LINUX MINT 21.2 is a solid update that's stuck in the past

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00:00 Intro
00:30 Sponsor: Stream any OS, desktop, or app to your browser
01:24 Touchpad Gestures
03:43 Look & Feel
06:26 Desktop & Apps
10:12 Internals
11:00 XFCE and MATE variants
13:35 Parting Thoughts
15:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly
16:30 Support the channel

If you got used to the super smooth 1:1 gestures for GNOME or Plasma on Wayland, or even elementary OS on X11, you'll be disappointed here. Mint still uses X11, and their gestures act like keyboard shortcuts. You perform the gesture on the touchpad, and once your fingers have moved enough, the animation happens all at once.

Gestures are disabled by default, you'll be able to enable them in the new Settings panel. They are very configurable though, contrary to GNOME or KDE.

Mint 21.2 also changes a few things in terms of how the distro looks, or can look. First, instead of the endless list of selectable themes, in their dark or light variant, and all their color variants, you now get Styles.

The Style defines the theme you're using, for example MintY, Adwaita, or the older Mint X. For each style, you can pick mixed mode, where apps can be light or dark at the same time, dark mode, where every app that supports the dark mode preference will use it, and light mode.

And on top of that, you have a choice of accent colors, if the theme supports it, for example, there are no accent colors for Adwaita, or the High COntrast theme.

Folder icons are now longer the same color as what WIndows uses, they'll now use your accent color instead, which is much better in my opinion.

On the desktop side of things, the login screen received a lot of improvements, with support for multiple keyboard layouts that you can switch between, and support for tap to click as well.

The onscreen keyboard is usable there, and you can also configure the layout for it, and you can now more easily navigate this login screen using the keyboard and the arrow keys.

Once you're logged in, you can now resize the main menu, by dragging its corner or its edge, and you can now disable notifications for connected devices that have a low battery level.

As per the apps, the file manager, Nemo, now generates thumbnails using multi threading, which means it should be way faster.

The software manager got a small UI refresh, with the search field inline in a headerbar, with the hamburger menu moving there as well. The app pages also got a small redesign, with buttons in the header to install, and to show the installation source.

Pix, the image viewer, got a lot of changes, mostly due to its rebase on a new version of GTHumb.

Finally, Warpinator, the PC to PC file transfer program, was reviewed by the openSUSE team, and some security issues were discovered and fixed.

All Linux Mint editions are still based on Ubuntu 22.04, and they're all LTS, supported until 2027. The next base change will be when Ubuntu 24.04 releases, which means that in the meantime, you get the Linux kernel 5.15, and older Mesa and Nvidia drivers.

Now, for the XFCE variant, you get the same improvements to the login screen, the apps and the software manager, plus the new colored folder icons, tooltips and notifications, and the symbolic icon changes. You're not getting the Styles manager and selector though, and you're not getting the touchpad gestures either.

Still, you do get XFCE 4.18, which is a solid update over 4.16 that Mint used in the previous release.

As per MATE, it gets the same stuff as XFCE, so no gestures or style manager, and it's still on MATE 1.26, same as the previous Linux Mint release.

[captainmother]

We use Linux Mint for industrial HMI interfaces and high speed machine vision with Matrox. At this point Wayland doesn't work well with high speed industrial cameras (yet) - X11 works great for what we need. For us, X11 on Mint is much much better than any M$ based solution, and is very stable and reliable across hundreds of machines. Love it! We don't care that the icons look "old" - we care that the machine runs 24/7/365 - that's the beautiful part! Thanks for the video Nick!

[wpipka]

I've been using Mint 21.1 for a few weeks now, because I wanted something that didn't require much maintenance. It does everything I want it to do very well. Even most of the games work (which I was suprised about). And I love the Cinnamon's design too.

[Linux_ASMR]

Linux Mint is my favorite distro and each new update just makes it better and more pleasant to use.

The gestures may need more polish, but at least they are there out of the box.

I do hope that the Mint team starts working on Wayland for cinnamon soon.

[interceptor]

There is a reason why Mint, Debian are as big as they are in the Linux Desktop Space. Not all people want to deal with bugs from the latest and greatest. It is very easy to install, easy to use and stable. Also very similar to Windows UI. But that is the beauty of Linux there is something for everybody. I also can't get how somebody can use stock gnome productively.

[luki]

I'm really happy with linux mint, it has it's usecase, but for it it's perfect. After hearing that W11 will not support older HW I started to migrate all the family PCs (more than 15, mainly 2nd to 4th gen intel machines from celerons to i7s) to mint and it's the best thing I've done. The occasional "please help, my computer has issues" type of calls are reduced to exactly zero and those old machines are started to fly in speed. Also love the conservative mentality of the OS, because of that it can be installed to basically every non tech user like my grandma. My workhorse PC (4th gen i5) also runs on mint since the pandemic HO world and I faced not a single issue. I just start it up and it does what it needs to do, no slowdowns, no weird bugs or errors, I can focus on my work and after that a few older games on steam (i have a console to play recent games) and personal PC stuff like browsing, chat, basic office things.

Yes, it's not the latest and greatest, but I simply not need that. If you ask me a few years ago I would say the opposite, but now all I want is a stable and familiar interface without any fancy new and buggy "next-gen" desktop. And for that, mint is the perfect choice.

[jamesford]

I have been running Mint Cinnamon since 19. I don't game, I dont do any video transcoding etc, so the X11 vs Wayland issue is simply not a concern for me right now. Sure eventually they will need to move to it, but for me, there is no rush. For me it is the most stable, consistent and usable DE i have encountered in my 5+ years of Linux use and don't see myself changing. I prefer their slightly more conservative approach to changes and hence not having the "latest and greatest" is to me actually a positive and not a negative. Lastly I rarely use any advanced touch pad gestures as most of my work is done from a PC and even when on a laptop I almost always use a mouse and keyboard shortcuts anyway, so again, for me a non-issue, ie nice to have but not mission critical

[almondnguyen]

people should realize that latest and stable rarely go together, in a perfect sense...

I honestly really appreciate Mint for holding off going latest everything. Makes it a much more stable experience for end users.

[MaryamMaqdisi]

Great video Nick! I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusion, as a dev I know first hand the stress of having new bug reports to fix every day when a new product or feature is launched and unless you commit to fix everything on a timely manner it is the end users who will suffer. So in a sense it’s good that they take their time until they actually have the hours to REALLY support it.

[happygofishing]

I'm really looking forward to cinnamon on Wayland, it is one of my favorite desktop environments.

[TazerXI]

I understand why Mint is a bit behind on Wayland/touchpad gestures

It is generally placed as a distro for those moving over to Linux, and as such, has an increased focus on stability. By implementing new features, they take a risk with this, and as such, could turn away new users if their first experience is buggy.

However, I do agree the transition will have to happen at some point, and the sooner, the better to fix bugs earlier. What could work might be using a transition to LMDE as the main distro (with their discontent with Ubuntu/snaps, I am half shocked I haven't heard that much about LMDE recently, I wonder how it is going) at a similar time to moving to touchpad gestures as well, or offering a beta desktop for users to choose at startup, or something along those lines.

[subwaygaragemusic]

One of the reasons I use (and cherish) Mint is because it offers you your traditional desktop paradigm a la Windows 7 coupled with rock solid stability. I for one would welcome some changes like adding Wayland support and able to change between X/Wayland at will and some few updates that would bring it more in line with some modern Linux distros. But for now, Mint is what it is and I like it for that.

[johncundiff]

I enjoy your videos. I often assemble Linux Mint boxes for senior citizens who have screwed up and virused up their W10 machines. Mint has always been the easiest for them to use. I appreciate all you publish to help the computer community!! Keep up the great work Sir!

[that_leaflet]

The lack of Wayland support is the main thing holding me back from using Mint.

[markdavid]

Linux Mint still excels because it works "right out the box""...drives Linux aficionados crazy!😁

[cenedi]

Thank you for explicitly calling out the issue with Wayland. The lack of Wayland support and no real timeline/roadmap is one of the main reasons I stopped using Cinnamon.

Linux Mint user here for years. Tried another distros and I love how Linux Mint and Cinnamon works. As you said not high fancy stuff but it is a very simple, old school desktop environment which works amazingly well. It is my mainly OS for Android Development for years.

[LavaLaugh]

I have been running Linux Mint 21.1 for a few months. Something snapped in me when I saw the Bing Bar on my Windows Desktop. Switched the same day. I mainly wanted something somewhat familiar that was pretty stable with all the programs that I would need. Mint was the best option because of those reasons. I also looked at Debian, but Debian 12 wasn't out yet, I may switch to that in the coming months.

[nxtaaa]

The biggest thing for me is that they enabled blur! Its still buggy, but hopefully they can make it work perfectly

[shatterstone]

I think the fact that the login manager now supports Wayland sessions is a preparation for either the in-development MATE and XFCE Wayland sessions, but it could also suggest that the Mint team is thinking of working on Wayland support for Cinnamon.

Edit: Looking at this, the only things the Mint team should focus on, for Mint 22, are 1 to 1 gestures and Wayland support.

[olokelo]

As an image codecs enthusiast I can say HEIF, AVIF and JPEG XL support by default is a huge step into the future. It is an important move forward so we can adopt newer and more efficient image codecs finally leaving the now 30-year old JPEG behind.