At the beginning of the month, we introduced you to some of the changes expected to be included in the upcoming Mint 22.1 release.
Today, Clement Lefebvre, lead of the Linux Mint project, shared another dose of updates in his monthly report, covering the work completed in September and upcoming plans for the project. Here are the highlights.
One of the most noticeable changes is the new default theme, which has landed on the master branch and will be part of the next Cinnamon 6.4 release.
The theme is significantly darker and offers more contrast than previous versions. Objects within the interface are now rounded, and a gap has been introduced between applets and the panel, giving the desktop environment a modern and polished appearance.
In addition, the system dialogs have also undergone a redesign to improve balance and aesthetics. Buttons within these dialogs are now separated, making them more user-friendly and visually appealing.
Moreover, Cinnamon displays a “Force Quit” dialog when applications become unresponsive. Previously a GTK window, this dialog has been rewritten in Clutter to match the rest of the Cinnamon environment, ensuring a consistent look and feel throughout the system.
But the novelties don’t stop there. The media-buttons OSD has received a makeover, boasting a cleaner and more contemporary design. Similarly, the Workspace OSD has been updated to reflect these modern aesthetics, enhancing the overall visual experience.
A new status applet is also being worked on. While specifics are being kept under wraps, these enhancements will be revealed gradually throughout the development cycle and are expected to be included in the upcoming Cinnamon 6.4 version.
Apart from those, the shift towards Aptkit and Captain has been finalized. Starting with Linux Mint 22.1, scheduled for release this December, none of the projects will depend on aptdaemon, Synaptic, GDebi, or apturl anymore. This transition signifies the eventual discontinuation of aptdaemon, mintcommon’s aptdaemon module, and ubiquity.
Additionally, the move to Aptkit and Captain offers several advantages:
- Refined Features: Unnecessary functionalities have been removed, and essential features like purging packages and downgrading to specific versions have been added.
- Full Translation Support: All components are now fully translated, resolving previous translation issues.
- Reduced Bugs and Papercuts: Dependency on unmaintained upstream components has been eliminated, leading to a more stable system.
This transition allowed for the complete refactoring of the Update Manager’s code, simplifying its architecture.
The previous codebase was dated and relied on deprecated multithreading techniques and components incompatible with future technologies like Wayland.
Lastly, the Software Sources tool has improved the process of downgrading foreign packages. Previously handled via an embedded terminal, this function is now managed directly by Aptkit with a user-friendly progress dialog.
As mentioned above, these changes are expected to be reflected in the upcoming Linux Mint 22.1 release scheduled for December, which is also expected to debut the new Cinnamon 6.4 desktop environment.
Check out the Linux Mint Projectโs September report for more detailed information.
Image credits: Linux Mint Project
