Has anyone upgraded to 17.3?

[oakpatch]

I am curious if anyone has upgraded the Mintbox Mini from Mint 17.2 to 17.3. I believe that the Mint developers generally take the position that there is no need to upgrade to a new release of Mint just for the sake of upgrading if your system otherwise runs fine. I have already upgraded my laptops from 17.2 to 17.3 without any problems, but I suppose that is no guarantee that a problem couldn't crop up on the Mintbox. Is there any reason to upgrade?

[Denis]

Hi,
You can make fresh 17.3 install like described in our wiki:
http://www.fit-pc.com/wiki/index.php/Fi ... _Mint_17.3

Important note:
- Automatic upgrade from 17.2 to 17.3 will crash fglrx drivers
The correct way is:
- Uninstall fglrx drivers first
- Make automatic upgrade to 17.3
- Install RadeonSI open-source video driver like described in wiki for 17.3

[hassellbear]

I upgraded from 17.2 to 17.3 using a fresh install. I am pleased. The suggested open source video driver is providing better performance than the OEM v13.350 driver I was using with v17.2.

[oakpatch]

That is good to hear. The fglrx driver has had presented problems with the Mintbox Mini, and in another top in this forum there is a discussion of how to fix some broken links to solve one of the problems (http://www.fit-pc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=144&t=5653), but even with that fix, I have found the graphics to be a bit slow, so it might be worth trying the open source driver. Thanks.

[Dinosaur]

Hi All

I also installed from fresh 17.3 64 bit, and using to control industrial machines.
Have had no reason to complain about anything.
In fact the "confetti" block near the mouse pointer has disappeared.

Using the fitPC B Barebone did present a problem that it was to slow to allow usb .rules to be used. Will write about that in another area in this forum.

[mbirger]

Yes, Linux Mint 17.3 is running very good on the machine.
I've addressed USB detection in your other post, and asked our Linux expert to refer to the point as well.
http://www.fit-pc.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 722#p19722

[Greenhorn]

I'm waiting for Linux Mint 18 with kernel 4.4 and full implementation of AMDGPU driver.
But until that day I'll maybe give 17.3 a try.

[fmk]

I followed the upgrade path outlined by Denis above and it seemed to go smoothly except for installing the RadeonSi video driver. When I rebooted, there were problems with the display, including the "confetti" block Dinosaur mentioned.

vainfo gives

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libva info: VA-API version 0.35.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns -1
libva error: va_getDriverName() failed with unknown libva error,driver_name=(null)
vaInitialize failed with error code -1 (unknown libva error),exit

and vdpauinfo gives

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display: :0.0   screen: 0
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Error creating VDPAU device: 1

The links in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/ are there.

I use XFCE rather than Cinnamon. Is it a difference in how they configure video drivers? Do I need to update the kernel, xorg or mesa which are all at the 17.2 versions?