Linux Mint 22 is an attractive option for migrating away from Windows - gHacks Tech News
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Linux Mint 22 is now available. The release of the popular Linux distributions marks a good time for Windows users to consider switching to Linux.

The Linux Mint team has just released Linux Mint 22, a new major version of the free Linux distribution. With Windows 10’s end of support coming up quickly next year, at least some users may consider making the switch to Linux.

While there are other options, paying Microsoft for extended support or upgrading to Windows 11, these options are not available for all users or desirable.

Linux Mint 22 is a long-term service release. Means, it is supported until 2029. Unlike Microsoft, which made drastic changes to the system requirements of Windows 11 to lock out millions of devices from upgrading to the new version, Linux Mint will continue to work on older hardware, even after 2029.

Here are the core changes in Linux Mint 22:

  • Based on the new Ubuntu 24.04 package base.
  • Kernel version is 6.8.
  • Software Manager loads faster and has improved multi-threading.
  • Unverified Flatpaks are disabled by default.
  • Preinstalled Matrix Web App for using chat networks.
  • Improved language support removes any language not selected by the user after installation to save disk space.
  • Several under-the-hood changes that update libraries or software.
  • Squizzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    I had the linux mint usb boot and then when I did the full install, the wireless internet wouldnt work so I needed a usb adapter. Weird, not a deal breaker just odd.

    • Grippler@feddit.dkEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      WiFi, BT and touchpads have IME always been wonky AF with Linux, and they still are. I had massive issues with my last thinkpad, and was never able to get BT or touchpad working consistently, but my “new” one (it’s 6-7 years old) works just fine without a single driver issue whatsoever.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        I’m currently dealing with a wonky WiFi issue, and the weird thing is that I have the exact same chip in two machines (openSUSE Leap and Tumbleweed), and the Leap one works fine and the Tumbleweed one is limited to something like 16mbps… And this is an Intel NIC, which are usually pretty good.

  • Defaced@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    3 months ago

    My main issue with mint has always been the reluctance to use a newer package base. Fortunately I think that’s changing since they’re adopting Wayland support and have their edge iso now. Currently running bazzite and it’s pretty rock solid with a couple quirks, but I’ve always thought about going back to mint when they start updating their package base.

  • PostingInPublic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1493·
    3 months ago

    I switched my main gaming computer to Mint after testing it on a laptop. Being away from Windows is awesome. You know how everything always wants your attention on Windows? Your antivirus proudly announces its existence. Windows wants to know if it should remove some printers? Some PDF software needs updated RIGHT NOW. There’s a license change please acknowledge this 20 page document. Animated attention grabbing everywhere. I always think FUCK OFF when presented with this bullshit.

    You know what - Mint doesn’t do that. I’ve not been internally shouting at my own computer since I went that way.

    It is serene.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      101·
      3 months ago

      I like the way Linux handles updating software better.

      On Windows, every app is installed separately so each app is internally responsible for its own updates. So you sit down to do some work, open up your productivity software and “Autodobe After360 requires an update to continue. [Yes] [Yes]” This isn’t impossible on Linux but it happens much less often.

      As you say it doesn’t throw itself under your wheels as often as Windows does.

      • Telorand@reddthat.comEnglish
        6·
        3 months ago

        You can do a lot with chocolatey or winget, but they can’t update system software. Linux package management is just better.

    • bricklove@midwest.socialEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      That serenity is why I enjoy running Arch with basically nothing on it. My OS doesn’t do shit and I love it

    • CybranM@feddit.nuEnglish
      28·
      3 months ago

      How has your gaming journey been so far? Games and general programs are the main reason why in still on Windows

      • jettrscga@lemmy.worldEnglish
        45·
        3 months ago

        I switched to Linux Mint a couple months ago and use Steam a lot. I’ve tried at least 10 games and all worked perfectly.

        But I don’t do competitive multiplayer. Those are more likely to have issues with anti-cheats. Although I did try Hell Let Loose and Helldivers very successfully and those are both major online titles.

        Check https://protondb.com if you’re worried about a specific game’s compatibility. I’ve had silver rated games work perfectly though.

        Edit: Apps - Photo editing and 3D CAD are the main areas I’ve struggled with on Linux. There’s no good Adobe equivalent, and no good Fusion 360 equivalent. Free CAD exists, but that can gently fuck off.

        • tyrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          I’m with you. Bricscad was the best cad I found and it genuinely wasn’t a great experience. Very laggy but it has all the professional tools and workflow I’m used to.

        • CybranM@feddit.nuEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          Thanks for the link! Will definitely check out my top played games, unfortunately I play a lot of multiplayer games like Dota, Hunt, CS and War Thunder.

          Photo editing and 3d modelling is something I do a lot which is a deal-breaker for me personally. Blender works on Linux afaik but stuff like substance painter/designer, Houdini, plasticity etc I don’t know

        • brachypelmasmithi@lemm.eeEnglish
          12·
          3 months ago

          Apps - Photo editing and 3D CAD are the main areas I’ve struggled with on Linux

          Yeah, I feel that. Paint.net is the sole reason I still fire up my Windows VM every now and then.

          The closest you can get is Pinta and even then, looking at the surface things may seem very similar, but the workflow is totally different (it doesn’t even have overscroll god damn it!) and the plugin scene is deader than dead. I wanted to code a proper replacement based on Pinta, but I haven’t got the motivation or time for that.

          If I wanna edit an image, firing up a VM is still genuinely faster than trying to work with Pinta or GIMP or any other opensource alternative for that matter. Krita has surprisingly been pretty good at replicating the workflow, but it still falls short.

      • pathief@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        3 months ago

        Not the person you asked to but my gaming experience has been stellar. If you use Steam you don’t have to do anything, it all works out of the box. If you don’t play those multiplayer games with kernel level anti cheats you’ll be fine.

        I was expecting a bad time and was extremely impressed. Gaming in Linux is amazing.

        • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          6·
          3 months ago

          Some of those with anti cheat even work, I’ve been playing Helldivers 2 with no issue

          Last I heard, Destiny 2 could be running fine, their anti cheat supports Linux, but Bungie still bans people for trying

        • rozodru@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          If in the future you don’t want to dual boot you should check out CachyOS. I use that as my daily driver right now and it’s great for gaming.

          • Lumisal@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            I’ve found I prefer Fedora over debian builds for gaming, and Bazzite also includes literally everything needed for gaming of any kind already installed. Also it being immutable is really good in particular in case a game causes system issues. Bazzite also has great Steam Deck integration and desktop interoperability if needed, and can install emulators from the get go, along with many wine configurations for older Windows games.

            It’s also nice to have my work space divided completely from my gaming one, and a debian build is great for productivity programs like audio mixing, 3d printing, and art, since there’s more stability and support vs bleeding edge like fedora.

            Hence my dual boot set up (with separate ssd’s).

            Now I just have to get around to writing a script to clean up the grub menu, street going through making it look pretty.

      • thundermoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
        20·
        3 months ago

        Steam + Proton works for most games, but there are still rough edges that you need to be prepared to deal with. In my experience, it’s typically older titles and games that use anti-cheat that have the most trouble. Most of the time it just works, I even ran the Battle.net installer as an external Steam game with Proton enabled and was able to play Blizzard titles right away.

        The biggest gap IMO is VR. If you have a VR headset that you use on your desktop and it’s important to you, stay on Windows. There is no realistic solution for VR integration in Linux yet. There are ways that you can kinda get something to work with ALVR, but it’s incredibly janky and no dev will support it. There are rumors Steam Link is being ported to Linux, nothing official yet though.

        On balance, I’m incredibly happy with Mint since I switched last year. However, I do a decent amount of personal software development, and I’ve used Linux for 2 decades as a professional developer. I wouldn’t say the average Windows gamer would be happy dealing with the rough spots quite yet, but it’s like 95% of the way there these days. Linux has really grown up a lot in the last few years.

        • CybranM@feddit.nuEnglish
          4·
          3 months ago

          Thanks for the detailed reply. VR isn’t a deal-breaker for me currently but your last paragraph is great, most of the videos I’ve watched have echoed that sentiment of “It works great… Most of the time”

          I do want to give Linux a try when I have some time over for trouble shooting and fixing. I feel like a Mac person when I say that lol, “I just want it to work”

      • skulblaka@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        Things with kernel anti-cheat aren’t going to work unless they have a Linux version. So no Helldivers, Valorant, Apex Legends, etc.

        Other than that, I have yet to find a game that doesn’t work under Proton. They’ll tell you it’s Windows-only until you go into the game’s steam compatibility settings and set it to Proton Experimental and then it just installs and runs no problem. Even things I didn’t really expect to work, I booted and played Trepang2 under Proton just last night, not a problem in sight.

        • jettrscga@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          Helldivers 2 works on Linux by the way. It was the first game I installed on Linux and I have almost 100 hrs on it. I haven’t tried the others you mentioned though.

        • Russ@bitforged.spaceEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          Along with Helldivers 2, I can confirm Apex Legends works as well. Valorant as far as I’m aware is a definite no-go though.

          Just adding on, ProtonDB is a great resource for checking game compatibility!

          • skulblaka@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

            Thanks to you and jettrscga for letting me know! I think that may not have always been the case, I seem to remember Helldivers pretty specifically didn’t have Linux support when I was last playing it. Or maybe I’m just crazy.

            Apex I for sure just assumed wouldn’t work, without trying, because of aforementioned kernel anti-cheat. Good to know I was wrong there even if I don’t like the game that much myself.

      • Telorand@reddthat.comEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        This is a great time to switch. I have Bazzite on a 2015 laptop and a Steam Deck with SteamOS, and I’m working on migrating my main gaming rig. 95% of my games run well, and the few that don’t are often tiny indie projects. Most general use apps have Linux equivalents or Linux versions.

        My recommendation is to try a few distros in VMs and see if you can set them up how you’d do it for real. Then, try out a few Live ISOs to identify any glaringly obvious hardware compatibility issues you might need to solve (rare, but it happens).

        Try the common recommendations like Mint or Pop!_OS, and check out gaming-focused ones like Bazzite and Garuda.

  • DaddleDew@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    3 months ago

    I revived a 15 year old laptop by installing Linux Mint on it (and replacing the hard drive for an old SSD I had kicking around). It does everything a modern laptop would do except play new games now.

  • jsonjson@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    36·
    3 months ago

    I hope Clem enjoys his successes on the backs of the many contributors he’s ostracized over the years.

    • blipcast@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      Could you elaborate on this? I’m still distro shopping and know basically nothing about Mint’s development history.

      • jsonjson@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        4·
        3 months ago

        Sure he’s burned bridges with me and other people I’ve talked to. They have a habit of reverting people’s work and have a lot of back door conversations. Just because it’s open source doesn’t mean it’s collaborative or that anyone has any input in the actual result, regardless of how much work they contribute towards it themselves.

        They also cut a lot of corners and do sloppy work, and when called out on it, that’s when they start ostracizing people. They work in bad faith in many situations with outsiders.

        Which is fine we all like different things but what I said was true, take it or leave it, and you guys can fanboy downvote me and I can move on and not actually care either way.

        For the people that really care about this distribution, they’re only doing a disservice to themselves by being in denial about Linux mint disappearing tomorrow if a single person goes away, because that’s the state of things.

        • blipcast@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          Thanks for the explanation. I’m sorry you had a bad experience working with them. Unfortunately, bad management and petty people problems don’t go away just because it’s open source. :(

    • Vik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      3 months ago

      I’m curious about these, do the surfaces still require the use of (or benefit from) custom kernels?

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        3 months ago

        AFAIK they still benefit from custom kernels, but don’t require them. I believe support continues to make it into master, so it likely won’t be the case forever.

    • ripcord@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      3 months ago

      Ive been willing to skip the like 2% of games I have that won’t play on it, personally.

    • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zipEnglish
      141·
      3 months ago

      Let me preach you the gospel of

      bazzite.gg

      A user friendly, steam OS like distro specifically made for gaming. About as difficult to set up as a new smartphone, and comes with all the goods needed for gaming preinstalled, like steam, wine (lutris), and various other compatibility features.

      It is also an immutable distro, which essentially means you can’t break your system*. If you mess something up you can simply roll back to an earlier configuration.

      *you certainly still can, but you would have to actively try

      • Sharkwellington@lemmy.oneEnglish
        9·
        3 months ago

        I installed Bazzite earlier this month as a dual boot and have been very happy with it. A lot of stuff just worked on bootup, haven’t installed a single driver, and that’s including my AMD GPU, just installed a game, plugged in my controller, and it played. Most games seem to run better than Windows. Fullscreen mode is a lot less annoying to tab out of - there isn’t the annoying momentary black screen, tab just happens. OBS seems to finally be on the level of Windows performance, although some of my favorite extensions are Windows-only. That’s been something of an annoyance, a lot of stuff is Windows-only, but usually if I Google “[program] Linux” I’ll get a workaround or substitute. I still leave Windows installed because of anti-cheat nonsense, but I rarely boot into Windows anymore.

        Kind of meandering but that’s my experience so far. Overall pretty satisfied.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        111·
        3 months ago

        Tried it this week, video signal would cut off as soon as there was a tiny bit of load on the GPU (like intro videos in a game would be too much)… I’ll have to experiment some more but you can’t blame people for using the option that just works when switching OS probably means troubleshooting for tens of hours…

        • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          I certainly dont blame them, I just made the switch from windows myself a few months ago and have been amazed by my problem free experience.

          Perhaps it isnt as effortless for everyone depending on the hardware, I have to concede, but my experience has been nothing but brilliant. My biggest gripe so far has been that the open source rgb controller needs to be set manually for my keyboard (which isnt much of a gripe really).

        • Telorand@reddthat.comEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          Have you experimented with the Proton version? Video playback in games is commonly problematic, and sometimes switching to the GE version, Experimental, or a downgraded version will fix it.

          Check ProtonDB and see if there’s a tweak you should make. I had to downgrade the Proton version in River City Girls to get video to work properly.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            4·
            3 months ago

            Yep, tried with Jedi: Fallen Order on the EA app via Lutris using Proton, same thing with Helldivers 2 and Pillars of Eternity on Steam, as soon as there was load on the GPU the display signal would stop (and it wasn’t just graphics not being loaded, it would switch to displaying my laptop input instead of my desktop display).

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

            6650xt

            I’ve got the whole day tomorrow to start over from scratch, I tried reinstalling to an external drive and I didn’t have a taskbar and wifi didn’t work, so clearly there’s something wrong somewhere…

            • Blisterexe@lemmy.zipEnglish
              32·
              3 months ago

              Bazzite is a small distro that isnt very well tested on desktops, have you tried something like pop, mint, zorin or fedora?

              • quarterlife@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                31·
                3 months ago

                I’m not sure what you mean by that, it’s directly built on Fedora which is probably one of if not the best workstation OS.

  • drislands@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    3 months ago

    I switched to Mint for my new PC a few months ago. There are a handful of games that don’t work on it, but they’re few and far between.

  • visikde@lemmings.worldEnglish
    13·
    3 months ago

    Mint’s ok other than that ubun taint Years ago it was a one man show, not as much now?
    I came & went from Mint 2010, I don’t remember specifics, something about network shares

    My criteria is corporate or community?
    Tinker or work?
    Bleeding edge or just works
    KDE/qt or Gnome/gtk, there are a few DE’s forked from Gnome
    I like the consistency across KDE apps of being able to have a custom toolbar & shortcuts

    I like community built, user friendly, KDE

    Whatever you choose, install the meta package. You can add a DE, but you will have to chase weird crap & it will never be as good as a clean install
    I like to install whatever I want to test on usb3 external nvme/sdd/hdd & use the Home [files] on the main machine or copy home as backup, best way to get the full effect of any distro
    Just to be safe I like to have stuff from different parts of the linux world as backups

    Debian MX just works, been good since they got over their init fixation, got all sorts of user friendly stuff, 6 month release cycle, enough community to keep it working
    I just downloaded Spiral linux all the nice touches, but updates direct from debian, kind of like the various arch installers, but not quite so do it yourself
    I don’t really like synaptic, the text is too small, takes too long

    Arch
    Manjaro
    As much arch as you want
    Very user friendly, big community, Pamac [best package manager], rolling release

    Red hat Suze is having weirdness from corporate again
    I’m on Mageia, a long history of user friendly [drak tools], stable, just works
    Very good community, 18 month release cycle, nice online version upgrade, rpm packages

  • Dave@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    3 months ago

    Switched to Linux Mint about three years ago after being unable to take my perfectly good laptop from W10 to W11. Dual boot firstly, quickly becoming entirely Mint. It just worked. It was the first Linux distro I’d tried in about 20 years that I didn’t mess up in a week or so.

    Recently bought a new laptop and decided to distro hop. Tried various flavours of Fedora, and a few others, but ultimately came back to Mint. None of the others worked quite as well as Mint does for me (though I really liked KDE Plasma, and Gnome surprised me once I finally discovered extensions!)

    • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      151·
      3 months ago

      You can put Plasma on Mint, I’m running that right now myself

      When I rebuilt my PC I was planning something similar, got two nvme drives to dual boot, but started with Linux Mint… And never wound up installing Windows on the other, never felt the need, so I finally last night formatted it for more room for all my games

      • Dave@lemmy.worldEnglish
        18·
        3 months ago

        I did try running Plasma on Mint, but it was never quite as good as on Fedora or as smooth on Mint as Cinnamon.

        Honestly, I think I just like the simple uniformity of Cinnamon. It’s dull and predicable, but really, really solid.

        • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          5·
          3 months ago

          I really liked Cinnamon but switched mainly because I kept having occasional video problems that didn’t seem to affect KDE… But, that might have been the lack of a proper video driver, I’ve not tried switching back since fixing that

          At this point, I’ve found enough with KDE that I like having in my workflow that I’ve been reluctant to try switching back

  • Zink@programming.devEnglish
    10·
    3 months ago

    Mint is my daily use OS at work, and will soon be taking over my windows machine at home that acts as a server.

    I’m sure it’s a side effect of me being old and being busy all the damn time, but I love that it can literally be easier to install and use than windows, without losing any linux-ness. Big deal if it looks like I have a windows taskbar, I still have my screens taken up by Firefox, VSCode, terminal.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      3 months ago

      Agreed. I managed to get my grandpa onto Linux using Mint on his old computer. He said the interface resembled classic Windows and was up and running in less than five minutes. I just had to show him how to use the software manager and that’s it.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        3 months ago

        I got my aunt’s laptop on Mint. Was unusable with Win 10, like click the start button, wait 4 minutes and then the start menu opens. Took right to it, especially since she’s been using an Android tablet for just about everything so she knew what an app store was. “Linux calls it a software manager” was all the training required.

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        It’s also got so many features that just make sense, like extending to separate monitors being automated, or when you download multiple files they’re automatically zipped to conserve space.

        I did love Mint.