Linux Mint 19 Released!

[Jason]

It was released yesterday and with all three editions instead of a wait for each one after Cinnamon. So you have your choice of Cinnamon, MATE or Xfce.

For Cinnamon, here are the new features:

https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_tara_cinnamon_whatsnew.php

The differences I found interesting:

   
• Update Manager no longer separates updates according to system risk (the numbers are gone) - the feature is still there if you want to turn it back on but it's off by default
• Automatic Updates is now available
• New welcome screen that walks you through the steps of customizing and finishing install of your system
• Faster app launching (supposed to be twice as fast)

Linux Mint 19 will receive security updates until 2023. Let us know below what you think of the new features and if you try it out. If you plan on doing a full review, create a new topic.

[buster]

Timeshift is a major factor in the design of this new release, though it was there before. Timeshift is a bit intimidating to me, and maybe others. How much space? External or on same drive? How much space? How often? How is it used?

Would be great if someone who actually uses it could do a presentation on it. Perfect September presentation.

[Jason]

I showed how to use it back when I did a presentation on Linux Mint. I think it was LM 18.2 or 18.3 - don't remember exactly. I use it regularly.

There's not a lot to show or say about it. You just follow the steps in the wizard. Think of it like Windows System Restore. It backs up your system regularly so if something goes wrong with it, you can roll it back to an earlier state. Like Windows System Restore, it's not meant for data. You should still back that up separately.

The first backup does everything except /home (unless you choose to add that). After that backups are incremental, meaning it only backs up files that have changed since the previous backup. So this should give you an idea of how much spaces it uses but it really depends on how often you set the backups and how often your files changed and how big they are. With system files, this would involve things like installing/removing software, changing OS settings and so on. Can't really give you an average case.

You can choose where to put the snapshots; the wizard guides you through this. Obviously, you have to put it on a drive and partition with enough space. I put it another drive but it's still on the same computer. You can use an external drive if you wish. All the snapshots go in a folder called Timeshift wherever you put it. A drive different from where you main system is recommended in case of drive failure.

You choose how often it backs up, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and how many backup points to keep. It works automatically in the background whenever you scheduled and you can do an on-demand backup whenever you choose as well.

If you have to do a restore, you just open it, choose the appropriate backup (they're listed by date and a letter indicating H,D,W,M for hourly, daily, weekly, monthly backups or O for On Demand backups (that you initiated via Create) and then click Restore. Your system will reboot and it will be restored. How long depends on how much has changed since the backup you chose. This article gives you the lowdown as well the Timeshift website (click on Menu -> About for the link).

https://itsfoss.com/backup-restore-linux-timeshift/

I suppose there might be a presentation here but it'd be a short one, I'd think.

Update: After about 3 weeks of use, I checked to see how much space Timeshift uses in a new topic here.

[dougal]

I hadn't known about this feature and wondered about it when I first started using LM as an install not as LIVE session. Now that i'm installing LM19 on machines and playing with supplemental programs this feature (timeshift) will be welcome.thanks.

[Jason]

Would you be interested in a Timeshift presentation as well, Dougal? I could certainly do one if there is sufficient interest.

I'd be certainly willing to do a presentation just for you, Buster, if you're the only one expressing interest, but you'd have to come to the meeting ;-)

[buster]

As you know, I'm sometimes otherwhere. While I'm mobile still love to live in other places. Usually OK Dec, Jan, Feb.

Noticed I could not use TimeShift with an msft file system for storage. Tried it today.

[Jason]

Yeah, if you click on the Help below, it has tips for each step in the wizard. And it specifically says it will write to any Linux filesystem. I'm guessing that's because it uses rsync which probably depends on certain file properties specific to Linux-based filesystems.

Good to mention though since most external drives probably come pre-formatted to NTFS.

[dougal]

thanks for the offer jason...i'll see how things go first.

[buster]

Disrowatch released a review of Mint 19 yesterday. Seems quite favorable:

https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20180702#mint

[Jason]

He mentioned having issues using Timeshift with encrypted home partitions and btrfs but this isn't how Timeshift is supposed to be used.You're not supposed to use it with home partitions. Even by default, /root and /home are not included in Timeshift snapshots. That's what the backup program is for.

Also, in Update Manager, if you prefer seeing the ranked updates, you can turn them back on in the settings.

Otherwise, I pretty much agree with his review having played with the final beta.

[fox]

I can now verify that the Mint 19 update works when the 18.3 installation is running an upgraded Mint 4.15 kernel. Now that I have Mint 19 with the default 4.15 kernel on my iMac, both Mint and Ubuntu support my 5k iMac video card without any proprietary drivers and both start up instantly from the default grub. Mint 19 actually seems a bit faster than 18.3 and all of the apps I have seem to work on it. Barring any hiccups in the next week or so, I am going to move to Mint Cinnamon as my regular distro on this iMac. At that point I will donate to the project.