Cinnamon desktop from Linux Mint gets easier for other distros to package

The March 2025 development round-up blog post from Linux Mint covers some interesting changes coming to the popular Linux distribution, like making packaging the Cinnamon desktop easier for other distributions.

Mint's Clement Lefebvre notes they're changing their versioning of the JavaScript engine that powers the Cinnamon desktop to match the Mozilla JavaScript engine it uses. They'll now be updating it indepedently to bring various improvements like:

• Updates can happen more frequently and efficiently.
• New JavaScript engine improvements can be added without waiting for a full Cinnamon release.
• The desktop environment can work with multiple versions of the JavaScript engine.

Additionally they said the change will "benefit Linux distributions like Debian and Ubuntu, making it easier for them to ship Cinnamon without having to maintain multiple versions of the Mozilla JavaScript engine".

Sounds like a great change.

Additionally the blog post notes how searching for files in Nemo, the Mint file manager, has been improved along with a new filter being added "to find files using regular expressions matching their filenames".

Cinnamon on Wayland continues to see improvements too. They're currently working on adding support for keyboard layouts and input methods to Cinnamon in Wayland, which should hopefully be in the next release.

On top of that they said that LMDE 7 (Linux Mint Debian Edition), which will be based on the next version of Debian Stable, will come with full support for OEM installations. Making it easier to be pre-installed on computers sold by various vendors.

Source: Linux Mint Blog