106 comments

1. The beginning of the end? I’m going back to KDE. Headerbars are the ugliest things ever thought up by a software “developer”, and if that is the way Cinnamon is going, well I have to find something different. So long and thanks for all the fish.

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   1. Widgets per se don’t matter all that much. When they were first introduced and poorly supported sure.. but nowadays they are rendered the same way, themed the same way, a CSD window looks just as native as an SSD one. What matters isn’t the choice of widget itself (headerbar vs titlebar), it’s how widgets are used and what the user experience is like in the resulting UI. All widgets have pros and cons and they all bring something to the table.

   2. Close the door on your way out…

   3. Seems a bit ungrateful. Goodbye.

   4. Yeah, I’ve never been a fan of the header bars, either. It hides the menus for no good reason, so that I have to do an extra unnecessary click just to get to them. Kind of annoying more than helpful. Too Gnome-ish, in a bad way (what other way is there with Gnome in recent decades?)

   5. Headerbars do not make the window transparent when scrolling with the mouse. I use that quite often on normal windows.

   6. I actially have to concur, but for a different reason:

      The fact that Clem and the team CARE 0 PERCENT about even trying to modernize Linux Mint for Wayland (which clearly IS THE FUTURE whether users or developers like it or not) is the line I’m drawing. I was very upset with Linux Mint 19 removing KDE Plasma and leaving those users in the cold until Feren OS switched from Cinnamon to KDE Plasma back in 2020, which finally gave those users an option.

      Now while I could use Cinnamon if they just gave us proper Wayland support or even had plans for the transition, I’m not even going to recommend new users even move to Linux Mint or Cinnamon until the developers of Cinnamon start listening to, you know, the community. Wasn’t that the reason for Linux Mint IN THE FIRST PLACE?

      So I guess it’s long to a distro that had so much promise, but in the world we live in, I guess you adapt or you die. And Linux Mint chose to go down with the ship…

2. Hello:
   First of all thank you very much to the Linux Mint team. I was really impressed with the latest version, everything works very well, fast, stable and smooth. I also found the changes that were made to the interface very appropriate.
   I never tire of repeating it, when I decided to migrate from Windows to Gnu Linux, it was thanks to Linux Mint that I was able to do it.
   One question, do you plan to migrate to Wayland?
   Thank you very much for everything and congratulations.
   Alejandro

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   1. Hi Alejandro,

      In Linux Mint? No, not at the moment. As developers we try to support it, just like any new technology, when possible. The tools we develop are also used in other distributions, some of which use wayland.

3. No me puedo aguantar las ganas de probar esta actualización. Le da un toque mas moderno el explorador de archivos. Bien por eso

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4. Hello linuxmint team, The vera update is really good a d I think it’s going the right way and I hope in the upcoming updates the icons will be updated too with the themes.
   Is it possible to add support of touchpad gestures? because there are many laptop users who are missing gesture functionality. There are some posts on github and forums too. Other distros like Gnome and kde uses 1:1 gestures on their wayland session but the more relevant scenario I think is elementary os and popos they are using(If I am not wrong!) touchegg library(https://github.com/JoseExposito/touchegg) which works on x11.
   It will be very helpful for the laptop users if linuxmint team can include this touchegg library (or maybe something other than this) in cinnamon.

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5. Sorry, but will the folders be new, blue or green?
   Because the yellow ones don’t fit into Mint, let me know.
   And also, will the edges be rounded at the bottom, and will there be transparency?

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   1. Hi, I’m not one of the developers, but as far as folder colors are concerned, I think I can help you out. If you navigate – at least on the Cinnamon desktop – to System Settings -> Themes -> Icons, you can customize the folder color and appearance.

6. Thanks again for the Slick Greeter improvements! After coming from Windows 7 last year, it was one of the few parts that just didn’t feel right. Arrow keys, toggle visibility… Those “minor” things really improve the experience!!

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7. I also generally would prefer menubars. Especially for Linux Mint, I thought that was one of the main points of xApps in the beginning. I was surprised that Celluloid comes in Mint with buttons instead of the already available menubar by default. For anybody reading that didn’t know, it is available in celluloid under Preferences-Enable client-side decorations (false).
   But thank you very much for the development! Keep up the good work <3

   ps: traditional panel layout (window list) has highlight-color issues. There is already a git issue present tho. The only thing not briliant for me in Mint21. Otherwise I love it and recommend to everyone 🙂

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   1. The main point of XApp is to guarantee support and integration with various distributions and desktop environments. If you look at gThumb for instance, it only supports GNOME, it doesn’t let you disable dark-mode, tomorrow it might use libadwaita, move to GTK4 or break compatibility with GTK themes. That’s the main goal of XApp. Beyond that there’s also a certain resistance to new trends, especially before they’re embraced/accepted widely. GNOME’s move towards headerbars and symbolic icons was brutal, and years prior to that its move to GTK3. A few years later, software matured, support was improved and we’re now in a situation where GTK3 looks good, it no longer breaks theming every 6 months, and headerbars+symbolic look clean and are well supported by all window managers. Timing is important in my opinion when it comes to accepting new trends. Some DEs like to be on the bleeding edge and push new ideas whether or not their users like it or not, others won’t change a thing and still look exactly the way they did 10+ years ago.. with Cinnamon I think we’re striking a nice balance, and same with XApps. Software should look easy to use and familiar, but without looking old. That means we need to embrace design changes which proved popular upstream but be responsible when it comes to timing and integration.

      I think dark mode illustrates that very well. It’s a nice innovation. It gives us the ability to turn some of the apps, and only these apps, dark. We use this in Linux Mint to ship with a light theme but with dark multimedia apps. Most of that technology comes from upstream (GTK), but we couldn’t just jump into it without caring about people who didn’t like it or window managers which didn’t support it. So for us to use this, it was a mandatory requirement that “dark apps” have an option in their preferences to turn this off. And since Xfwm4 (the Xfce window manager) doesn’t support it, it was also a requirement that these apps disable their dark mode when run in Xfce. These are little yet very important things, and a good illustration of how we work and what goes in these xapps.

   2. Headerbars are 100% a downgrade, they’re ugly and have bad usability. If you want to move a window, a title bar is perfectly consistent: click anywhere but the buttons on the corner, and drag around. Headerbars are not consistent, as different programs will have different sets of buttons, so this throws off the user’s muscle memory.

      At this point, any interface idea from Gnome must be treated as wrong and harmful.

8. will the next version have support for fingerprint login?

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   1. Hi Kyle,

      I noticed an issue for it in github when working on slick-greeter. I’m planning to look into it.

9. Pix has now become Gthumb’s outdated clone. In other news, a new picture manager is recommended post mint21.2 installation.

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10. Question – will Mint 21.2 also include built in support for JPEG-XL just like the rebased Pix, or will Mint itself only be adding AVIF/HEIF?

    Basically I was primarily looking to take advantage of JPEG-XL’s lossless repackaging of JPEG functionality…

    (it should also be mentioned that, after Google’s unpopular removal of JPEG-XL, it became clear that end-users seems to have quite a bit of interest in the format despite developers seemingly being more interested in AVIF)

    Otherwise, I’m EXTREMELY glad that 21.2 will be using the updated Xfce 4.18 as it solves a slew of low-hanging fruit that I’ve had between Cinnamon and Xfce 4.16 & 4.17, and I’m due to re-install my 20.3 Xfce OS anyway on an NVMe SSD (I was able to clone from NVMe to SATA, but going the other direction fails…)

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    1. I forgot to ask – does the updated login screen combined with the use of Xfce 4.18 mean that Xfce will no longer be using “Light Locker”? As was mentioned previously on the Mint 21.0 beta git, it was stated that Mint Xfce will be moving away from “Light Locker” at some point which will subsequently solve the issue where locking the current session cuts off network traffic on Mint Xfce within a minute or so.

    2. One last thing I forgot to say about JPEG-XL – it’s vastly superior lossless encoding relative to AVIF is another thing I was looking forwards to.

       And while I’m here, thank you for adding support for changing keyboard layouts on the login screen. This is something I discussed in the forum a few months ago.

    3. Hi,

       That’s a great question. JXL is brand new and things are moving upstream. We didn’t include JXL in 21.2 just yet because I want to see if things change between now and June. Long story short I don’t want us to start packaging this one way and later find out Debian decided to package it differently. We want the lib but also a thumbnailer.. we’ll see how it goes, but yes, we’re likely to have JXL in 21.2.

       Codewise, JXL support is already present in gThumb/pix. It’s very easy to add support for it in Xviewer and mime handling for it in Linux Mint.

       Regarding Xfce, the switch towards a screensaver and away from light-locker is in our roadmap. It should happen at some stage, it’s not tied to the move to 4.18.

    4. I feel the same way about JXL- lossless conversion of my photo library? That is awesome! I am really hoping that it gets adopted so widely that the browsers start to support it de-facto.

11. Pix in Linux Mint 21.1 can not be started. My computer is Dell T7920.

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12. Hello, it’s appreciated that Pix gets new features, but please provide an option to have toolbars and menubars instead of headerbars in the app. I know more users prefer the old ‘classical’ paradigm. It’s one of the reasons why I love xapps.

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13. First, can’t you keep the old Pix UI? Just use gthumb if you want headerbars.

    Also, I guessed the codename, I knew you would use Victoria

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    1. No way around Victoria, it’s such a classic name.

       gThumb is designed for GNOME, it will work to some extent in other DEs but it’s not something we can ship with. It’s a pity because it really doesn’t miss much. If it had a wider scope when it came to distro/DE integration, we wouldn’t need Pix. As it is now the less we deviate from it the more we can rebase easily and keep up with it.

       Some apps are mostly just a UI and rely on multimedia libs, these can be forked or go in a new direction or even be rewritten from scratch. gThumb has a huge amount of code dedicated to image rendering and manipulation. That’s something we want to keep up with. Once it supports all 3 DEs fully, what matters most is its performance and compatibility with new image formats.

       We could bring back a titlebar/menubar in Pix but I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle. First, it could make it harder to port changes from gThumb, second I’m not sure there’s an actual need for it. The UI does look different, and it is less discoverable, but it isn’t confusing or hard to use at all. I’m open to feedback on this. I don’t see a cause for concern or anything in the UI which prevents us from shipping with it as it is.

    2. I wish you would explain these things in the blog, Top Dev. That is what the blog is for. I feel bad about my snide comment now. Sorry, without proper explanation, I assume the change-for-sake-of-change mentality. It is insidious in this industry, as we are all aware.

    3. Late reply to Clem: I agree but for such large apps headerbars are the worst choice. Lump all common functions in the titlebar then merge all menus (100+ options combined) into one.

14. Awesome work as always! But can there finally be a fix for the bug where seconds don’t update properly using the custom time format token %r? I would like to use:
    %x%n%r
    as my custom time format but the seconds constantly show as :00. I know there are other ways around this, but that’s beside the point. And it’s not an issue with only later versions of Linux Mint; my old 18.x install does it too.

    Reply

    1. Hi,

       I checked the code, the clock is updated every second. It also works for me, I get the seconds running without issue. That said, %r is discouraged, it only works in some locales. Check https://docs.gtk.org/glib/method.DateTime.format.html.

       I’d recommend you use %X instead, or make your own with %H:%M:%S. Note also that %n won’t render well in the greeter, there isn’t enough space in the bar to accommodate two lines of text. You can use %t instead or your own separator.

    2. Okay, I just learned from your conversation that %n is the proper way to move to the next line. What I did on my setup was type the format that I wanted on the text editor, press enter where I wanted to go next line, then copy-paste the entire text into the clock’s configuration page. Fun times :).

       On the topic of Cinnamon’s desktop clock: I’d like to request with all due respect to please add an option to reconfigure the font size of the clock’s display. When I googled how to do it last time, iirc, I had to edit the theme file to set a different font size. The setting will affect font sizes on other parts of the theme, not just the clock. I don’t even remember how to do it anymore. It sounds way too overkill of a workaround just because there’s no option to change the font size on the clock.

    3. By the way, I’m referring to the clock which sits in the system tray in the lower right.

    4. I tried the %S option and the seconds are updating on my desktop clock just fine.

    5. Yes, %S works fine, it’s %r which does not.

15. cCc Clem cCc I admire you chief

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16. Thanks for the work in improving Linux Mint. I will suggest a nice to have. Older versions of Linux Mint had a slideshow option for the login screen, but that option is not anymore available in later releases (or I have not been able to figure out where it is…). Will it be possible to have this back?

    Apart from that, Linux Mint works like a breeze. I hope it will be rocking for many years to come!

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    1. Hi Alvenn,

       We used to have a display manager (responsible for the login window) called MDM. It was highly customizable and could even run games. This was a while ago. The code is still available here: https://github.com/linuxmint/mdm.

       We switched to LightDM for better performance, stability and compatibility with important Linux projects such as the various DEs, but also plymouth, systemd etc.. and a greeter called slick-greeter which isn’t as customizable but provides a better experience out of the box. LightDM, like its name suggests is much simpler and much lighter. It does less but it does it really well.

17. @Clem & Team,
    This post came right on time. I’ve bought a new Canon printer and installed it today. I’m still on 20.3 but booted the 21.1 live ISO to test this and my 1st impression was better than with 21.0. The dark theme integration seems to be much better implemented than in 21.0 and with time I’ll install 21.1 from scratch (since the upgrade from 20.3 had issues) on a VM and check to see if it fits my usability. Not yet the preferred taste of my cup of coffee but I might eventually be able to live with Cinnamon as it is now, let’s see. Thank you for the minor but IMO critical little fixes.
    Regarding printing, with 20.3 I couldn’t get it to print and scan just with IPP. Installed the Canon drivers and it works, although I cannot set the printing quality in Draft and Simple Scan sometimes recognizes the scanner on the printer but can’t connect to it at the 1st go, but already had this bug with a very old Epson photo scanner.
    With 21.1 everything just works out of the box, no drivers needed. But funny, neither in 20.3 or 21.1 I can’t see the amount of ink left in the cartridges as it says that function is not supported… But no worries as I’ll fill them up myself, so this is a no problem.
    With time I’ll evaluate 21.1 better, compare them with my previous list of complains and check what has been fixed and what new issues and regressions might show up. And then reply some criticism, in a constructive way, because I know you’re listening. And yes, my eyes still dream of a Cinnamon theming tool…
    Best regards.

    PS – Clem, what’s the best way for me to make sure this information reaches you and/or who it might concern?
    Open a new Topic on the forums so others can also chime in, and then post the link here next month, or there’s someone already reading on the forums who forwards it, or…?
    Many many thanks.

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    1. Hi Bruno,

       I usually hear from Xenopeek when something important pops up in the forums. I don’t have a good answer to this I’m afraid. We get a huge amount of feedback and queries and we don’t always have eyes everywhere. Personally when I focus on something I try to look around it a little bit. If I post on the blog I reply to comments for a few days. If I work on a specific project (like slick-greeter recently) I have a look at github issues for it…etc. There are many users and very few developers. It’s the nature of our open source model, we get great feedback and great support from our community, but it’s a huge community in terms of size, much larger than we’d like when it comes to acknowledging communication and being able to reply to everybody.

       If there’s an issue you want fixed, and I mean an issue, not just an observation, what helps a lot is when it’s posted in the right place and everything’s in place for us to fix it. This means the issue is analyzed, conditions to reproduce it are described, the solution is in our reach, and all we have to do is to actually fix it. It can still take a while before anyone reads about it, but when someone does that usually leads to a bug fix. We fix bugs like this very often. The order in which we do has nothing to do with how old the issue is though.

       When an issue is fixed by the community (via a pull request), it also gets a lot more visibility. All pull requests are reviewed, at least once, in each release cycle.

18. Pix is getting new features, great! I use Pix exclusively when it comes to image management, it’s one of my must-be apps. A bit sad about toolbar going away, though expected it. I prefer text in menus instead of small icons. I guess all Xapps will eventually get headerbars, Nemo included. Not very happy, but Clem makes his point in the comments well enough even for a noob…

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    1. Thanks. You can get it from here if you want to give it a try: https://github.com/linuxmint/pix/releases/download/master.mint21/packages.tar.gz

       PS: Translations aren’t ready yet.

    2. Nemo isn’t an XApp. Nemo is a hard fork of nautilus, that is, it is never rebased or kept up with newer nautilus versions, so it won’t get headerbars. Pix got headerbars because it has been rebased on top of a newer gThumb version.

19. You guys forget your own guidelines! Goodbye XApps project…
    https://linuxmint-developer-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/xapps.html
    – How do I…?
    Sanity days: “Go to Edit, Preferences and select…”,
    Nowadays: “at the top-right of the screen click the button with cog or hammer or 3 horizontal lines or…, not the first one, the second one, then select…”

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    1. Good point, this needs an update. It’s also missing many new Xapps and showing some which aren’t actively developed anymore.

       The cogs and burger menu have become well known. Younger users actually have experience with phone UI before they even start using a computer nowadays. I know what you mean though, and I agree. There’s less variation across applications which use menubars, you always find standard functions (preferences, open, quit, about..) in the very same place. That’s true, that’s one of the pros of toolbars/menubars.

20. Hamburger menus were invented for small phone displays due to space restrictions. They offer an inferior user experience compered to menu bars and make desktop applications look unprofessional. Therefore they should be avoided if possible.

    Good job on the login screen, though. I really appreciate all the hard work the mint team is putting in to make the best distro even better 🙂

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    1. I prefer proper toolbars/menus too, I accept this may be an age thing in my case as did not grow up with mobile phones (or computers come to that 🙂 ) but to me it seems more intuitive to look there than in a hamburger/dots/cogs menu, especially in an unfamiliar application. Having said that Mint continues to improve and I too appreciate the work Clem and the team put in to make it even better

    2. This.
       Menubars are better for pc, and Mint is not for smartphones.
       And also SSD window are much better than CSD for user customization and to use the “close” button for maximized windows (mouse at the screen corner and click without looking at, instead pointing exactly over the X icon…)

    3. I detest hamburger menus, but it’s wrong to say they were invented for phones. They were created back in 1981 by Norm Cox for the Xerox Pilot operating system (that powered their “Star” workstations).

21. Thanks, Clem! Always looking forward to new Linux Mint releases, even if changes aren’t always the way I prefer my OS to be (and I apologize for airing my frustrations with this sometimes). LM is still the best OS available, in my opinion!

    That said, has there been any headway on some of the bugs that were introduced in the initial Linux Mint 21 release last summer? I still have several (relatively minor) issues plaguing my computer since that upgrade.

    A couple examples:

    https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/11123
    https://github.com/linuxmint/mint21.1-beta/issues/78

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22. I, too, despise the shift to header bars, and especially the dropping of finer-grained settings and controls that GNOME seems to love. That said, I guess I can install alternative apps that still have proper menus and proper settings options if and when I wish. (For now, anyway.)
    In any case, thanks Clem and team for all the work you do to produce Mint! Cheers!

    Reply

23. Dialogue boxes in Cinnamon don’t have a highlight anymore which option is the active one. This is a problem with keyboard navigation, and that’s an accessibility problem. Can you please fix that?

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24. Can someone please point me to a discussion about Flatpak and how to get it under control. I updated from Mint 20.3 a month ago. I like 21.1 but I’m not seeing anything different usage wise that effects me personally. What I am seeing is numerous Flatpak huge updates. I’m talking nearly 1-2 gigs worth!! And several times a day!!

    I know I can disable Flatpak. But how much of Mint 21 is reliant on Flatpak? Is there a command that lists the Flatpak apps?

    Thanks

    Reply

    1. Nothing in Mint is *reliant* on Flatpak, except the packages you may have installed. In fact, you could completely uninstall all Flatpaks and even the Flatpak daemon itself, and return to only using the .deb repositories if you prefer (although it isn’t necessary to go quite that far). The OS itself doesn’t rely on Flatpak. Its only purpose is to provide an easy way to install more up-to-date software versions, and some software which isn’t available by other means.

       Here’s what I would recommend: If you don’t like Flatpaks, don’t use them. Uninstall all of the Flatpaks that you’ve installed, as well as the Flatpak runtime dependency packages (you can find all of these by opening a terminal and entering: flatpak list) and from now on, only use software from the normal .deb repositories (labeled as “System Packages” in the Software Manager).

       Personally, I’ve never been a fan of Flatpaks and similar packages, as there are way too many problems that arise from them. Unfortunately, unless you’re able to make do with only what’s available in the .deb repositories, you would probably be forced to use them for one thing or another. It stinks, but that’s where we are in the Linux world these days.

    2. flatpak list

       You can also do flatpak uninstall –unused

    3. Great thanks!

25. Dear Linux Mint team,

    I wanted to express my sincere gratitude for the excellent work you do in developing and maintaining one of the best Linux distributions. Your dedication and hard work are truly appreciated by the user community.

    I was wondering if you have any information on whether “clicky” will be released this year.

    Thank you again for your dedication and support to the community.

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    1. I don’t remember ever mentioning clicky… it’s still pretty much top secret at this stage 🙂

       I started working on it when we were moving towards the 22.04 base. I was worried about the changes in gnome-screenshot but with a few patches we got it working pretty well. I’m not sure we need clicky. It’s there on github, it’s functional but not complete yet. We haven’t done the homework on integration with the various DEs.

26. Dear Clem,
    first my congratulations and gratitude to the whole Linux Mint team. LMC 21.1 is a success.
    Following the conversations of the Blog in the last time, I am noticed by topics such as the following:
    1.The colour of the folders
    2.The decoration of windows with their rounded corners or not.
    3.The use or disuse of Headbars or Titelbars,
    4.The new availability of desktop and sound themes
    5. The benefit or need for widgets, especially in LMC, among other related matters.

    I wonder specifically for Linux Mint Cinnamon what is happening with “Cinnamon Spices”?
    Even though these “addons” and their updates are integral part of the file update application, I still find countless of them are not operational/updated or functional for linux mint 21.x (Cinnamon 5.6x).

    I believe that before talking about the appearance issues listed above, in the Cinnamon version at least, there is a missing step to integrate/update and more proactively maintain these desktop addons.

    Surely there is an additional problem of coordinating resources and scheduling them (following some cases on Github), but considering Cinnamon as a popular desktop environment, it would be unfortunate if there wasn’t more consistent development of these addons.

    Is anything new in this area expected for future releases of Cinnamon?
    Thank you.

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    1. Not speaking on behalf of anyone else, but it’s been my understanding that Cinnamon spices are 3rd party extensions, which means updates for them are up to their respective maintainers or occasionally, individual contributors other than the designated maintainer. It’s just the nature of these things that sometimes maintainers become inactive and the extension falls behind in compatibility. At best, we can hope that maybe someone else picks up the unmaintained extension, or makes a new one with similar functionality to the old one. Whatever the case may be, I think it’s unreasonable to expect its maintenance to fall onto the Mint team.

    2. I can bet a lot of applets don’t work currently because the cinnamon’s location for configuration files has changed from ~/.cinnamon/configs to ~/.config/cinnamon/spices . Why? What was the purpose? I don’t know. I accidentally discovered this from here: https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon-spices-applets/pull/4665.

27. What are your plans for post GTK3 world ?

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28. I usually using middle mouse click to toggle always on top at title bar it make easier to drag and drop from file explorer to other app. But there is one problem i feel when using app with gnome header bar instead of traditional title bar which it wont work when i click the header bar with middle mouse button that way i think better to use traditional title bar rather than header bar, unless there way to make it work, after all title bar action is a feature from system setting itself.

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29. Old times, great times. Well, it sometimes happens to be that way.
    Recently I found in the back of a wardrobe a little package. I opened it and inside there was a little printer, HP Deskjet D2560. It had been there for about 15 years. I was thinking about throwing it into …bin. But I said to myself… Why not? Letś give it a chance. So I tried to make it work again and… after fully cleaning and refilling cartridges I discovered a great machine. I installed it with CUPS – there is an option called Fast Draft, that is faster than Draft or Quick Draft in Windows -. And.. thanks to CUPs this little printer has become the fastest and sharpest printer I’ve tried. What a beautiful little beast… Thanks to Linux Mint Team for making possible this marvellous revival. Great!

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30. Hi Clem,
    as always thank you people for the hard work you put into your project!
    Concerning pix: As much as I appreciate the refresh of features for the program headerbars are not a good idea.
    Everyone but the most hardcore users will open apps like these once every few weeks/months to get a few specific tasks done and if the UI is not immediately understandable/discoverable they will get frustrated. It does not matter that people these days are used to put up with suboptimal UI on their mobile phones – we all know that form factor needs to make compromises to be usable at all – but with a big screen and a powerful mashcine there is no excuse for bad UI design from a usability standpoint. Going back to the casual user: Neither the icons nor the structure of the hamburger menus, let alone navigation between full window content panels is selfexplanatory in headerbar apps of they offer more than 3 basic features. This means the casual users will have to relearn where to find the features they are looking for basically every time. It does not help either that the hover-tooltips come with a 1-second delay. No one cares if a UI looks slightly more elegant when they have to suffer through that delay 13 times while trying to find out what functionality the application actually tries to hide behind the icons- they are probably busy ordering a new monitor on their phone after retrieving the mouse out of the old one 😉 . This could partly be improved by adding text to the icons but all in all the best solution from a users perspective is indeed the tried and true standardized classic tool-/menu-bar layout because it is indeed discoverable by sight (instead of try and error) for everyone and usually also requires less clicks to get where you want to go.

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31. Clem, I’ve been wondering why there’s no direct link from blog.linuxmint.com to linuxmint.com main site. Or maybe there is, but I just can’t see it…?

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32. Using Libre Office on Mint 21.1 dark themes the ribbon strip at the top, some of the options (right, center, left) completly blanked out. Hypnotix seems to track a bit better with a 8 to 10 seconds delay ? cheers!
    I hope everyone is doing O.K
    I really enjoy using linux mint Cinnamin. Thank You.

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    1. Hi,
       In LibreOffice Alt+F12 (or Tools > Options / Hamburger menu > Options)

       Options window:
       LibreOffice > View > Icon Theme
       Theme: Colibre (dark)
       Apply / OK

       If you later change Mint back to a light theme, you’ll need to do the same in LibreOffice, for example…
       Theme: Colibre

    2. I have the same issue with Libre Office on Mint 21.1 when using dark themes. Following David’s suggestion, there are only 2 options available, Automatic(Colibre) or Colibre. There are no other choices and no indication of “dark” in the menu. Either choice leaves the same totally darked out icons. Otherwise all other Libre Office functions appear to be working fine.

    3. Thanks David,
       looked into it and installed the dark dynamic. Bit different but fixed the black out.

    4. Hi Bear,
       I’m running latest LibreOffice 7.5.0.3 using the official PPA (only use official ones).

       Terminal window:
       sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
       apt update

       If new to PPA’s, once added, you’ll then see new versions of LibreOffice in the Update Manager (replaces the bundled older version).

       Alternatively, you could try the Flatpak version (installs alongside the bundled older version).

33. A minor request: can we have a dark mode switch in Rhythmbox like in the other multimedia apps?

    Reply

34. Love Mint and really enjoy Cinnamon! Three small-ish things, that would make my experience even better:
    1) I would love to see more zoom levels in Xreader – my city’s transit map (ZTM Poznań, Poland) is available only in PDF version, and the maximum zoom isn’t enough – it only becomes readable at 600% (Okular).
    2) I am in a middle of a big clean-up of my documents, and I use Bulky a lot; it would be great if a single Tab keypress took me from Find to Replace field, rather than to Regular expression
    3) I would love to have access to my recent documents right after I right-click on an icon in Grouped window list, rather than clicking again to expand Recent submenu (one step less). To work around this I’ve added my most frequently accessed files to my favorite list, and use the Favorites applet (the Star)

    Reply

    1. Hi,

       Xreader greater magnification would be appreciated (thanks in advance Clem).
       Until implemented, in case helpful, Okular allows high zoom levels.

    2. Oops! you mention Okular, apologies!

    3. No worries! I’ve also tried Evince, it goes up to 400%, which gives almost exactly same results as Xreader (not big enough to read).

    4. David, you may find this interesting!

       I just applied the:
       gsettings set org.x.reader page-cache-size 200
       and it works (9 zoom-in levels, instead of 7), but still it would be great to get this out of the box.

35. Hi, I installed gThumb 3.12.2 flatpak to check how it feels comparing to Pix. I really like few things like new Zoom options. I can live with the headerbar though Pix toolbar looks more elegant and is clear. Pix feels more polished than gTHumb. In viewer mode in gThumb each photo shows with a very unpleasant visual effect, it looks like some pixels jump. In Pix showing photos is smooth. I mean jpg files if it matters.Is it possible to keep Pix’s image rendering?

    Reply

36. I forgot about gThumb: icon placement for some options is imperfect there. Example – when I edit file in viewer and use automatic contrast or another option but then change my mind and don’t want to ‘accept’ the change, I must move the cursor far to the left to click the ‘back’ arrow icon. Then the change is not applied. Current Pix is better, gThumb feels inferior.

    Reply

37. Mis conocimientos son muy básicos. Con un portátil antiguo instale linux Mint 19.3 Tricia mate, me compensaría instalar la última versión o sigo con esta ya que me da lo que quiero hasta ahora. Gracias.

    Reply

38. The implementation of headerbars in the picture of pix above seems to fit very well. I liked it.

    XApps, from an engineering perspective, make a lot of sense as a base to provide cross-desktop solutions and protect them against drastic changes upstream (of course, adapting those changes in the adequate time).

    Wayland is maturing, but from what I know about it, I agree this is not the best moment to move yet.

    Are you thinking about supporting aarch64 in the future?

    Reply

39. Please never add headerbars to nemo!

    Reply

40. Love Mint and really enjoy Cinnamon! Three small-ish things, that would make my experience even better:

    1) I would love to see more zoom levels in Xreader – my city’s transit map (ZTM Poznań, Poland) is available only in PDF version, and the maximum zoom isn’t enough (I think it’s 400%, at least when I compare to Evince) – it only becomes readable at 600% (Okular).

    2) I am in a middle of a big clean-up of my documents, and I use Bulky a lot; it would be great if a single Tab key press took me from Find to Replace field, rather than to Regular expression

    3) I would love to have access to my recent documents right after I right-click on an icon in Grouped window list, rather than clicking again to expand Recent submenu (one step less). To work around this I’ve added my most frequently accessed files to my favorite list, and use the Favorites applet (the Star)

    Reply

    1. Since I posted this twice, it wouldn’t hurt to post a fix here as well:

       I just applied the
       gsettings set org.x.reader page-cache-size 200
       and it works (9 zoom-in levels, instead of 7), but still it would be great to get this out of the box.

41. Hello Clément,

    Thank you a lot for this (once more) wonderful version of Linux Mint Cinnamon (21 and 21.1).

    After several unsuccessful attempts with Mandrake (the “dependencies hell”), I fully migrated to Linux in 2005 with Ubuntu 5.10, Ubuntu which I left for Mint in 2016 after 11 years, so sickened was I by the Unity desktop.

    For all the versions of Ubuntu I used and all the distributions I tested during all these years, never have I enjoyed one so user friendly, so clearly deliberately manufactured for the user.

    But I must say that I too think of headerbars as another dysfunctional false simplification from the Gnome 3 madness. You officially created Linux Mint (both Cinnamon and Mate) to maintain the very efficient and working WIMP model of desktop (fools always think they can reinvent the wheel…).

    Please let us not follow the same path as Unity of Gnome 3!

    Also there is one thing that disappointed me during the past year: it’s the disappearance of the Cinnamon’s windows snapping feature. This feature is a very useful one for working on two windows at the same time (for translating a text for one example). Of course one can arrange the windows by hand.

    I must say that what irritated me the most is that this regression hadn’t been obviously enough (perhaps it’s stated somewhere) announced (so that one had to search for this problem on the web).

    And I’m curious to know if this feature’s restoration is considered (and if so, if a date is contemplated).

    Thanks once more for the wonderful work and this best working desktop!

    Reply

42. I suspect nautilus files latest update slowing my machine at startup if the default application of browse is put nautilus. And its true thar thunderbird 102.7.1 latest update is bad? Please confirm

    Reply

43. Please read this article. This could be great for Linux Mint to adopt.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/my-idea-for-a-great-new-beginner-friendly-linux-distribution/

    Reply

    1. It is an interesting idea, and very good for new users I agree (and I would once have no doubt found it useful) , but if implemented I hope there would be a “skip” option. When I do a fresh install I do not want to have to go through a whole lot of instructions before I can start using it. I do appreciate I am not the target market as been using Mint for some years now,, hence the desire for an option to skip it too.

44. Hi, Januray 2023 has been the month where Canonical released Ubuntu Pro for free (each user can freely subscribe for a token, valid for up to 5 computers).
    Ubuntu Pro is available for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, 20.04 lTS and 22.04 LTS versions.
    What are Ubuntu Pro advantages?
    They are explained here https://ubuntu.com/pro.
    In summary the main advantages are:
    * maintenance duration 10 years with Ubuntu Pro instead of 5 years with Ubuntu,
    * 2300 packages from main Ubuntu repository + 23000 packages from Universe are maintained with Ubuntu Pro instead of 2300 packages from main Ubuntu repository with Ubuntu,
    * Live kernel patch, allowing to update kernel without interrupting a session,
    * CVE fix after one day with Ubuntu Pro, instead of up to 98 days with Ubuntu.
    Ubuntu Pro does not work on Linux Mint distributions, though they are based on Ubuntu LTS versions: you can attach a computer running Linux Mint to an Ubuntu Pro subscription, but you can’t enable any Pro service.
    So, my question is simple: does Linux Mint team plan to add Ubuntu Pro support to Linux Mint? And, if the answer is yes, to what versions?
    Regards,
    MN

    Reply

    1. Danke Mike Navy
       Werde mir dies mal genauer anschauen.
       BOB

45. I would love for Hypnotix to be able to make a list of favorite channels, since I have many channels and it is very easy to get lost, thank you very much.

    Reply

46. Thank you, Linux Mint team, for being with us! The Project that you have made is amazing and I admire every single one in the team! So far, this is my most-used distro and have drived it since 3 years ago.

    However, please hear my opinion, the headerbars replacing the toolbars aren’t exactly very intuitive. Settings and such are hidden more. Sure, it looks cleaner, but we also have to consider the the efficiency to go and look for the buttons.

    Thanks!

    Reply

47. Hey, can we address this issue in the new release?

    https://github.com/linuxmint/linuxmint/issues/333

    Reply

48. Good job on this release! But just My kind request to @clem and team. ‘darker’ application background always gives a combination of black and white. Although it is still retained as legacy, new styles with rounded corners are introduced only for light application background or dark application background. Appreciate if ‘darker’ application backgrounds can be included in new look and feel ideas. Really appreciate if this can be taken into consideration.

    Reply

49. Sorry but the proliferation of hamburger buttons instead of menus is ~not~ acceptable. Trying to stay away from them is my only reason to use Mint in the first place (beside all that snap bullshit); if I lose control over the UI it really makes no difference what distro I use. Guess I’ll be refusing to upgrade indefinitely, hoping for an alternative to present itself before that becomes untenable.

    Reply

50. Headerbars are ugly and have worse usability than the traditional way.

    Reply

51. Still waiting for fs-uae-launcher for Mint, instead of https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:FrodeSolheim:stable/xUbuntu_22.04

    Reply

52. I just read about Ubuntu banning Flatpak starting with Ubuntu 23.04. How might this affect Mint going forward? Will Mint have to package its own Flatpak support on top of everything else you guys are busy with? I’m not a huge fan of either Snap or Flatpak, but if I had to choose between the two, it’s definitely going to lean more toward Flatpak. I can’t believe Ubuntu’s doing this (ok, maybe I can believe it, knowing Ubuntu these days, but I’m amazed they actually went ahead and did it). It seems like a very anti-competitive and anti-open-source-ish move to force their users to only use Snap.

    Reply

    1. Technically speaking Ubuntu users can still install Flatpak and enjoy using it. In Mint it doesn’t change anything.

       This is more worrying for Snap users than anyone else. I interpret it as Canonical running out of patience with the snap store not gaining a dominant position and wanting a return on investment. If they don’t get positive results they’ll either force its adoption even more or they’ll eventually kill the snap project and abandon it.

    2. Thanks, Clem! Good to know!

53. Mostly great experience so far with 21.1, although I have noticed a few glitches-which may very well be self inflicted but still annoying. So far no fix to be found in the forums. During the install I wanted Mint on my nvme, but the installer wanted to re-partition one of my other SSD’s which already had Windows 10 and install them side by side on the same drive. I didn’t have the option to simply tell Mint where I wanted the install (like Debian), I had to manually select the drive, manually partition it and select the bootloader device. Mint and Secure Boot don’t play well together. Disabling secure boot is not an option as I recently recovered from a rootkit that compromised my CMOS firmware. Many Mint modules are blocked by secure boot, and even though os-prober can see my Windows install when I ask grub to boot Windows, it can’t find the bootmgr.efi. Right now the only way to boot Windows is by pressing f9 and selecting the boot device. And what is this mok screen about? It wants me to make selections and enter keys but doesn’t recognize wireless or usb keyboards and mice? While my NVIDIA driver does load on Mint, other things do not. This might be too much to ask with Microsoft involved but how do we get Grub, secure boot and multiple OS’s to work together seamlessly on the same machine?

    Reply

54. How to change login screen resolution?

    The system is at 1368×768.

    The login screen is at 1920×1080.

    I want to make the login screen at 1368×768.

    I’ve tried everything but it didn’t work.

    Reply

    1. grib-customizer

55. Hi! I really love Linux mint. It’s polished, modern and lightweight linux distro. But i can’t install waydroid on it. Can you guess a solution? maybe a support for wayland would be great.

    Reply