Linux

[Mike Watterson]

Hi.
I've been Beta testing the new release of Mint. Its Tessa 19.1 and I've been running Cinnamon on the Shed's Dell Optiplex 780 computer. For a Beta release it is 100% stable with no issues on my set up.

Mint 19.1 and 19.2 are both on full release. I do have 19.1 64 bit on one desktop and 19.2 32 bit on an old latptop, but the main laptop has 18.3, which has LTS. I find the GUI Themes I use on 18.3 don't work as expected on 19.x. Also 19.x by default only installs 64 bit WINE. The WHOLE point of WINE is OLDER programs, most of which don't work on 64 bit Win7 and 64 bit Win 10 (though mysteriously some do on 32 bit Win10, which is rare).
I did figure how to get 32 bit & 64 bit WINE working on 19.x. There are instructions.

I prefer Mate as it's faster on old HW and you can install themes with decent GUI visibility.

However what's great is the choice. I usually install multiple kinds of desktop, as then you have a spare GUI if you break one.