Linux Mint 20 is now available, the new major version of the most popular derived from Ubuntu, based on the latest LTS of this and with five years of rigorous support ahead. A version that according to its developers «comes with updated software and brings improvements and many new features to make your desktop experience more comfortable».
Codenamed 'Ulyana', Linux Mint 20 does indeed present numerous new features, both for the base provided by Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and for those introduced by motu proprio, mainly in the form of new versions of the official desktop environments. and the other tools shared between these. This is, as usual in the project, a conservative release focused on incremental improvements. But this is, in fact, one of its strengths.
What's new in Linux Mint 20
The highlight of Linux Mint 20 is found in the guts, which correspond to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and everything it brought to the system level, including the Linux 5.4 and Mesa 20 kernel, while on the surface it depends on the edition and the Desktop environment that governs it, be it Cinnamon 4.6, MATE 1.24 or a fairly updated Xfce 4.14.
Now, if Linux Mint has a jewel in the crown, it is the edition with Cinnamon and, as usual, they only promote the news of each new version when the distro is released. It's not understood why they do it this way when Cinnamon has become one of the most popular GNU/Linux desktops beyond even Linux Mint itself, but that's how they do it.
So we take advantage of this release to talk about what's new in Cinnamon 4.6, among which we can highlight the performance improvement of the Nemo file manager, a new option in the desktop preferences to set the screen refresh rate, fractional scaling for HiDPI screens, new access to keyboard layouts and the ability to run custom commands to modify the screensaver. This is what Cinnamon 4.6 brings roughly.
The rest of the news of Linux Mint 20 are common to all three editions and have as 'star of the show' according to the developers to Warpinator, a reimplementation of Giver that, like this one, allows file sharing over the local network.
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| Warpinator |
Warpinator is, in essence, a new application that joins the XApps, which also receive their dose of tweaks, including improvements in saving files in the Xed text editor; buttons for full-screen mode of Xviewer image viewer; a print button for the Xreader document viewer; and better support for the indicators of the Electron applications.
Another application that changes is the Deb Gdebi package installer, which renews its interface; And so does the package system itself, enabling the default recommendations when installed via APT and, as noted from the project, disabling Snap by default. In fact, to enable Snap it is not enough to install it, but you have to follow some instructions with which to unlock its installation.
Thus Linux Mint complies with the threat of full rejection of the Canonical package system and in the case of Chromium, which is why he carried out all this, they do it as expected without providing any solution that makes life easier for the user, but rather the opposite. In summary, Ubuntu does not package and maintain Chromium as would be desirable, in the native format of the distribution; but neither does Linux Mint.
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| NVIDIA Prime |
The final highlight of Linux Mint 20 is in enhancing NVIDIA Optimus support through the NVIDIA Prime applet, which now shows new options for selecting the card to use directly from the menu. For the rest, there are brings aesthetic changes in the system tray and the official visual themes, whose main color can be chosen from the same welcome screen on the desktop.
For more details, the Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce announcements, including links to release notes and downloads.
Download Linux Mint 20
If you prefer, however, you can download Linux Mint 20 directly from the official download pages, remembering that this version is only available for 64-bit systems.
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