Recommended packages and 32-bit libraries

Recommended packages are no longer automatically installed in Linux Mint. To install a package with its recommended packages, use the command “apt install packagename –install-recommends”.

If you’re experiencing issues with Skype or other 32-bit programs under Linux Mint 64-bit, install the package “ia32-libs”.

DVD Playback

Totem will read your files and decode multimedia on the Internet but it does not properly support DVD playback in this release. To watch DVD movies, please use VLC instead.

If VLC does not find your DVD player, click on Media->Open Disc, and specify ‘/dev/sr0’ as the disc device.

EFI support

If your system is using secureBoot, turn it off.

If you installed Linux Mint in Virtualbox in EFI mode and it cannot boot post-install, type “exit”, choose “Boot Maintenance Manager”, “Boot from file” and select EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi.

Post-installation, the EFI boot file is located in /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi. If your system is unable to find this file, copy it to /boot/efi/boot/bootx64.efi (alternatively you can write “fs0:\EFI\linuxmint\grubx64.efi” into a /boot/efi/startup.nsh file).

Note: Linux Mint 16 places its boot files in /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu to work around a bug in Ubuntu 13.10. Consequently Linux Mint 16 supports EFI installations, but cannot be dual-booted with Ubuntu in EFI mode.

PAE required for 32-bit ISOs

The 32-bit ISOs of Linux Mint 15 use a PAE kernel. If your processor is not compatible with PAE please use Linux Mint 13 Maya LTS instead. Linux Mint 13 is supported until 2017.

mint4win

The mint4win Windows installer was not able to reliably handle the size of the ISO images. It was therefore removed and isn’t available in Linux Mint 16 Petra.

Other issues

Linux Mint 16 is based on Ubuntu 13.10.

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Login Screen

MDM 1.4 was designed to work perfectly with Linux Mint 16 Petra not only to log in but also to let you switch between users easily.

USB Stick support

A new tool was developed to easily format USB sticks to NTFS, FAT32 and ext4.

System improvements

Under the hood, Linux Mint 16 Petra introduces a lot of improvements:

• Safer kernel updates.
• Faster boot sequence and faster login.
• Better EFI support.
• Better support for Steam and its addition in the repositories and the featured section of the Software Manager.
• Additional private/secure search engines in certain countries.
• APT “recommends” disabled by default.
• Better colors in terminal and the addition of “ll” as an alias to “ls -al”.
• Better help support.

Software Manager

The Software Manager received many bug fixes and performance improvements. It’s faster to start, faster to search, and uses less memory than before.

Performance improvements

Linux Mint 16 Petra focuses on the task at hand, it does less and does it better than before. It features many speed and performance improvements:

• The boot and login sequence no longer scan your system for btrfs partitions.
• The MDM display manager no longer listens or communicates over the network.
• The Update Manager is now started with a delay to make it faster for the session to load.
• The Software Manager features significant speed improvements.
• The Linux Mint 16 ISO images are not as compressed as before. They take more space and are bigger to download but also easier on the system and faster to decompress during the live session.

Main components

Linux Mint 16 features MATE 1.6, MDM 1.4, a Linux kernel 3.11 and an Ubuntu 13.10 package base.

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Download links Linux Mint 16 Petra

Edition				Multimedia support *
Cinnamon	32-bit	64-bit	An edition featuring the Cinnamon desktop	Yes
Cinnamon No codecs	32-bit	64-bit	A version without multimedia support. For magazines, companies and distributors in the USA, Japan and countries where the legislation allows patents to apply to software and distribution of restricted technologies may require the acquisition of 3rd party licenses*.	No
Cinnamon OEM	64-bit		An intallation image for manufacturers to pre-install Linux Mint.	No
MATE	32-bit	64-bit	An edition featuring the MATE desktop	Yes
MATE No codecs	32-bit	64-bit	A version without multimedia support. For magazines, companies and distributors in the USA, Japan and countries where the legislation allows patents to apply to software and distribution of restricted technologies may require the acquisition of 3rd party licenses*.	No
MATE OEM	64-bit		An intallation image for manufacturers to pre-install Linux Mint.	No
KDE	32-bit	64-bit	An edition featuring the KDE desktop	Yes
Xfce	32-bit	64-bit	An edition featuring the Xfce desktop	Yes

* Missing codecs and extra applications can be installed with a simple click of the mouse.