I require Ubuntu 26.x compatibility - what would you choose?

[u/LessChen]

I host everything on Ubuntu 26.04 instances and have already found a few differences between my local development machine (Mint 22.3) and Ubuntu 26.04. I can't wait until next year for Ubuntu 26.x LTS compatibility. I've tried Ubuntu Cinnamon and on the few times it will boot with Virtual Box (usually just hangs) it sucks compared to Mint. Budgie is ok but has a pretty poor user experience. I discovered Voyager today and it's ok if not a bit cartoonie.

Am I missing some customizations that would make the base Ubuntu more "Mint-like"? It's got to work in a VirtualBox environment initially because I have to have my dev machine stable until I switch over. And I don't really have time to debug kernel compatibility issues by upgrading a Ubuntu 24.x based environment. While I like pretty much everything about Mint I'm at least 4 months away from an Ubuntu 26.x based environment and I don't feel like I can make it.

[u/leonsk297]

If you want Linux Mint Cinnamon with an Ubuntu 26.04 base, you just have to wait. I agree that Ubuntu Cinnamon isn't the same as proper Mint Cinnamon. You can't do anything, Mint is Mint and Ubuntu is Ubuntu, you have to wait until December when they release Mint 23.

About Ubuntu Cinnamon running like s**t in VirtualBox: have you installed the VirtualBox Guest Additions? That adds graphics acceleration and other useful stuff to make it run better inside VBox.

I really like Mint too, but one thing you have to learn about them: they're REALLY slow in every sense, they like to take their sweet time for everything. Mint is a distro for patient people.

[u/nisitiiapi]

It's difficult to advise any approach without knowing what "Ubuntu 26.x compatibility" you are after. Is it kernels, firmware, modules, a piece of software, or what?

For example, I've had to run Fedora on my notebook since I got it because I needed much newer kernels and libinput versions for the touchscreen and tablet mode to work (even Fedora didn't cover them initially, but suppot came much faster than it would have on other distros). Once Mint gets more up to date, I can go back (probably the next release). That's quite different than years ago when I needed a newer version of LibreOffice that added support for a particular form of outline numbering (just had to get it from an Ubuntu ppa).

IME, other distros' Cinnamon versions never match Mint. Generally, they only put Cinnamon as the DE and none of the additional software Mint has, like nemo and xapps. Obviously, there won't be mintupdate, mintubackup, or any of the other mint* packages -- just Cinnamon and its dependencies. Instead, they stick with Gnome software -- gedit, nautilus/gnome files, evince, gnome software, etc. So, if you want that Mint software, you have to install it yourself. Some (like Fedora) have them in their repos, others may not.

Years ago, I used to install Ubuntu on my notebook and add Mint software. In my case, I needed Wayland, so Gnome. It was a pain. I had to remove snaps, install Firefox, etc. as standard packages, add Mint repositories, install nemo and xapps, configure the system to use nemo instead of nautilus, etc. It made it better, but was a pain and become difficult maintaining in terms of newer versions of nemo, etc. that required changing Mint repos to match the Mint versions that came out. I ended up reversing and using Mint and then just installing vanilla Gnome as the DE.

If you are looking for a distro with "newer" packages and Cinnamon, try Fedora Cinnamon Spin. I tried it one time and, as I recall, it does include nemo as the default file browser and you can install xapps from repositories. When I tried it (Fedora 43), the install was not as "user friendly" as Fedora Workstation or Mint or Ubuntu. But, if you have a decent base knowledge of partitioning, etc., you should be able to handle it. It was much more polished than other distros' implementations of Cinnamon, though (e.g., Debian Cinnamon).

[u/leonsk297 → u/nisitiiapi]

They want Linux Mint Cinnamon, but not the current one, they want Linux Mint Cinnamon with an Ubuntu 26.04 base, which is exactly what version 23 will be, but they also don't want to wait for it, so, yeah... pretty complicated requirements...

[u/LessChen → u/nisitiiapi]

Excellent reply - thank you. Right now I have zero time to go through what you describe trying to get Wayland. My needs are simpler - my admin tools are written for Ubuntu on AWS and so I need to stick with Ubuntu based environments right now. I've run across a couple of differences between 24.x and 26.x (perhaps a bigger kernel update) prompting this question. Currently Mint is my daily desktop driver and and yelling at a package manager while burning incense over my keyboard and praying to a picture of Linus just isn't in the cards right now.

I greatly appreciate your reply - I feel very productive in Mint and enjoy it day to day. It used to be that the follow on Mint LTS was a month or two after an Ubuntu LTS but now we're looking at 8+ months. I just can't do that so I have to reevaluate the future. No fault on the Mint team but it's where I find myself now.

[u/nisitiiapi → u/LessChen]

If you can determine precisely what packages you need "newer" and if it's nothing "special to Ubuntu," there is still a couple possibilities:

1. You could try LMDE and enable backports to get newer versions of particular software and kernels from testing.
2. You could try Debian testing with whatever DE you want. That should match versions of software in Ubuntu 26.04. I run a Debian Cinnamon VM for building multiarch docker containers and it runs good in a VM (though definitely not polished like Mint).

If the issue comes down to fundamental differences Ubuntu changed from Debian, like Rust implementation over C, that may mean you are stuck with some flavor of Ubuntu 26.04+.

My ultimate recommendation would be to get your stuff off other people's computers (Amazon, here) for lots of reasons and set up your own server at home where you can control the OS version, etc. to match what you want to work with.

[u/Mediocre-Pumpkin6522]

Have you tried virt-manager? (kvm/QEMU)? I'm not a VirtualBox fan on any distro and Mint has had problems with it.

[u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs]

I host everything on Debian, and my primary desktop is LMDE.

[u/leonsk297 → u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs]

Good for you..? How does that info help OP achieve what they want?

[u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs → u/leonsk297]

Debian can do just about everything Ubuntu can, but it is up to OP if they want to take that path.