Linux Mint 20.1 long-term support release is out

[mood]

Linux Mint 20.1 long-term support release is out

 

Linux Mint 20.1 is now available; the first stable release of Linux Mint in 20.1 is available in the three flavors Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce. The new version of the Linux distribution is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Linux kernel 5.4.

 

Since it is a long-term support release, Linux Mint 20.1 will be supported until 2025. The Linux distribution comes with updated software and refinements and new features according to the development team.

 

Linux Mint 20.1 comes with a unified file system that sees certain directories being merged with their counterparts in /usr, e.g. /bin merged with /usr/bin, /lib merged with /usr/lib for compatibility purposes.

Linux Mint 20.1

 

Linux Mint 20.1 includes several new features. The developers have added an option to turn websites into desktop applications in the new version. Start the new Web App manager to turn any site, e.g. gHacks, Twitter, or YouTube into a web app.

 

 

Web apps behave like desktop programs for the most part; they start in their own window and use a custom icon, and you find them in the Alt-Tab interface when you use it. Web apps can be pinned and they are found in the application menu after they have been created.

 

Another new application in Linux Mint is the IPTV player Hypnotix. The application supports Live TV and playlists, and if a VOD section is available, TV services and movies. The app comes with default support for the free IPTV provider Free-IPTV which provides access to free live TV only.

 

Here is a list of "other" features shared across all three desktop environments:

• Printing and Scanning improvements by dropping support for ippusbxd which was introduced in Linux Mint 20 and restoring Linux Mint 19.3 printer and scanner support for reliability purposes.
• Xapps improvements.
• Celluloid hardware video acceleration enabled by default.
• Driver manager was migrated to PackageKit.
• Chromium was added to the repository.

 

Some features are desktop environment specific. In Cinnamon, there is a new option to right-click on files to add them to the favorites. Favorites can be accessed from the Favorites section of the files manager and the application menu.

 

Cinnamon 4.8 includes performance improvements, the developers mention a 5% rendering improvement at 4K and lower. Other improvements in Cinnamon include better Flatpak and spices support, a new relevance sort order of search results in the application menu, and support for thumbnails for files up to 64 Gigabytes in nemo.

 

You can check out the release notes and what's new posts on the official Linux Mint website:

• Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon What is New and Release Notes.
• Linux Mint 20.1 MATE What is New and Release Notes.
• Linux Mint 20.1 Xfce What is New and Release Notes.

 

Direct downloads for all supported desktop environments are available on this page.

 

 

Source: Linux Mint 20.1 long-term support release is out

[mood]

How to upgrade to Linux Mint 20.1

 

It is now possible to upgrade Linux Mint 20 to version 20.1.

 

 

If you’ve been waiting for this we’d like to thank you for your patience.

 

1. Create a system snapshot

 

You can use Timeshift to make a system snapshot before the upgrade.

 

If anything goes wrong, you can easily restore your operating system to its previous state.

 

Launch Timeshift from the application menu, follow the instructions on the screen to configure it and create a system snapshot.

 

2. Prepare for the upgrade

• Disable your screensaver
• If you installed Cinnamon spices (applets, desklets, extensions, themes), upgrade them from the System Settings

3. Upgrade the operating system

 

Upgrading to Linux Mint 20.1 is relatively easy.

 

In the Update Manager, click on the Refresh button to check for any new version of mintupdate or mint-upgrade-info. If there are updates for these packages, apply them.

 

Launch the System Upgrade by clicking on “Edit->Upgrade to Linux Mint 20.1 Ulyssa”.

 

 

Follow the instructions on the screen.

 

 

If asked whether to keep or replace configuration files, choose to replace them.

 

4. Convert the system with usrmerge (optional)

 

Although it is optional we recommend you convert your system with usrmerge. This is done already for all fresh installations of Linux Mint 20.1.

 

For information on usrmerge, read https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge/.

 

To convert your system, open a terminal and type:

apt install usrmerge

5. Reboot the computer

 

Once the upgrade is finished, reboot your computer.

 

Commonly asked questions

• If the upgrade is not available to you, check that you have the latest versions of mintupdate (5.7.3 or higher) and mint-upgrade-info (1.1.7 or higher) and restart the Update Manager by launching it again from the applications menu.
• If the latest versions of mintupdate and mint-upgrade-info are not yet available in your mirrors, switch to the default repositories.
• This happens rarely, but if you ever got locked and were unable to log back in, switch to console with CTRL+ALT+F1, log in, and type “killall cinnamon-screensaver” (or “killall mate-screensaver” in MATE). Use CTRL+ALT+F7 or CTRL+ALT+F8 to get back to your session.

 

Source: How to upgrade to Linux Mint 20.1

[mood]

Linux Mint sticks by Snap decision – meaning store is still disabled by default in 20.1

A few improvements and a handy web app utility, but older kernel causes problems for some hardware

 

The Linux Mint team has released version 20.1 - codenamed Ulyssa - with long-term support to 2025 and the usual three variants: Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce.

 

This is the first point release to Linux Mint since version 20 in July 2020. Both editions are based on Ubuntu 20.4 LTS, which is why long-term support is promised. The team has said that the same Ubuntu 20.04 package base will be used for all versions of Mint until 2022, which is when the next Ubuntu LTS is set for release, version 22.04. The kernel in Mint 2.01 is therefore 5.4, released at the end of 2019. The approach reflects a philosophy that a long-term support release is the right thing for most users, though using an older kernel also has downsides.

 

Mint 20.1 has two new applications. The first is a Webapp Manager which, the release notes say, lets users "turn any website into a desktop application." Once set up, a web app has its own window and icon, displays in the Alt-Tab selector, and can be pinned to the panel, a quick launch bar not entirely dissimilar to the Windows 10 taskbar. The rationale for the feature is that "it's easier to multi-task between applications on the desktop than it is between tabs in a web browser. As more and more useful tools are available on the web, it was important for Linux Mint to make it easier to create web apps."

 

Linux Mint 20.1 showing how a website can be displayed in its own window as a web application, pinned to the Panel for quick access

 

The code for Webapp Manager is in Python and can be found on GitHub. Apps can be based on various browsers including Firefox, Brave, Chrome, Chromium, Epiphany, Vivaldi, Ungoogled Chromium, and Microsoft Edge. Although technically there is not much to it, it is a handy feature with usability advantages.

 

Configuring a web app in Linux Mint 20.1

 

The second application is Hypnotix, an IPTV player and also a Python application, which streams from IPTV providers. One provider, called Free-IPTV, is pre-installed. It is not doing anything users could not already do with Kodi or VLC but the focus is on ease of use.

 

Another new feature is Add To Favorites, which populates a favourites menu in the Panel, giving quick access to files and folders. Support for this is extensive, and it is included in all file dialogs if they are built with GTK3, as well as in selected applications.

 

The Cinnamon desktop, developed for Linux Mint, has a claimed 5 per cent improved rendering performance for window management at resolutions up to 4K, a faster JavaScript interpreter, and improved power management from support for "suspend then hibernate" in Systemd.

 

Printing and scanning support has backtracked. Linux Mint 20 included driverless printing over USB using a library called ippusbxd (IPP over USB). "Ippusbxd turned out to be a disappointment and created more problems than it solved," according to the notes, so it has been removed in 20.1. The Chromium web browser is now in the Mint repository simplifying installation.

 

Under "Known issues" the Mint developers note that the Canonical Snap Store remains disabled. It is easy to enable, but the Mint team argues that Snap "only works with the Ubuntu Store" and that it uses "a protocol which isn't open, and using only one authentication system."

 

Another issue is that some APT packages in the Ubuntu repository "not only install Snap as a dependency but also run Snap commands as root without your knowledge or consent." Presuming Canonical continues to depend increasingly on Snap, this may be a growing problem for Linux Mint, but for the moment the absence of Snap is not a huge inconvenience. Flatpak, an alternative deployment system that also lets developers build one application for every distribution, is supported in Mint and has improved support in version 20.1.

 

The Mint developers also provide Edge install images, which include "newer components to be able to support the most modern hardware chipsets and devices." The Edge versions are described as less stable so should only be used if the standard release will not install or boot.

 

Along the same lines, a user noted that "most hardware released last year" is only supported in the Linux kernel 5.10.1 and that "kernel 5.4 is very, very old." In response, Mint maintainer Clément Lefèbvre agreed to consider building an install image using this later Linux kernel, which like 5.4 is designated LTS.

 

It is obvious from the above that Linux Mint is not the place to go for the latest Linux innovations. It is a conservative choice with the emphasis on presenting a simple user interface and a relatively easy transition from Windows – leaving aside details like not running Windows applications (although there is Wine).

 

The price of caution is lack of support for the latest hardware and while there are ways round this, it does undermine the user-friendliness for which this distribution is known.

 

 

Source: Linux Mint sticks by Snap decision – meaning store is still disabled by default in 20.1