Nice! The outdated kernel was one of the main reasons why I never recommended using Mint. Now, if they can do something about their other outdated packages like Mesa - and switch to Wayland - I'd be happy to recommend Mint.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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They have the edge kernel, which is not exatly the latest and greatest but should be new enough.
I think their focus is having things that doesn't break and requires no tweaking.
I have to ask: what are you and your friends running that doesn't work with kernel 5.15? FYI, I got a Thinkpad T14 Gen 3 running Mint with no issue.
Running recent AMD hardware and gaming. I have a ThinkPad Z13 with a Zen 3+ APU, a performance-oriented homelab machine with a recent Zen 4 APU, and a Zen 2 gaming desktop with a recent AMD GPU.
For the laptop, my main concerns are battery life, desktop responsiveness and gaming performance. As you may or may not be aware, the AMD space has seen a flurry of development activity these past couple of years thanks to Valve and the Steam Deck. There have been several improvements in the power management aspect in recent kernels, specifically the AMD p-state EPP driver. For desktop responsiveness, the new EEVDF scheduler has been a groundbreaking improvement over the old CFS scheduler. Finally, for gaming, there have been tons of performance improvements and bug fixes in the Mesa and Vulkan drivers, and as a laptop gamer I always aim to squeeze every bit of FPS I can get out of it. For some games, a recent Mesa makes a huge difference.
I also appreciate the improvements to the in-kernel NTFS3 driver since kernel 6.2 (where some important mount options were added) and most recently (tail end of 6.7) a bunch of bug fixes were also merged. I use an NTFS-formatted external drive for archival and file sharing between different machines (I also use macOS and Windows, hence why I went with NTFS), so any improvements to the NTFS3 driver is something I look forward to.
Next is my homelab setup, it's recent bleeding edge AMD hardware which runs a ton of VMs (Openshift container platform, Docker, Postgres and a bunch of web apps). When I'm working on it, I also use it for dev stuff and some work stuff - whilst all the VMs and containers are running in the background. So once again, I'm looking for stuff like EEVDF for desktop responsiveness, but also improvements to KVM or virtualisation performance in general. I'm also really excited for the upcoming kernel 6.9, because of the KSMBD and bcachefs improvements - particularly the latter, since I intended to evaluate a tiered storage setup using bcachefs, and if it's any good, I'll make the switch from btrfs.
Finally, for my gaming PC - obviously I'm always after the latest Mesa and Vulkan improvements, as well as overall desktop responsiveness and performance. In addition, I also care about things like VRR and HDR support, and all the Wayland-related improvements across the spectrum. All of which have seen vast improvements in recent times.
I mainly run Arch (with Cachy repos), which allows me to use optimised x86-64-v3/v4 packages for the best performance, as well as special AMD-GPU optimised Mesa/vulkan/vdpau/vaapi drivers which is available only for Arch (as far as I'm aware; but maybe there's a PPA for *buntu as well?). In any case, with Arch I'm able to easily fine-tune and get the most out of my systems.
So there you go, this is why I chase after recent packages and why Mint isn't suitable for me. I know if you wanted to, Mint users could subscribe to PPAs like Oibaf or something, or manually install recent kernels, but then you'd break the system and that defeats the whole point of Mint's focus on stability. On the other hand, I don't mind recommending it for someone who's main use case is primarily home-office/web browsing etc and they have an older system. But for power users, gamers, or those who have recent hardware, I definitely cannot recommend Mint in good faith.
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I no longer use Linux Mint, but I really enjoyed the decade I spent on it. The kernel change seems like a good move considering Mint is targeted towards desktop users.
So what made you switch after so long?
Haha Mint was my first distro! I wiped Windows 7 and installed Mint, then quickly learned that a tarball is in fact more work than an exe. Good times and a great learning experience! Back then it was the only thing not slow, ugly, or wildly unfamiliar.
They didnt use Pipewire before??
was not ready you had to use a PPA to make it work well.
Lolz
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DefaultPipeWire
I know that Fedora does breaking changes and basically beta tests, but Pipewire "just works" since at least 2 years
Mint 21 is based on an LTS from two years ago so that tracks.
You'll have to excuse the fact they're basing on the LTS.
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Yes, they did. I'm using Mint 21.2 Xfce with Pipewire "factory" installed.
Are these rolling out to LMDE?
LMDE is already on pipewire as far as I can tell. I have a process running by that name, as well as one called pipewire-pulse which I assume is providing some or all of the old pulseaudio functionality for whatever might be expecting it.
No problems I'm aware of. I thought I was having problems early last month, but that turned out to be hardware failure.
That's great to hear! Thanks
I would expect all these changes get to LMDE except the kernel, which is based on Ubuntu.
Absolutely
Why except the kernel? Of all the things, that’s the easiest to get custom.
Sure, you still can customize the kernel, it's just not the same default kernel for LMDE. Kernels move differently in Debian but you can always install something like the Liquorix kernel if you need the newest, and Ubuntu still uses the HWE model IIRC.
What I mean is that it’s about the easiest package for the Mint team to package a custom version of. No dependencies to worry about. Or they can pull the HWE from Ubuntu and ship it with LMDE.
I don't think that's a good idea. Moreover, it would defeat the purpose of using Debian Stable as the base system and their magnificent team of kernel maintainers. If you want the HWE just use plain Linux Mint, if you need a current kernel, go with a rolling release distro, and if you need Debian, try Sid.
pipewire was the smoothest transition ive ever experienced in linux, and fixed most of my grief with the audio subsystem. mint always takes its sweet time and i feel like this should have happened much sooner, but better late than never.
Fuckyeah. I need it, so I had to jump through a couple of hoops to get it running on LM21, but good to know that it's default next time I need to install.
As someone who has pulse just the way they want it, what will this mean for me?
Is it a forced change on a current install?
Is there an equivalent to PulseEffects for PipeWire?
Actually, PulseEffects has been renamed into EasyEffects and is PipeWire only now
Well the PulseEffects version is still alive and well in Ubuntu's repos and it will be for a while.
There's Easyeffects. I don't know if it is equivalent but it certainly has more features than I could ever hope to be able to use.
There's a compability layer, generally called pipewire-pulse. I think it's not a one-for-one copy, but it works great for desktop applications that expect pulse.
Some things that previously were pulseaudio modules, like rtp and raop (airplay), have been reimplemented as native pipewire modules, I believe.
More complicated setups I can't personally speak to, but since pipewire is also catered towards professional audio workflows (as opposed to just desktop audio), you should at least be able to replicate what you have now.
And, as others have already pointed out, pulseeffects has been long dead, and now lives on as easyeffects.
PulseEffects is still working fine for me is why I was asking. Been using it for the past year after making the switch.
I find Easy effects is much more feature rich easier to import APO files and such
I switched my Mint install to Pipewire already. Just hope that won't mess up the upgrade.
In my experience, it probably will. I've learned to just leave stuff alone and let the distro people handle it all. They know their own distro way better than me.
Ah well. I guess a reinstall every couple of years or so isn't such a bad thing.
You can come back to pulseaudio and delete all your pipewire configs before upgrading.
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