Before we start with the news I’d like to thank all the people who send donations to us and who help our project grow. Many thanks to you all.
Linux Mint 20.3 Una
Linux Mint 20.3 was codenamed “Una”. Its stable release is planned to arrive for Christmas this year. It will come in 3 flavors: Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce.
LMDE 5 Elsie
Work is set to start on the next version of LMDE which was given the codename “Elsie”. It will be based on Debian 11, ship with a Cinnamon desktop environment and support both amd64 and i386 architectures.
New website
The new website is now fully ready and live on https://www.linuxmint.com. It looks minty, it works on all devices and it looks modern. It also does a better job than before at welcoming newcomers, explaining what Linux Mint is, why people love it and how to install it.
It took longer than expected but the job is done and we’re glad we took the time to finally do it. I’d like to thank all the people who sent us feedback and who helped us with it.
The website no longer shows ads and this blog announcement is no longer showing the community sponsors. These were tough decisions to take because they immediately reduce our income but they also make Linux Mint look more serious and professional. We’re hopeful they’ll help us grow in the long term and we’ll generate enough to not worry about it.
We received a lot of positive feedback since the website went live so we know you really like it! I know we can’t please everybody and taste is subjective but for most people this is a very welcome change. Personally I remember how amazing the previous website looked when it was made in 2009, but what looked amazing then just simply looks outdated now. Although I grew attached to it since it represented part of our identity during these many years, getting the opportunity to redesign it during this development cycle was a relief and I’m very happy with the result. We are a modern operating system. We use Linux because it’s better, not because it’s free or because it’s old or because it didn’t embrace controversial design changes. We use it because it’s fast, because it works, because it does what we want. It was important for our website to not only convey these ideas but to look modern as well.
Titlebars
With the website finished, the artwork is given full priority at the moment. This is also an area we often neglect when working on development and focusing on bugs and new features. Although the introduction of Mint-Y made Linux Mint look more modern there still are many visual aspects of the distribution we want to improve.
The titlebars were too small. We want to make them rounder with bigger buttons to make the desktop look more pleasant and generous and to make it easier to press the buttons.
Accents
The current Mint-Y theme is a grey theme with many “accents”.
An “accent” is a part of the theme which uses a vibrant color (Aqua in the example above) to catch your attention and look more noticeable than the rest of the theme
Accents make the theme look nice, catchy, vibrant, fun even… especially on top of grey which can be quite austere.
That said, accents also compete for your attention and distract you from the actual content. Because they’re so prominent in Mint-Y they also prevent us from using colors which could be more vibrant. A vibrant green might look better than the one we currently ship with, but because there are so many accents in the theme, it would feel overwhelming.
To make the theme look more pleasant we’re trying to remove accents and inject a tiny bit of tint into our shades of grey.
Small widgets such as sliders, checkboxes, radios and the close button continue to provide your favorite highlight color while the rest of the theme takes a step back and looks more neutral than before.
In the current theme, selections use inverted colors. This looks nice in text entries but it can be overwhelming in lists which contain embedded widgets. Transmission for instance features a treeview of elements which use progressbars. When some elements are selected the list quickly becomes unreadable, because the highlight color is used all over the place, inverted in many places, and it just looks confusing.
We’ll keep color inversions on small widgets (text entries, maybe the sidebar) but we’ll remove them in large areas. In a long list of items we’ll want selected items to only differ from non-selected ones via a background color, not through inverted colors.
Colors
The greys underneath are tinted just a tiny bit (2% in the screenshot below).
This brings back a bit of fun to the theme and makes it look pleasant.
At the moment we’re still working with the same colors as we used in previous releases. We do however think that tinted greys look better in some variants than others and we know the removal of some of the accents now allow us to explore colder greens and more vibrant colors.
Dark Apps
Last month we talked about supporting Dark mode in Mint-Y. Since then we cleared many compatibility issues with the various window managers we’re using and I’m happy to report we’re going ahead with that. Dark mode is the ability for certain applications to look dark without using a dark theme. In other words it makes it possible for only some applications to be dark and for the rest of the desktop to remain light.
Here’s an example with Mint-Y-Purple:
As you can see above, the theme is light yet some applications (gnome-terminal, Celluloid) are dark. We’ll use this technique in Linux Mint 20.3 to ship with a light theme but to make the following apps look dark by default:
- Hypnotix
- Celluloid
- GNOME Terminal
- Pix
- XViewer
Note: Xfwm doesn’t support dark mode, so Pix and Xviewer will remain light in Xfce to keep full compatibility with that window manager. Hypnotix and Celluloid use GTK borders so they will support dark mode everywhere.
Legacy
We’re hoping you’re excited with these visual changes and that they will be well received. We’re also aware we can’t change that many things without creating frustration for some of you, and that’s not something we like to do.
Last month you asked us to reconsider removing Mint-Y-Darker and we heard you. That already got the ball rolling on a project to keep the old theme available in the repositories.
So first of all, you will be able to make 20.3 look exactly as it did before (and that includes Mint-Y-Darker) by installing a new package called mint-themes-legacy. This will give you access to both the new themes and the old ones.
Second, dark mode is configurable in every single application we ship dark by default. So if you don’t like Hypnotix, Celluloid, Pix, Xviewer or GNOME Terminal to be dark, you’ll be able to disable that in each one of them.
Sponsorships:
Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:
Gold Sponsors:  Silver Sponsors:    |
Bronze Sponsors:          |
Donations in August:
A total of $11,590 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 428 donors:
$2000, Big PP
$278, Brian P.
$250 (27th donation), Ralph Siegler aka “ziggy”
$108 (12th donation), Naoise G.
$108 (4th donation), Anna U.
$108, Gert S.
$108, Detlef K. aka “fox73”
$108, Brenno D.
$108, Riivo M.
$100 (9th donation), Mountain Computers, Inc
$100 (7th donation), Michael S.
$100 (7th donation), Andrew Gouw Tjwan Liang
$100, Michaz W.
$100, Richard V.
$100, Collin D.
$100, Tom R.
$100, Kevin K.
$75, Jan A.
$60 (3rd donation), David B.
$55 (3rd donation), Manuel F.
$54 (5th donation), Philipp S.
$54 (5th donation), Michael S.
$54 (4th donation), Volker P.
$54 (3rd donation), Uwe O.
$54 (3rd donation), Dominique P.
$54 (2nd donation), Erkki Ruohtula
$54 (2nd donation), Rolandas R.
$54 (2nd donation), Jo W.
$54, Denis R.
$54, Wolfgang K.
$54, Markus P.
$54, Otto T.
$54, Slovak patron
$54, Peter S.
$54, Wolfgang S.
$54, Quentin N.
$54, Jelmer A.
$54, Peter S.
$54, Simon G.
$54, Edwin W.
$54, Cyril A.
$50 (52th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (9th donation), Wade T.
$50 (5th donation), Chungkuan T.
$50 (5th donation), Brian S.
$50 (4th donation), Griffin C.
$50 (3rd donation), Jack B.
$50 (3rd donation), James G.
$50 (3rd donation), Nathaniel B.
$50 (2nd donation), Wallace O.
$50 (2nd donation), Lee R.
$50 (2nd donation), Günter H.
$50 (2nd donation), Richard D.
$50 (2nd donation), David K.
$50 (2nd donation), Stephen R.
$50 (2nd donation), Julia R.
$50 (2nd donation), Dennis K.
$50 (2nd donation), Stephen C.
$50, William D J.
$50, Juan G.
$50, Jeffrey S.
$50, Mint U.
$50, James A.
$50, Rui W.
$50, Rory M.
$50, Michael W.
$50, Patrick B.
$50, William N.
$50, Richard D.
$50, Dwight S.
$50, John S.
$50, Patrick N.
$50, Mark S.
$50, Stephanie B.
$50, Steven J.
$43 (137th donation), Olli K.
$40 (11th donation), Vladimir Litvinenko
$40 (5th donation), Alex S.
$40 (4th donation), John B.
$40, Alan S.
$40, Nancy G.
$36 (4th donation), Gabriel D.
$35 (16th donation), Ted S.
$35 (4th donation), Silvio H.
$35, C C.
$35, Attila T.
$32, Thomas M.
$32, Sebastian S.
$32, Ignacio A.
$32, Fabienne D.
$32, Antoine M.
$30 (4th donation), Leonardo E.
$30 (3rd donation), Bjorn P. M.
$30 (3rd donation), TomT3rd
$30, Kay K.
$28 (7th donation), Adam K.
$27, L J T.
$27, Aivars17
$25 (7th donation), Linux Mint Sverige
$25 (7th donation), Timothy C.
$25 (6th donation), Ron C.
$25 (4th donation), Linda P.
$25 (2nd donation), Noah H.
$25 (2nd donation), Steve S.
$25 (2nd donation), Paul M.
$25, David T.
$22 (10th donation), Henrik H.
$22 (6th donation), Bjarne K.
$22 (6th donation), David Atherton aka “David A”
$22 (5th donation), Raymond L.
$22 (4th donation), Andrew Payne (London)
$22 (4th donation), Ulf-Andreas S.
$22 (3rd donation), Stephan V.
$22 (3rd donation), Holger B.
$22 (3rd donation), Stefan S.
$22 (3rd donation), Erkki J.
$22 (3rd donation), Marion C.
$22 (3rd donation), Didier P.
$22 (3rd donation), Sebastian G.
$22 (2nd donation), Shahnawaz S.
$22 (2nd donation), Robert B.
$22 (2nd donation), Christian G.
$22 (2nd donation), Damien B.
$22 (2nd donation), Axel G.
$22, Philip O.
$22, Riccardo A.
$22, Paolo Eugenio D.
$22, Frants L.
$22, Paul C.
$22, Erwin v.K. aka “erwinmusicman”
$22, Thomas H.
$22, Axel M.
$22, Yilmaz K.
$22, Shannon C.
$22, CUSTOMAGENTS SAS DI MASSIMINO GIUSEPPE & C.
$22, Marcos M.
$22, Henrik S.
$22, Robert H.
$22, Gordan G.
$22, Heimo H.
$22, Tom S.
$22, Giuliano L.
$22, Peter H.
$20 (37th donation), Bryan F.
$20 (35th donation), Stefan M. H.
$20 (25th donation), John D.
$20 (21st donation), Hemant Patel
$20 (13th donation), Brent P.
$20 (11th donation), Mr. Bee
$20 (10th donation), Carl K.
$20 (10th donation), Robert L.
$20 (8th donation), Anthony S.
$20 (7th donation), Robert K.
$20 (7th donation), Matthew L. A. aka “Matt”
$20 (7th donation), Douglas W.
$20 (6th donation), J.M. Tremblay aka “JM”
$20 (5th donation), Antonio Misaka
$20 (5th donation), Brian H. Y.
$20 (4th donation), Erling D. aka “Bitflogger”
$20 (4th donation), Edward F.
$20 (3rd donation), Andrew E.
$20 (3rd donation), Vince Montgomery aka “Vinnyj1701”
$20 (3rd donation), Larry B.
$20 (3rd donation), Michael W.
$20 (3rd donation), Jose M.
$20 (2nd donation), John P.
$20 (2nd donation), Jaime F. Zarama
$20 (2nd donation), Charles W.
$20 (2nd donation), Lisha L.
$20 (2nd donation), Dean D.
$20 (2nd donation), Nathaniel S.
$20, Michael H.
$20, Jack D.
$20, Philip P.
$20, Josh T.
$20, Carlos M.
$20, Gary L.
$20, Victor R.
$20, Ironshipping
$20, Marc Sitkin
$20, Larry C.
$20, Royle J.
$20, Jeff R.
$20, Andrew M.
$20, Mike P.
$20, Ross D.
$20, David B.
$20, Michael P.
$20, Keith V.
$20, Javier P.
$20, Allan S F.
$20, Gustavo D.
$20, Jayden F.
$20, Tim A.
$20, John A.
$20, Carlo T.
$20, Darlene B.
$16 (55th donation), Andreas S.
$16 (4th donation), Philippe A. aka “Phreezoo”
$16 (2nd donation), Bernard L.
$16, Dominik M.
$16, Julio P.
$16, Alex A. aka “cambiatealinux”
$16, Quittanson V.
$15 (14th donation), Pawel M.
$15 (6th donation), ajgringo619
$15, Stephen S.
$15, Paul Ove M.
$15, Wayne L.
$14 (61th donation), Johann J.
$13, Andrew G.
$13, Georg R.
$12 (126th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
$12 (24th donation), Lance A.
$11 (22nd donation), Jens-uwe R.
$11 (18th donation), Denis D.
$11 (18th donation), Daniel S.
$11 (10th donation), Alexander P.
$11 (7th donation), Filip N.
$11 (7th donation), Marko U.
$11 (7th donation), Janne M.
$11 (6th donation), Adis H.
$11 (6th donation), Andreas M.
$11 (5th donation), John Marakis
$11 (4th donation), Iker P. M.
$11 (4th donation), Hamid N.
$11 (4th donation), Augusto B.
$11 (3rd donation), Tim E.
$11 (3rd donation), Derek B.
$11 (3rd donation), Sebastian M.
$11 (3rd donation), Hans-Peter P.
$11 (3rd donation), Alfons B.
$11 (3rd donation), Michael Z.
$11 (2nd donation), Heiko W.
$11 (2nd donation), Emanuele N.
$11 (2nd donation), Gavan R.
$11 (2nd donation), Thomas L.
$11 (2nd donation), Miguel Angel P.
$11 (2nd donation), Niclas O.
$11 (2nd donation), Pilar G. C.
$11 (2nd donation), Stylianos D.
$11 (2nd donation), Jeanmichel T.
$11 (2nd donation), José María G.
$11 (2nd donation), Rupert P.
$11 (2nd donation), Gorazd B.
$11 (2nd donation), Luc V.
$11 (2nd donation), James L B B.
$11 (2nd donation), Christian K.
$11 (2nd donation), Frank P.
$11, Richard M.
$11, Andreas L.
$11, V-Fuchs
$11, Wolfgang K.
$11, Paul Shilling
$11, Dominique L.
$11, E S K.
$11, Konstantinos S.
$11, Stefano B. aka “bonste”
$11, Keith R.
$11, Barets J.
$11, Jonathan F.
$11, txolo99
$11, Pavel P.
$11, Kalervo H.
$11, Jose T.
$11, Mike D.
$11, Vesa R.
$11, Edward K.
$11, Andreas G.
$11, Jake C.
$11, Rossano Paris
$11, Corrado Maria C.
$11, Renaud C.
$10 (88th donation), Tree Service Kansas City
$10 (82th donation), Tree Removal Raleigh NC
$10 (66th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (60th donation), Fence Baton Rouge
$10 (43th donation), Rick R.
$10 (27th donation), Francois-R L.
$10 (25th donation), Serhii B. aka “sinpavla”
$10 (21st donation), Paul B. aka “Dude”
$10 (17th donation), Chiropractor Edmonton
$10 (16th donation), Carpet Cleaning Winnipeg
$10 (14th donation), Platypus Products
$10 (13th donation), Fence Company Raleigh
$10 (12th donation), Dylan B.
$10 (12th donation), Abdulkadir H. aka “Askari”
$10 (11th donation), Solar Panels Saskatoon
$10 (11th donation), Antonio Carlos L. Sampaio aka “tnsampa”
$10 (10th donation), Concrete Contractors Raleigh
$10 (9th donation), Owen D.
$10 (8th donation), Jason D.
$10 (8th donation), Gary N.
$10 (8th donation), Michael P.
$10 (7th donation), Minneapolis Commercial Cleaners
$10 (6th donation), Alexey T.
$10 (5th donation), Harold R.
$10 (5th donation), Bryan M.
$10 (5th donation), blueredgreen
$10 (5th donation), Michael K.
$10 (4th donation), Brooklyn Park commercial cleaning
$10 (4th donation), Andrew L.
$10 (4th donation), Minneapolis Commercial Painting
$10 (4th donation), Robert H.
$10 (3rd donation), Robert Z.
$10 (3rd donation), Luxury condo renovations Naples FL aka “Luxury condo renovations Naples FL”
$10 (3rd donation), Sanket W.
$10 (3rd donation), Oleksandr Z.
$10 (3rd donation), Andrew G.
$10 (3rd donation), Marvin M.
$10 (2nd donation), Øyvind K.
$10 (2nd donation), landscaping st catharines
$10 (2nd donation), Peter O.
$10 (2nd donation), Ralph R.
$10 (2nd donation), Blake F.
$10 (2nd donation), Michael A.
$10 (2nd donation), Almir D. A. B. F.
$10 (2nd donation), Bruce M.
$10 (2nd donation), Stefan K.
$10, Harold H.
$10, Peter K.
$10, zzzzz .
$10, Thelma G.
$10, Adam Neal Design
$10, Joseph Watts aka “JosephCW”
$10, Andrew W.
$10, Stefan N.
$10, Soane M.
$10, Allyx S.
$10, Gary R.
$10, Gloria W.
$10, Michael R.
$10, Dave S.
$10, Mihai-Vlad N.
$10, Jack A.
$10, K Greg C.
$10, Douglas Norton
$10, Matthew K.
$10,
$10, Stephen T.
$9 (23rd donation), Tomasz K.
$8, Gabriel B.
$6 (26th donation), GaryD
$6 (18th donation), Ky LMDE
$6, Davide M.
$6, Bernd Strieben aka “namtar73”
$5 (63th donation), Eugene T.
$5 (53th donation), Bhavinder Jassar
$5 (34th donation), William Menezes
$5 (22nd donation), Thomas R.
$5 (22nd donation), Sami Mannila
$5 (16th donation), Simone G.
$5 (16th donation), Kirill
$5 (14th donation), Sérgio D. S. S. aka “sersantos”
$5 (10th donation), Jürgen K.
$5 (9th donation), Michael V.
$5 (6th donation), Giuseppino M.
$5 (6th donation), Dionisios K.
$5 (5th donation), Daniel P. J.
$5 (5th donation), Joseph G.
$5 (2nd donation), John M.
$5 (2nd donation), Asheville roofers
$5 (2nd donation), Denis C.
$5 (2nd donation), Aaron G.
$5 (2nd donation), Guenter S.
$5, Michael F.
$5, Douglas J.
$5, Andrés M.
$5, Bert G.
$5, zzzzzzzz .
$5, Oleg F.
$5, Rafaz K.
$5, Dmitrijs K.
$5, Thomas K.
$5, David P.
$5, Francisca A.
$5, Timothy W.
$5, Sebastian B.
$5, BOND Goodwin aka “”Dobermann””
$5, Henk E.
$4 (6th donation), Hamm S.
$4, Joel L.
$3 (4th donation), Stefan E.
$3 (2nd donation), Alexey Shtabskiy aka “youngsummerlight”
$3 (2nd donation), Vincent D.
$3, Igor U.
$3, Clauber B.
$3, Vincenzo L.
$23 from 17 smaller donations
If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php
Patrons:
Linux Mint is proudly supported by 582 patrons, for a sum of $2,529 per month.
To become a Linux Mint patron, please visit https://www.patreon.com/linux_mint
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$50 (4th donation), Dave K.
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$20, Jan V.
$14, Dimitar S.
$10 (31st donation), LJNL aka “lauranl”
$10, Angela B.
$3 (11th donation), Szilard S.
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$22 (2nd donation), Marko B.
$11, Kenan C.
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$5 (2nd donation), Juan R. aka “Zorencen”