The release of a new LTS at Canonical marks the arrival of a new release cycle for Linux Mint.
Some considerations on snaps and flatpaks
Linux Mint 20 "Ulyana" is the first edition of the Linux Mint branch 20 to be based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. This new edition marks an important step in the distro which, starting from this edition, has become completely snap free or it will not be possible, unless some changes you find at the bottom of the guide, to install applications in snap format.
If you want to follow the philosophy of Linux Mint and hate the thought of installing a snap-like application like the plague, do not despair because on Linux Mint 20 you will have full support for the flatpak format that will allow us to have the same advantages as a snap with, in addition, greater lightness in terms of space occupied by applications as well as significantly better boot performance than snaps (unfortunately some snaps are slow to start, which does not happen with applications in flatpak format).
The installation of programs in flatpak format, on Linux Mint 20, is possible directly from the appropriate Flatpak section in the Application Manager. The repository used as the basis for the installation of the packages in flatpak format is the flathub.
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| The Flatpak section present in the Application Manager |
In the guide that follows I will often refer to this option for installing applications in the flatpak format. In addition to this, I will show you how to install applications like real nerds using the terminal
An overview of the pre-installed applications
Before proceeding with the guide, let's take stock of the situation and see what programs we find pre-installed on Linux Mint 20:- Internet: Firefox, Thunderbird, HexChat, Transmission
- Office: LibreOffice in complete edition with Base, Calc, Draw, Impress, Math, Writer.
- Graphics: Drawing, Pix and Scan Documents (ex Simple scan)
- Audio and video: Celluloid (as a video player) and Rhytmbox (as audio file player)
- USB device manager: USB pen formatter (to easily format external USB memories), USB image writer (which allows us to write our favorite distros to pendrives)
- Backup tool (a tool developed by Mint for making system backups)
- Timeshift (a system recovery utility)
- Warpinator (a tool that allows us to send and receive files between computers belonging to our same network)
- Synaptic (the famous package manager)
- Application manager: The software center developed by the Linux Mint team and which allows us to install both applications present in the distro repositories and flatpak format applications present on the flathub repository)
- Update Manager: The software that allows us to keep our distro up to date
- Driver manager: The Mint driver manager that allows us to install any proprietary drivers such as, for example, the NVIDIA graphics drivers. Unlike Ubuntu, when you install Linux Mint on a computer with an NVIDIA graphics card, its proprietary drivers will not be installed automatically but you will have to do it later.
As you can see with Linux Mint we already have almost everything we need to start working with our distro right away.
Let's see how to make some small tweaks
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| Linux Mint 20 on first boot |
Install updates
The first step is to check for updates to install.
Launch the Update Manager and follow the instructions to download and install the updates. You can call it from the applications menu or click on the shield present in the system tray.
As you can see, compared to other distros, the Linux Mint Update Manager has a very user-friendly interface. After installing the updates you will be offered to restart the system. do it
Alternatively, we can update from the terminal by giving
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
Install multimedia codecs, additional fonts, DVD support, and OpenJDK
During the installation of Linux Mint, it is possible to tick the item that allows us to download the codecs and additional software that allows us to pre-install everything necessary to play our multimedia files. If we had not ticked the relevant items during the installation it will still be It is possible to install the codecs once the system has been started using the appropriate voice present in Audio and video.
The same operation can be done through the terminal by giving the command
sudo apt install mint-meta-codecs
Now we just have to install the basic Microsoft fonts. We can do it graphically using the Package Manager (start menu, administration) or by giving terminal
sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
I also recommend installing the Carlito and Caladea fonts. The two fonts are two free fonts designed to replace Calibri and Cambria, two proprietary fonts often used by users for the creation of their documents. Without these two replacement fonts, you may have problems with formatting text in some documents.
To install them, just give them from the terminal
sudo apt install fonts-crosextra-caladea fonts-crosextra-carlito
As for DVD video playback, we will need to install libdvd-pkg. This package automates the download of source files for libdvdcss2 from videolan.org as well as their compilation and installation of binary packages (libdvdcss2 libdvdcss-dev). From the terminal we give:
sudo apt install libdvd-pkg
Once the installation procedure is finished, a warning will appear asking us to type a terminal
sudo dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg
to complete the configuration. Let's do it. We also confirm the automatic search for updates.
Let's now install OpenJDK and the browser plugin from the terminal
sudo apt install openjdk-11-jre
Messaging and feed management
If you need to use XMPP, IRC, AIM, etc the best solution you can find is Pidgin. You can install Pidgin either from the Application Manager or from the terminal by giving:
sudo apt install pidgin
If you are a Skype user you will have to manually download and install Skype for Linux from the Microsoft website at https://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/
Once you have downloaded the DEB package, you just need to double click on it and install it.
If you love reading feeds without resorting to web services one of the best GTK clients is without a shadow of a doubt Liferea that you can install by giving from the terminal
sudo apt install liferea
Telegram is known, it has become one of the most popular messaging programs by Linux users also because it offers a native client for Linux PC. If you want to use Telegram on Ubuntu I suggest you download the package directly from the official website at https://desktop.telegram.org/
Once done, extract the Telegram folder and launch the executable. At the first start, Telegram will create the shortcuts so that you can launch it comfortably from the relative icon. I recommend you use this method and avoid additional PPAs because it will be possible for you to keep Telegram always up to date without having to wait for the repository maintainers to release updates from time to time.
Alternatively, you can install Telegram in a flatpak format. You can do it either through the Application Manager or from the terminal by giving:
flatpak install flathub org.telegram.desktop
Install alternative browsers like Google Chrome, Opera or Vivaldi
On Linux Mint 20 we find pre-installed the dear and old Firefox, one of the best browsers around.
The only thing for Firefox to do is to add Google to the search engines because, by default, the version of Firefox in the Linux Mint repositories does not include Google. To do this, with Firefox, go to https://www.linuxmint.com/searchengines.php and click on the appropriate item.
However, you may want to install something different. Don't worry because the main browsers you find on Windows are also available for Linux.
If you want to install Google Chrome just download the installer in DEB format from the address https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/desktop/index.html and install it manually by double-clicking on it.
If you want to install Opera, simply download the installer in DEB format at http://www.opera.com/ and install it manually by double-clicking on it.
If you want to install Vivaldi just download the installer in DEB format at https://vivaldi.com/download/ and install it manually by double-clicking on it.
We increase the security of Transmission
As for the management of torrents on Linux Mint 20, we find the excellent Transmission pre-installed. The program is simple and intuitive. The only thing I suggest is to add a blocklist to Transmission to increase the level of privacy.
Office programs
On Linux Mint 20 we already find pre-installed LibreOffice in full version so you won't have to install anything else.
On Linux Mint 20 you find pre-installed Drawing, a kind of Microsoft Paint.
The program is fine for making minor adjustments but it is not up to more complete programs.
For image editing, the best solution for Linux is without a shadow of a doubt GIMP. Here we have two possibilities. If you make use of several additional plugins such as gmic and you do not care to always have the latest version of GIMP, you can install the version of GIMP from the terminal by giving
sudo apt install gimp gimp-gmic gimp-plugin-registry
If, on the other hand, you always want to use the latest stable version of GIMP and do not use third-party plugins, you can install the Flapak version of GIMP from the Application Manager or from the terminal by giving:
flatpak install flathub org.gimp.GIMP
If you also work with vector images, I recommend installing Inkscape both from the Application Manager and from Terminal, giving:
sudo apt install inkscape
Also, in this case, you can install it in Flatpak format from the Application Manager or from the terminal:
flatpak install flathub org.inkscape.Inkscape
For creative enthusiasts of modeling, rigging, animation, video editing, composition, and rendering of three-dimensional images and whoever has more, I recommend installing Blender. I advise you to install the Flatpak version directly instead of the one present in the repositories, in order to always have the latest version available. You can install it from the Application Manager or from the terminal giving
flatpak install flathub org.blender.Blender
Leisure
Reading enthusiasts who make extensive use of epub will find their perfect companion in Caliber. The program is able to read epubs (but not only as it is able to read the formats Cbz, Cbr, Cbc, Epub, Fb2, Html, Lit, Lrf, Mobi, Odt, Pdf, Prc, Pdb, Pml, Rb, Rtf, Tcr, and Txt), create them (if you want to try your hand at writing) and interface with your ebook or android reader for the management of your books. We can install Caliber from the terminal
sudo apt install calibre
If, on the other hand, you are like me occasional readers who do not have a large library to manage, my advice is to install Foliate.
Foliate is available both in DEB format from the developer's GitHub repository, and in Flatpak format and you can install it either from the Applications Manager or from the terminal by giving:
flatpak install flathub com.github.johnfactotum.Foliate
If you are like me and you often have to make DVDs and CDs, my advice is to install Brasero. From the terminal we give
sudo apt install brasero
If instead, you want a software to manage your media library the only way is to install the excellent Kodi (ex Xbmc) and you can do it by giving from Terminal:
sudo apt install kodi
As for video editing, after years of testing, I realized that the most complete program currently available in kdenlive. You can install it in flatpak format from the Application Manager or by giving from the terminal
flatpak install flathub org.kde.kdenlive
Finally, if your passion is audio editing or you simply need an editor to touch up the episodes of your podcast, my advice is to install Audacity. The program is present both in Flatpak format and from the repository. If you want to install the repository version, just give it from the terminal
sudo apt install audacity
If you want to install the flatpak version you can do it from the Application Manager or from the terminal
flatpak install flathub org.audacityteam.Audacity
Yes but I want snaps, how do I install them?
Have you tried flatpaks but still want to have the ability to install snaps on Mint 20? You can do this by following the guide How to install snapshot packages on Linux Mint 20.How to fix the time difference between Linux Mint and Windows 10
Have you installed Linux Mint 20 in dual boot with Windows 10 and have you noticed that every time you start Windows 10, you find yourself with the time completely unpacked? Solving is possible and you can do it by following this guide.
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