Not found reliable way to get up-to-date distro info of Linuxmint yet, you may have problem if you use newest version of Linuxmint

[martin68]

Unlike Ubuntu having distro-info package which can be got updated by APT, Linuxmint does not have similar package to get up-to-date distro info, at lease I cannot find one. Currently, it relies on me to update the bundled Releases of Linuxmint by run make releases and then publish to github and then release new version of apt-smart. Unfortunately I cannot update it manually in time when new version of Linuxmint is released. This happened when Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia was released several months ago (see #4), obviously it should not happen again. So any suggestion?

P.S. as I said above, if you ran into similar problem, you can run make releases to update bundled Releases to get it work.
(see b7efb9d)

[smurphos]

Hi,

I'm not sure exactly what you need but a Main edition Mint installation will always have one of mint-info-cinnamon, mint-info-mate or mint-info-xfce installed. One of the files installed by this package is a plan text file /etc/linuxmint/info - content from 19.3 Cinnamon below

RELEASE=19.3
CODENAME=tricia
EDITION="Cinnamon"
DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia"
DESKTOP=Gnome
TOOLKIT=GTK
NEW_FEATURES_URL=https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_tricia_cinnamon_whatsnew.php
RELEASE_NOTES_URL=https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_tricia_cinnamon.php
USER_GUIDE_URL=https://www.linuxmint.com/documentation.php
GRUB_TITLE=Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon

There is also Mint's version of base-files which is not specific to flavour - which installs /usr/lib/os-release

NAME="Linux Mint"
VERSION="19.3 (Tricia)"
ID=linuxmint
ID_LIKE=ubuntu
PRETTY_NAME="Linux Mint 19.3"
VERSION_ID="19.3"
HOME_URL="https://www.linuxmint.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forums.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://linuxmint-troubleshooting-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.linuxmint.com/"
VERSION_CODENAME=tricia
UBUNTU_CODENAME=bionic

[martin68]

@smurphos THX for your good info. Originally I want something like Ubuntu's distro-info package which can be got updated by APT and has newest Ubuntu version info. Actually I have looked at mintsources package, but it does not contain newest Linuxmint version info if you use old Linuxmint version. Newer Linuxmint version info is useful when you update from 19.2 to 19.3, for example, and download speed from official archive is slow so you want to use apt-smart. mint-info-cinnamon is similar to mintsources IMO. I also looked at mint-upgrade-info package, it seems that it has newer info, so it may be better. How do you think?

[mhjessen]

I just upgraded to Linux Mint 20 "Ulyana" and discovered that apt-smart is unhappy now. I get the following error:

apt-select --country US
Error setting system information:
Linuxmint distributions are not supported. Ubuntu is required.

JIC this helps:

$ cat /etc/linuxmint/info
RELEASE=20
CODENAME=ulyana
EDITION="Cinnamon"
DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 20 Ulyana"
DESKTOP=Gnome
TOOLKIT=GTK
NEW_FEATURES_URL=https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_ulyana_cinnamon_whatsnew.php
RELEASE_NOTES_URL=https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_ulyana_cinnamon.php
USER_GUIDE_URL=https://www.linuxmint.com/documentation.php
GRUB_TITLE=Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon

$ cat /usr/lib/os-release
NAME="Linux Mint"
VERSION="20 (Ulyana)"
ID=linuxmint
ID_LIKE=ubuntu
PRETTY_NAME="Linux Mint 20"
VERSION_ID="20"
HOME_URL="https://www.linuxmint.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forums.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://linuxmint-troubleshooting-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.linuxmint.com/"
VERSION_CODENAME=ulyana
UBUNTU_CODENAME=focal

[martin68]

@mhjessen Hi, thanks for report, but your report is about apt-select, please paste apt-smart error info. BTW, in Linux Mint 20 apt-smart should be able to work since Linux Mint 20 info was bundled a month ago (see these lines ), have you updated apt-smart to 7.1.3? if not, you can do it by run pip install --user apt-smart --upgrade

[mhjessen]

Hi, Sorry about the apt-select pasting, I didn't notice I grabbed the wrong part.
I ended up uninstalling, then re-installing pip. Then I was able to update apt-smart. It's working now. Thanks!