Linux Mint 22.1 “Xia” – BETA Release

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This is the BETA release for Linux Mint 22.1 “Xia”.

Linux Mint 22.1 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2029. 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 22.1“.

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 22.1”

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.
  • Upgrade instructions will be published after the stable release of Linux Mint 22.1.
  • It will be possible to upgrade from this BETA to the stable release.
  • It will also be possible to upgrade from Linux Mint 22.

Bug reports:

  • Bugs in this release should be reported on Github at https://github.com/linuxmint/mint22.1-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.

Download links:

Cinnamon Edition:

Xfce Edition:

MATE Edition:

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!

53 comments

  1. Some of us had difficulties with the upgrade path from 21.3 to 22 and decided to temporarily stick with 21.3 . Will the upgrade path be more reliable to 22.1?

    Reply

    2. Clem
      I tried it once and I was not satisfied with the functioning of the system so I went back to 21.3. What does yes and no mean? Can you clarify a little?

  2. Love the new default cinnamon theme. But I tend to use lighter themes; just wondering if the Mint-Y themes will eventually get the rounded corners and the spacing between the applet and the task bar? I guess it would be nice to have uniformity in that sense

    Reply

    1. The new default theme will probably inspire artists to create new spices. I’m sure we’ll see a light version of it with minimal changes, just color differences.

      Mint-Y itself is slightly different. It’s more rounded than before but not as much as this one. It also has no gap with the panel. It only uses a radius on corners which are away from the panel.

  3. Amazing update! My highlights are the power modes because I’m using it on the laptop and the design overhaul. Can’t wait to test it.

    Reply

  4. Very nice new cinnamon theme with rounded corners well done , only there is no distance between thumbnail miniatures and panel in grouped windoes.

    Reply

  5. Hello, and thank you for the new release. I have a question about the power-profiles – how and when are they applied? Here is why I ask. I have custom settings – set by tlp and by scripts – and I don’t want Cinnamon to override those settings. Thanks.

    Reply

    1. Hi JL,

      They’re applied by power-profiles-daemon. Note that Cinnamon supports it as a feature but doesn’t depend on it. If you’re using TLP you can remove power-profiles-daemon for it not to interfere. The profiles will just then disappear in the Cinnamon Power Settings and power applet.

    1. Hi David,

      The Mint-Y theme has round corners in its titlebars and corners away from the panel, not corners which touch the panel.

      The calendar in this screenshot is using the “Cinnamon” theme, not “Mint-Y”.

      For applications, it’s hard to make GTK use rounded corners at the bottom of the windows. GTK3 wasn’t designed for that. Apps which do that are usually not using GTK windows, but custom libraries such as libHandy or libAdwaita.

    2. Ah, thanks Clem!
      Would it be possible to add the nice refreshed ‘Cinnamon’ theme as an option to Theme > ‘Simplified settings…’ (set as default?), making it more discoverable, and allowing Mint live sessions/installs to match the release notes screenshots?

      —

      Hi @JosephM, Thank you for your recent great Cinnamon theming work!

      Previously there was a setting in…
      usr > share > cinnamon > theme > cinnamon.css
      —
      .grouped-window-list-box {
      spacing: 2px;
      }
      —
      For Mint 22.1, appears this has been changed/replaced, please can you let me know the new location for this setting to adjust GWL icon spacing (aesthetics aside, wider spacing is helpful for touch screens)?

      Thank you in advance!

    3. Update:
      After experiments…

      Discovered the setting can be re-added cinnamon.css.

      Since the default (without the setting) is an improved 6px (compared with previous 2px), its possibly no longer required, although would be nice to have a user configurable option in ‘Panel settings’ or GWL ‘Applet preferences’. 🙂

  7. When I finally updated to 22, I switched to MATE because I want a more stable desktop. But don’t interpret this as spam, because Cinnamon is still a good desktop, just not my top choice. I still love Linux Mint and that you actually listen to your users.

    But why is it Xia and not Wanda, Willa or Winona?

    Reply

    1. Hi Vlad,

      It’s just subjective. Xia and the option to potentially use Y and Z sounded better than using 4 W-codenames we weren’t really excited about.

    2. I wondered exactly the same. I am sure there will be a bunch of OCD types that won’t like this decision, haha
      Everyone knew that the W X Y Z names would suck. It would be 16 weird names for 8 years… On the other hand… the name doesn’t actually really matter that much. It’s just a codename to possibly help identify which versions have the same ubuntu base, which will be broken with this. If I had to choose, I would have also stuck to the 4W 4X 4Y 4Z names. Would be a few Asian names, who cares.
      I really hope we can go back to that standard in Mint23 and onwards.
      Or pick another infinite group of living things to be grouped by first letter in one base.

  8. Clem, the night light mode works fine… but I would like to make a couple of observations. 1- It is not possible to specify the start/end time in more detail, it only allows to choose the time in ranges of 15min. 2- The color temperature slider only works in ranges (not like the volume level slider for example that allows to choose the level in more detail). 3- The preview mode is a bit long (about 10 seconds). Other than that, so far I haven’t found great details in the Beta. Best regards

    Reply

  9. Clem, I’m trying out the beta. For the most part, things look great, and I can’t wait for the release! There are a couple things I did notice, though:

    1. I had asked in the comments from last month’s blog post whether or not these new dialogs will be themeable. You said (from my understanding, anyway – I may have read your response wrong) that they should be themeable, following the Cinnamon theme. However, in the beta, no matter what Cinnamon theme I try, the dialogs remain the same flat black with white text theme. How do we change the theme on these? I’d like to keep them looking like they belong with my Mint-X themed desktop, if possible.

    2. I noticed that the “Linux Mint” panel theme is missing. That’s the only dark panel theme that has elements that fit with Mint-X. I’m not a fan of the lighter-colored Mint-X panel themes, but the Linux Mint panel theme is gorgeous, and I love how it highlights panel applets with a sort of backlighting effect. Is this missing theme an oversight, or is it permanently gone? (I’m hoping it’s an oversight, because I love that panel theme)

    Reply

    1. Answering the first question these dialogs are themeable, you can check the theme CBlue they are one of the only ones that upgraded their theme to support theming for these new dialogs. For other themes to have them themed, they must also update the code to have styling instructions for these new dialogs.

    2. Anaximeno, that’s interesting. I have only tried the built-in themes, and specifically the one I normally use. So I guess they’re just not supported yet. Weird. I would have thought that Mint’s own themes would have been the first to support the new dialogs. Ok. Good to know. It’s hopefully just a matter of time before Mint-X supports theming the new dialogs (please, Clem?!).

  10. Hello, thank you for continuing to listen to your users and continue to develop this great system.

    I have a small detail, with the “Web Apps” app and is that when I create a WhatsApp webapp the links open within the same webapp and I want the links to open in the default browser, I wish you could correct that little detail.

    Thank you.

    Reply

  11. Excellent work Clem, you guessed our thinking with the new features included, I wanted to mention that there is an error in Nemo for Linux Mint 22.1, when you download a folder from a OneDrive educational account, when you unzip the downloaded folder, the thumbnails cannot be displayed correctly, I left the complete description of the problem on gibhub, greetings.
    https://github.com/linuxmint/mint22.1-beta/issues/26

    Reply

  12. Excellent work Clem, you guessed our thoughts with the new features included, I wanted to mention that there is an error in Nemo for Linux Mint 22.1, when a folder is downloaded from Outlook or OneDrive, when unzipping the downloaded folder, the thumbnails cannot be displayed correctly, the description I left the complete version of the problem on gibhub, greetings.
    https://github.com/linuxmint/mint22.1-beta/issues/26

    Reply

  13. First impressions: positive and works alright for now.
    Some remarks:
    1) GDEBI and Synaptic not installed by default. I kinda remember reading something about this in some past monthly news. So, no big surprise.

    2) When trying to install a .deb file with the default ‘install with programs manager’ the manager opens but does absolutely nothing. I gave up on it.

    3) Once installed Synaptic works as advertized.

    4) This is not the case for GDEBI. It is afflicted with the same ‘desease’ as the GDEBI installed in Debian: when we try to install using ‘open with Gdebi’, Gdebi opens but closes abruptly when ‘install package’ is clicked. The remedy is the same as with Debian: modify the menu entry by clicking on ‘open in a terminal’. Gdebi works OK after.
    Regards
    François Proulx, Longueuil, Québec, Canada

    Reply

    2. Hi. Yes I remembered this mention without realizing what that meant. Problem was solved by the failure of something I tried and had to re-install LM22.1. Just found that it was a single file that did not install, all others installed without problems. Right now everything works and as of now no need for Synaptic and the software installer works all right. Neat…
      Regards
      François Proulx, Longueuil, Québec, Canada

  14. Hi Clem, thanks for the good work !

    You said power modes may override certain user settings, may I ask which ones exactly ? More clarity on this front would be welcome.

    It would also be very nice if we were able to adjust both day and night temperature of the screen in the night light feature, but I guess that’ll be for another release, haha ^^

    Reply

  15. How will this impact LMDE6 in the near future?
    I’m assuming that LMDE6 will be getting the Mint 22.1 upgrades, soon.

    Reply

    1. Same questions as Jeremy!
      I prefer the LMDE edition and am wondering when the new Cinnamon version and new themes will be ported to LMDE.
      Thanks for the work guys!

  16. Hi Clem, excellent work as always!

    Quick question: are Chrome(ium) notifications going to get fixed anytime soon? They kinda broke since the introduction of the color switcher in the Theme settings along with the new theme (so a long time ago). Basically, when receiving a notification containing an image from any Chromium browser, the image is not shown at all and only text is displayed. However, if two Chromium notifications are sent at around the same time, the first notification will be bugged as described but the second one will contain the image (although extremely big).

    If this could be fixed, and perhaps the image made smaller to look consistent with how Firefox handles images in notifiactions, that would be much appreciated.

    You can test the notifications with this simple website: https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html

    Reply

  17. I’m impressed with what’s been done with the Cinnamon desktop, but as a committed Mate enthusiast, I’d like to know what’s new in the Mate desktop.

    Reply

  18. The new version, fresh out of the oven, with the delicious aroma of cinnamon and mint, for us to savor 😋️😄️

    I believe everyone was looking forward to the new post, a big hug to all the developers and contributors of this great project (^o^)//

    To infinity and beyond!

    Reply

  19. @Clem and Team,
    Any news regarding enabling back again video decoding acceleration by hardware on VLC on Intel CPUs as I’ve reported back here?

    https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=426456

    This is a showstopper for me and the only reason I prefer to hold back on Mint 21.3 on my old Intel NUC I use for everyday multimedia.

    Besides this, thank you Team for even more and better Mint, I will test it on the only AMD machine I have once the upgrade path is open. May you have a good bug crunch time and manage to release it as our much expected and appreciated Christmas present and then relax and enjoy your Holidays with your loved ones.

    Reply

  20. Hi, Clem, great job! Now the interface has become better and better!

    I still couldn’t answer you about the fact that in the Nemo file manager there is no viewing or editing descriptions of media files in the properties of the files themselves. There is still no way to put a password on any file. Thunar has these functions, but Nemo itself does not.

    I would really like to see these features appear in future versions. In the media files property, you can both view and edit descriptions – title, album, genres, year, rating and everything else in the media file. This very necessary feature is NOT available in Nemo.

    As for xplayer, I found a replacement in the SMPlayer media player, so I’m very happy with that.

    Reply

    1. I’ll second that proposal!
      It would be much more convenient to be able to view and edit audio or video file information with a simple right-click, as is commonplace with other file managers.
      Meanwhile, Thanks to all the Mint team for a top-class operating system, I’ve been using Mint for nearly 11 years now, sometimes with xfce desktop, sometimes Cinnamon. I’m currently using Cinnamon with Mint 22.

  21. The new password prompt (e.g. when using update manager) now block the whole screen, not allowing interaction with other windows. Previously it was only “pinned to top”. Can we switch it black? Just because a password dialog pops up, it should not block whatever the user does elsewhere.

    Reply

  22. Clem. The LMDE 6 installer does not recognize an existing Intel Sata Raid 1 volume, it only offers installation on separate disks. Have you developers removed Raid support?

    Reply

    1. The sound doesn’t have the quality I need so I have to stick to LM 21.3. Maybe you think to redo the sound part because so can not be used.

  24. I am always grateful for what Linux Mint offers and seldom ever have anything negative to mention about it, if ever. However, some things should be mentioned about this release, in all honestly, I will not be using 22.1. It only took 10 mins to make that decision. Night Light is useless if you are on the edge of time zone. There are too many inconsistencies in the color and shape of the UI that just makes for a distracting user experience. This very unlike the usual Linux Mint experience.

    An epic fail IMHO. There is no law that says Linux Mint should have two releases a year. Might as well just freeze 22.0 and get all this worked out instead of a issuing a sub-par release. This is not unique to Linux Mint, this happens in all distributions. It was so unexpected from Linux Mint. Ironic that this happened just as Linux Mint made it back to the top of the list in DistroWatch.com — so they must have been doing something right in the past!

    Reply

    1. Do you absolutely need to use Night Light, if you allow me to ask?
      I’m not using it, so I don’t get that this feature could be a show-stopper.
      Thanks in advance for enlightening me.

  25. In response to https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4785#comment-448680

    Well, here is another one slightly stumbling over Xia :-0
    Wanda, Wega, Wendy, Wiebke, Winnie, Whitney, Wynona are a few names I find are not bad 😉

    Staying within the same starting letter as the maior version and then following alphabetic sorting with the minor ones, made it easy to keep track when people only use the code names.

    Here are already some suggestions for the next iteration (to get back on track) 😉
    Yana, Yara, Yasmin, Yoko, Yolanda, Yuki, Yulia, Yuna, Yvette
    Guess that should do for a start 🙂

    Reply

  26. tengo lm21.3 y no puedo actualizar lm22 por las dificultades que me presentan para mi. que no soy experto en la materia.Uso LM desde la vercion 17 y no he tenido ningun problema anteriormente ,rogaria facilitar en esta oportunidad para acceder a LM22

    Reply

    1. Ho wrote (translated with Google translate):

      I have LM21.3 and I cannot update LM22 due to the difficulties it presents for me, as I am not an expert in the field. I have been using LM since version 17 and have not had any problems previously. I would ask for help on this occasion to access LM22.

  27. Hi Clem and Linux Mint team
    Some fault in 22 and 22.1:
    1) https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=429823
    2) In the event that a program freezes, it often happens that the buttons in the “Force quit” window are not clickable either (in 22.1, new design “force quit window). The buttons on the “force quit” window do not detect the click, as if it were frozen too.
    3) Open two terminal windows (A and B). Drag window ‘A’ to the left edge of the screen (snap). Drag window ‘B’ to the right edge of the screen (snap). Click ‘B’ window. Resize window ‘B’: move the vertical left edge of the window. Result: ‘B’ window size collapses.
    This is an old bug, Linux Mint 21 is also affected.

    Regards,
    Peter

    Reply

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