t violate the principal of least astonishment ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment ). My desktop doesn’t go zipping across the screen and I know where to go and find a tool because I know where the menu is, and how it’s organized. It isn’t perfect, no distribution is. But it’s practically perfect in nearly every way, to the point where I’m considering now more than ever switching away from Fedora.

My greatest aggravation with Fedora 36 is, and continues to be, Parental Controls.

I can neither uninstall nor disable it.

You will note that the latest feature is to “prevent malcontent-control from being uninstalled and removing core desktop components with it.” Really? I have to wonder if the developer was being an asshole when they named it “malcontent-control,” because it sure does bring out the malcontent in me, especially when it’s my computer and I’m making choices about what I want to run on it. You either trust me to make good decisions or you don’t; either way it’s really none of your business. Parental Controls is a slap in the face of every Fedora user. The only good feature (if you can call any feature of Parental Controls good) is that it looks to be off by default. But I don’t trust it, and by association, I’ve come to distrust Fedora’s developer community and the Fedora product.

I imagine the self-righteous do-gooder(s) (a variation of the developer group that attempts to produce a Better Desktop Environment™) that foisted this upon all of us is sitting alone in front of their computer lamenting how misunderstood and unappreciated their creation is. So far I haven’t seen that show up within the Cinnamon desktop.

The problem with migrating yet again to another desktop (I migrated from Pop!_OS to Fedora 36) is pulling my now considerable development environment with me. It was difficult enough with the first transition to Fedora. It will only be more complex now. But I believe I need to do it, if for no other reason than to shut up about Fedora.

Yes. It’s time to move on…