Some good news coming out of camp Linux Mint, as the upcoming release of Linux Mint 22 is set to be quite a good one for bringing it up to standard like other distributions on newer tech.
Announced in a blog post, Mint's Clement Lefebvre mentioned various improvements coming like better localization support which will also use less disk space. Languages you don't pick will now properly be removed, and the ISO will actually have English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, Dutch and Italian requiring no extra downloads for those.
Something big for audio fans is that Linux Mint 22 will also finally swap over to Pipewire as the default sound server, the Software Sources tool will feature support for the new Deb822 format and the next version of Pix (their image viewer) will support JXL images.
Pictured - Linux Mint Cinnamon Desktop
Another big change is their kernel versioning. Mint has always been quite reserved on using newer kernels, often sticking with older versions. They have been shipping EDGE ISOs with newer kernels for a while, but now they're going to follow Ubuntu with shipping new kernel series release after Linux Mint 22 is live. As Lefebvre mentioned "we didn’t observe significant differences in terms of stability between LTS and HWE series" and that a "growing number of users with new laptops/chipsets relied on EDGE images" so this move makes sense.
They've also made a new XApp, GNOME Online Account GTK, with a goal to work across any desktop environment to connect to online accounts like Google, Microsoft and so on.
Snap is also another issue, as the Mint team continue to not particularly like Canonical's packaging format. With Ubuntu moving Thunderbird into a Snap, the Mint team will now be packaging it themselves as a .deb.
They're also continuing to work on Jargonaut, a modern chat application that uses IRC under the hood.
They're also now working with Fastly, to support their packaging repositories which should provide better speeds and overall stability.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
gradyvuckovic Apr 3
Quoting: PenglingAll sensible stuff, and this is why I love using Mint as my daily-driver OS.Yup, yup. Likewise.
Quoting: Purple Library GuyYup, yup. Likewise.I wish I could show a Mint badge, here, but I don't want to mess up GOL's main gaming PC stats - I'm not running it on my Steam Deck, after all.
I switched to pipewire long ago, so I might have to revert that change before I update to avoid conflicts. And I'll keep using Xanmod kernels on my gaming box simply because they've been serving me well for years. Our other machines are on HWE kernels already, but I guess that's a few less clicks the next time I decide to reinstall one of them. Same goes for removing all the extra languages.
Nice to see that Thunderbird will still be available as a native package.
I really don't see the point of basing a modern chat app on IRC though. There are nicer protocols to choose from.
Not pushing Snaps and sticking to .deb is to my liking too.
Linux_Rocks Apr 3
But would have stayed with Mint otherwise.
Last edited by Sparhawk on 3 April 2024 at 6:01 pm UTC
Caldathras Apr 3
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