Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is based on Debian. With this inheritance thing, the one who is at a lower level is the one who has the most possibilities, because he can take from everyone his ancestors, and the operating system of Clem Lefebvre and company takes things from his father and from his grandfather. Something it borrows from Debian is the idea of where they got Romeo, and we are going to talk about this heartthrob here today.
The names of the Debian versions come from Toy Story. The stable ones are toys, and the unstable ones are named after whoever breaks the toys, Sid. The names of the stable versions of Linux Mint are named after girls, and all the girls have their Romeo (that's what they say, not me) that it will probably break their hearts. This is just the beginning of the information we want to share in this article.
Romeo is not a version, but he wants more prominence
Romeo it is not a version itself, but a repository. There are no unstable versions of Linux Mint until the release of the beta. If you want to install 21.3 right now, you simply cannot; It doesn't even have a name yet. So that people can start getting a taste of what's to come in the future, the Mint team is offering Romeo.
Until now, Romeo has been used by the developer team to quickly test packages. Looking ahead, Romeo will be used to offer new features and the changes Mint developers are working on to prepare for the next release. This will allow alpha testers to run unstable versions of Cinnamon, Xapp, and Mint tools, among other things, without having to compile them themselves. Additionally, this will replace the "unstable" repository.
How to activate Romeo
To activate Romeo, what you have to do is:
- We open Software Sources. It can be searched from the applications menu.
- We activate the “Unstable packages (romeo)” switch.
- We accept the notice that explains what it is.
- At the bottom a banner appears saying that changes have been made to APT. We accept them.
- We wait for the repositories to be updated and we would have it.
Now we open the update manager and, if there are new packages, we install them.
At the time of writing, November 2023, a version of Linux Mint has just been released and they have not yet made the changes that will give more prominence to Romeo. But in a few months, as the release of 21.3 approaches, new packs like Cinnamon 6 should appear long before its release.
It doesn't hurt to remember what "unstable" software is: by definition, it is unstable and is not recommended on production equipment. Be careful Romeo doesn't break your heart and something else.