i’ve been using linux mint xfce for a lil over a month now and i could genuinely recommend this distro to anyone wanting to try linux its amazing what it does for old pc hardware. i got an old hp pavilion p7 for free it had an athlon 2 x4 645 with 6gb of ddr3 and integrated graphics i have since upgraded it to a phenom 2 x6 1045t with a asus rx 460 4gb and 16gb of ddr3 running off a 512gb ssd, the reason i mention the upgrades is because this pc ran phenomenally without the upgrades only because of linux mint not to mention its even better and snappier since ive made those upgrades. linux mint truly works wonders on a wide range of hardware. im to the point where im about to switch my main pc to a dual boot setup and my primary be linux mint that pc is far far better with much more modern hardware but i think it would benefit running linux aswell! i apologize for the rant but i genuinely can’t get enough of linux mint, i was recommended it through this subreddit and i’ll continue to recommend to anyone wanting to try linux. such a great community to be a part of.

I'm relatively new to Linux Mint (less than a year), and I'm looking to put some kind of password or encryption to individual folders containing files (like photo or music folders). Just hiding it is not enough.

I looked online and mostly found extremely cumbersome ways to do it that need installing weird programs, or gpg for individual files (which is not what I'm looking for). I even saw a guy zipping the folder to add a password, but that's just compression with a password.

I'm looking for something I can set up once, and asks for a password when you try to open the folder, similar to how it asks for a password to confirm certain updates and installs.

Is there something I can use for that? Does that "something" have a IU or is it commands only? Does the password requirements show as a pop up?

If you guys have something at all I'll be interested to know. If it has UI and a pop-up for the password, that's extra helpful and an very welcome solution. Thanks!

I found this pretty amusing

please help bruh im gonna cry

Packaged Orbiscreen for the PPA, works on Mint:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shadow-x78/ppa

sudo apt update && sudo apt install orbiscreen

Turns a spare Android tablet or phone into an actual second monitor over Wi-Fi or USB, not screen mirroring, a real virtual display your desktop treats as a normal monitor.

On Cinnamon (X11) it uses evdi for the virtual display and XTEST for input, both rootless. orbiscreen doctor will confirm what's active on your system and orbiscreen doctor --fix grabs the kernel module if it's missing.

Once installed it's in your application menu like any normal app.

GPL-3.0, source and docs: https://github.com/shadow-x78/orbiscreen

Happy to help with any install issues, and curious how it runs on older tablet hardware if anyone tries it on one.

ive only recently started using linux mint, but dont get me wrong the customisation is amazing in some areas.. rate it C:

Ok, I am curious to know your thoughts because this is something I will definitely do.

Here's a bit of context:

I work as a digital marketer here in the Philippines and I usually find employers online where they require their employees to have a Windows OS with at least 8GB of RAM (I do have a good lappy with an i7 and 32GB of RAM). Also, a lot of them want to have time-tracking software installed (e.g. Time Doctor, HubStaff etc.) that also takes screenshots of the system.

I on the other hand, have had enough with using Windows and intend to migrate to a Linux Mint setup. I also have an aversion to time-tracking software as I see it as an invasion of privacy. I still currently have a Windows setup. But in the past couple of months, I have been doing some learning and experimenting using VirtualBox with a variety of distros. I fell in love with Mint and I plan to fully migrate to it before this month ends.

One thing I also did was experiment with creating a Windows 11 VM. In set this VM to have 14GB of RAM, 8 processors, and 200 GB of storage. And for good measure, I also made an ova file of this so that I can reuse this configuration for future clients/employers.

I have tried the usual tools and workflows I do as a digital marketer. So far, it's already working well even with my current Windows setup. And I believe this will be faster once I actually migrate to Linux Mint.

I made this Windows VM for the following reasons:

• Most digital marketing work that I do is web-based
• I want my privacy and I don't want my employers/clients to see my main host OS which is a Linux
• This also means that the time-tracking software installed in the Windows VM won't do screen capture on my main host
• I can actually get used to learning and using Linux

So I have some questions:

1. What do you think of this setup?
2. Has anyone else done something similar to this?
3. Do you have any comments or suggestions?

Thank you and I hope this makes for an interesting suggestion.

Hello all!
Im a very happy Mint user in general, but I have this one thing that keeps bugging me, which is, that whenever my labtop wakes up or boots the bluetooth connection to my speaker system connects and disconnects a few times before becomming stable. The whole thing lasts from my login screen to 10-15secs after I enter my desktop enviroment.

This of cause means that my decently sized speaker system starts spitting out the mandatory connection disconnection tunes, to my big discomfort and annoyance.

I was wondering if any of you guys have a similar problem and have found a work-arround for this ?

Hi all, I just updated to the new 6.8.0-139 kernel and my bluetooth was turned off and couldn't scan and connect to any devices.

Restarted and selected the old 6.8.0-138 kernel in grub advance options and bluetooth is back.

Just wanted to check if anyone else have the same issue?

From what I saw here, I'm lucky that the bluetooth was the only issue I had with the new kernel phew

I got a thinkpad(T460) and installed linux mint on it for the first time and my experience has been pretty positive so far. Its been a month of using linux now and in the beginning setting up certain things was annoying like having issues with audio and video codecs etc but they've all been resolved now. Its so suprising how little ram linux uses compared to my windows machine(Asus Tuf F15 Gaming Laptop). Right now im running multiple tabs, discord, libre office and im having a smooth experience on a 10 year old machine theres no lag but on my other laptop there's always some lag and 80% of the ram is being used compared to my thinkpad where 41% of the ram is being used literally less then half.

I’m sorry if this is a stupid question, but how do you change these? I checked in settings and couldn’t find anything relating to changing these colors. I don’t know if it’s the theme I installed or what. I’ve tried googling it but it didn’t help. If anyone can help, I would appreciate it.

If it helps, the theme I installed is called “Cinnamox Gold Spice”.

Thank you!

Edit: The outline doesn’t look blue in the first picture, but it’s blue.

I switched to mint a month or so ago but my SSD fried and I had to use my Rpi5 for a while. I finally got back to my desktop w a new theme.

Linux mint XFCE Bug

there is no button to shut down the system. But it's just my shitty old laptop so who cares really.

Installed the latest Linux Kernel (6.8.0 - 139.139) and Firmware update via the Update Manager today and got a black screen after restarting the PC and logging into the Default session.

Restarted the PC again and logged into the Wayland session successfully. Then restored the PC to an earlier state using Timeshift.

Just curious to know what is actually causing the problem and if there are any fixes. Grateful for advice.

After the update of 3/9/2026

Me research show me that's a problem with the graphic driver, but since I was able to switch to a terminal and do startx and I actually writing this on Firefox on the same computer.

So this is my system.

OS: Linux Mint 22.3 x86_64 
Host: HP EliteBook 840 G8 Notebook PC SBKPFV3 
Kernel: 7.0.0-31-generic 
Uptime: 14 mins 
Packages: 2145 (dpkg), 10 (flatpak) 
Shell: bash 5.2.21 
Resolution: 1920x1080 
DE: MATE 1.26.1 
WM: Compiz 
WM Theme: Atlanta 
Theme: Mint-X [GTK2/3] 
Icons: buuf-nestort [GTK2/3] 
Terminal: mate-terminal 
Terminal Font: Monospace 10 
CPU: 11th Gen Intel i7-1185G7 (8) @ 4.800GHz 
GPU: Intel TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] 
Memory: 3976MiB / 15671MiB 

So i was downloading linux mint xfce but in the installation app my partitions doesn't show up I have 3 main partition one for windows and other 2 for stuff and there is another 500mb that I cannot remove idk why? I wanna downloading it but there are 2 1mb ones and one 53gbs(windows c drive) and another 500mb one the other don't show up but which I close that app and check the file explorer in linux it show the partitions but when I open the install app they disappear. What I do?(Here is a claude link if it helps)

https://claude.ai/share/c4eb5f48-f09e-4129-989c-bba6cdbb26bf

did you find a distro that works?

Bottles has been updating at least daily and sometimes multiple times a day for like a week, maybe two. Any cause for concern?

1.) Iv never ran mint on a computer with a NVIDIA Graphics’s card before.

2.) I recently updated all my drivers for windows 10 after years and somehow my laptop is running way worse than before.

3.) I use my laptop for streaming on twitch,YouTube, ect. And retro gaming up to the 360 which I have found most games run just fine.

4.) I have a standalone version or mod of Smackdown Vs Raw 2007 that runs on pc with no emulation and I don’t want to loose that gem. As it does not run as smooth in emulation.

5.) mainly the graphics card is my biggest worry ngl

Edit: “new to me…” laptop… if you couldn’t see by the specs it’s from 2017.

Hello all!

I feel like I complain on here regularly about various Linux issues, so it is only fair to announce when something good happens. The screen brightness issues that have plagued the last 3-4 kernel updates have been resolved for my Dell Latitude 5430 on the 7.0.0-31 kernel update. Much appreciation to the devs for rapidly rolling out these repeated updates in an attempt to fix all the issues. I don't know if the other major kernel problems have been solved, but it looks promising.

I am on Linux Mint 22.1 cinnamon. Since a while ago I noticed that YT videos were lagging, but only when I was holding my mouse still. When I was wiggling the mouse it was smooth playback. Today I noticed that this would also happen for a game I played called Soulchain and for most loading screens both in the game and outside of it. I assume this is not normal. Could somebody help?

Here is my System Info: System: Kernel: 6.14.0-37-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0 clocksource: tsc Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.4.8 tk: GTK v: 3.24.41 wm: Muffin v: 6.4.1 vt: 7 dm: LightDM v: 1.30.0 Distro: Linux Mint 22.1 Xia base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble Machine: Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 20S1S5Q900 v: ThinkPad T14 Gen 1 serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 10 serial: <superuser required> Mobo: LENOVO model: 20S1S5Q900 v: SDK0J40697 WIN serial: <superuser required> part-nu: LENOVO_MT_20S1_BU_Think_FM_ThinkPad T14 Gen 1 uuid: <superuser required> UEFI: LENOVO v: N2XET42W (1.32 ) date: 06/12/2024 Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 38.9 Wh (86.3%) condition: 45.1/51.0 Wh (88.5%) power: 17.4 W volts: 12.9 min: 11.5 model: Celxpert 5B10W13954 type: Li-poly serial: <filter> status: charging cycles: 691 CPU: Info: quad core model: Intel Core i7-10610U bits: 64 type: MT MCP smt: enabled arch: Comet/Whiskey Lake note: check rev: C cache: L1: 256 KiB L2: 1024 KiB L3: 8 MiB Speed (MHz): avg: 1000 high: 1001 min/max: 400/4900 cores: 1: 1000 2: 1000 3: 1000 4: 1000 5: 1000 6: 1000 7: 1000 8: 1001 bogomips: 36799 Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx Graphics: Device-1: Intel CometLake-U GT2 [UHD Graphics] vendor: Lenovo driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-9.5 ports: active: eDP-1 empty: DP-1, DP-2, HDMI-A-1, HDMI-A-2 bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:9b41 class-ID: 0300 Device-2: Chicony Integrated Camera driver: uvcvideo type: USB rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-8:3 chip-ID: 04f2:b6d0 class-ID: fe01 serial: <filter> Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: zink gpu: i915 display-ID: :0 screens: 1 Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x285mm (20.00x11.22") s-diag: 582mm (22.93") Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: InfoVision Optronics/Kunshan 0x057d res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 158 size: 309x174mm (12.17x6.85") diag: 355mm (14") modes: 1920x1080 API: EGL v: 1.5 platforms: device: 1 drv: swrast gbm: drv: kms_swrast surfaceless: drv: swrast x11: drv: swrast inactive: wayland,device-0 API: OpenGL v: 4.5 compat-v: 4.6 vendor: mesa v: 25.2.8-0ubuntu0.24.04.2 glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: zink Vulkan 1.4(Intel UHD Graphics (CML GT2) (INTEL_OPEN_SOURCE_MESA)) device-ID: 8086:9b41 API: Vulkan v: 1.3.275 layers: 7 surfaces: xcb,xlib device: 0 type: integrated-gpu driver: N/A device-ID: 8086:9b41 device: 1 type: cpu driver: N/A device-ID: 10005:0000 Audio: Device-1: Intel Comet Lake PCH-LP cAVS vendor: Lenovo driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-cnl bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:02c8 class-ID: 0403 API: ALSA v: k6.14.0-37-generic status: kernel-api Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin Network: Device-1: Intel Comet Lake PCH-LP CNVi WiFi driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 00:14.3 chip-ID: 8086:02f0 class-ID: 0280 IF: wlp0s20f3 state: up mac: <filter> Device-2: Intel Ethernet I219-LM vendor: Lenovo driver: e1000e v: kernel port: N/A bus-ID: 00:1f.6 chip-ID: 8086:0d4e class-ID: 0200 IF: enp0s31f6 state: down mac: <filter> Bluetooth: Device-1: Intel AX201 Bluetooth driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-10:5 chip-ID: 8087:0026 class-ID: e001 Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 1 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 5.2 lmp-v: 11 sub-v: 20f9 hci-v: 11 rev: 20f9 class-ID: 7c010c Drives: Local Storage: total: 953.87 GiB used: 281.62 GiB (29.5%) ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: MZVLB1T0HBLR-000L7 size: 953.87 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 tech: SSD serial: <filter> fw-rev: 5M2QEXF7 temp: 46.9 C scheme: GPT Partition: ID-1: / size: 937.33 GiB used: 281.62 GiB (30.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (1.2%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1 Swap: ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 file: /swapfile USB: Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: hi-speed hub with single TT ports: 12 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900 Device-1: 1-6:2 info: Elan Micro Touchscreen type: HID driver: hid-multitouch,usbhid interfaces: 1 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 100mA chip-ID: 04f3:289b class-ID: 0300 Device-2: 1-8:3 info: Chicony Integrated Camera type: video driver: uvcvideo interfaces: 5 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 500mA chip-ID: 04f2:b6d0 class-ID: fe01 serial: <filter> Device-3: 1-9:4 info: Synaptics Prometheus MIS Touch Fingerprint Reader type: <vendor specific> driver: N/A interfaces: 1 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 100mA chip-ID: 06cb:00bd class-ID: ff00 serial: <filter> Device-4: 1-10:5 info: Intel AX201 Bluetooth type: bluetooth driver: btusb interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 100mA chip-ID: 8087:0026 class-ID: e001 Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: super-speed hub ports: 6 rev: 3.1 speed: 10 Gb/s lanes: 1 chip-ID: 1d6b:0003 class-ID: 0900 Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 61.0 C mobo: N/A Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A Repos: Packages: 2956 pm: dpkg pkgs: 2916 pm: flatpak pkgs: 40 No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/freedownloadmanager.list 1: deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/freedownloadmanager.gpg] https: //debrepo.freedownloadmanager.org/ jammy main Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list 1: deb [arch=amd64] https: //dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 1: deb http: //ucmirror.canterbury.ac.nz/linux/mint/packages xia main upstream import backport 2: deb https: //mirror.fsmg.org.nz/ubuntu noble main restricted universe multiverse 3: deb https: //mirror.fsmg.org.nz/ubuntu noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse 4: deb https: //mirror.fsmg.org.nz/ubuntu noble-backports main restricted universe multiverse 5: deb http: //security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list 1: deb https: //repository.spotify.com stable non-free Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/unit193-encryption-noble.list 1: deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/unit193-encryption-noble.gpg] https: //ppa.launchpadcontent.net/unit193/encryption/ubuntu noble main Info: Memory: total: 32 GiB available: 31.1 GiB used: 4.88 GiB (15.7%) Processes: 301 Power: uptime: 5m states: freeze,mem,disk suspend: deep wakeups: 0 hibernate: platform Init: systemd v: 255 target: graphical (5) default: graphical Compilers: gcc: 13.3.0 Client: Cinnamon v: 6.4.8 inxi: 3.3.34