Linux Mint 20 has today been officially released across multiple official desktop environments and it's all sounding great. The Cinnamon desktop edition sounding especially good.
This is the first Linux Mint release to be based upon Ubuntu 20.04, the latest Long-Term Support release so you can keep on using Linux Mint 20 happily until around 2025. If you're looking for a good starting point with Linux, Mint is often a good choice.
Pictured: Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon
Linux Mint 20 will likely see 2-3 point releases, all supported until 2025 and all made from the same base Mint 20. They no longer chase all the interim Ubuntu releases so they can focus on keeping things stable, this should mean upgrades to Mint 20.1 and 20.2 should be quite easy.
With this latest release, there's lots of fun new features included. For the Cinnamon edition, the biggest is the inclusion of fractional scaling for the UI along with each monitor being able to be scaled differently. Another big improvement is better support for NVIDIA Optimus out of the box, as their included applet easily allows you to pick your GPU from its menu. It also now support the NVIDIA "On-Demand" profile too. For gamers, the Optimus improvements are a big plus.
Some other nice fluff improvements came with it, like the Welcome app letting you pick a colour scheme easily.
More improvements can be found elsewhere like the improved system tray icon system, a new application named Warpinator to easily share files across networks, Nemo file manager performance improvements and the Gdebi tool used to manually install .deb files was given a fresh look.
The most controversial change in Linux Mint 20 is their disabling of Snap packages by default. Snap is the Canonical-backed next-gen Linux packaging format, which Mint's Clément Lefèbvre is not currently a fan of for various reasons like the Chromium package on Ubuntu actually being empty and just sets up a Snap instead. Their reasoning goes a lot deeper than that though, including Snaps being from one centralized store. If you want to read more on Mint's stance on Snaps, see here.
Additionally, the is the first time the Mint team have gone 64bit only as they've retired the 32bit downloads.
The currently released editions are:
Are you a Linux Mint or Cinnamon fan? Let us know what you think of the latest releases in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
MellowTigger Jul 11, 2020
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