Linux Mint 20.2 “Uma” Xfce – BETA Release

This is the BETA release for Linux Mint 20.2 “Uma” Xfce Edition.

Linux Mint 20.2 Uma Xfce Edition

 Linux Mint 20.2 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2025. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

New features:

This new version of Linux Mint contains many improvements.

For an overview of the new features please visit:

What’s new in Linux Mint 20.2 Xfce“.

Important info:

The release notes provide important information about known issues, as well as explanations, workarounds and solutions.

To read the release notes, please visit:

Release Notes for Linux Mint 20.2 Xfce

System requirements:

  • 2GB RAM (4GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
  • 20GB of disk space (100GB recommended).
  • 1024×768 resolution (on lower resolutions, press ALT to drag windows with the mouse if they don’t fit in the screen).

Upgrade instructions:

  • This BETA release might contain critical bugs, please only use it for testing purposes and to help the Linux Mint team fix issues prior to the stable release.
  • It will be possible to upgrade from this BETA to the stable release.
  • It will also be possible to upgrade from Linux Mint 20 and 20.1.
  • Upgrade instructions will be published after the stable release of Linux Mint 20.2.

Bug reports:

  • Bugs in this release should be reported on Github at https://github.com/linuxmint/mint20.2-beta.
  • Create one issue per bug.
  • As described in the Linux Mint Troubleshooting Guide, do not report or create issues for observations.
  • Be as accurate as possible and include any information that might help developers reproduce the issue or understand the cause of the issue:
    • Bugs we can reproduce, or which cause we understand are usually fixed very easily.
    • It is important to mention whether a bug happens “always”, or “sometimes”, and what triggers it.
    • If a bug happens but didn’t happen before, or doesn’t happen in another distribution, or doesn’t happen in a different environment, please mention it and try to pinpoint the differences at play.
    • If we can’t reproduce a particular bug and we don’t understand its cause, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to fix it.
  • The BETA phase is literally a bug squashing rush, where the team is extremely busy and developers try to fix as many bugs as fast as possible.
  • There usually are a huge number of reports and very little time to answer everyone or explain why a particular report is not considered a bug, or won’t get fixed. Don’t let this frustrate you, whether it’s acknowledged or not, we appreciate everyone’s help.
  • Please visit https://trello.com/b/15hGHUfP/linux-mint-202 and https://github.com/linuxmint/mint20.2-beta to follow the progress of the development team between the BETA and the stable release.

Download links:

Here are the download links:

Integrity and authenticity checks:

Once you have downloaded an image, please verify its integrity and authenticity.

Anyone can produce fake ISO images, it is your responsibility to check you are downloading the official ones.

Enjoy!

We look forward to receiving your feedback. Many thanks in advance for testing the BETA!

34 comments

  1. XFCE 20.2 Seems to be running fine. The only small annoyance I can see is that after an application is closed a ghost of the Window Button remains in the system tray, sometimes pulsating. Other than that it’s shaping up to be the usual quality release.

  2. Please LM explain more about ubuntu ESM and how input the token given in the account on terminal. Because Xenial users and in 21 months for Bionic users does not know it.

  3. Developers still haven’t resolved the noticeable error of disproportionate dashboard icons? It’s been a year and this still hasn’t been resolved?

    1. If taskbar icon size, right-click on taskbar and adjust icon size.
      If Desktop, right-click on Desktop, customise and choose icon size.

    2. This has been my biggest annoyance and has been an issue since 19.3. However, there is a fairly simple fix:

      In your home folder in the (hidden) folder “.config” create the folder “gtk-3.0”. In that folder create the file “gtk.css”.

      In that file paste the following:

      #pulseaudio-button * { -gtk-icon-transform: scale(0.8); }

      Then restart the panel with the command: “xfce4-panel -r”.

      Play with “scale(0.8)” to adjust the size to your liking.

    3. … you can adjust the other icons in the same way – just add a line for each of the various panel-apps/icons. I only ever really had an issue with the volume/audio icon.

  4. In Mint 20.2 Xfce BETA when creating with right button on the desktop a new document based on the Templates folder (txt, odt, ods etc.), the entire filename including the extension is highlighted, instead the extension should not! This “error” shows up in many distros, but never in Linux Mint. Please correct it, Xfce 4.16 looks very good! Thanks to Team.

    1. in stable version, too.
      in the Templates dir I create, for example: .txt, .odt (Hidden Files). NO text.txt or word.odt
      when highlighted, just left-arrow and enter a filename of your choice

  5. Panel disappears when removing a launcher ; then when adding a launcher the icon that appears is the first launcher I had remove first, I have to add the launcher again in order for the correct icon to appear in the panel , and again when I go to remove the icon that had wrongly appear the whole panel is remove; restart does not get the panel back but shut down does .

  6. Well, shoot, with Ubuntu 20.04.2 shipping with the 5.8 kernel, I was expecting the same with Linux Mint 20.2. Will there be an Edge version of Linux Mint 20.2 Xfce.

    1. No. If you can boot with 5.4 you can upgrade to 5.8 post-installation. Otherwise you’ll need to install Xfce and remove Cinnamon using the EDGE ISO.

  7. Complimnets to y’all — very thorough curation of this already-stable release! Alas, just as with all prior spins, several (IMHO “cotre”) features are still missing: (1) xfce4-goodies, (2) xfce4-panel-profiles, and (3) the RTL8xxxx stub device driver for RTL-wifi dongles used by ubuntu provides a useless 1Mbit/s wifi speed, requiring a somewhat tricky post-installation (manual) uograde. Otherwise, GREAT JOB!

  8. Please, where to download a ready-bulit APK file of Warpinator for a mobile phone? Do not forget about those do not have G. services… Thank you.

  9. Hello,
    Very, very happy to see Xfce 4.16 and its Mint implementation. Some observations:
    The graphs in the Task Manager display in an unusual way – the colored areas (processes and memory) change each time the graphs move left. Generally speaking, there is a diagonal division with the left part white and the right one colored, and their borderline jumps a bit with each move. It might be an upstream problem of Xfce but I report it here though. I’m not sure if mu description is clear enough, but if you have the same problem, you will see it easily once the Task Manager is launched.
    Testing Notes App – as someone observed, all notes from the same group appear together on the display, which can be problematic with a high number of such notes. Besides, when I create several notes (the same group), put them in different places on the screen and use the tray icon to hide/show them clicking it quickly several times, my original note layout changes. Except for the first note, the others tend to accumulate in the upper left corner of the display.

  10. Thanks Linux Mint team! the BETA is working well on my stable of old Acer One netbooks (AOD255E and AOD257 and AOD270) with 2GB of memory. your efforts are greatly appreciated 🙂

  11. Please bring back GIMP! there is no substitute for it., and well worth learning to make use of it.
    GIMP is such a great piece software, just as powerful as commercial counterparts.

  12. Hi Clem! I have installed Mint 20.2 xfce on three pc on a home network which includes a WDtvLive media player. All computers can also exchange samba files except WDtvLive which is visible on the network but not accessible. This was not the case with the debian 10 I had installed. There is no system crash, no error message. I just do not have access only to the player ??????

    1. Could it be something in the default samba configuration? I don’t know, I’d need more information to be able to fix anything.

  13. By default samba config works on Debian 10 and MXlinux. It does not work on Ubuntu or Linux Mint cinnamon, xfce that I tried without changing anything on my home network. I would send you my smb.conf but the site does not accept it for security reasons. Anyway, thank you!

  14. About samba.
    On Ubuntu gets me the message:
    Unable to access location
    Failed to retrieve share list from server: Software caused connection abort

    1. Hi Giorgos,

      You can use a pastebin service, or even better, open an issue and paste the two smb.conf and their respective samba versions.

  15. I’m really happy with Uma on my Desktop. So I installed it but with Xfce on my old E1312 which has only 1GB of RAM. LM18 worked fine for me. So I installed LM20.2 BETA Xfce. I erased some packages but the laptop is alwas swapping. With 3GB swap on a SSD no problem. But Firefox is always crashing with tabs, including the preinstalled start site from linuxmint.com. I didn’t test ist without Javascript but installed Opera by deb.opera.com. This works fine. Round about 500MB are always on swap, if memory intensive applications are running. Not really a problem but with Firefox. My conclusions are that the minimum of main memory is 2GB or 1.5GB. Except if you don’t like to use a browser on the internet. Let me say, Linux Mint 20.2 works fine. I’m really glad with Cinnamon and Xfce. But I will be really enthusiastic about swisscows.com in the search engine list. 😉

    1. After installing Firefox addons noScript, Ghostery and uBlock origin, the problems were gone. After clicking this side, swap rises only from 138 to 191 MB. No crashed tab.

      $ top -n 1
      Tasks: 137 gesamt, 1 laufend, 136 schlafend, 0 gestoppt, 0 Zombie
      %CPU(s): 11,8 be, 17,6 sy, 0,0 ni, 64,7 un, 5,9 wa, 0,0 hi, 0,0 si, 0,0 st
      MiB Spch : 854,4 gesamt, 116,2 frei, 560,7 belegt, 177,5 Puff/Cache
      MiB Swap: 2930,0 gesamt, 2738,5 frei, 191,5 belegt. 160,6 verfü Spch

      PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM ZEIT+ BEFEHL
      1626 user 20 0 12344 3704 3172 R 12,5 0,4 0:00.02 top
      701 root 20 0 526404 21660 14656 S 6,2 2,5 0:29.70 Xorg
      997 user 20 0 319852 15540 11324 S 6,2 1,8 0:05.38 xfce4-p+
      1188 user 20 0 395384 24200 17948 S 6,2 2,8 0:03.90 xfce4-t+
      1 root 20 0 102068 6532 4828 S 0,0 0,7 0:02.65 systemd
      2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0,0 0,0 0:00.00 kthreadd

  16. Hello again Clem. About samba: after a test, I found that the problem is with the samba version. Until the version of Mint 19.3 it works perfectly, as in Debian 10. It does not work on Debian 11 and therefore neither on Ubuntu nor on Mint. I just wanted to inform you and thank you for your interest. I live with Mint 20.2 on all my computers and I will just connect the media player for copies. Keep up the good work. Thanks!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *