Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” Now Available for Download, This Is What’s New

Three weeks after its beta and more than seven months since 22.1 “Xia”, Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” is now available for download as an LTS release, promising updates and support until 2029.

Right off the bat, there aren’t any big new features in this release—aside from fingerprint authentication, which I’ll touch on in a bit. Instead, it’s mostly about polishing what’s already there, in that classic Mint way. With that said, here are the most important changes.

Zara tracks Ubuntu 24.04 LTS under the hood and pulls in the latest Hardware Enablement (HWE) stack, so fresh installs come with Linux kernel 6.14 plus Mesa 25.0.7, which benefits users with newer CPUs and GPUs. However, despite being based on Ubuntu, the distro (as always) keeps steering clear of Snaps—Firefox and Thunderbird come bundled as native DEB packages.

As I already mentioned, the main new feature is native fingerprint authentication. In light of this, Mint ships a new XApp called Fingwit to enroll and manage fingerprints and then wire them into PAM, so you can log in at the greeter, unlock the screensaver, run sudo, or launch admin apps via pkexec with a touch—falling back smartly to passwords where encryption/keyrings require it.

On the desktop side, you’ll find the latest Cinnamon 6.4.8, which continues work on input methods and keyboard layout handling to fit better its experimental Wayland session introduced earlier in the 22.x series. At the moment, however, X11 remains the default session, making Mint one of the last leading distros that continues heavily to rely on it.

The Mint-Y theme also gets subtle tweaks (a cooler grey tint, softer dark mode), and Mint patches libadwaita styling so GTK4/libadwaita apps respect Mint themes and your chosen accent color more predictably. Long-term, Mint’s own libAdapta (a soft-fork of libadwaita with theme support) is in play to keep GTK4 apps visually aligned without heavy hacks.

Other updates include:

• Additional refinements have been made across Mint Menu, Timeshift, and other utilities.
• Sticky Notes: now Wayland-compatible, with an Android app available through F-Droid for note synchronization via Syncthing.
• Hypnotix IPTV player: new Theatre and Borderless viewing modes, faster startup, and improved channel loading.
• Update Manager: now shows a reboot button when required.
• Software Manager: simplified welcome screen.

The Linux Mint 22.2 installation ISOs are now available for download from the distribution’s mirror servers, as most of them are already synchronized with the new images available. Just navigate to the “stable/22.2/” directory where you’ll find Mint 22.2’s Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce editions. An official announcement is expected soon.

Moreover, current 22.1 “Xia” users can upgrade to 22.2 “Zara” directly. To do so, open Update Manager and check that the “mint-upgrade-info” package is at version 1.2.9 and “mintupdate” is at 7.0.7.1. If they’re not, you should see them offered as updates.

Once you install those and restart Update Manager, the “Upgrade to Linux Mint 22.2 Zara” option will show up under the “Edit” menu.

Of course, I gave this option a try right away, and I can confirm the upgrade process went through smoothly without a single hitch.

So, with Mint 22.2 now available, the team’s focus is shifting to LMDE 7 “Gigi,” for all of you who prefer Debian’s rolling security updates, stability, and reliability, but still want Mint’s trademark usability polish.

And as you can expect, it will be built on top of the recently released Debian 13 “Trixie.” While there’s no official timeline provided, chances are we’ll see it land sometime in the second half of October. Until then, enjoy the new Zara.