The Linux Mint Blog

Hi everyone,

I’d like to thank all of you for your support and your donations.

The development cycle for Linux Mint 21.2 was closed a few days ago. Most of the projects have been tagged, built and added to the repositories for the upcoming release.

Xfce was updated to version 4.18.

CJS was rebased on GJS 1.74 / Mozjs 102.

XDG Desktop Portal support was added to all supported desktops (Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce). Among other things this brings a global dark mode setting.

This dark mode setting affects applications which support it and lets you choose between three options:

• Prefer light
• Prefer dark
• Let the applications decide

Among the many apps which support it, some are light by default (Firefox, Xed, Thingy, Xreader) and some are dark by default (Xviewer, Pix). The setting is also supported by many Flatpaks and GNOME/LibAdwaita applications.

Cinnamon 5.8 is getting gestures support for window management, workspace management, tiling and media controls. Gestures will be supported on touchpads, touchscreens and tablets.

The Software Manager was given a UI refresh, better scoring/sorting algorithms and a tuned package list.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors: Silver Sponsors:

Bronze Sponsors:

Donations in April:

A total of $9,952 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 317 donors:

$730 (2nd donation), John M.
$647 (4th donation), Oliver G.
$647, kit jugendhilfe
$647, Roland M.
$108, Andreas L.
$108, Udo F.
$100 (36th donation), Fast Junkie
$100 (13th donation), Tomasz E.
$100 (6th donation), John
$100 (3rd donation), Far West Computer Consulting
$100, Hans Christian R.
$100, Mark M.
$100, Simon W.
$75, Geoffrey N.
$75, Robert Z.
$71, Philippe L.
$70 (3rd donation), Horacio M.
$65 (3rd donation), Marcus A.
$54 (13th donation), Bernard H.
$54 (8th donation), Roland H.
$54 (7th donation), Richard C.
$54 (6th donation), Jyrki A.
$54 (4th donation), Marco V.
$54 (4th donation), Philippe A.
$54 (3rd donation), John A.
$54 (2nd donation), Dominique R.
$54 (2nd donation), Germain G.
$54 (2nd donation), Martin L.
$54 (2nd donation), Matthias P.
$54 (2nd donation), Rolf H.
$54 (2nd donation), Vidar Jon B.
$54, Carlos I Z.
$54, Daniel K.
$54, Elmar V.
$54, Gerhard S.
$54, Harry B.
$54, Henning W.
$54, Jean-guy F.
$54, Judit A.
$54, Klaus W.
$54, Lars D.
$54, Marc M.
$54, Phil G.
$54, Torsten W.
$50 (71th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (5th donation), W G. M.
$50 (4th donation), William M.
$50 (3rd donation), William T. aka “Beel”
$50 (2nd donation), W. K. .
$50 (2nd donation), Edward W.
$50 (2nd donation), Tlingit Tribal Art
$50, aethernet.org
$50, Alejandro R.
$50, Cody N.
$50, Derek H.
$50, Karl G.
$50, Mark F.
$50, Nicholas C.
$50, Rafael A.
$50, Robert W.
$50, Sammie W.
$50, William R.
$40 (6th donation), Kenneth R.
$38 (14th donation), Henk van C.
$36 (2nd donation), Theodore S.
$35 (14th donation), Bill S. aka “In memory of Madalyn my beautiful wife who passed on Thursday.”
$32, Philip B.
$31 (14th donation), Adam K.
$30, Chris G.
$30, Kuba S.
$27 (2nd donation), Matthias H.
$25 (26th donation), Linux Mint Sverige
$25 (3rd donation), Jeff E.
$25 (2nd donation), Myron J.
$25, John A.
$22 (35th donation), Peter E.
$22 (17th donation), Bjarne K.
$22 (13th donation), David Kelly aka “Daveinuk”
$22 (7th donation), Dionisios K.
$22 (6th donation), Liviu B.
$22 (4th donation), Antonio D.
$22 (4th donation), Rolf-jürgen G.
$22 (4th donation), Tino M.
$22 (3rd donation), Arno W.
$22 (3rd donation), Carsten M.
$22 (3rd donation), Frank D. aka “highlandham”
$22 (3rd donation), Kiaran S.
$22 (2nd donation), aka “Infidelus”
$22 (2nd donation), Charles K.
$22 (2nd donation), Filippo B.
$22 (2nd donation), Jean-pierre V.
$22 (2nd donation), John T.
$22 (2nd donation), Jürgen L.
$22 (2nd donation), Luc F.
$22 (2nd donation), Michael B.
$22 (2nd donation), Peter E.
$22 (2nd donation), Stefan W.
$22 (2nd donation), Thomas B.
$22 (2nd donation), Viktor W. aka “Vykynger”
$22, Adam H.
$22, Alexander R.
$22, Andreas V.
$22, Anonymous
$22, Artan K.
$22, Axel F.
$22, Csordas M.
$22, Daniel B.
$22, Dario B.
$22, Digimations IKE
$22, Hans-juergen L.
$22, Hartmut K.
$22, Josef G.
$22, József G.
$22, Juan M.
$22, Kjetil F.
$22, Kozic J.
$22, Maik R.
$22, Manfred H.
$22, Odie P.
$22, Owen O.
$22, Reimund M.
$22, Richard H.
$22, Robert S.
$22, Sascha K.
$22, Sebastian H.
$22, Thomas A.
$22, Thomas V.
$22, Victor B.
$21 (9th donation), Lamont C.
$20 (55th donation), Bryan F.
$20 (35th donation), John D.
$20 (20th donation), SecureRandom
$20 (10th donation), Anne-christine U.
$20 (9th donation), Stephen F.
$20 (7th donation), Kostas M. K.
$20 (7th donation), Nate P. aka “cog_nate”
$20 (7th donation), Robert D. aka “MacDhai”
$20 (6th donation), Steverj aka “Somerset Scrumpy”
$20 (4th donation), Debra D.
$20 (4th donation), Eric M.
$20 (4th donation), Gary B.
$20 (4th donation), Michael P.
$20 (3rd donation), Curtis S.
$20 (3rd donation), Keith H.
$20 (2nd donation), Alex Z.
$20 (2nd donation), Christer B.
$20 (2nd donation), Tulio J S.
$20, Andrew G.
$20, Anthony J.
$20, Anthony M.
$20, Elite Pool Inspections aka “Elite Pool Inspections”
$20, Ganesh S.
$20, Gary K.
$20, German Genaro R.
$20, Joe V.
$20, Lu R A.
$20, Nathaniel C.
$20, Patrick W.
$20, Paul C.
$20, Paul C.
$20, Peter H.
$20, Robert G.
$20, Steve P.
$20, Steven M.
$20, Tom T.
$20, William B.
$19 (2nd donation), Toon V.
$16 (51th donation), Michael R.
$16 (2nd donation), Richard T.
$15 (16th donation), Constantin M.
$15 (2nd donation), Nick Gausling, Business Consultant
$14 (81th donation), Johann J.
$11 (46th donation), Francois-R L.
$11 (36th donation), Daniel S.
$11 (36th donation), Thomas R.
$11 (19th donation), aka “AsciiWolf”
$11 (13th donation), Tugaleres.com
$11 (12th donation), Thomas K.
$11 (11th donation), Adis H.
$11 (11th donation), Denys G.
$11 (9th donation), François L.
$11 (9th donation), Przemyszaw S.
$11 (8th donation), Karl H.
$11 (6th donation), Dimitar S.
$11 (6th donation), Jeanmichel T.
$11 (6th donation), Thomas R.
$11 (5th donation), Alexander J.
$11 (5th donation), Axel R.
$11 (5th donation), Lukas N.
$11 (5th donation), RJ
$11 (4th donation), Antonio C.
$11 (4th donation), Matthias S.
$11 (3rd donation), Gernot K.
$11 (3rd donation), Heiko W.
$11 (3rd donation), Jan Z.
$11 (3rd donation), Rainer N.
$11 (2nd donation), Andrea S.
$11 (2nd donation), Andrew G.
$11 (2nd donation), Jörg B.
$11 (2nd donation), Leonardo M.
$11 (2nd donation), Patrick B.
$11 (2nd donation), Sascha M.
$11, Andrea S.
$11, Andreas K.
$11, Arie N.
$11, Bjarke B.
$11, Bjarne G.
$11, Brett A.
$11, Byron F.
$11, Bzazej T.
$11, Carl S.
$11, Daniel R.
$11, Eke Tamás aka “enurien”
$11, Florian K.
$11, Francisco R.
$11, Giancarlo S.
$11, Giso G.
$11, Jarmo M.
$11, Javier C.
$11, Jocelyn G.
$11, Joel S.
$11, John M.
$11, Jörg R.
$11, Jos H.
$11, Karim M.
$11, Konstantzns J.
$11, Marc R.
$11, Mario P.
$11, Marion P.
$11, masformulas.com
$11, Münxelhaus Beratungen
$11, Nandor Z.
$11, Nikolaos S.
$11, Raymond C.
$11, Reynaldo M.
$11, Stefan D.
$11, Thomas G.
$10 (85th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (79th donation), Frank K.
$10 (32nd donation), Philip Woodward
$10 (28th donation), Carpet Cleaning Winnipeg
$10 (26th donation), Tomasz K.
$10 (17th donation), Aimee W.
$10 (14th donation), Jorge R.
$10 (10th donation), Jan P. aka “plavcik”
$10 (9th donation), Michael K.
$10 (6th donation), Dave S.
$10 (5th donation), Organic CBD Gummies
$10 (4th donation), Allyn G.
$10 (4th donation), HM Magnusson
$10 (4th donation), Jose C.
$10 (4th donation), Mihai-Vlad N.
$10 (4th donation), platypus products
$10 (3rd donation), Ilija L.
$10 (3rd donation), Waldemar P. aka “valldek”
$10 (2nd donation), Allan S.
$10 (2nd donation), Daniel C.
$10 (2nd donation), James C.
$10 (2nd donation), John D.
$10 (2nd donation), Paweł S.
$10 (2nd donation), Shawn P.
$10, Airton Antonio D.
$10, Callie H.
$10, Dennis G.
$10, Garry H.
$10, Ivan S.
$10, Jakub N.
$10, John B.
$10, Jonah B.
$10, Jordan K.
$10, Joseph P.
$10, Kenneth J Majersky K.
$10, Larry E.
$10, Nayab K.
$10, PF
$10, Philip Rowell
$10, Riasp M.
$10, Robert W.
$10, Sanyu Y.
$10, Valerio S.
$7 (6th donation), Geoffrey O.
$7 (4th donation), Andrew C.
$7, Przemyszaw T.
$118 from 32 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

Patrons:

Linux Mint is proudly supported by 612 patrons, for a sum of $2,783 per month.

To become a Linux Mint patron, please visit https://www.patreon.com/linux_mint

Many thanks for your continued support and for your donations!

A few additional visual changes were implemented in preparation for Linux Mint 21.2.

Tooltips

We had been planning on redesigning our tooltips for a while. The main reason was that they lacked consistency and looked slightly different depending on where they came from (GTK2, GTK3, Cinnamon). They also featured a grey border which didn’t look clean around their yellow background.

Looking around us at other operating systems, Linux themes and what was done on the Web, we found that almost nobody used the traditional yellow color anymore. We tried a few things and eventually settled on what we think looks the best for us. Rather than using yellow, black or grey tooltips we decided to make them use the accent color.

We fixed the consistency issues across the various GTK versions and Cinnamon. We also took inspiration from Adwaita and made our tooltips bigger, rounder and with larger margins.

In Cinnamon we also added a bit of space between the applets and their tooltips so they wouldn’t be stuck to the panel.

Notifications

Cinnamon notifications will also be using the accent color.

And whenever possible they will prefer symbolic icons.

Although these changes are quite small they continue to make the desktop look and feel cleaner and more modern.

In Linux Mint 21.1 efforts were made to make the accent colors more special, more vivid but less used. This continues this trend. Notifications and tooltips are transient elements which highlight an event or a feature. They should be beautiful and noticeable.

Secureboot

An update in Ubuntu’s shim-signed broke the compatibility of all Linux Mint (and past Ubuntu and derivative) ISOs with secureboot.

If because of this you are unable to install Linux Mint, for now we recommend to disable secureboot.

We are currently working on a fix for future ISOs and taking this opportunity to review the way we produce our images.

Upcoming Releases

We’re planning three releases for the Summer (or Winter if you’re in the South Hemisphere):

• Linux Mint 21.2
• An EDGE ISO release with kernel 5.19
• LMDE 6, based on the upcoming Debian 12 (set for release in June)

In order for all releases to get the 21.2 changes, they should come out in that order, with up to a month separating the Mint 21.2 and the LMDE 6 releases.

No ETAs have been decided yet.

Warpinator

Work continues on hardening the security aspects of Warpinator.

The tool recently received support for landlock and bubblewrap. These technologies were used to guarantee folder isolation, basically making Warpinator technically unable to write outside of its dedicated download folder.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors: Silver Sponsors:

Bronze Sponsors:

Donations in March:

A total of $10,780 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 393 donors:

$250, Larry F.
$216 (3rd donation), Morten K. A.
$150 (2nd donation), Adam S.
$133, Michael N. aka “Django”
$108 (8th donation), Mimi
$108 (4th donation), Nicolas H.
$108 (3rd donation), Mark H.
$108 (2nd donation), Christian G.
$108, Achim R.
$108, Jessica R.
$108, Stan
$100 (7th donation), Ricky G.
$100 (6th donation), Charles aka “Charley3”
$100 (4th donation), David T.
$100 (4th donation), Kevin L.
$100 (3rd donation), Carl T.
$100 (2nd donation), Curt B.
$100 (2nd donation), Jason B.
$100 (2nd donation), Joel H.
$100, Danny T.
$100, Jeffrey J.
$100, mattlongname
$100, Michael L.
$100, Trent I.
$98, Melvin C.
$86, Monika K.
$69 (2nd donation), Tomáš R.
$54 (18th donation), Naoise G.
$54 (16th donation), Bjarne K.
$54 (4th donation), Christian D aka “zorbeck”
$54 (4th donation), Rolandas R.
$54 (3rd donation), Christian N.
$54 (2nd donation), Marinus D.
$54 (2nd donation), Minty Kerman
$54 (2nd donation), Stephan A.
$54 (2nd donation), Wulf N.
$54, Albert-jozef P.
$54, Christopher B.
$54, Dominik P.
$54, Duncan T.
$54, Friedhelm K.
$54, Guillaume V.
$54, Irene L.
$54, Jonas F.
$54, Jonathan J.
$54, Jörn B.
$54, Lukas S.
$54, Markus B.
$54, Martin F.
$54, Patrick L.
$54, Paul MD
$54, T.j. B.
$54, Tim O.
$54, Vytautas R.
$52 (2nd donation), M. B. .
$51 (2nd donation), Khan G.
$50 (70th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (7th donation), Rod Hassler
$50 (7th donation), Slowpoke47
$50 (4th donation), Martin Ch.
$50 (3rd donation), Peter S. aka “Pierre”
$50 (3rd donation), Wayne R.
$50 (2nd donation), Chris C.
$50 (2nd donation), Edward J. C.
$50 (2nd donation), Francois B.
$50 (2nd donation), Larry M.
$50 (2nd donation), Niels B. aka “DetTårnHøjeHelvede”
$50, aka “The O.G.”
$50, Andrew B.
$50, Davin S.
$50, Frank J.
$50, John R.
$50, Peter L.
$50, Rajesh S.
$50, Robert G.
$50, Robert J.
$50, Ron T.
$50, Rylen L.
$50, Stephen C.
$50, Thomas H.
$50, Timothy R.
$40 (5th donation), Juan V.
$40 (4th donation), William L.
$40 (2nd donation), Brian M.
$40, Elizabeth R.
$40, Richard S.
$40, zz .
$38 (3rd donation), Rüdiger A.
$36, Emily L.
$36, Theodore S.
$35 (9th donation), Jeff S.
$35 (7th donation), Ken W. aka “Tracknut”
$35, Bob W.
$32 (10th donation), Lars-gunnar S.
$32 (4th donation), Anthony G M.
$32 (4th donation), Ralf W.
$32 (2nd donation), Johann S.
$32 (2nd donation), Peter P.
$32 (2nd donation), Söhnke H.
$32, Carlo Z.
$32, Lothar L.
$32, Pierre G.
$32, Renato O.
$32, Torsten D.
$30 (7th donation), Gene P.
$30 (4th donation), Daniel T.
$30, Nikola Y.
$27 (18th donation), Hubertus B. aka “hubi”
$27 (12th donation), Roger aka “GNU/Linux werkgroep”
$27 (2nd donation), Christoph M.
$27, Hc K.
$27, James F.
$27, Monika M.
$27, Stylianos C.
$25 (25th donation), Linux Mint Sverige
$25 (14th donation), Vaughan Butler
$25 (11th donation), Richard N.
$25 (8th donation), Carl J.
$25 (4th donation), Reuben N.
$25 (3rd donation), Cheryl Meril, Notary Public
$25, Colin E.
$25, Rodney M.
$22 (34th donation), Peter E.
$22 (20th donation), Per J.
$22 (17th donation), Abdulkadir H. aka “Askari”
$22 (9th donation), Steve Glyn.
$22 (8th donation), L. Mikkel
$22 (7th donation), Ciaran M.
$22 (7th donation), Jürgen B.
$22 (6th donation), Stephen W.
$22 (5th donation), Davide P. aka “Dragone2”
$22 (5th donation), Joe S.
$22 (5th donation), Liviu B.
$22 (5th donation), Marcel aka “schlegel11”
$22 (4th donation), Dominique M. O.
$22 (4th donation), John T.
$22 (4th donation), Vittorio F.
$22 (3rd donation), Antoni Aloy Torrens
$22 (3rd donation), Fredrik E.
$22 (3rd donation), Günther H.
$22 (3rd donation), Luis D. R.
$22 (3rd donation), Pavlos G.
$22 (3rd donation), Richard W.
$22 (2nd donation), Bruno Z.
$22 (2nd donation), Christopher H.
$22 (2nd donation), Dirk H.
$22 (2nd donation), Ivan D.
$22 (2nd donation), Karl-heinz P.
$22 (2nd donation), Peter W.
$22 (2nd donation), Raul A.
$22 (2nd donation), Rolf S.
$22, Albrecht H.
$22, Alexander R.
$22, Christian J.
$22, Dieter H.
$22, Gian Carlo G.
$22, Gunnar Bjørn L.
$22, Gustav L.
$22, Johannes B.
$22, Julien G.
$22, Lydia B.
$22, Malcolm S.
$22, Marko D.
$22, Michel B.
$22, Niccolo B.
$22, Nico W.
$22, Peter S.
$22, Robert C.
$22, Seppo K.
$22, Serge J.
$22, Stavros S.
$22, Steven H.
$22, Tim H.
$22, Valentijn G.
$22, Vilius C.
$22, Werner S.
$21 (2nd donation), Matt H. aka “ermacaz”
$20 (62th donation), Rick R.
$20 (54th donation), Bryan F.
$20 (42th donation), Stefan M. H.
$20 (24th donation), vagrantcow
$20 (13th donation), Dana S.
$20 (6th donation), Doug S.
$20 (6th donation), Harrison U.
$20 (5th donation), Lal C.
$20 (4th donation), Brent P.
$20 (4th donation), Mark M.
$20 (4th donation), Robert M.
$20 (3rd donation), Glenn Meyer
$20 (3rd donation), John A. F.
$20 (3rd donation), Marvin F.
$20 (3rd donation), Robert S.
$20 (3rd donation), Ueda Y.
$20 (2nd donation), Chad B.
$20 (2nd donation), Christopher E.
$20 (2nd donation), Jean-francois B.
$20 (2nd donation), Lee R.
$20 (2nd donation), Thomas D.
$20, Aaron H.
$20, Allen L.
$20, Andrew F.
$20, Anon
$20, Anthony W.
$20, Charles C.
$20, Daniel S.
$20, Francis B.
$20, Geoff C.
$20, Howard C K.
$20, Joseph M.
$20, Keith B.
$20, Mike W.
$20, Pablo J.
$20, Paul H.
$20, Raymond L.
$20, Robert G.
$20, Robert W.
$20, Ronald B.
$20, Ronald H.
$20, Tamas M.
$20, Tarcisio P.
$20, Thiago Juliano D.
$20, William S.
$18 (2nd donation), Imre N.
$16 (67th donation), Andreas S.
$16 (50th donation), Michael R.
$16 (4th donation), Daniel H.
$15 (12th donation), Fred B.
$14 (80th donation), Johann J.
$12, Paul A J.
$11 (45th donation), Francois-R L.
$11 (35th donation), Daniel S.
$11 (35th donation), Thomas R.
$11 (12th donation), Tugaleres.com
$11 (10th donation), Denys G.
$11 (9th donation), Ivan Stamenov
$11 (9th donation), Jarmo J.
$11 (6th donation), Mark W.
$11 (5th donation), Stefan P.
$11 (4th donation), Kjerkreit Ytre, Anders Kiær
$11 (4th donation), Antonio John Ettorre aka “AJ”
$11 (4th donation), Massimo R.
$11 (4th donation), Raphael G.
$11 (3rd donation), Alf J.
$11 (3rd donation), Mr A
$11 (3rd donation), Pavel P.
$11 (3rd donation), Ronald S.
$11 (3rd donation), Sean Y.
$11 (3rd donation), Sebastian H.
$11 (2nd donation), Andre Toussaint aka “AndreT”
$11 (2nd donation), Arno W.
$11 (2nd donation), Axel S.
$11 (2nd donation), Carlo R.
$11 (2nd donation), Henry B.
$11 (2nd donation), Luis C.
$11 (2nd donation), Mario M.
$11 (2nd donation), Mariusz B.
$11 (2nd donation), Matu Teodor Ioan aka “Teo”
$11 (2nd donation), Roland F. aka “rofibelm”
$11 (2nd donation), S. W.
$11 (2nd donation), Sandu I.
$11 (2nd donation), Želimir S.
$11, Albert T.
$11, Andrea S.
$11, Antonio B.
$11, Csilla F.
$11, Dario B.
$11, David H.
$11, Davide T.
$11, Fran P.
$11, Giorgio M.
$11, Henrik N.
$11, Igor Tomasz G.
$11, Jerome L.
$11, Jonas H.
$11, Juan Ramon B.
$11, Luciano V.
$11, Marcus B.
$11, Marko S.
$11, Nicola C.
$11, Nikola D.
$11, page aka “page”
$11, Patrick B.
$11, Paul A.
$11, Pedro Miguel
$11, Peter C.
$11, Philippe J.
$11, Piotr S.
$11, Ralf W.
$11, Roger Julius Felix D.
$11, Sascha M.
$11, Sergej S.
$11, Stefan J.
$11, Stefan W.
$11, Sten G.
$11, Thomas K.
$11, Yevhen S.
$10 (84th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (78th donation), Frank K.
$10 (31st donation), Philip Woodward
$10 (19th donation), Solar Panels Saskatoon
$10 (16th donation), Aimee W.
$10 (11th donation), William M.
$10 (10th donation), Michael P.
$10 (7th donation), Jeffery G.
$10 (6th donation), Andrei Z.
$10 (6th donation), Thevirtua
$10 (6th donation), Vlad Gruetz (YouTube)
$10 (5th donation), Nathan G. aka “Interior Painters in Baytown TX”
$10 (5th donation), Ricardo C N aka “V”
$10 (4th donation), casca de copiat
$10 (4th donation), Cesar A.
$10 (4th donation), Corey J.
$10 (4th donation), Daniel Greg aka “006.5”
$10 (2nd donation), Alan S.
$10 (2nd donation), Alfred A.
$10 (2nd donation), Eugene C.
$10 (2nd donation), Ian E.
$10 (2nd donation), Ricardo S. C.
$10 (2nd donation), Robert K.
$10 (2nd donation), Ruslan N.
$10 (2nd donation), Walter P.
$10 (2nd donation), Zsolt T.
$10 (2nd donation), Дмитрий С.
$10, Andrew S.
$10, Anthony M.
$10, Ash
$10, Bryan M.
$10, casca de copiat
$10, Christopher H.
$10, David S.
$10, Douglas Y.
$10, Fred B.
$10, Gilberto L.
$10, Greg N.
$10, Hannes B.
$10, Jason K.
$10, John D.
$10, John R.
$10, Kenneth P.
$10, Martin M.
$10, Michael C.
$10, Nick Gausling, Business Consultant
$10, Pawan N.
$10, Rebecca W.
$10, Robert A.
$10, Tarek E.
$10, Wesley S.
$9, Cameron S.
$8 (2nd donation), Leonid B.
$154 from 41 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

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Today we’re revealing some of the visual changes we’ve been working on in preparation for the next release.

Introduction

In Linux Mint 21.1, we introduced the following improvements:

• Mint-Y was turned into a less-accentuated theme with vibrant colors and new place icons
• The old look was provided via Mint-Y-Legacy for people who didn’t like these changes
• A selection of popular 3rd party themes (Yaru, Numix, Breeze, cursor themes..) was added

This was well received and it provided a lot of options for users to choose from.

That said, a few issues caught our attention.

The huge variety of themes and color variants created clutter and made it harder for users to locate a particular theme.

Some icon themes work well with some control themes but not with others. The welcome screen provides a way to quickly switch from light to dark and from one color to another but it has its own limitation: It only works with the Mint-Y theme and only in our distribution.

With this in mind we decided to design a solution which could work for any theme and any distribution and which would make it much easier to browse and pick without having to go through long lists of installed themes and without worrying about compatibility.

Oh, and the striped place icons weren’t as popular as we had imagined. This is something we got very early in your feedback. We worked on that too.

Simplifications

No brown

Brown and Sand are shades of the same color (same hue). We’re introducing color tones so one of them had to go.

No stripe

The stripe on the place icons was cute but it wasn’t well received. People wanted more variety when it came to colors. The stripe color wasn’t visible enough to work well with folder-color-switcher.

The stripe was therefore removed, making the icons look similar to those from the Papirus icon theme, which they were based on.

No mono icons

One of the really cool things about Gtk (the toolkit used by most applications in Linux Mint) is how it supports “symbolic” icons.

Symbolic icons are designed to provide good contrast and to be recognizable in all sizes. Gtk dynamically changes the color of these icons based on the background color which is behind them.

Have a look at the “Copy” menu item below:

This menu is from Nemo which uses symbolic icons. As you can see, the icon changes color and goes from black to white when the menu item is hovered. It matches the label.

In comparison, look at the menu item below:

This menu is from Caja, it uses a normal icon, also known as “fullcolor”. This is an icon which is rendered just the way it looks. Gtk doesn’t change its colors dynamically.

As you can see it doesn’t look as nice. The “Copy” label gets inverted to white but the icon keeps its original color and lacks contrast.

And this particular icon isn’t just a fullcolor icon… it’s a monochrome fullcolor icon. We use fullcolor icons in dialogs, in the app menu and that’s OK as long as these icons are actually colorful. The problem here is that this fullcolor icon is monochrome.

You see, the trend nowadays is to have monochrome action icons. It’s what we’re used to and what we expect. It can either be done correctly, using symbolic icons:

or done badly, using mono icons:

To prevent this kind of issue all the applications and projects we develop use symbolic icons. This ensures they look fine with any themes, whether the themes are dark, light or light and dark.

An application which uses fullcolor icons will only work well with some themes. An application which uses symbolic icons will work well with any themes.

Until now Mint-Y provided monochrome fullcolor icons. This was done to make fullcolor icon applications look nice (almost similar to the symbolic look) but at a cost. First it only worked with light themes, so each color variant had to be duplicated, to provide both a Light and a Dark icon theme. Second, no matter what, this couldn’t work with themes which mixed dark and light elements (Mint-Y-Legacy-Darker or Arc-Darker for instance).

This is Transmission, one of the few applications which still relies on fullcolor icons. It looks nice because Mint-Y provides monochrome icons which look similar to its symbolic icons.. but this application features the same theme compatibility issues as caja.

In Linux Mint 21.2 we will remove all monochrome icons and all Dark icon themes. In applications which still use them, fullcolor icons will default to Adwaita.

Whether or not they look better is subjective, but at least they will work everywhere.

Cinnamon “Styles”

The next iteration of Cinnamon will introduce a new concept called “styles”. A style has up to three modes: mixed, dark and light. Each of these modes can contain color “variants”. A variant is a combination of themes which work well together. The idea behind styles, modes and variants is to make it really simple to switch to something that looks great, and to quickly browse what’s there, no matter how many individual themes are installed and without having to find elements which match each other.

When you open the theme settings, you will see this:

In the style combo you’ll see popular styles such as Adwaita, Mint-X, Mint-Y etc.. choose one mode and the color variants will show up.

You can switch between styles, modes and color variants with a few clicks of a button.

If you want to tune things or select a combination of themes which isn’t proposed, you can click on “Advanced settings” and get back to the familiar settings window where you can choose each theme individually.

Mint-L

Mint-Y-Legacy was renamed Mint-L.

If you enjoy the “Darker” themes, it’s never been easier to select. And now that the mono icons are gone it’s compatible with fullcolor applications.

Two-tone place icons

The stripes are gone on place icons and each color received beautiful two-tones icons.

Here are a few examples, Aqua:

Pink:

New colorways

In the past we tried to cover all the colors of the rainbow and to make sure they weren’t too similar to each other. This was a mistake. Most people like blue or aqua. We still need to provide variety of course, but it shouldn’t matter if two styles are similar, as long as they bring something tangible and they’re both popular.

So with this in mind, we brought in another orange combination. This one uses Yaru (from Papirus, inspired from the Yaru theme from Ubuntu):

And from blue to green we’ve got 7 beautiful variants. Here’s Teal using Cyan icons:

Distributions and 3rd party themes

Everything will work out of the box for everybody. We want Cinnamon styles to work well for us but also for other distributions and 3rd party theme artists.

Cinnamon styles are defined in JSON files in /usr/share/cinnamon/styles.d/. These files are read in alphabetical order and styles can override one another if they have the same name. This is done to let distributions and/or theme artists define their own styles. Cinnamon provides style definitions for Adwaita. Mint provides additional style definitions for its own themes.

We also made it relatively easy for artists to generate Mint-Y icon themes. Here are SUSE and Gulf examples:

If you’re interested in defining Cinnamon styles or generating your own Mint-Y colorways don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

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