Linux Mint Debian Update Pack 3 Released
Summary: I noticed yesterday evening that one of my systems running Linux Mint 201109 Gnome was offering to install Update Pack 3. This morning I see the release announcement for it.
I noticed yesterday evening that one of my systems running Linux Mint 201109 Gnome was offering to install Update Pack 3. This morning I see the release announcement for it. This is going to be particularly good news for some users with very new hardware, because it upgrades to Linux kernel 3.0. On my HP dm1-3105ez, for example, this means that it now includes the driver for the Ralink 5390 WiFi adapter. Of course, there are a lot more changes and improvements in this update. If you have been running the normal distribution with Update Pack 2 installed, it will probably install something like 480 updates.
There is one thing you have to be careful about, which is explained both in the Update Pack description that you can get on your Linux Mint system by clicking the button in Mint Update, and in the Update Pack release announcement mentioned above. The Debian security and multimedia repositories are now included in the Linux Mint hierarchy, so you need to change the software sources list on your system accordingly. It is not a big deal to change, it takes about a minute, and there are very good instructions in the Update Pack release announcement.
Until now I have had my HP dm1 netbook pointing at the Linux Mint "Incoming" repos, so that it already got the Ralink driver. Now that this Update Pack has been released, I changed it to point at the "Mint Latest" repos, and then refreshed the update list. It only needed to install about four or five updates, and everything was done. Very nice.
This is essentially the first iteration of how this "Update Pack" system is going to work on Linux Mint, and I think it looks very good.
jw
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Talkback
I updated Linux Mint Debian today before reading your blog. Could you tell me what the correct repository sources list should be, after updating, as I am now getting error messages. The new security and multimedia entries are OK, the problem lies elsewhere. I have also enabled Main, Upstream, Import and Backport.
Another, rather frustrating issue is the show/hide button not working if more than one window is hidden, the hidden windows just vanish, apparently closed or crashed. Just as I was warming to Linux Mint Debian. Just for clarification, there is no bottom bar on the screen, I guess that is as it should be.
Wow, lots of stuff going on there... ok, first things first:
Your APT sources, should now look like this:
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/multimedia testing main non-free
This is quoted from http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1836, there are more details there.
I'm not sure what you mean by no bottom bar on the screen, you mean there is no bottom panel? That doesn't sound right; I auto-hide mine to get it off the screen, but it is there and visible after installation, and of course it comes up and is visible when I move the cursor to the bottom of the screen.
Are you using a fresh install of the 201109 release, or are you upgrading from a 201012 installation?
jw
Thanks for your response.
I updated from a recent but recently dated 201108 release. However, I think the fault is mine for not changing the repositories before installing the update pack. I was tired and didn't pay proper attention to the messages on the screen.
Nevertheless, the lack of a bottom panel and disappearing windows makes LMDE unworkable so I will have to go back and start all over again from the 201109 release.
It was the 'deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import' entry, which did not need to be changed, which was causing the problem with error messages and today I could not even edit /etc/apt/sources.list without receiving error messages.