Monthly News – January 2020

We’re starting the new year with very good news. First of all, I’d like to thank you. We received 1,022 donations, for a total of $25,352 in a single month! This is an all-time high and it follows the release of Linux Mint 19.3 and the great reception you gave it, so we’re really happy, we’re very proud and we’re very thankful for your support.

We’re also excited about the start of this year because we’re not only starting a new development cycle and getting time to implement new features, we’re working on two brand new package bases in preparation of LMDE 4 and Linux Mint 20.

LMDE 4

LMDE 4 will be released first. It will feature all the improvements we shipped with Linux Mint 19.3 (HDT, boot-repair, system reports, language settings, HiDPI and artwork improvements, new boot menus, Celluloid, Gnote, Drawing, Cinnamon 4.4, XApp status icons etc…) on top of an improved Debian 10 package base.

Some of the features which were missing in LMDE 3 were also ported from Linux Mint. The installer was given a better look and the same slideshow as in ubiquity:

It also now supports Btrfs submodules and home directory encryption:

NVIDIA driver from the boot menu

Like every new release, LMDE 4 is an opportunity to try new things. We’ve had issues with Nouveau (the open-source driver) compatibility on some NVIDIA cards for a while now. In most cases people had to use nomodeset, but when Nouveau didn’t recognize the chipset at all, they were left with no graphical display. In LMDE 4 we’re adding a new entry in the boot menu which installs the NVIDIA drivers on the fly, so both the live session and the installed OS work out of the box:

Cinnamon 4.6 Display Settings

The next version of Cinnamon will let you choose the frequency of your monitors. This is a feature that has been requested a few times and which is available in other desktop environments.

Cinnamon 4.6 will also introduce fractional scaling. At the moment your scaling is either 100% (normal mode) or 200% (HiDPI mode) and it is the same for all your monitors. Going forward, the scaling will be able to be different for each monitor, and you’ll be able to set it to values in between 100% and 200%.

In normal mode the resolution you set is the resolution you see. In HiDPI, at 200% scaling, the screen is showing twice the pixel density so everything looks sharper, but the resolution you see on the screen is only half the resolution of your monitor. Many HiDPI displays have a resolution which is actually quite small once HiDPI is activated.

Take a 13″ Macbook Retina 2013. Its screen resolution is 2560×1600. That’s too much for a 13″ screen; Applications, text and desktop items look way too small. In HiDPI mode, the screen shows twice the pixel density and everything looks really crisp, but look what happens to the resolution… it gets halved to 1280×800. The problem then is that 800px is not enough in terms of screen space, and some applications don’t even fit in it. A display like this one looks perfect in 1200px and that unfortunately means reducing the actual resolution to 1200px and not using HiDPI.

Another issue with HiDPI is multi-monitor support. You could plug an external monitor to this Macbook in the hope to stay in HiDPI on the laptop but to be in normal mode on the monitor. That’s not possible at the moment though, either all screens or none at all can be in HiDPI at the moment… and a non-HiDPI compatible screen set in HiDPI is just unusable.

So we’re trying to fix that with fractional scaling. By being able to set the scaling for each monitor independently and allow for scaling values of not only 100% and 200% but also 125%, 150%, 175%, we’re hoping to get higher pixel density and allow HiDPI and non-HiDPI monitors to play well with each others.

In the example of the Macbook plugged to a non-HiDPI monitor, we’d typically set the Macbook to 150% and the monitor to 100%. Under the hood, the entire desktop environment would run in HiDPI mode, but the actual scaling of the Macbook screen would be reduced from 200% to 150% and the scaling of the monitor from 200% to 100%.  We’d end up with a monitor which looks perfectly normal, and a Macbook screen which has a nice 1200px resolution and a “half-hidpi” 1.5 pixel density, which doesn’t look as crisp as full-hidpi, but looks crisper than in normal mode.

We’re currently Alpha-testing this fractional scaling in Cinnamon and assessing its compatibility and pros and cons on various GPUs.

MintBox3

The MintBox3 is now available with Worldwide shipping from Compulab (Israel) and Amazon (USA).

We’ll post a review of this amazing computer in February.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors:
Linux VPS Hosting
Silver Sponsors:
Sucuri
ThinkPenguin: For Everything Freedom
Tibor Kaputa
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
Goscomb
BGASoft Inc
David Salvo
Feathercoin
Synapse Search
Uwe Schneider GmbH
Community Sponsors:

Donations in December:

A total of $25352 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of  1022 donors:

$625,
$500 (2nd donation), Gerald L.
$377, cat escape UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
$350, Garlin Security Consulting, LLC
$270 (2nd donation), Mathias H.
$250, Gregg S.
$216, Titouan B. aka “MoltenCore
$200 (5th donation), Randall H.
$200, Ueli S.
$162 (4th donation), Torsten P.
$150 (4th donation), John M.
$130 (5th donation), Mary A.
$120 (6th donation), JimM
$120 (6th donation), Stefan S.
$108 (9th donation), Frederic L. aka “nofrog”
$108 (9th donation), Heiko P. aka “CyCroN
$108 (6th donation), Martin R.
$108 (4th donation), aka “Phantasus
$108 (3rd donation), B. S. aka “disfit”
$108 (3rd donation), Roland L.
$108 (3rd donation), Wolfgang B.
$108 (3rd donation), Marcus H.
$108 (2nd donation), James B.
$108 (2nd donation), Theo R.
$108, David VANTYGHEM aka “InfoLibre
$108, Plamen A.
$108, Kati S.
$108, Didier T.
$100 (12th donation), Philip W.
$100 (10th donation), George H.
$100 (7th donation), Timothy P.
$100 (7th donation), Peter Larson
$100 (6th donation), martywd
$100 (6th donation), George P. aka “taz840209”
$100 (6th donation), Christophe Caillé aka “KKY”
$100 (4th donation), Data Power Development Limited
$100 (4th donation), Matt S.
$100 (4th donation), Jerry S.
$100 (3rd donation), Ralph P.
$100 (3rd donation), Michael H.
$100 (2nd donation), Sivaguru
$100 (2nd donation), John
$100 (2nd donation), Wayne B.
$100 (2nd donation), Peter C.
$100 (2nd donation), Roger W.
$100 (2nd donation), Albertas N.
$100 (2nd donation), Douglas Swinhart
$100 (2nd donation), Jim R. aka “Renn Computer Services”
$100 (2nd donation), Raymond H.
$100 (2nd donation), Paul R.
$100, Carl B.
$100, Jonathan S.
$100, Patrick Michael M.
$100, Dirk S.
$100, Anselmo S.
$100, Per B.
$100, Chris F.
$100, Lawrence W S.
$100, Roger J.
$100, Jon H.
$100, anonymous aka “anonymous”
$100, Alex R.
$100, Jeff J B.
$88, Brock C.
$81, Karsten P.
$80, Dani W.
$75, Robert S.
$75, Michael M.
$65 (4th donation), Michael S.
$65, Peter G.
$60, LanPort aka “LP
$60, Nelson L.
$59, Clive B.
$54 (18th donation), Orlando M. M.
$54 (13th donation), Goran A.
$54 (8th donation), Drazen P.
$54 (7th donation), Paul S. E. aka “Paul”
$54 (5th donation), Devendra Rai.
$54 (4th donation), Weber Technics
$54 (4th donation), Chema Cortés
$54 (2nd donation), Torsten M.
$54 (2nd donation), Jean-baptiste P.
$54 (2nd donation), Philipp K.
$54 (2nd donation), Martin D. O.
$54 (2nd donation), Ronald S.
$54 (2nd donation), Klaas H.
$54 (2nd donation), Maurizio M.
$54, Nicholas D.
$54, Albino Azevedo aka “albinoa”
$54, Marco L. aka “mar9000
$54, Oj S.
$54, Holger S.
$54, Fanchon P.
$54, Michael F.
$54, Olli S.
$54, Angelika A.
$54, Derek S.
$54, Ernst C.
$54, Andrei H.
$54, Regis K.
$54, Roberto C.
$54, Marcus O.
$54, Andrey U.
$54, Robbie H.
$54, Jan
$50 (18th donation), Thomas T. aka “FullTimer1489”
$50 (13th donation), Hans J.
$50 (8th donation), Douglas J.
$50 (8th donation), Warren A.
$50 (6th donation), Roy Q.
$50 (6th donation), Steven C.
$50 (5th donation), Rich H.
$50 (5th donation), Wallace P. M. J.
$50 (4th donation), Paul R.
$50 (4th donation), William G.
$50 (4th donation), Don P.
$50 (4th donation), Kris J.
$50 (4th donation), Brian S.
$50 (4th donation), Daniel B.
$50 (4th donation), Bob T.
$50 (3rd donation), Peter P.
$50 (3rd donation), Craig B.
$50 (3rd donation), L. H. .
$50 (3rd donation), Jonathan S.
$50 (3rd donation), Matthias H.
$50 (3rd donation), Ugo J.
$50 (3rd donation), Jeff B.
$50 (2nd donation), greerd
$50 (2nd donation), Krister P.
$50 (2nd donation), Prashanth V.
$50 (2nd donation), Steven A.
$50 (2nd donation), Gunter V. D. H.
$50 (2nd donation), Holly G.
$50 (2nd donation), John B.
$50 (2nd donation), Stuart C. D.
$50 (2nd donation), David B.
$50 (2nd donation), The Voorhees – Fine Audio
$50 (2nd donation), Jørgen R.
$50 (2nd donation), Gordon M.
$50 (2nd donation), Karl K.
$50 (2nd donation), Martin B.
$50, Sami Mannila
$50, Richard O.
$50, Stefan G.
$50, Grant W.
$50, Andrew W.
$50, Hubert K.
$50, Harry S.
$50, Eric W.
$50, H. Joel M.
$50, Steven J.
$50, Robert M.
$50, Didier N.
$50, Michael W.
$50, Stephen W.
$50, Nathan F.
$50, Norman L.
$50, Luca S.
$50, Claude M.
$50, Garrett F.
$50, Edward C.
$50, Stephen W.
$50, Robert T.
$50, Binu W. aka “BW”
$48, William P.
$47 (2nd donation), Renato R.
$45, Andrew Y.
$43 (7th donation), Pavel B.
$43 (2nd donation), Eugen A.
$43, Zuzana M.
$43, Jean-Claude M.
$43, Richard G.
$41, Anastasios S.
$40 (14th donation), John D.
$40 (5th donation), Oblong Software Products
$40 (2nd donation), David V.
$40, Jarett R.
$40, Vic M.
$40, Dennis S.
$39 (2nd donation), Christian S.
$36, Marco V.
$36, identity projects
$35 (3rd donation), Wiilliam N. H.
$35 (3rd donation), Alex S.
$35 (3rd donation), Andrew J. M. G.
$35 (2nd donation), Ricardo M.
$35, Allan Pendlebury. aka “AllanPen”
$35, Anthony D.
$33 (3rd donation), Clifford H.
$32 (117th donation), Olli K.
$32 (13th donation), David M.
$32 (6th donation), Ben E.
$32 (6th donation), Lars-gunnar S.
$32 (6th donation), Marc S.
$32 (6th donation), Jean-claude M.
$32 (4th donation), Ralph K.
$32 (4th donation), Jürgen F.
$32 (3rd donation), Daniel K.
$32 (3rd donation), Manfred S.
$32 (3rd donation), Chris M.
$32 (2nd donation), Florian M.
$32 (2nd donation), Jürgen H.
$32 (2nd donation), Frank B.
$32 (2nd donation), Jean-luc M.
$32 (2nd donation), Alexander M.
$32 (2nd donation), Michael B.
$32 (2nd donation), Willi S.
$32 (2nd donation), 974_RUN
$32, Andreas L.
$32, Adam Kraszewski
$32, erwn16 aka “erwn16”
$32, Juliane S.
$32, Klaus B.
$32, Dimitrios A.
$32, Martin H.
$30 (15th donation), Kevin S.
$30 (7th donation), Martin B.
$30 (6th donation), William E.
$30 (5th donation), Stuart B.
$30 (5th donation), Daniel M.
$30 (3rd donation), Michael Schröter aka “mia
$30 (2nd donation), Silvio H.
$30, Robert P.
$30, zzzzz .
$30, Carl T.
$30, Danny L.
$30, Wayne F.
$30, Hugli G.
$30, Kamil R.
$27 (15th donation), Joachim M.
$27 (13th donation), John K.
$27 (6th donation), Frank V.
$27 (5th donation), Manfred W.
$27 (5th donation), Alonso C.
$27 (4th donation), Nadim K.
$27 (4th donation), Michael W.
$27 (4th donation), Bernd J.
$27 (3rd donation), Holger R.
$27 (3rd donation), Tobias S.
$27 (3rd donation), Stefan B.
$27 (3rd donation), Richard L. F.
$27 (2nd donation), Franke-polz F.
$27 (2nd donation), Wolfgang S.
$27 (2nd donation), Oliver G.
$27 (2nd donation), Alessio B.
$27 (2nd donation), Maximilian H.
$27, Stefan E.
$27, Raymond L.
$27, Karljosef K.
$27, Jan Sanders aka “jasabor”
$27, Sybren S.
$27, Frederic W.
$27, Luis D.
$27, Igor K.
$27, Ferdinand H.
$27, Želimir S.
$27, Felix S.
$27, Jörg T.
$27, Gerbert Lekkerkerk
$27, shiatsu4you.net PALFALVI
$27, Michael K.
$26, Fabian F.
$25 (100th donation), Ronald W.
$25 (22nd donation), Ray
$25 (9th donation), George R. aka “Az4x4”
$25 (8th donation), Bill Metzenthen
$25 (8th donation), Vaughan B.
$25 (7th donation), Frances K.
$25 (7th donation), Bill R.
$25 (7th donation), Rene H. aka “Hogi”
$25 (5th donation), Scott S.
$25 (5th donation), Daniel B. M.
$25 (5th donation), Frederic R.
$25 (4th donation), Craig M.
$25 (4th donation), Michael T.
$25 (4th donation), Michael M.
$25 (4th donation), Charles S.
$25 (4th donation), Robert S.
$25 (4th donation), Edmond I.
$25 (3rd donation), Hendricus P. D. V.
$25 (3rd donation), William C.
$25 (3rd donation), Fahri T. C.
$25 (3rd donation), James C.
$25 (3rd donation), Stu B.
$25 (2nd donation), Vang P.
$25 (2nd donation), Edward O.
$25 (2nd donation), Michael C.
$25 (2nd donation), Martin M.
$25 (2nd donation), David H.
$25 (2nd donation), Jeffrey W.
$25 (2nd donation), John C.
$25 (2nd donation), Viv H.
$25 (2nd donation), Marinus V. D. W. aka “Max”
$25 (2nd donation), Steven V.
$25 (2nd donation), Stephen A.
$25, Douglas J.
$25, David K.
$25, Leonard F.
$25, Fred D.
$25, Andris Z. aka “Zars”
$25, Eric L.
$25, ClockXP
$25, John B.
$25, Edward C.
$25, Kevin R.
$25, Jonathan C.
$25, Mathew K.
$25, Paul W.
$25, David S.
$25, John A.
$25, Lisha L.
$25, Derek B.
$25, Patrick S.
$25, Raymond F.
$25, Michael S.
$25, David C.
$25, Rick T.
$25, David O.
$25, Jonathan P.
$25, Robert P.
$25, opalInteractive
$25, Eric C.
$25, Jeff E.
$25, Dani
$25, Michael S.
$25, Craig H.
$24, Ping X.
$23, P aka “Pociao”
$23, Jefferson Fernando L.
$22 (31st donation), Derek R.
$22 (19th donation), Doriano G. M.
$22 (13th donation), Per J.
$22 (9th donation), Luca D.
$22 (9th donation), Nigel B.
$22 (8th donation), Christian K.
$22 (7th donation), Brandon W.
$22 (7th donation), Mark A.
$22 (6th donation), Hubertus B.
$22 (5th donation), Andreas M.
$22 (5th donation), Martin L.
$22 (5th donation), Kleiner Funk-Electronic
$22 (5th donation), Tom B.
$22 (5th donation), Demosthenes Koptsis
$22 (5th donation), Frank J.
$22 (4th donation), Matthias Rainer
$22 (4th donation), W. H. .
$22 (4th donation), Bernard D.
$22 (4th donation), R. I. . aka “Birman”
$22 (4th donation), Ralf S.
$22 (4th donation), Torsten B.
$22 (3rd donation), José A. M.
$22 (3rd donation), Gerard V. S.
$22 (3rd donation), Harald M.
$22 (3rd donation), Ulrich H.
$22 (3rd donation), Thomas G.
$22 (3rd donation), Steve M.
$22 (3rd donation), Martin
$22 (2nd donation), Michael N.
$22 (2nd donation), Dimitrios P.
$22 (2nd donation), Matei M.
$22 (2nd donation), Marc F.
$22 (2nd donation), Kai H.
$22 (2nd donation), Jonas H.
$22 (2nd donation), Plamen K.
$22 (2nd donation), Paul S.
$22 (2nd donation), Raromatai
$22 (2nd donation), Marion C.
$22 (2nd donation), Lutz B.
$22 (2nd donation), Dirk L.
$22 (2nd donation), Andreas Z.
$22 (2nd donation), Tapani H.
$22 (2nd donation), Kaloyan K.
$22, mercredo
$22, Marco S.
$22, Bobby
$22, Bettina B.
$22, Jakob W.
$22, Adam P.
$22, Detlef N.
$22, Rene B.
$22, Florentino A.
$22, Alexander W.
$22, Robert S.
$22, zzzzzzzz zzz. .
$22, Alastair Scott
$22, Guersel Y.
$22, Oliver W.
$22, Fabian J.
$22, Carl-heinz D.
$22, Michael H. aka “mintaka”
$22, Tino M.
$22, Gunter F.
$20 (16th donation), Bryan F.
$20 (14th donation), Mike W aka “bajan52”
$20 (9th donation), Charles W.
$20 (9th donation), Murray C.
$20 (9th donation), Charles W.
$20 (8th donation), Hubert Banas
$20 (7th donation), Paul K.
$20 (6th donation), Computers Reborn LLC
$20 (6th donation), Andrew C.
$20 (5th donation), Kostas M. K.
$20 (5th donation), Dean P.
$20 (5th donation), Andrzej C.
$20 (5th donation), Joao Kodama
$20 (4th donation), Hugo G. aka “hugonz
$20 (4th donation), Terry B.
$20 (4th donation), S.S. Gold Coast aka “zoom zoom”
$20 (3rd donation), Jimmie D.
$20 (3rd donation), Chap-liong O.
$20 (3rd donation), D. H. .
$20 (3rd donation), Corey P.
$20 (3rd donation), Gordon E.
$20 (2nd donation), Michael P.
$20 (2nd donation), Kouji S.
$20 (2nd donation), Stan K.
$20 (2nd donation), Mark F.
$20 (2nd donation), Robert L.
$20 (2nd donation), Jason B.
$20 (2nd donation), John S.
$20 (2nd donation), Robert O.
$20 (2nd donation), Robert F.
$20 (2nd donation), Peter T.
$20 (2nd donation), Antony L.
$20 (2nd donation), Noriaki M.
$20 (2nd donation), Вержиковский А.
$20 (2nd donation), Thomas H.
$20 (2nd donation), Michael H.
$20, Ronald M.
$20, William M.
$20, John A.
$20, Karen B
$20, zzzzzz .
$20, Gavin P.
$20, Torfinn V.
$20, Harshith K.
$20, Paul S.
$20, aka “jl”
$20, Ronald F.
$20, Jimmy V.
$20, Matthew B.
$20, Robert R.
$20, Carlos T H.
$20, James M.
$20, Per N.
$20, Kevin M.
$20, Nils O.
$20, Robert G.
$20, Dan C.
$20, Val C.
$20, Uria C.
$20, Bill W.
$20, Rick S.
$20, Donald B.
$20, Thomas C.
$20, Michael B.
$19 (12th donation), François P.
$19 (9th donation), Malte J.
$18 (36th donation), Johann J.
$18 (2nd donation), Paul-andré R.
$16 (34th donation), Andreas S.
$16 (11th donation), Michael R.
$16 (8th donation), Florian U.
$16 (7th donation), Francois B. aka “Makoto
$16 (6th donation), Jens
$16 (6th donation), Dirk M.
$16 (5th donation), José G.
$16 (5th donation), Gabriele B.
$16 (5th donation), Erwin v K. aka “Erwin Musicman”
$16 (2nd donation), Bernard L.
$16 (2nd donation), Marius A.
$16 (2nd donation), Timothy D.
$16 (2nd donation), Andreas B.
$16 (2nd donation), Samu A.
$16 (2nd donation), Sam N.
$16, Martin J.
$16, Rj V.
$16, Martin J.
$16, Jan A.
$16, Benoit G.
$16, Pedro Antonio U.
$16, Thomas G.
$16, Marius M.
$16, Alfio L.
$15 (24th donation), Stefan M. H.
$15 (16th donation), AJ Gringo
$15 (8th donation), Feroz E.
$15 (5th donation), Fred B.
$15 (3rd donation), David W.
$15 (2nd donation), Steve S.
$15 (2nd donation), Karen B
$15 (2nd donation), Greg K.
$15 (2nd donation), G H.
$15 (2nd donation), El Gitto
$15 (2nd donation), Marcin A.
$15, Michael H.
$15, Reinaldo R.
$15, Matthew T.
$15, Edmund S.
$15, Enmanuel M.
$15, Jizí N.
$15, Tamer A.
$15, Jave I.
$15, Mathew N.
$14, Matthias K. aka “snacke99”
$13 (3rd donation), Brian H.
$13 (3rd donation), Andrew P.
$13 (2nd donation), Keith W.
$13, John T.
$13, Zoran C.
$13, Jeste S.
$12 (105th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
$12 (3rd donation), Lance A.
$12 (2nd donation), David B.
$12, Marcin P.
$12, Arsoluhur M.
$12, Krzysztof S.
$12, Luke B.
$11 (37th donation), Paul O.
$11 (12th donation), Raymond M. (retired)
$11 (12th donation), Queenvictoria
$11 (9th donation), Slobodan Vrkacevic
$11 (9th donation), Rene Schwietzke aka “Rene S.
$11 (9th donation), Michael S.
$11 (9th donation), Michiel B. aka “Fairyland Ironwolves
$11 (8th donation), Piotr L aka “xpil
$11 (7th donation), Tom M.
$11 (7th donation), Yves R.
$11 (6th donation), A. R.
$11 (6th donation), Serhii B. aka “sinpavla
$11 (6th donation), Alexander Lang
$11 (5th donation), Alexander P.
$11 (5th donation), Bernhard M.
$11 (4th donation), Martin H.
$11 (4th donation), Petr V.
$11 (4th donation), Benjamin F.
$11 (4th donation), Tomislav C
$11 (3rd donation), Florian J.
$11 (3rd donation), Anatoli K.
$11 (3rd donation), Paolo C.
$11 (3rd donation), Michail I.
$11 (3rd donation), Enrico C.
$11 (3rd donation), Martin L.
$11 (2nd donation), Thomas L.
$11 (2nd donation), Frank R.
$11 (2nd donation), Sebastian J.
$11 (2nd donation), Rupert B.
$11 (2nd donation), Jens H.
$11 (2nd donation), Bruno S.
$11 (2nd donation), Jesus I. A. B.
$11 (2nd donation), Johan Z.
$11 (2nd donation), Roger
$11 (2nd donation), Augusto B.
$11 (2nd donation), Gabriele D.
$11 (2nd donation), František H.
$11, Vladimír V.
$11, Sascha S.
$11, Robert B.
$11, Marcel S.
$11, Jozef M.
$11, Miguel Ángel M.
$11, Franz-josef N.
$11, Stefano R.
$11, Andrés F.
$11, Lukas G.
$11, Mladen P.
$11, Alexander K.
$11, David Lara aka “Nevat”
$11, Lorenzo Carbonell aka “atareao
$11, Toni P.
$11, Christoph C.
$11, João Francisco P.
$11, Giuseppe Antonio F.
$11, Andrey K.
$11, Hayden B.
$11, Lukas O.
$11, Robin O.
$11, Claude D.
$11, Herve D.
$11, Kim-jürgen B.
$11, André S.
$11, Julien P.
$11, Vincent B.
$11, Wolfgang S.
$11, Bernd Lauert
$11, Fell V.
$11, Henk R.
$11, Felipe P.
$11, Vesa A.
$11, Paul V.
$11, Heinz F.
$11, Christopher S.
$11, Massimo C.
$11, Philipp H.
$11, Bernd S.
$11, Pierre L.
$11, Johan D.
$10 (45th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (40th donation), Frank K.
$10 (24th donation), Rick R.
$10 (20th donation), Laura NL aka “lauranl
$10 (15th donation), Wilson G.
$10 (13th donation), Antoine T.
$10 (13th donation), Masaomi Yoshida
$10 (10th donation), Ian E.
$10 (8th donation), Martín P. D. L. G.
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80 comments

  1. Is… is that a refresh rate setting?! Thank you thank you! I was hoping when Linux distros will see the value in high refresh rate monitors. Can’t wait!

  2. > The next version of Cinnamon will let you choose the frequency of your monitors. This is a feature that has been requested a few times and which is available in other desktop environments.

    YESSSSSS!!!

    Thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou!

    brb donating

  3. Finally, fractional scaling support, the final missing piece for usability. I used to run Linux Mint on my older 14” notebook with 1080p resolution and the text was a tad too small for comfortable usage. In the end, I had to lower the resolution to 1600×900 which was fine for reading but you could see that text was more blurry. Hopefully, it will work as expected. Thanks for this and good luck!

    1. @Carlos Felipe
      you might not be aware of this but systemd isn’t perfect you know, and it has its own advantages and disadvantages.
      I’m not saying systemd is bad and shouldn’t be used by anyone, all I’m saying is that LMDE could gain from the advantages that other init systems such as OpenRC offer. And since the regular Linux Mint is already using systemd – I don’t see any reasons why not make LMDE systemd-free. Wouldn’t it be important for LM to know that in case systemd takes an unfortunate route, that they can use an alternative init? After all systemd has over 1.3 million lines of code, so it’s not easy at all to change something in it.

  4. Happy New Mint Decade Everyone!

    Over 1000 donations in one month, wow!
    Knowing how few that actually donates, it would be interesting to know how many active LM users there are out there.

  5. I would like the LM20 to improve the Menu, I think it is a little too simple, although it is very fast, it would be interesting to have some applet option through cinnamon spices.

    Gtranslate

  6. THANK YOU for the AMD-ATI Driver update, it fixed alot of my minor graphic errors 🙂 I just have one small question, why was Noto Sans Bold removed from 19.3? I just imported it from my 18.3 version, because the other Noto Sans versions are to wide or narrow, aka baby bear’s porridge was just right.

  7. Can we have android application installation support. A sandbox like anbox project to allow us run Android apps on Linux Mint?

    1. Hi John, if we can find a solution with a small footprint we can look into it. Anbox isn’t suitable if it depends on snap.

  8. Question about Celluloid:
    I thought it will use HW-Acceleration out of the box.
    I made a clean install (19.3 Cinnamon) on a Lenovo T450 (i5300u / Intel HD5500) and 4k videos lags and shutter a lot in Celluloid, while CPU-Usage is on 100%. In Kodi they all run absolutely smooth and i can see they use HW-Acceleration.
    Did i missunderstand something?

    Thanks for Answers

    1. Try another universal Parole player instead of Celluloid. It is more effective. But there are 2 problems.
      1. Not all MKV format is supported in it.
      2. If you use headphones connected via bluetooth on a computer, then no sound will be output to them.

    2. I asked about it last time and got no reply, in theory it uses GPU, in practice – NO!
      Same goes with VLC, MPV, and other video players.

      The same reason why you cannot use in Linux web browser GPU, even if you turn the option in browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, etc.
      Sucks! Especially if you want to have a nice, fluid 4k or 8k videos 60fps, you simply cannot (unless you have a great CPU as it handles everything instead of GPU) – on Windows it works out of the box (GPU handles videos in web browser and CPU is almost not in use, so the opposite of Linux where CPU does everything and GPU is sleeping) – tested!

    3. Hi Roland,

      Check https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/wiki/Hardware-decoding-on-Linux for information on how to enable hardware acceleration. GNOME-MPV is the old name for Celluloid (same project), mpv (or libmpv to be precise) is the backend used by Celluloid. Check also https://github.com/celluloid-player/celluloid/issues/287 to understand the reason why it’s disabled by default.

      Some more info on the hwdec option in mpv: https://mpv.io/manual/master/#options-hwdec

      If you don’t want to use the command line, you can specify MPV options inside the Celluloid preferences window.

    4. Hey Guys
      Thank you all for your answers! Really cool! 🙂
      @Clem: i will check out your links next weekend. The T450 is just my “crash-test-dummy”. So, at the moment, i play a little bit around with it, till it is completely broken and i need to reinstall it again. 😀
      But i will check this out for sure! Thanks a lot!

  9. Is it possible to have monitor scaling between 200% and 300%? on a 13″ 4K screen I find 275% or %250 to be perfect for me.

    1. I don’t think 4.6 is released yet. I think Clem was mentioning what they are still preparing for 4.6.

    1. I understand you on that Carlos. I had to leave LMDE because of the LMDE 2 Mate desktop fiasco.
      No regrets, I don’t really miss it anymore.
      LMDE is the test base for Cinnamon, so if you want Cinnamon then just go for it!

  10. On LM Instillation Guide, under the FAQ section, there is a “Pre-installing Linux Mint (OEM Installation)” section.

    Under the Boot Linux Mint section there is a “The isolinux menu in BIOS mode” and I don’t always see the OEM menu selection, usually only see the 10 second count down.

    > https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/oem.html
    >
    > To perform an OEM installation follow the steps below:
    >
    > 1. Select OEM Install from the USB stick (or DVD) menu.

    How am I to consistently bring up the OEM install item as listed above?

  11. Another great release for Mint!
    2 suggestions .
    1 For eye candy have the mint logo change colors in a rotating fashion.
    2. do we have access to stickers for our machines that say Mint?
    Thanks again for making me a proud member of the Linux Mint Community!

    1. I found some great quality stickers on ebay, albeit for the “leaf” mint logo, as that was the one in use when I bought the stickers. All of my machines proudly sport such a sticker. I do not know if anyone is making the “round LM” logo stickers yet though

  12. Fractional scaling is great news, I’m really looking forward to it. Thank you very much! Do you know if this results in a higher computing load?

    1. Hi Markus,

      It depends heavily on the GPU. We’re getting good results with NVIDIA right now for instance but screen tearing and performance loss on Intel. With the current LTS version of MESA we’re also getting input issues.

      You can test fractional scaling by enabling HiDPI and then using xrandr in the command line, for instance to get 150% scaling on the eDP-1 monitor you’d run:

      xrandr –output eDP-1 –scale 1.33×1.33

      ^^ note: These above are double dashes. The blog doesn’t show them properly.

  13. Hi

    My computer is a a so-called Nvidia Optimus enabled system. I never had any issues with the Nouveau driver but when I upgraded to LMDE3, one of the first thing I did was to install the bumblebee, bumbleee-nvidia and primus packages. The only reason for installing bumblebee was that it removed and annoying warning on the screen when booting up the system (the warning is still there when booting up LMDE 3 live system). Otherwise there were no advantages or disadvantages.

    Not sure what to do when LMDE 4 will be released. Should I uninstall the bumblebee packages before upgrading. Then after upgrading, do I have to click Esc everytime I turn on the computer, and when I see the boot menu, scroll down and choose “Start LMDE4 with Nvidia driver” and then boot the system with that choice? If I have to do that everytime, I think I am better off just leaving the bumblebee packages installed and let the system boot automatically with the default choice, which I am guessing would be the first entry “Start LMDE 4”

    One thing I would welcome is that you release LMDE 4 with as recent kernel as possible. In Linux, hardware and driver support are built into the kernel.

    Look forward to LMDE 4.

    1. Thank for the tip. I am not familiar with Grub Customizer though.

      I wrote that there used to be a warning message when booting up previously before installing bumblebee. Well warning wasn’t the correct word. It rather is an error message of sorts that used to show only for a fraction of a second when booting up. As I wrote I had no issues otherwise with the Nouveau driver, and I don’t have any issues either since I installed the bumblebee packages. The only thing I obtained by installing the bumblebee packages was that that error message disappeared when booting up LMDE. I don’t remember now what those error messages were, but I did take some pictures of my screen before installing the bumblebee packages back in 2018 when LMDE 3 was released. So I could always search those up from my HDD if anyone is interested in more details on that.
      I have seen similar error messages when booting up other Debian and Ubuntu based live systems. So this isn’t unique to LMDE or Linus Mint. I am sure Linux developers know what I am talking about. I’d regard this a minor issue.

  14. Clem consider adding control center/system setting to desktop setting…just for safe precaution in case someone accidentally delete their panel and left with nothing but desktop and the only thing they can open is file manager probably…

    1. Hi,

      When you remove your very last panel a dialog pops up to warn you and asks you if you want to open the panel settings (where you can create a new one). At any time you can also press Alt-F2 and run commands from there (cinnamon-settings for instance).

  15. Got me a MintBox3 Pro. This is by far the most powerful, fastest computer I ever played with, and I’ve been playing with them since ’74, bought an original Macintosh in ’84, many others since.
    I’m mining Monero at the moment, haha, the hash rate for that jumped to 2.53 khz, up from 11 hz (just hz!) on an AMD 6700, I’m using half the cores to mine and the other half still responds to other computer work just like it wasn’t already maxxing out half the cores. Plus 5% of price goes to the Mint team.

    1. Hi Howard,

      Same here, I was impressed with the performance. I was used to the form factor already (with the Airtop 1).

  16. The recent release of GNOME 3.34 and the upcoming 3.36 release include significant improvements around performance and memory usage along with major bug fixes. In general, how much of those changes do you anticipate you will be able to incorporate into the upcoming Linux Mint 20 release? For example, many of the improvements and fixes in those releases are in the mutter library. Since Linux Mint forked that years ago to create the muffin library which it currently uses, is it still possible to incorporate any improvements made to mutter? In general I prefer the cinnamon desktop experience in Linux Mint over both the default GNOME desktop experience and the custom Ubuntu desktop experience based on the GNOME desktop. I like the direction Linux Mint has taken with many of the apps. However I am also looking forward to various improvements I see in those GNOME releases and I am curious what the path forward looks like for the next version of Linux Mint.

    1. Hi Matt,

      It’s hard to answer like that because it really depends on the improvements and features we’re talking about. Some of the changes which happened in mutter aren’t possible in muffin, and some are possible but not welcome or do not give us the results we want. Generally speaking we do keep an eye on what’s being done in other projects (not only upstream in GNOME but also in MATE, Xfce etc..) and we do port content. Sometimes we also test and incorporate things which aren’t in GNOME yet. For instance Ubuntu proposed patches for GNOME, some of these found their way into Muffin.

      If there’s a particular set of commits you’d like to see in muffin, the best thing is to make sure you can catalog that and then report it as an issue on muffin’s github repository for us to look into. If you’re able you can even create a pull request and post tests results.

      Nowadays muffin and mutter are different, not only codewise but also in their design and their functionality. Some WIP can be easily ported, some not, it really depends. What really helps is black box testing also, if you find something works better in GNOME than in does in Cinnamon, then describe that and document it as best as possible. It can help us to know another DE is doing a certain thing better and it gives us a goal to achieve, even if the code itself isn’t easily portable (and then yeah, sometimes it is).

  17. Hi,
    Would you enable email subscription to this blog. I have to use RSS subscription and IFTTT just to receive this email in my inbox.
    Thanks!

    1. Hi James,

      No I’m sorry. I would have recommended an RSS -> Email service or a connector on your side like IFTTT or blogtrottr.com but you’re already using one.

      Server side, the more services we run the easier it is to get hacked. The more personal data we have the more problematic this can get. If we don’t need to run a mail service and if we don’t need to know your email address, we’d rather not.

  18. Yeah, I waiting for fractional scaling, it’s main feature that stopping me moving from Windows 10 to Linux Mint.
    Thank you for amazing work on distro!

  19. Hi Clem,

    Why is there no mention, no explanation, of the fact that PIA, Private Internet Access, is no longer a Platinum Sponsor of Linux Mint?

    Did you decide to drop them as a sponsor because some users objected to their announced merger with Kape Technologies last November?

    Will the loss of your primary sponsor cause any serious financial challenges for the development team?

    Will the PIA Manager app no longer be supported? Will it soon be deleted as an option in the official repositories?

    1. Hi Tom,

      Like all our sponsors, and as our primary sponsor, more so than any other, PIA helped us tremendously and they contributed to our success. We wish them luck and we’ll remember them for being alongside us and helping our project so much. We’re very grateful for the support they gave us throughout the years.

      The PIA manager app isn’t the best way to set up PIA anymore. When the sponsorship started PIA wasn’t easy enough to set up in a Linux environment so we went ahead and developed a little tool to do the job. Nowadays the situation is rather different, PIA provides an excellent client application, which is not only really easy to use, but which also provides many options which are missing in PIA manager. We talked with PIA about this last year and decided to discontinue PIA Manager and switch focus towards the official PIA client.

    2. Hi Clem,

      Thanks very much for taking the time to respond, even if it was only a partial answer to my questions and concerns!

      You didn’t explain why PIA is no longer a sponsor. Are they still a VPN provider that you would recommend? (I’m about a year into a 2-year subscription with them, which I purchased expressly because they were a sponsor of Linux Mint!)

      You didn’t say whether the loss of your primary sponsor has caused any serious financial concerns for the team. If that were indeed the case I’m sure that many loyal Linux Mint users would be willing to make some extra donations, if they were just informed that there was a need.

      Are there currently any prospects on the horizon for a potential Platinum level sponsor to replace PIA?

  20. THANK YOU for fractional scaling AND, just as important, multiple monitor scaling support! This is huge and, to my knowledge, either isn’t offered or doesn’t work well in any linux desktop environment. I gave up months ago when I moved back to a 4k display. So now I have extra, very nice 1080p displays that are just sitting unused because of the lack of multiple monitor support for scaling. I suspect by your adding this feature to Cinnamon you will gain a LOT of new users.

  21. Hi Clem, thanks for the amazing work,

    I have a question: Linux Mint 20 will bring any improvements on the optimus/hybrid nvidia notebooks lands?

    I know that the latests drivers from NVIDIA when associated with certain x.org server version allow prime render offloading. Some distros, like Pop_OS are already using it and they have a switch on the interface to change between internal/dedicated/hybrid options. Will Linux Mint 20 implement something like this?

    Regards

    1. Hi Nash,

      Can you describe this switch more in detail? We’ve introduced such a feature years ago. It was recently forked by Ubuntu MATE and people wrongly assumed it was somewhat new… This has been in Mint for years now.. you switch between Intel and NVIDIA from your system tray and that dictates the GPU you’re using on your next login. Is that what you mean?

      If functionality was added on top of that please describe it in detail so we can implement it.

  22. Great news about screen frequency and fractional HiDPI.
    Please also make sure, that with multiple monitors setup, not to get change between DisplayPort and HDMI.
    For example, I have 2 monitors (DP) and 1 beamer (HDMI):
    I can see BIOS starting and Linux Mint on Monitors, but then I cannot see login screen which is forcefully being displayed on a beamer (which I prefer to turn on only at night). After login, it then again comes back to monitors.
    Really stressful, as I either have to turn on the beamer (which is a taking shades down on windows, turning on a beamer, etc.), or login blindfully.
    Not good!

    1. What happens if you move your mouse to another monitor ?
      In my case the login-prompt follows the mouse.
      So when the mouse is on another monitor the prompt jumps to there…

    2. That’s because your display settings are YOUR display settings. They’re specific for each user (in fact, they’re stored as a user file in ~/.config/monitors.xml) and do not affect the rest of the system. When you boot, when you log in, you’re not yourself yet.. and the system isn’t using your user account’s configuration, it’s using the system configuration. So no matter how you set your monitors in your desktop environment, it won’t affect the system itself.

      Regarding monitors and plugnames, yes, the configuration isn’t just saving things as “monitor1”, “monitor2” etc.. it’s saving configuration for each set of plugged monitors. So it’s able to remember configuration for the HDMI+DP1+DP2, or HDMI+DP1, etc… it won’t suddenly switch your HDMI configuration towards DP1 for instance.

  23. I’m really looking forwards to LM20 and also the next version of Cinnamon.
    Ironically I have found that on my DELL Studio system the Nouveau display driver works MUCH better than any of the Nvidia drivers. Despite the fact that I have an Nvidia 710 card installed. The Nouveau driver has the advantage of not requiring the DKMS service & doesn’t require the create of extra kernel modules (kernel object) when upgrading a kernel and the screen resolution seems sharper too. This seems counter intuitive though. But it works very nicely for me or perhaps I’m just lucky? Not sure.

  24. I just want to say I find it a bit amusing that you say that 800p is too small for desktop use when, not only do many laptops use native 768p displays, but 1280×800 was the standard for widescreen laptop displays from the early to late 2000s (basically after non-widescreen 1024×768 laptops of ~2000 and before 16:9 1366×768 laptops of ~2010).

    Also I am very happy to finally see a GUI option to select the refresh rate. 😀

    1. I don’t find it amusing that manufacturers sell budget laptops with very low resolutions just to make more money by using resolution as another way to segment the market. It’s sad to see we’re in 2020 and we’re still talking about 1024×768 as the base resolution to support.

      We commit to it anyway. All our apps fit in 728px (we take 40px away for the panel) and 768px is the requirement we communicate. We tell ourselves the reason we can’t add widgets or design UIs the way we want and we’re restricted to fit in so few pixels is to support old hardware, and we try to not think of the fact that people are buying these resolutions right now, as we speak.

      So yeah, anyway, it’s not amusing, but we’re committed to supporting 800px. Still, it is small. If fractional display means you can go from 2px density at 800px to 1.5px at 1200px, you’ll probably want to. It’s subjective of course and a matter of taste, but personally I find the additional space more important than the 0.5px density difference.

  25. Glad to see LMDE 4 getting some upcoming priority and action! Any chance of bringing back a Mint themed Mate version vice just Cinnamon? I like Cinnamon, but sometimes Mate makes sense for a little less overhead running in virtual machines, etc.

    1. The goal of LMDE is to showcase and guarantee a fallback plan and compatibility of the technology we develop outside and without Ubuntu. We don’t need to support multiple environments for that and the audience is too small to do so. It would be a distraction from our main goal. That said, MATE 1.20 is there in the repositories so it can be added post-install.

  26. I too prefer Mate to Cinnamon.
    Is there full-disk encryption with ext4 yet? For me, that is more important.
    Is btrfs stable and safe now? Few distros seem to be using it.

    1. Hi,

      That’s something we’re looking into. I’d rather not talk about features which aren’t developed yet though, as they might or might not get in and it’s too early to say.

  27. When the option “Locate Pointer” of “Mouse Preference” is selected it interferes with the renaming of files within caja. While editing the file name, pressing ctrl (useful for copy or paste) closes the rename editing window. It is therefore no longer possible to copy or paste text to rename of file.

    This issue was reported, fixed, and closed as Mate issue 770. The problem still exists in Linux Mint Mate 19.3. The Mate team says this fix needs to be added to the Mint caja build.

    I did look in the Linux Mint GitHub project, but it’s not clear in what repository this issue could be reported.

  28. Pleased to see LMDE4 coming before Mint 😉
    Perhaps it may encourage a few more users making the switch from Mint to LMDE?

  29. Awesome news on the fractal scaling feature and per-monitor settings! That’s a huge leap forward for my favourite OS and I can’t wait to take it for a spin. Thanks so much, team Mint, you folks rock!

  30. Why isn’t numlock enabled by default in the login password box? We be typing our password with some numbers in it and then realize numlock is not on.

  31. Hi Clem,

    [OT] would it be an viable option, to list all rejected comments – even if blacked out – in a separate feed track, just to know technology is running … more than that to understand the context of acceptance if missed?

    Thank you

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