Linux Mint 20.3 Released with Some New Features and Refinements

Linux Mint has for years been one of the most popular Ubuntu-based distros out there, with plenty of tweaks and refinements for both beginners and pros alike. Yesterday, the Mint team released Linux Mint 20.3 “Una,” the last Focal-based release, and we’ll take a look at it today.

What’s New in Linux Mint 20.3 “Una”

Linux Mint 20.3 is a long-term support release based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and is supported until 2025. It is available in Cinnamon, Xfce, and MATE flavors. This release ships with linux-firmware 1.187 and the Linux kernel 5.4.

We start with the fact that Linux Mint 20.3 features an updated look and feel with larger title bar buttons, rounded corners, a cleaner theme, and support for dark mode. In other words, Mint’s appearance has received a minor but very welcomed facelift.

Until now, the title bars were relatively small. In the 20.3 release, the Mint devs made them rounder with bigger buttons to make the desktop look more pleasant. In addition, the hover zone around the icons was also widened to make it easier to press the buttons. And I can’t disagree that it makes things look far better and easier to use.

Linux Mint users who prefer the older style of the desktop can switch back to the original version by enabling the Mint-Y-Legacy theme to restore the previous theme used by the Linux distro. All you have to do is search for the mint-themes-legacy package and install it.

We can’t fail to mention that Linux Mint 20.3 now features full dark mode support and takes advantage of this to give the terminal and multimedia apps a distinctive look.

At the same time, you will undoubtedly notice an improvement in displaying applications that support their dark interface when working with a light theme. For example, the Hypnotix IPTV player looks better than ever, thanks to Dark Mode support.

The Sticky Notes application has also received some love because it now filters notes quickly. In addition, the app now includes a search button allowing you to quickly look up your saved notes. On top of that, the users who use Sticky Notes may also notice a changed look as the title is now embedded within the note.

Among other things, Linux Mint 20.3 introduces a brand new app called Thingy, which is a Document Manager. It gives you quick access to your favorite and recently opened documents and keeps track of your reading progress.

With Linux Mint 20.3, users get the latest Cinnamon 5.2. However, if you are not a big fan of Cinnamon and prefer the other desktop environments, Linux Mint 20.3 Xfce edition ships with Xfce 4.16, while the Mate edition ships with Mate 1.26.

Other Improvements

Apart from those mentioned above, some additional changes should also be noted.

Now, the calendar applet shows calendar events from multiple sources, including Google Calendar and the GNOME Calendar app Mint ships with.

The file manager Nemo has a new feature that adds an option to file copy or move conflicts. Whereas in the past, you could only either skip/ignore these files or overwrite the old ones, you can now choose to have them renamed automatically to avoid the conflict as they are moved/copied to the new destination.

The Web Apps manager also received some updates. Now it has a new column to show which browser is used for each of the WebApps.

Last but not least, Bluetooth can now be turned on or off straight from the Bluetooth tray menu, which is a pretty handy feature.

You can refer to the official announcement for detailed information about all changes.

Download Linux Mint 20.3

You can download Linux Mint 20.3 from here as a 64-bit .iso image. After download, you can flash this image to a USB to boot from, or you can use any virtual machine to try it.

If you are using Linux Mint 20.2, here’s how to upgrade to Linux Mint 20.3 quickly and easily.