I recently re-instilled linux mint on my computer, and just discovered that the RawTherapee I installed from its repository will not show .ARW files in the file browser. I noticed that I had a appimage of 5.12 on my computer and ran that, and that version will show and open .ARW files.
Does anyone know why mint is installing such an old version?
Is Linux Mint a rolling release, or does it usually distribute major (i.e. not just security fixes) upgrades of its software within a release cycle?
Linux Mint 22.3 uses the Ubuntu Noble (24.04LTS) package repo.
Whereas Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 (‘Gigi’) uses the Debian 13 Trixie package repo
So it will follow their release cycles.
If you want the latest version, then use appimage or flatpak.
Yes, Linux Mint is pretty slow at getting the latest versions out there. It’s a much more conservative distribution. I used it for about a decade and I liked it but its software is just old.
It’s not a matter of slowness, it’s a model of distribution. Some distros like Debian freeze all the packages at a certain version which remains fixed for the whole lifetime of the “stable” release (which is called stable for a reason). There will be no updates, apart from security fixes, until the next stable release (which in the case of Debian might mean 2 years or more, since they have no fixed timeline). I think that Red Hat Linux Enterprise is the same.
This is desirable in production environments and servers, a bit less if you’re a desktop user who wants the latest software. As a Debian stable user I remember the frustration of having apps obsolete and buggy sometimes.
Others are rolling distributions like Arch where the packages are updated continuously. Others like Fedora, are semi-rolling because despite having a fixed 6-month release cycle, they often updates the packages within a release.
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I’m pretty sure that 5.10 is more than two years old.
Mint is slow with updates. That is the reason why I switched to Manjaro years ago.
Still happy with it.
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Yes, February 2024. And if Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, then it ships the most recent version at the time of release.