It has taken a little longer than expected and there has been no gift for Christmas, but it is never too late if the distraction is good. What Clem Lefebvre made official a few moments ago is the availability of the stable version of linux mint 21.3, codenamed "Virginia." It arrives with outstanding new features, although the one that is perhaps most striking appears only in the form of an experimental option.
And the future of all Linux projects goes through the protocol Wayland. GNOME has already been using it for a few years by default, KDE will take the step in February, other projects will do so in 2024 and with Linux Mint 21.3 the foundations for this change will be laid. What you have below is the list with news most notable that have arrived with Virginia.
Linux Mint 21.3 highlights
- Based on Ubuntu 22.04 and supported until 2027.
- Linux 5.15.
- Cinnamon 6.0 in the main edition, with new features such as:
- Actions as a new type of spices. They were previously known as “Nemo actions”, and can be downloaded, activated and valued like any other.
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- Wayland as an option. It's not expected to replace This option can be accessed from the login screen. They warn that it is not ripe and that some options may be missing.
- 75% scale is back.
- The window opacity is available again.
- The stylus buttons can be disabled.
- The monitor used for notifications is now configurable.
- Menu apps can be edited with right click -> properties
- New Gestures: New desktop zoom action and you can now specify when an action is triggered.
- Sound Applet: New middle mouse click action.
- Grouped Window List: New option to not show anything when hovering the mouse over an application button.
- Hypnotix can now add favorites. You can also watch streaming channels and even add YouTube channels. Among other improvements, it also contains updates to yt-dlp.
- Warpinator now allows you to connect to another device manually, either by entering its IP or, if it is a mobile phone, by scanning the QR code.
- The sticky notes application has received support for DBUS commands, allowing you to manage notes from scripts or keyboard shortcuts.
- Slick Greeter, the login screen, now allows you to align the text box login.
- Bulky has received support for thumbnails and drag and drop.
- Pix now respects the video orientation.
- The backup tool now has header bars and an “About” dialog.
- The color picker has been added to the Xapp XDG Desktop Portal.
- Full support for SecureBoot and compatibility with more BIOS and EFI implementations.
- Grub in EFI mode.
- New wallpapers.
Now available
Linux Mint 21.3 “Virginia” available for a few days on the project server, but its launch was not official until a few moments ago. Images are available at this link, from where you can choose different mirrors. At the end of the article we will also add three buttons, one for each of the editions in which it is available, to facilitate its download, but we must bear in mind that a server may perform less well in some cases and we recommend going to the official page and choose one that works well for each specific case.
For existing users, the way to update is a simple path where you just have to follow the instructions displayed by the update application, but you will need to activate them first. When they do, Clem will publish the official notes explaining how to update from a previous version to this new Linux Mint 21.3, and we will publish an article with all the information in Spanish.
To the users of this popular distribution, I tell them to enjoy it.
Images: Linux Mint blog.