{"id":3858,"date":"2020-01-31T14:21:03","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T14:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.linuxmint.com\/?p=3858"},"modified":"2020-01-31T14:21:03","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T14:21:03","slug":"monthly-news-january-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.linuxmint.com\/?p=3858","title":{"rendered":"Monthly News – January 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

LMDE 4<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

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

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It also now supports Btrfs submodules and home directory encryption:<\/p>\n\n\n

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NVIDIA driver from the boot menu<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

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Cinnamon 4.6 Display Settings<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’re currently Alpha-testing this fractional scaling in Cinnamon and assessing its compatibility and pros and cons on various GPUs.<\/p>\n

MintBox3
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The MintBox3<\/a> is now available with Worldwide shipping from Compulab (Israel) and Amazon (USA).<\/p>\n