Mint Monthly News – July 2024

Linux Mint 22 is ready. The release will be announced this week. It will be followed by upgrade instructions for Linux Mint 21.3 and package backports for LMDE 6.
The BETA phase was very productive. We went through a total of 203 bug reports, it was intense.
https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4730

Thanks to mintcast.org for the updates.

Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” released!
https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4731

Yes, this is a costly screw-up

There is no fix for Intel's crashing 13th/14th Gen CPUs – damage is permanent
Article, Comments

Monthly News August 2024

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4740

The repository servers were upgraded.
The upgrade between Mint 21.3 and 22 was broken last week due to package conflicts introduced upstream in Ubuntu 24.04 on samba and libreoffice. See blog for more details.
Outside of Linux Mint, Cinnamon looks pretty ugly. To address this problem Cinnamon 5.4 will ship with a much improved default theme.
Maintaining better APT libraries and utilities.
LMDE 5 “Elsie” reached End Of Life and is no longer maintained.

Thanks to mintcast.org for the summary.

Mint Monthly News – September 2024

Visual improvements in Cinnamon
+The new default theme is much darker and contrasted than before. Objects are rounded and a gap was introduced between the applets and the panel.
+The dialogs were redesigned. They’re nicely balanced and feature separated buttons.
+When an application is frozen and no longer responds Cinnamon shows a “Force Quit” dialog. This used to be a Gtk window. It was rewritten in Clutter to look like the rest of Cinnamon:
+The media-buttons OSD looks more modern and much cleaner than before, and so does the Workspace OSD.
+Also working on notifications, animations, the main menu, pkexec/logout dialogs, a new status applet…

+The transition towards Aptkit and Captain is now finished. Starting with Linux Mint 22.1, set to be released this December, none of our projects will depend on aptdaemon, synaptic, gdebi or apturl anymore.
No more translation issues. Everything is now fully translated.
No more bugs/papercuts. We no longer depend on unmaintained components which are upstream from us.
Redefined scope. Anything we didn’t need was removed, anything that was missing (purging packages, downgrading to specific packages etc..) was added.
+This allowed us to completely refactor the code in the Update Manager and greatly simplify its architecture
+In the Software Sources tool, the downgrading of foreign packages was performed via a VTE (an embedded terminal). This is now handled by Aptkit directly, with a nice progress dialog.

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4749

Thanks to mintcast.org for the summary.

Mint Monthly News – October 2024

The team is working on adding Night Light support in Cinnamon.
Work continues on migrating key Cinnamon dialogs to Clutter.
Stripe was added as an alternative to PayPal on the donors page.
The team started working with Framework. They’re hoping this will lead towards a great partnership.
Some of our branded clothes will soon be discontinued. Hellotux can’t source the green Mint shirts anymore.

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4762

Thanks to mintcast.org for the summary.

Mint Monthly News – November 2024

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4787
Release of 22.1 BETAs

Mint Monthly News – December 2024

"The BETA phase for Linux Mint 22.1 is now over. 115 reports were received and many bugs were fixed. Many thanks for your help during this beta-test!

After a few days of QA testing we’ll be ready to publish the stable release. The new features will then make their way towards LMDE and we’ll open up the upgrade path from Linux Mint 22."

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4790

Thanks to mintcast.org for the summary.

Linux Mint 22.1 “Xia” released!

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4793

Mint Monthly News – January 2025

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4803

Thanks to mintcast.org.

Mint Monthly News – February

On March 14, 2025, a root certificate used by Firefox will expire. When this happens, Firefox version 128 (and lower) will suffer significant issues related to:
configuration
add-ons
signed content
DRM-protected media playback
Make sure you are updated. Firefox 135.0.1 has been backported to Mint 19.x and LMDE 4/5.

The backend for the main Linux Mint website was completely rewritten and containerized.

Work started on a redesign of the Cinnamon application menu.

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4811

Thanks to mintcast.org for the summary.

Mint Monthly News – March 2025

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4825

Features coming in upcoming releases
Improved search in Nemo
Support for keyboard layouts and input methods to Cinnamon in Wayland
OEM Support in LMDE
JavaScript interpreter (CJS) will be versioned according to the Mozilla JavaScript engine it uses

Thanks to mintcast.org for the summary.

Mint Monthly News – April 2025

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4840
Codenames.
Linux Mint 22.2 will be called “Zara”
LMDE 7 will be called “Gigi”
We have a new user! Welcome to Linux PewDiePie!
A hint of Blue in Mint-Y
Made a small change to the XDG Desktop Portal XApp to support accent colors.
Patches could be applied to libAdwaita meaning probably won’t need to continue to downgrade the GNOME applications to GTK3. They could use GTK4.
"Upstream and long-term, if we continue to use libAdwaita applications we probably need an XApp platform lib similar to libAdwaita, either in the form of a soft-forks (libs and/or apps which are often rebased on upstream) or in the form of an extension library (something that extends libAdwaita, similar to libGranite)."

Thanks to mintcast.org for the summary.

DNS4EU for Public Is Available
Article, Comments

Mint Monthly News – May 2025
https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4850


Mint 20.x has reached End Of Life. Upgrade options are shown in the blog.

Fingerprint Authentication
Linux Mint 22.2 will feature a brand new app called “Fingwit“, which is a fingerprint configuration tool. It detects if your computer has a fingerprint reader and lets you record your fingerprints. It then configures your system to use fingerprint authentication for:
The login screen
The screensaver
sudo commands
Admin apps (pkexec)

libAdwaita apps and patches
Starting with Linux Mint 22.2, libAdwaita will be patched to work with themes. Support for libAdwaita was added to Mint-Y, Mint-X and Mint-L. The following apps will be upgraded to their libAdwaita versions:
gnome-calendar
simple-scan
baobab

libAdapta fork
In the scope of XApp and for our own projects, libAdwaita was forked into libAdapta: LibAdapta is libAdwaita with theme support and a few extra. It provides the same features and the same look as libAdwaita by default.

Framework
The company sent Clem some of their hardware so he was able to test the Laptop 13 and the gaming Desktop already. Their products are really nice. Clem hopes to be able to review them soon and add them to our store section. This isn’t just a commercial partnership. By testing this hardware we boost compatibility for the brand and significantly improve Linux Mint. It’s thanks to Framework we implemented power profiles in Linux Mint 22.1. It’s also thanks to them that we worked on fingerprint authentication or pushed towards an HWE kernel in Linux Mint 22.2. Their hardware challenges us to do better, because it’s packed with features in need for support.

Thanks to mintcast.org for the summary.