A new version of Linux Mint, a popular Linux distribution, is now available. Although it can be downloaded from servers, the official website has not been updated to announce the new release.
Linux Mint 21.2 is the second point release in the Linux Mint 21 series. The original version was released in August 2022, followed by Linux Mint 21.1 in December of the same year.
Upgrades are not yet enabled, but the built-in Upgrade Tool should work for most users. Standalone ISO images are already available for all three flavors, Cinnamon, Mate, and Xfce, on the official download mirrors.
Linux Mint 21.2 is supported until 2027. The Linux Mint team will release another point release, Linux Mint 21.3, before moving on to the next major version release.
The official “What’s New” posts are available but not yet linked from the main site. They can be accessed by following the links to Cinnamon’s, Mate’s, and Xfce’s on the official site.
A lot of work has gone into visual changes in Linux Mint. Cinnamon, one of the desktop flavors, now features styles designed to “make it really simple to switch to something that looks great, and to quickly browse what’s there” regardless of individually installed themes.
Linux Mint users can pick one of the available styles, an appearance setting, which can be mixed, dark or light, and a color variant. Users who prefer more control can activate the advanced settings link to go back to the previous option of setting themes individually.
Several changes are shared across the three desktop environments. New features include the option to select different keyboard layouts from the login screen, an updated Software Manager user interface, vast improvements to Pix, an advanced image viewer and browser, including support for AVIF/HEIF, improved performance and support for RAW, Gif, and TIFF, support for larger thumbnail sizes, and more.
Folder Icons are displayed as two-tones icons now, and new color variants were introduced in the release. Tooltips on the system are now “bigger, rounder and with larger margins”, which should give them a consistent look and feel across desktop environments.
The developers have added XDG Desktop Portal support for XApp for all desktop environments. This improves the compatibility between desktop environments and non-native applications, including flatpaks and GNOME apps.
Regarding desktop environment specific changes, there are several noteworthy ones:
- Cinnamon notifications use accent colors now. (Cinnamon)
- Support for gestures was added to window management, workspace management, tiling, and media controls. (Cinnamon)
- XReader supports Adobe Illustrator documents.
Image Source: Unsplash
