Linux Mint 20 hits Beta with Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce desktops

Fractional scaling support, and each monitor can be scaled differently.

Wow, am I right that no other DE has this?

Including the somewhat controversial decision to block Snap packages and snapd being installed unless you do it manually.

I love that the Mint team did this. If I want to install Snap, I will do so, and I don't have any major objections to it, but I don't like it when something installs itself silently like that in a 'sneaky' way. It should be something I am aware of and choose to install rather than something just getting quietly slipped onto my HDD in an apt package.

Probably thing things I'm most excited about are the nemo performance improvements and the new options for monitor configuration and desktop scaling.

Although not currently a Linux Mint user, I am a HUGE fan of their decision to exorcise the 'Snap' daemon from their distro. It's not the 'Snap' format itself (though I'm decidedly not a fan) but the way that Canonical has chosen to foist it upon the user. (It puts me in mind of Microsoft's Internet Explorer circa 2000.)

So skål! to Clément Lefèbvre and his crew, their distro and their truth, long may they live!

If only Feral would not completely ignore this Linux version

I wonder when is the release date of the final version.

Fractional scaling support, and each monitor can be scaled differently.

Wow, am I right that no other DE has this?

I thought Gnome-shell was supposed to get at least the first bit. But I haven't seen it in the options on Pop_OS.

I do wish Mint would support Gnome though I kind of see why they do not. But yes, maybe if all of the Ubuntu based systems refuse to play ball with forcing snap down our throats, Ubuntu will come to realize that much like other things they've tried to push an alternate system for, that they'll just back down.

While I'm not against alternatives at all (otherwise why would I be using Linux as a desktop system, right?), there are certain things we should try standardizing on, like the graphical display tech (xorg / wayland), system resource management and startup (though to be fair, it systemd started with just being an improved init, it really is growing into much more, and I can see reasons to hate it for that, but it has become the 'standard'). We already have flatpak that isn't terrible in performance like snap, is already well integrated into other distributions (though Debian is as they always are neutral and properly support both flatpak and snap, just not out of the box, which is the way it should be).

This does give us two good options now though, Pop_OS! for those who enjoy using Gnome Shell, plus they have an easy way to switch between hybrid, dedicated and iGPU settings, and Mint for the Xfce, Cinnamon and Mate DEs, without having things shoved into our faces!

Nice thing they blocked it. As an Ubuntu MATE user I might consider moving to Mint MATE. Gonna give it a shot

Fractional scaling support, and each monitor can be scaled differently.

Wow, am I right that no other DE has this?

I thought Gnome-shell was supposed to get at least the first bit. But I haven't seen it in the options on Pop_OS.

I do wish Mint would support Gnome though I kind of see why they do not. But yes, maybe if all of the Ubuntu based systems refuse to play ball with forcing snap down our throats, Ubuntu will come to realize that much like other things they've tried to push an alternate system for, that they'll just back down.

While I'm not against alternatives at all (otherwise why would I be using Linux as a desktop system, right?), there are certain things we should try standardizing on, like the graphical display tech (xorg / wayland), system resource management and startup (though to be fair, it systemd started with just being an improved init, it really is growing into much more, and I can see reasons to hate it for that, but it has become the 'standard'). We already have flatpak that isn't terrible in performance like snap, is already well integrated into other distributions (though Debian is as they always are neutral and properly support both flatpak and snap, just not out of the box, which is the way it should be).

This does give us two good options now though, Pop_OS! for those who enjoy using Gnome Shell, plus they have an easy way to switch between hybrid, dedicated and iGPU settings, and Mint for the Xfce, Cinnamon and Mate DEs, without having things shoved into our faces!

Ubuntu has fractional scaling (although it was borked for me when I tested 20.04, 19.10 was fine), I don't actually have 2 screens to check.

Yes, I am glad Mint voiced their concern with snaps (again), and this time Canonical heard it and proposed to talk.
Before they just wrote it off as 'vocal minority', 'tinfoil hats', 'windows haters', something among these lines.

As a long time Mint user, I dunno what I'm looking forward to. I'm sure there will be some nice things, but I'm already fine with my current version. I'll just be kind of vaguely glad that various things are a bit more up to date, but the Mint desktop is mature enough that for me it's not really about specific pain points. Heck, I only just updated to 19.3, and the only difference I've really paid attention to so far is I notice LibreOffice is looking a bit slicker.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 16 June 2020 at 8:55 pm UTC

I feel that the Linux Mint team has a good understanding about what their user-base wants, this is shaping up to be another great release :)

- Nemo I already think is a great file manager, but load up a folder with 10k+ PNG images and it grinds to a halt trying to create thumbnails for all of them (not that any other Linux file-manager is any better at it, but if they solve this then that would be great)
- I have never had issues with Flatpaks in any distro, I can't say the same about snaps . From my point of view Snaps are trying to solve a problem that already has a solution.

Changing the refresh rate actually freezes cinnamon for me but I'm sure it's because of my weird setup with PRIME. Otherwise, it's been pretty darned solid and stable, especially for a BETA.

Fractional scaling is the big thing for me, I have a 13" 1080p laptop and it's a must there. Let's just say it's VERY beta right now. :-)

Fractional scaling support, and each monitor can be scaled differently.

Wow, am I right that no other DE has this?

Don't be too impressed. I tried the feature and all it does is render the desktop/UI at 150% together with blurry font.

So if you expected good scaling where font's look like it was rendered natively...

Nope.

I was exited at first as well until I saw the cheap hack they basically did. Totally unusable in this state.

Fractional scaling support, and each monitor can be scaled differently.

Wow, am I right that no other DE has this?

Don't be too impressed. I tried the feature and all it does is render the desktop/UI at 150% together with blurry font.

So if you expected good scaling where font's look like it was rendered natively...

Nope.

I was exited at first as well until I saw the cheap hack they basically did. Totally unusable in this state.

Thanks for sharing this.
I tried with a single display today, even a "simple" 2x scaling is just a zoomed-in pic. Looks super bad :(
I am keeping Ubuntu as a backup for my Debian Testing system.