I have a 2012 MacBook Pro and
the new Linux Mint 21 beta. Let me explain. Greetings! And welcome to another
thrilling episode of Veronica Explains! I'm Veronica, and today I'd like to take
a first look at the Linux Mint 21 beta, code named: Vanessa. Now Linux Mint is a distro that a lot of people have very strong feelings
about one way or another. I for one think Linux Mint is an excellent distro.
It has a community that is really passionate about it, it is well maintained and has a history of
being very well maintained, and quite stable. And I think it's a fantastic option for
both folks who'd been in Linux awhile as well as newcomers to Linux who are
just getting started for the first time and want something that's gonna feel familiar. Now I've used Linux Mint a couple of times in my
life for just like a few months at a time, and when I used it, I really liked it. I thought it was very well done. The desktop metaphor that Linux Mint
uses isn't exactly my favorite thing, but it might be something
that you're interested in, so that's why I wanted to just take a
moment here, and try out the new beta. So earlier today, as soon as I saw that the beta
was available, I quick flashed it to a flash drive and I dug up this fantastic 2012 MacBook Pro
that a customer gave me to wipe a little bit ago. I successfully wiped any customer data out
of it, and I'm getting ready to recycle it, but I figured before it heads off to it's
next owner, it'd be a pretty a fun idea to install Linux Mint 21 on it, and just
kick the tires and see how it looks. I've done no research into whether or not Linux
Mint works on this machine, and I've also done no research into Linux Mint 21 in general...
I haven't tried it before, I haven't seen it, I just saw that it's out, so I figured
we should dive in and take a look. This particular MacBook Pro has certainly
seen better days, but if you have a MacBook Pro from even this old - ten years old - you
might still be able to install Linux on it, and in fact that's a common occurrence
that I hear about on my channel. People are constantly reaching out to
me saying they've used Linux to refresh a ten year old Mac or, you know, something
like that, and I think that's wonderful. And it's really one of the fantastic things about
Linux Mint compared with some distros like Debian or Fedora - Linux Mint includes the batteries
that you'll often need to get these older laptops running, in the form of proprietary drivers that
are sometimes missing from some of these distros. That's one of the things that I think makes Linux
Mint an excellent option for beginners, and why a lot of people recommend it as a first distro. So let's dive into installing
it, let's see what we can do... ...now before we do that, I just want to
take a moment for a little housekeeping note. I have a new t-shirt for sale on the website,
vkc.sh/merch- that is the official Veronica Explains merch store, where you can
get awesome t-shirts like this one. Go check it out, because it
helps support the channel. OK, let's go ahead and give this a try. So I believe I'm supposed to hold
down "option" as I boot up... Speakers not great on this. This MacBook has definitely seen better days -
there's all this artifacting around the screen, and it looks like it's been "well
loved" by it's previous owner. I'm actually planning on taking it
to Free Geek Twin Cities! Which... this isn't a sponsored video, but I love
Free Geek Twin Cities! If you have a Free Geek in your community, go check them out,
because you can get some amazing stuff. When we boot up this beta of Linux Mint, it looks
like it drops us into a live cd. That's fantastic! Now, normally I would say you
should play around with the live cd, make sure it's doing everything you needed
to do, make sure that it looks fantastic, that your drivers are supported, that
every thing is going to work out for you. In our case, because I'm just going full
speed ahead on this, I'm just going to start installing it, and we're going to see
how that turns out, on a 2012 MacBook Pro. OK, my first impressions here of
the desktop is it's beautiful. It's clean, and it's simple, if I were coming to Linux for the first
time, this would feel really friendly. So yeah, this is super clean looking.
I really like the way this looks. Now one thing to check - do I have Wi-Fi? Guessing it doesn't know
where my Wi-Fi adapter is. It should be yelling at me about that, so it
doesn't seem to be able to find my Wi-Fi adapter. This is exactly why you use the live environment to play around on your Linux distro
before you actually install it. Luckily, I keep one of these nearby, just in case I need to install a Linux
that doesn't have Wi-Fi ready to go. Let's plug it in. Wi-Fi networks available... beautiful! It's always handy to keep one of those here. Let's see if, after an update, it's
able to find this Wi-Fi driver. "You can't see what I'm typing" OK, so now that we are connected, let's check and
see... is it called drivers? Oh, driver manager. Let's go into driver manager, and let's see if it knows of a driver that works for
the Wi-Fi on board this old laptop. Oooo, Airport Extreme- this device is
not working. I like it. It's beautiful. This kind of just proprietary
driver functional situation is something that I think a lot of
distros need to really focus on. This is one of the criticisms that some
people lay into distros like Fedora because Fedora doesn't necessarily
include this help right out the box. Let's see what happens when I enable this. OK, so that seems to have worked with
the Mac onboard drivers. In fact, I don't know if I even needed to use
this thing, but I'm glad I had it. Always keep one of these around if you can. But enough of this! We've tested the Wi-Fi, let's actually get it installed
and see how long it takes. It says 3:35, it is not 3:35, it's 10:35 here. I'm a mom and I'm filming this
after my kid went to sleep. You may wish to read the release notes, "I do!" This is Linux Mint 21, codename
Vanessa, long term support. I should note that I'm using the trackpad,
and the trackpad is working without incident. Will be supported until 2027...
five years, it's not bad. Snap store is disabled... controversial! I mean I'm not the biggest fan of
the actual Snap store from Ubuntu, mainly because I'm more of a Flathub person. Home directory encryption is slower than full disk encryption- the move to systemd
caused a regression ecrypts encrypted... OK, so yeah, they do the encrypted home directory thing... I tend to do full disk
encryption, but that's just me. Release notes are there, they're definitely worth
checking out, This is a first look, keep in mind. English. Let's install the multimedia codecs. The window got wider. I like the theme of Linux Mint-
look I think this is pretty. Advanced features... none selected... it looks
like it's just going to go right into it. Aaah, use LVM and encryption- I'm not encrypt
this because I'm planning on donating it so... but normally I would use LVM and
then encrypt it, and choose a security key. Let me know if you want me to do a video
on encryption, and encrypting your disks, because I definitely recommend it. If you're actually going to be taking your laptop out into the world with you,
seems like a good thing. OK, here we go! Alright we're installing, you know what
that means... time to select Chicago. But then, you know what that means! After
that, nope nope, it's now asking me questions this is... this is good. The installer is
pretty basic, it's pretty straightforward. "secrets" OK, we're copying files. I think it was doing some of the install while it was doing
that, but we're doing the install! As is tradition, time for some Bop-It! OK, I stopped it. (Bop-It says "One hundred nine") OK! That only took 109 Bop-It's to get through a Linux Mint install on
this ten year old machine! It's not bad! Now it says I can continue testing, but
I'm just going to restart, let's just power it off and the get it done. Let's see how it looks. Of course, now
the screen is kittywampus, but that's OK. First boot here we go so one of the things right away that
I like about this is that does have what looks like fractional scaling. I can scale the monitor to 100, 125,
150, 170, 200 - that's pretty neat. Not every distro supports that, not
every desktop environment supports that. We gain some advantages here with Linux Mint, in that the people developing the distro are the
same people developing the desktop environment. In that way, this shares some similarities
with the fantastic work at Elementary or the fantastic work with
Pop!_OS and their their Pop Shell. I mean this is something that I
actually kind of like in a Linux distro, is that attention to the desktop
environment from the distro perspective. What the Linux Mint team is doing
with Cinnamon is really spectacular. Anyway, you walk in, and the
first thing you see is this wonderful welcome screen, which I really like. "Welcome to your new operating
system." It's so... it's so friendly! First steps. This is cool. You get to pick a desktop
color. I love the the styles here. We've got dark mode and light mode. Very cool! Cat wants to be let in. Wanna say hi to YouTube? I don't think she's gonna say hi to YouTube. Very nice, I'm going to try to
keep things default, but let's... let's play around a little bit. I- I like that. That's- that's neat. These are such great options. You can really make
this your own, which is wonderful, it's amazing. OK and then you can have a small traditional
panel layout or a modern panel layout. Let's see what small is like.
Oh, it's very "older Windows-y". I mean I like it... gonna
keep it on the modern, though. I think I like this one, a little bit better. OK and then, after that we got system
snapshots. That's- that's fantastic! You should always backup your system
and the fact that they're they're doing a system snapshot right in the
"First Look" area. That's fantastic! Now how does this look- looks like it's
just starting Timeshift! That's right! Linux Mint actually runs
the Timeshift project now! If you're looking for a good backup routine
system, it's hard to go wrong with Timeshift. I'm thinking about doing a video on Timeshift.
So if you want to see that, leave a comment. This is really cool, though something for a future video, I think, but
I love that they're adding this right away. This is- this is just gorgeous. OK, Driver Manager. So now I noticed it doesn't look like
it added my network connection back. So, let's try out the Driver Manager,
to see if we can get that working again. This time without my little Wi-Fi adapter. Please connect to the Internet, OK... or insert
the Linux Mint installation DVD or USB stick. You mean like this thing? Let's see if it can do it ooh, that's interesting. OK,
look at that! That is fantastic! That is amazing and they pulled it right up,
I'm not even having the connect to the Internet. That's wonderful! Let's just select it and apply it. I mean this is always a risk with
any laptop as you're going to have like some driver that doesn't work,
and I love that Linux Mint actually includes the utilities you're
going to need to get that working. Should I try this Nvidia driver? I mean
it recommends it, let's give it a try. There's a chance this blows everything up.
I mean this is a ten year old computer, it's running very hot, we're getting
some ancient Nvidia going on here. Well, we have a little bit of a problem.
The MacBook is running way too hot. I think I might have to come back when
the temperature cools down, because this laptop is not happy with me. (video game music) Alright, it's the next morning, got me some
coffee, let's see if we can fire this thing up. Display drivers kind of got
the best of me there, but I think I've got capture working now,
should be able to see this on your screen. So let's keep going with this
first steps. This is fun. We're going to keep the dual graphics business
disabled for now, I'm just gonna use the standard, open source graphics driver for
this and we're going to continue. I suppose we want to update,
that's probably a good thing. Local mirror, OK. It's asking about
the local mirror! That's nice! Nice that it gives you a little
speed test. This is kind of cool. I don't think a lot of distros do this, at
least if they do, they're not putting that information just "out there", the way Linux
Mint is here. That's- that's a nice touch. I should probably update. Let's do it! Ooh, OK, so it looks like we're on 5.15. OK. While it's doing this, I want to
see... if I can move, am I allowed to move? I can move the panel. OK, that's kind of neat. Ooh! OK, you can auto hide. How about
this "Applets"? What does that do? Let's see? Oooh! Well that was kind of nifty. The option
to download? What are some of your options here? OK, it is telling me to reboot. OK, we are booting back up, but let's
take a look at the system settings. This is nice. This is this is almost Mac-ish, in my mind. This is much nicer than the multiple
control panels in Microsoft Windows. In my opinion, you know, people talk about
Windows having this very cohesive UI. But then you think about the fact that you
still have at least two control panels. Linux has it's problems, but
I'll take editing text files over hunting and pecking through
multiple control panels any day. OK, this is- this is very nice. It looks like
there's a ton of stuff you can update, but we're going to keep it stock for now and just move on
to the next thing, which is the Software Manager. This wouldn't be a first look at a distro without
at least checking out the software center. Oooh! Pretty. Now I like this, this full image
at the top this- this is- this is pretty. This is a simple way to do it. It's "app
store esque", without being you know, specifically the App Store, but
let's try to install something. OK, it's just Flatpak right here. There's a ton of Flatpak stuff. OK, so so so some stuff is definitely
being installed via Flatpak OK. So it's not abundantly clear
what's being installed through Flatpak and what's being installed
through the package manager. I do wish the software manager here made that
distinction the way that other distros seem to, where I can go to Steam, as an example
piece of software, and have the option to install it via Flatpak or regular packaging. I think that's a good thing to do, for
people is giving them that transparent, "this is where you're getting it". In the software manager, I went
down to where it says "Flatpak", and that seems to be where Flatpak'd stuff is. I'd prefer to see- you know,
like if I click Spotify, not that I'm gonna install it... it'd be nice if
it showed me where it's installing it from here. If it's here, it's not readily apparent...
this is, of course a first look. I I haven't done any investigation into this. OBS, now, which one of these is the
Flathub. This is what I'm talking about. Which one of these is the
Flat- this one's the Flathub. OK, if- cause I scrolled down, I
can see it says Flathub down there. OK, we're installing Steam via Flathub... Did I
say Steam via Flat?. We've got OBS via Flathub. While it's installing... App, let's download some new Applets. Ooo, a cpu temperature indicator.
This is going to be bad. It is yelling at me it's critical,
we'll we'll let that run 'cause- I I think that's going to be
kind of fun and interesting. What other I mean there's so many Applets here. This is- this is really quite
good with the weather Applet. Who's... the weather applet by? Hey. This is the weather applet...
Cinnamon Spices, that's so cute! It's the it's just GNOME
shell's weather extension. What else we gonna... do we have a KDE Connect
Applet. We do! I'm not going to set that up, because I don't want my text messages to
interfere with the video here, but that is neat. I love KDE Connect- I use it all the time
time on my GNOME desktop with Pop!_OS. It's one of the things that to
me has become really critical in managing my workflow, because if I
have a client texting me or something, this lets me have that pop up, which is similar to
the coherence that we're used to out of you know, operating systems like macOS
and it's- it's fantastic. Now what if I wanted to move
the taskbar? I guess I can. You can have a side panel. That's weird! Looking out at the top! That's
nice! That's really cool. Something got kittywampus there,
but that might just be me. OK, so we got OBS installed. Can we run it? This
is running off of Flatpak felt pretty fast to me. It gets critical. Should we see if the camera works? Hey, it's me! (audio noisey) Alright- this is a test of
using OBS and the built-in Facetime camera on this ten year old MacBook using
Linux Mint 21. This is pretty cool. Real, quick, let's see what
else Mint is shipping with? Let's see, we've got... I like
this menu. This is not bad. It's got a notes, app. Some people
love their sticky notes. I don't use- I tend to use vimwiki, but sticky notes are cute. What else have we got? We've
got a password manager. Now, I'm guessing. This is a- it's
own integrated password manager. Key servers. OK, so you can add a keyserver. Yeah, I'm guessing it doesn't
integrate with third party apps like a Bitwarden or Lastpass, or that sort of thing. I don't see Keepass on here. I wish that Linux desktops offered that kind
of integration out of the box. I don't know any Linux desktop "passwords and keys" program
that integrates with those third party services. I think that would be really cool- I think that would be something that would really
help folks were switching to Linux. Now it's got Warpinator, I haven't tried
Warpinator and this is not a real network, so I'm not going to try Warpinator, but I've
been interested in comparing Warpinator to KDE Connect and just see kind of how they work. I use KDE Connect for file sharing across
the network between my phone and my computer, and doing that with Warpinator...
I mean that might be a better bet. Let me know if you want to see a video on
Warpinator, because I have haven't personally spent much time in it and it looks like it's cool,
but I need to set up a network just for that... ...and I'm not gonna do that today. Was going to... drawing app that's pretty neat. It's got color management, that's really cool. Effects. Oh that's nice! There's
all kinds of features here. It's one of the things that I love about Linux
Mint, is- they're they're exposing features that make sense to expose, but they're not
throwing in a ton of stuff that might overwhelm somebody who is dipping their toe in the water. It's customizable, but it's
not a tiling window manager. It's- it's a very straightforward,
traditional desktop experience. There's nothing wrong with a straightforward
and traditional desktop experience. People like traditional desktop experiences.
People want to just use their computer. And Linux Mint has done a wonderful job of
packaging that, and putting that together in a way that is discoverable and
simple and just seems to make sense. So my first impressions of Linux Mint are that
this thing is wonderful: they have done just just a fantastic job of packaging the Linux experience
in a way that just works, and just makes sense. Other than my overheating issues, I had really no problems at all running
this thing on a ten year old laptop. But I want to know what you think
of Linux Mint. Do you use Linux Mint or have you considered using Linux Mint? Leave a comment, and let me know. In any case, the folks at Linux
Mint have done a fantastic job of packaging a wonderful Linux
desktop experience in this distro, and I can imagine that Linux Mint 21 is going
to be an amazing addition to the community. But I don't know why that would surprise me at
all. I mean Linux is awesome, and so are you!
