Linux Mint team shares its plans for upcoming version

The Linux Mint team has been testing Linux Mint 21.3 for most of December and people are probably wondering when the stable version will land. According to the Mint team, which shared several plans it has, we will see the release sometime from next week.

Clem Lefebvre who heads the project said that it had received 50 bug reports during the beta and that 35 have since been closed. It plans to resolved the other 15 this week before making preparations for the stable version and an upgrade path.

Lefebvre also said that a 21.3 EDGE ISO is also going to be released with Linux kernel 6.2 rather than 5.15 so that newer hardware can be used. Problematic hardware included AMD graphics cards, wireless chipsets, and SSD controllers used in Acer laptops.

For anyone out there running LMDE 6, you will receive new updates just before Linux Mint 21.3 is released containing all the new Linux Mint features - the Debian base will still remain the same though.

This release cycle has been a bit atypical because the beta period only lasts about two weeks, even if Christmas and New Year are coming up. The team did not share why there has been such a delay this time, but it could be due to them receiving a greater quantity of bugs, it’s also possible they want to release the upgrade path at the same time.

Linux MInt 21.3 is codenamed Virginia, continuing the female naming system. It includes Hypnotix TV streaming improvements, improved ISO images that have full support for SecureBoot, Cinnamon 6.0 with plenty of improvements, and improvements to Warpinator.

Some of the Cinnamon improvements are:

• 75% scaling is back
• Window opacity keybinding is back
• Stylus buttons can be disabled
• The monitor used for notifications is now configurable
• Menu apps can be edited with right click -> properties
• Gestures: new desktop zoom action
• Gestures: You can now specify when an action is triggered.
• Sound applet: new shift-middle click action
• Grouped window list: new option to not show anything when hovering an app button

If you downloaded the beta and want to use the stable version, just keep applying the latest updates and once the stable is out, you’ll be on the stable too. If you were thinking of trying the beta, at this point it’s just best to wait for the final release as it should be ready soon.

Source: Linux Mint

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