Linux Mint 19.1 will feature a modern Desktop layout and performance improvements with Cinnamon 4.0

[steven36]

If you are a Linux Mint user, you will be happy to know that Linux Mint 19.1 "Tessa" will be released around Christmas time. The release will include the Cinnamon 4.0 desktop environment with a refined user interface, along with various improvements made to different parts of the OS.

 

The official announcement say the following:

Cinnamon 4.0 will look more modern thanks to a new panel layout. Whether you enjoy the new look or prefer the old one, we want everyone to feel at home in their operating system, so you’ll have the option to embrace the change or to click a button to make Cinnamon look just like it did before. The idea of a larger and darker panel had been in the roadmap for a while.

 

The user will be able to choose between the traditional panel and a modern window list applet with window grouping and window previews. The modern version of the panel includes the following features:

• 40px icons
• 24px icons in the system tray
• Windows that are grouped by application

 

Users were given the ability to define a different icon size for each of the three panel zones (left, center and right for horizontal panels, or top, center and bottom for vertical ones). Each panel zone can now have a crisp icon size such as 16, 22, 24, 32, 48 or 64px or it can be made to scale either exactly (to fit the panel size) or optimally (to scale down to the largest crisp icon size which fits in the panel).

Other interesting changes of Linux Mint

Mint-Y improvements

 

Joseph Mccullar continued to improve the Mint-Y theme. Through a series of subtle changes he managed to dramatically increase the theme’s contrast.

The screenshot below shows the Xed text editor using the Mint-Y theme as it was in Mint 19 (on the left), and using the Mint-Y theme with Joseph’s changes (on the right):

 

 

The difference is immediately noticeable when the theme is applied on the entire desktop. Labels look sharp and stand out on top of their backgrounds. So do the icons which now look darker than before.

 

The changes also make it easier to visually identify the focused window:

 

 

In the above screenshot, the terminal is focused and its titlebar label is darker than in the other windows. This contrast is much more noticeable with Joseph’s changes (below the red line) than before (above the red line).

 

Status icons

Linux Mint 19 featured monochrome status icons. Although these icons looked nice on dark panels they didn’t work well in white context menus or in cases where the panel background color was changed by the user.

 

To tackle this issue, Linux Mint 19.1 will ship with support for symbolic icons in Redshift, mate-volume-control-applet, onboard and network-manager-applet.

 

Xapp

 

Stephen Collins added an icon chooser to the XApp library.

 

 

The icon chooser provides a dialog and a button and will make it easier for our applications to select themed icons and/or icon paths.

 

Cinnamon

Cinnamon 4.0 will look more modern thanks to a new panel layout. Whether you enjoy the new look or prefer the old one, we want everyone to feel at home in their operating system, so you’ll have the option to embrace the change or to click a button to make Cinnamon look just like it did before.

 

The idea of a larger and darker panel had been in the roadmap for a while.

 

Within our team, Jason Hicks and Lars Mueller (Cobinja) maintained two of the most successful 3rd party Cinnamon applets, respectively “Icing Task Manager” and “CobiWindowList”, two attempts at implementing a window list with app grouping and window previews, a feature which had become the norm in other major desktop operating systems, whether it was in the form of a dock (in Mac OS), a panel (in Windows) or a sidebar (in Ubuntu).

 

And recently German Franco had caught our attention on the need to use strict icon sizes to guarantee icons looked crisp rather than blurry.

 

We talked about all of this and Niko Krause, Joseph, Jason and I started working on a new panel layout for Cinnamon. We forked “Icing Task Manager” and integrated it into Cinnamon itself. That new applet received a lot of attention, many changes and eventually replaced the traditional window list and the panel launchers in the default Cinnamon panel.

 

Users were given the ability to define a different icon size for each of the three panel zones (left, center and right for horizontal panels, or top, center and bottom for vertical ones). Each panel zone can now have a crisp icon size such as 16, 22, 24, 32, 48 or 64px or it can be made to scale either exactly (to fit the panel size) or optimally (to scale down to the largest crisp icon size which fits in the panel).

 

 

Mint-Y-Dark was adapted slightly to look even more awesome and is now the default Cinnamon theme in Linux Mint.

 

By default, Cinnamon will feature a dark large 40px panel, where icons look crisp everywhere, and where they scale in the left and center zones but are restricted to 24px on the right (where we place the system tray and status icons).

 

This new look, along with the new workflow defined by the grouped window list, make Cinnamon feel much more modern than before.

 

We hope you’ll enjoy this new layout, we’re really thrilled with it, and if you don’t that’s OK too. We made sure everyone would be happy.

 

As you go through the “First Steps” section of the Linux Mint 19.1 welcome screen, you’ll be asked to choose your favorite desktop layout:

 

 

With a click of a button you’ll be able to switch back and forth between old and new and choose whichever default look pleases you the most.

 

Update Manager

Support for mainline kernels was added to the Update Manager. Thanks to “gm10” for implementing this.

 

 

Source

 

[gerula113]

hi Ihave linux mint 19 and win 10 and I put automatic updates and now when Istart the laptop its a grub error there 

you know how i can fixet whitout reinstall all

many thanks

[Israeli_Eagle]

And MATE Edition is still best and for sure stable. 

 

[steven36]

On 11/23/2018 at 4:11 AM, gerula113 said:

hi Ihave linux mint 19 and win 10 and I put automatic updates and now when Istart the laptop its a grub error there 

you know how i can fixet whitout reinstall all

many thanks

  Ways To Rescue Or Recover Grub Menu

http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/home/ways-to-rescue-or-recover-grub-menu

 

Windows 10 now messing up your boot on normal  updates  ?   I use to never have a problem with this with Windows 10 before as long as i kept Linux and Windows on the same drive . Only on Windows upgrades I would lose Grub completely and just have windows boot manger .So i just did clean installs  of both   I been running Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 LTS  since April  with Windows 8.1 with no problems  .

[thunderpants]

@gerula113

Boot repair cd

or try MXlinux ,it has a boot repair function built-in.

[BimBamSmash]

I see what they did here, and it is another step in the right direction for this great desktop environment. 

 

I don’t really get what about these changes makes this “modern” though. Kind of feels like that term is being used for wrong purposes in the tech industry these days.

[steven36]

15 hours ago, BimBamSmash said:

I see what they did here, and it is another step in the right direction for this great desktop environment. 

 

I don’t really get what about these changes makes this “modern” though. Kind of feels like that term is being used for wrong purposes in the tech industry these days.

It's not windows you can actually change the theme to anything  you want . Cinnamon  is like the best i used as far as changing the looks around  just  they need  to improve the performance.witch there doing in v4. Budgie  has good look out of the box and has good performance already . Mate can  even be made to look good if you apply a different theme too it.

[debebee]

Testing XFCE on Live USB mode now

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/12/19/linux-mint-19-1-tessa-is-now-available/

https://www.linuxmint.com/

[mp68terr]

Don't forget to check the known issues and possible fixes, mostly for those using Epson/Brother scanners.