Linux Mint 20 "Ulyana"

Download

 

Did you install? Make sure you have the PC connected to internet so that it downloads shim-signed and efibootmgr from the repo otherwise it will install grub2-non-efi. Then you need to use rEFInd to load the correct kernel and boot into it and run sudo update-grub after you install those packages.
I just tried Parrot Home OS in live cd and it was painful to install on existing partitions and it failed. I installed Ubuntu Budgie and install was done in 5 mins.
Parrot OS Home I used was MATE edition just like Linux Mint. The UI is simple and elegant but settings are buried deeper than in ubuntu distros.

 

Clean installed on my Dell Precision 5510. So far running smooth, and funny enough, battey life has improved. We'll see what its like in a couple weeks.

 

Battery life is better thanks to on-demand Optimus switching, I can managed to 5 hrs instead of 2.5hrs on 96Wh battery.

 

Download Linux Mint 20 Wallpapers

 

Seems like a nice list of enhancements. I'm going to have to upgrade when I have some spare time.

Here are just the Linux Mint 20 wallpaper JPG files pulled from the archive for use with Windows for whoever wants them. It's good to see all of them are higher than 1080p resolution. The Redmond Slobs should pay attention. 1080p is entry-level, low-end Chromebook and tablet wallpaper image quality now. Yet, they only provide crappy 1080p stock wallpaper with Windows 10.

Good to know. Thank you for sharing. I'm used to having to make sure I am disconnected from the internet to get the result I want from Windows. Otherwise, a butt-load of cancer gets downloaded during Windows 10 Setup. I should be OK because my preference is Legacy (non-EFI) and that is how things are intentionally set in my BIOS.

Great to see an example of something being produced in an operating system that actually adds value for a change. That is extremely rare in a Micro$lop world where everything they touch turns to crap.

Ready to go.

 

@Spartan - all set

 

That is sick! on which computer is this?

 

Linux Mint is/was on my desktop. I just upgraded it to Mint 20.

I have Zorin Linux installed on my TongFang turdbook.

 

Here's my Zorin desktop on the turdbook.

 

Do you still need to spend a day researching how to install an nVIDIA driver in the world's most not user friendly OS in the world?

Also, do FN keys on laptops still not work? They can't figure out these simple things for years which is why I never wanted to spend more than 10 minutes on Linux.

 

No, the NVIDIA driver gets selected and installed through the driver manager.

And, all of my FN keys work normally with an on-screen display image (volume, screen brightness, keyboard backlight brightness, etc.) so no issues.

You should try making a dual-boot setup. Just carve out like 256GB of unallocated drive space and install it there.
I think you'll like it if you take the time to get comfortable with it.

 

Check my specs bro, I only have a 512 GB NVMe SSD in my system which has only 100GB left after a few game installs. I'll need to wait till I can afford to get a bigger drive. I've sent HIDevolution a message to tell me how much would two HP EX950 1 TB M.2 PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD cost me which are the best bang for performance

 

This is what I am using in the TongFang. It is affordable and fast enough for there to be no reason to care if it isn't the fastest. Great bang for the buck and fast enough to not be able to sense or perceive any performance difference compared to my Samsung 960 Pros.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1437036-REG/intel_ssdpeknw020t8x1_660p_2tb_ssd_sata.html

@Spartan - Warpinator works nice. Quick and easy way to transfer files between two Linux computers running Warpinator.


Linux version of JRiver Media Center works great.

 

The lack of anything resembling a decent music manager has been one of the biggest holdbacks for me.
I do hear good things about Jriver, but the exchange rate is brutal. By the time I convert to Canadian Pesos it's ~$100CAD. Way too much, esp. considering I have no use for video/streaming or anything not music related - and I'm loathe to pay for features I don't want or need.

Battery life is another issue, but if Mint 20 is better for battery time, I might have to give it try again but I've read claims about better battery life before that have never panned out. (i'd also miss Throttlestop keeping my fans from needlessly screaming - undervolting works quite well on my machine)

 

JRiver Media Center is excellent. It has a very good EQ and mixing features. I don't do any streaming, but it does a great job of playing my stereo MP3 files in 5.1 channels. But, it is too expensive if you're paying the normal price. I got it on sale for like $30 USD with lifetime license for multiple installations across Linux, Windows, and Mac (I think they call it a "Master" license).

I normally do not care about battery life. But, I know it is important to some. I decided to check and it seems it dramatically improved my battery run time compared to Windows 10 and Zorin. (Yes, I replaced Zorin with Mint 20. Zorin is a really nice distro, but it has too many configuration limitations for my liking in its default form... mainly a Linux for noobs that don't want to break anything by accident. It is probably the very best option for Linux noobs migrating from Windows that are not into tweaking, but kind of inconvenient if you are into tweaking. Hard to beat Mint... my favorite distro.)

I was playing with GIMP to make a new wallpaper while seeing how the battery would hold up. See the screenshot below. This laptop has a very small battery, so that's pretty darned good. Looks like the battery time measurement also seems to be properly calibrated. I started at about 3:15 PM with about 5:00 hours on a full charge. Checked a little bit ago (5:10 PM) and still have more than 2.5 hours left.

 

I'll have to keep my eye open for Jriver sales then. I don't need a master license, I'm a diehard Musicbee user on Win. environment.

Sounds like the battery improvements are pretty worthwhile afterall. When I get some free time and inclination to play with it, I'll give it a go again - too bad I don't have a big enough SSD (128GB) to do a proper dualboot.

 

So, last night I had some time to ran the Linux Mint (LM) 19.3 to 20 upgrade. The overall process went fairly smoothly, but I did hit 3 snafus, one of which I haven't solved yet. Posting my experience here for others that may hit similar issues:

Ran the "mintupgrade" utility ( https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/upgrade-to-mint-20.html ), and that process went as well as one could expect. I had to run "sudo apt-get autoremove" a single time after the first "mintupgrade checK' command, in order to get the list just how I wanted, but other than that everything else just worked. Including downloading all needed packages, the overall process took ~35-45 minutes.

Upon reboot, I hit my first snag. The first message to be displayed upon choosing to boot LM was "Initramfs unpacking failed: Decoding failed”... The following fixed the problem for me: a) using sudo, edited /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf and changed the line "COMPRESS=lz4" to "COMPRESS=gzip", b) ran "sudo update-initramfs -c -k $(uname -r)", and c) rebooted. That solved the first problem, and led to something unexpected.

In my three of four past versions of LM , I've never seen behavior that I first saw last night. My UEFI splash screen now displays after booting Linux Mint! My guess is earlier versions of LM either didn't use a RAM disk or if it did, it failed, and didn't output the error (or perhaps I didn't see it). As to what was happening, my guess is the splash screen stored in UEFI is stored in some format that .z4 cannot decompress. Switching it to "gzip" allowed this part of LM boot to extract the image, decompress it on the RAM drive, and now display it.

Second snag ( of which I have not yet addressed) is system boot time. Before the upgrade, booting off the NVMe (from cold start to login) was about 5-6 seconds. However, post upgrade, I see the UEFI screen, a message about the NVMe shutting down clean and a list of used blocks. This is followed by some dead wait time of 12-14 seconds (there is no output, no activity of lights on the machine, nada). After the wait time, the system picks right up and displays the login display manager within 2 seconds. I have a suspicion it has something to do with running a disk check on the NVMe partition but haven't looked into this problem yet.

Finally, the last problem is I didn't check my VMWare Workstation for compatibility. The version I had been using is not compatible with the Linux kernel found in LM 20. The solution here is to upgrade to the next version of VMWare Workstation which *is* supported in LM 20.

Welp... That's my experience so far. Hopefully I'll figure out the boot issue and be able to update here once I've figured out what's going on.

 

I'm trying to install this on my Sager laptop and I'm really getting frustrated, maybe somebody can help here? None of the permanent install options can possibly work for me. First option wants to mess with my Win installation, add some stupid menu to choose OS on every boot up, change things in my Win10 install etc. no way I want that. Second option wants to erase my Win10 partition???, third option created I think 6 partitions, 4 of them are not recognized by Windows, which wants to format them on every boot up into windows etc etc. All I want is simple dual boot, choosing boot sequence from BIOS. Live option works great , except it doesn't save anything, even after I used latest Rufus with 12GB persistent storage set asside. So my question is how do I force Live linux mint to save the freaking settings and make them survive the reboot. I would imagine they are saved somewhere (Ram disc?), so there has to be some way to fix this.

 

Linux ISO with persistent option is a PAIN. I stopped using them and went with dual boot with grub2 bootloader.
Make Sure you use AHCI with partitions ESP/System reserved 260MB (Default Win10 configures 100MB) and then /(root) partition where all system and user files resides and finally optimal sized Page/Swap File.

 

For most people, the idea of "dual-boot" is to use GRUB** (as you call it - the 'stupid menu' ) within EFI, and boot from a computer's internal hard disks. A PC has only ONE boot-up loader when starting off a different device (like USB, hard drives, Optical disk, etc.). In any case, within this proces is where a boot loader like GRUB comes in . GRUB will look to the next step of the boot process by handing off the boot process to the operating system (OS) on a drive or partition it can access. In the case of hard disks, since all available devices are seen when booting off the hard drive, it can access a drive/partition off of those devices. That is why it is called a "dual-boot" or "multi-boot" system, as you're allowing the SINGLE boot-loading process to choose multiple locations of the next step in loading the OS.

I don't know for certain but suspect that a boot loader within each boot item in the BIOS/UEFI cannot boot an OS outside of it's list of seen devices. In other words, I've never seen a configuration with a boot loader on a USB or optical disk access the OS on an internal disk drive and then have it pass off the next step in the boot process to the OS. Note, please don't confuse this description with accessing other devices AFTER the OS has loaded. I'm strictly talking about a computer booting, and that start-up routine handing off control to an operating system.

Have you thought about another option? What if you purchased a decent sized USB drive, find instructions on how to install a bootable Linux onto the USB drive? You could then boot off of this drive when you wanted to use it from the BIOS/UEFI's boot menu. Then you could partition some of the internal hard drives, and modify Linux on the USB drive to use those partitions as the operating system is loaded - thus utilizing your internal hard drive space as well from the USB. Just a thought.


** - First off, when I say GRUB, I don't mean any specific version of GRUB, I mean any all (GRUB, GRUB2, and future versions). Also, other boot loaders like LILO exist if you want to investigate more. Anyone remember one of my favorite tools, System Commander! That was a great tool.

 

I'll toss in my 5¢ on bootloaders…

I dunno what Acer is doing in their BIOS, or if its something completely different, but I've never been able to get Mint to boot OOTB.
I decided to play around with v20 over the weekend. Since my Win10 install was trashed (yet freakin again), I totally nuked my entire SSD and went ahead with a clean Mint install. Install finishes, gets stuck in an endless boot failure. I needed to go into my BIOS, enable Secure Boot so I could manually select a trusted installer. Then I had to move that trusted install to the top of the boot list. I'm not sure what the heck the Limpus thing Mint uses to boot, but it never works for me. Now that I think about it, the only Linux that I didn't have to do this with was Solus.

Anyways, just my rant for the day.
Cheers

 

Yes that's the way to dual boot Win 10 and GRUB2 with GRUB2 handling booting to Linux or Windows with Menu.
Without installing GRUB2 or Grub-efi you cannot boot into Linux just like that. most distros use on-demand method to install grub-efi and that's why you see linux installs failing after reboot provided you haven't connected to the internet, if connected it'll download EFI package to make your system bootable via SSD/HDD/usb drive. You can use efibootmgr to switch between default Boot Mgr say Win 10 or Linux.

 

Since the encryption keys for some boot loaders aren't necessarily stored in your BIOS/UEFI, I don't believe I've ever seen a Linux distro work with "Secure Boot" enabled. It is one of the first things I disable in any system.

It has always seemed a crooked deal between Microsoft and HW to embed MS's public key, signature or whatever is used by Secure Boot to make a system only boot an pre-approved list of acceptable bool loaders / operating systems.

Surprised to see your Acer system behave a bit differently.

 

I do keep secure boot disabled (IIRC the one time I forgot it was enabled, the liveISO wouldn't boot), I have to enable it in order to manually select a trusted installer though.
Once I pick the right one and get the order sorted, then it doesn't seem to matter if secure boot is on or off - I usually switch it back off tho.

Why my installs never work properly in the first place (I was connected to the internet) and I have to dick around in bios is a mystery to me - and I wasn't even trying a dualboot this time.

 

I haven't had any issues installing or booting Linux by itself or with Windows. Works great on my desktop and laptop. I like GRUB just fine. I like that I can customize it aesthetically. It loads the Windows Boot Manager.

 

A BIOS that is a pile of crap can present many challenges, and Linux is one of them. I have had a couple of laptops that I could never get Linux to boot properly. Does your Acer have Insyde BIOS by chance? All of the problems I have experience in this regard were on laptops with Insyde BIOS. I've always considered Insyde BIOS to be feces. Award/AMI is better.

 

For me, it was always opposite atleast on laptops with InsydeH2O. Linux works beautifully w/o any fuss considering the fact that its a 7 y.o machine with SSD and RAM upgrade to make it almost as fast as AW BGA. One thing I'm waiting for i7 3630qm chip to be available on ebay, last time I checked it was too expensive + shipping to India.
Then again, most OEMs lock their BIOS tight and most options we use are simply hidden.

 

Insyde seems to ring a bell. Not surprising that a mainstream manf. like Acer would cheap out on the BIOS, really.

I can't remember what error it gave me, but looking at the F12 boot menu, the loader Mint was trying to use was named "linpus lite" - apparently Ubuntu et al. get called that on a lot of machines for some reason, probably your s--t BIOS theory again
I did some Googling back the first time it happened, but most of what I did find was either tech-speak way above my head, or horribly out of date. Eventually I did stumble across a way to get dual-boot working, but damned if I can remember what is was now.

Anyhow, I have drifted back to the Windows darkside for the time being, at least until I can get another SSD and give dual-booting a serious effort.
BTW, this time through the Windows ringer I went the LTSC route. Might as well make the experience the least sucky as possible.

 

Yeah, amen to that. If you have to use Windows 10, then LTSC is the only respectable version. The other options are pure rubbish.

 

If by respectable you mean in the same way a mob rat joins the Witness Protection Program to become a "respectable" member of society, then sure, I guess you're right

 

I'm a poor guy running Win 10 Home Garbage with Pro and Enterprise scripts and everything w/o any issues. I think MSFT should streamline Win 10 to one version or atmost two. Too much choices are confusing.
Although, I'm beginning to get sick of Win 10 and will be moving to LSTC 2020/2021.

 

As long as what remains is equivalent or better than Home I would agree. There is no legitimate reason for Home to exist. It does only to help facilitate screwing consumers by making it more work to cut back on the data harvesting and Digi-Nazi control freak nonsense.

 

I agree. Nowadays, Ubuntu 20 and other distros with LTS is pretty solid and on-par with Windows performance like battery life and processing speed. One thing that is not working correctly is Proprietary Nvidia optimus and fractional scaling on the same.

 

Optimus not working how - just wondering what your experience was? When I was playing around I set my Nvidia for "on demand" or whatever it's called (I'm assuming this was supposed to work like on Windows). When I rebooted the nview program crashed, but everything did seem to run fine otherwise. I'm pretty OK with having to logout/reboot to switch gpu anyways.
IMO, I find that the latest Nvidia drivers for Windows are just crap when it comes to switching now too. I never used to have any problem with it detecting the proper graphics card. Now it's 50-50 at best.

 

Hmmm.... Set fractional scaling and reboot with Nvidia GPU and you'll see only broken display. That's why I have set it to nvidia optimized since it uses iGPU.

 

Sorry for dredging an ancient post, but would you mind sharing where you found JRiver on sale. I haven't had any luck, and I'm really getting fed up with Windows. The only thing that's stopping me from ditching it completely is the crappy choice of music managers on the Linux front. There still are a few Win only progs that I use, but I'm at the point where I'd be willing to sacrifice them.
(plus my laptop is old enough now that spending the money to get enough ssd storage space to dualboot properly probably isn't worthwhile)

 

You can get the trial version for testing from their Linux forum. https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/board,67.0.html

I have found good discounts directly on their forums. Example: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=126044.0

Once you get on their mailing list they will let you know about sales and discounts.

 

I got a blank display after reboot. No damn display... Had to use recovery mode and switch to iGPU and only to find its in iGPU mode and had to install special nvidia kernel modules to get it working. Battery life is pathetic in Nvidia optimus Linux since both iGPU and dGPU are powered on consuming 20-45W on battery even with tlp and tuned-adm set to laptop-battery-powersave.

 

If you haven't already, you may want to try POP!_OS instead of Mint since it is made and optimized by a company that specializes in laptops (thus Optimus also). POP!_OS and Zorin both work great on my BGA turdbook. I found Optimus worked fine, but I installed Mint primarily because I want it to use the NVIDIA GPU all of the time. I don't care about the Intel GPU or battery life. POP!_OS has a stinking ugly UI and skanky wallpaper, so one of the first things you may want to do (unless you like it for some reason) is install the Cinnamon desktop environment. It will look and feel the same as Linux Mint with Cinnamon.

 

That's the first thing I tried after the hype train, an OS made for Linux laptops an Apple-esque HW-SW integration. But, Pop OS only worked in LiveCD/USB mode and refused to install on AW BGA due to installer can't continue bugs. Even connecting to internet didn't start the installer eventhough its based off Ubuntu 18. Installed Ubuntu 18 in 5 mins w/o any fuss.
On Ubuntu 20, Nvidia optimus is same as what Pop OS offers! Nearly killed my Progenitors when I had the BGA on a lap and it got stuck at blackscreen when I thought it was shut-off. I noticed when I felt discomfort and sweaty and thought it was higher ambient temps but in reality, it was damn hot and was stuck due to nvidia optimus. I have reverted to Intel iGPU permanently!

 

Sounds like what you are experience is an Alienware trashbook issue. I'm glad your Progenitation modules survived.

I really hate hybrid graphics switching garbage. It sucks. Should be one or the other, integrated or discrete, or a mux for switching manually. The hybrid approach is trash.

 

Thanks.
Its not an issue with Hybrid approach otherwise my sister's laptop which has amd m330 and broadwell BGA should be overheating on Linux but it working w/o any issues. AMD dGPU rarely switches unless you're coding or doing lite gaming on Linux whereas nvidia runs 100% of the time when you're opening file manager and clocks are at 100% the moment I use my mouse. Another issue is dGPU nvidia doesn't power off when not in use but continues to run. Any tweaking to turn off the BUS/PCIe or whatever permanently disable dGPU and needs fresh install to wake it up on Linux. These issues hold me back from buying BGAs w/ Nvidia that doesn't play nice.

 

Pop!_OS just came out with a new UI; "Cosmic". Basically a customized Gnome. Maybe worth a look. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://blog.system76.com/post/648371526931038208/cosmic-to-arrive-in-june-release-of-popos-2104

 

Thank you. I will check it out.

Edit: Yes, it definitely seems like an improvement over the atrocious POP!_OS UI theme before it. But, I will be sticking with Cinnamon. I prefer that my Linux desktop environment be as aesthetically similar to Windows 7 as possible.

 

I've given up on Mint for about a year now. Damn thing thing always freezes on me and I am forced to manually reboot. I tried it on 5 different laptops.

 

I ran into the same problem and it's only when letting it do the default installation method. When I do the installation manually (partitioning it myself and telling it how to do it instead of letting the setup process decide) it works flawlessly. I almost gave up for the same reason and I found something on the internet about it. I think it has something to do with the computer firmware and the fact that I use Legacy BIOS mode, not UEFI. (I prefer Legacy over UEFI, so it is a matter of personal preference in my case. It could be an issue on older systems that are Legacy-only.)