Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon Edition: A Great Linux Distro (but with a Few Rough Edges)

Linux Mint 21 sees the popular distribution rebase onto Ubuntu 22.04, and comes with the latest Cinnamon desktop. In this video, Jay reviews the latest release and gives you his thoughts. Linux Mint 21 is definitely a great Linux distribution, but with a few rough edges. Check out this review to learn more!

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*⏰ TIME CODES*
00:00 - Intro
01:05 - Get your very own cloud server with Linode (sponsor)
03:18 - Quick note about my new book, Mastering Ubuntu Server 4th Edition
04:34 - Installation process
06:51 - Installing updates
08:10 - Under the hood changes in the latest Cinnamon desktop
09:02 - Thoughts about Linux Mint's performance in version 21
10:47 - Printers are automatically installed (if compatibile) in Linux Mint
13:07 - The new ability to format a flash drive in Linux with the Nemo File Manager
13:56 - The Cinnamon desktop is extremely customizable
14:41 - Let's talk about Timeshift, the awesome snapshot utility for Linux
17:13 - Linux Mint 21 under the hood
18:17 - Issues I ran into while testing Linux Mint 21
23:49 - Final thoughts on Linux Mint 21*🎓 FULL LINUX COURSES FROM LEARN LINUX TV*

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[warthunder]

Honestly this is the distro I always come back to. I've tried them all and its always cinnamon and Mint that work the best for me. Super Stable, Clean and works well.

[excdnforces]

Linux Mint has been my go to distro for when I refurbish a old laptop, its the one that has given way less issues with hardware compatibility if any at all. Its in my top 5 list for sure!

[T_Burd_]

Linux Mint has been my favorite for the past five years. It has always worked out-of-the-box on every computer that I've installed it on, which is more than I can say about many other distros out there.

[agpct]

I've been using Mint/Cinnamon for 4 years now solid. It seemed solid from the start. Mint 21 Vanessa upgrade went very smooth for me. Mint 21 seems to have remedied the flaky sound issues that I was having. You are spot on about Nvidia. That's always been an issue since I have been using Mint.
All my settings (including Timeshift) transferred flawlessly. Thanks !

[kote]

The statement that GNOME is resource-heavy is not so untrue. Try it on a single-core processor with 1 GB of RAM or less, and then compare to XFCE, you'll see what I'm talking about😄
Of course, on any modern hardware, it works fine, like any other DE.

[fixer]

I had just a small inconvenience when upgrading to Mint 21, but other than that it remains as stable as always. Gotta love your videos, keep them coming. Greetings from Costa Rica.

[zameerpashablr]

I was desperate waiting for your review....You are very honest and i love your explanation.

[LosPompadores]

Great you mention the usual RAM misconception, i.e. that using more RAM is somehow bad or makes a distribution 'heavier' or 'bloated'. That is completle consense, of course. RAM is there to be used, and using it makes a system fast and responsive. Gnome etc. and the distribution they live in all manage RAM well.

[fictitiousnightmares]

20:50 I LOVE that Linux Mint's driver app automatically had the NVidia driver for me. 2 clicks and it was installed. Super easy. I guess I am lucky I never had an issue when first booting into it, shrug. No crash issue like you mentioned. Would be nice if it was automatically installed for sure.

[paintedjaguar]

Thank you for providing some background info on how the desktop processes function instead of just clicking through the install procedure.

[joanapaulasoliveira]

Using time-shift was a simple and intuitive experience. Loved it.

[keithdavis]

I am watching this video on an old Gateway laptop that came out with Win Vista on it. I think it was manufactured in 2008! Approx. 2 yrs ago I got it out of the closet and installed Linux Mint 32 bit version (no longer supported) on it. I use it everyday at work to check email, watch YouTube, type memos, etc. Works flawlessly! I have since put the 64 bit version on all my Win 10 systems and never have to worry about Win Updates interrupting.

[oz]

Actually, regarding RAM usage, the kernel cache is not visible in System Monitor. Search for "linux cache usage" to see how to use the "free" command.
The value "2.3" shown under "2.3 GB of 33.6 GB" is *not* cached RAM, it's *actual usage* as far as I remember. This is the memory apps and the system need currently. This memory is not readily available to other applications.
What might happen with high usage?
Well, if it ends up being something like "25 GB of 33 GB" and some newly launched app needs memory, the least used part of those 25GB will be paged out to the swap file or partition (but not freed, except in the case the app says it doesn't need it anymore and drops it), in order to make some space in RAM for the new app (swapping will begin a lot sooner than 25GB btw, on any OS, depending on how it handles memory pressure).
But if all running apps require a lot of memory at the same time, the kernel and CPU can become very busy swapping memory pages between RAM and the page file leading into what was known as HDD thrashing, which would now be SSD thrashing. In Linux, traditionally, this leads to a UI freeze. macOS seems to keep the UI alive and pop a "Task manager" window asking you to close some app. As far as I've read there are various strategies being explored, like the new OOM killer you've maybe heard about which still needs some work.
Having said that, the same app on the same OS may use 500MB of memory on a machine with 8GB of RAM, and use 1.2GB of mem on a machine with 16GB of RAM. The kernel manages the virtual memory of an app and may allow it to more eagerly load more of it into physical RAM, when RAM is plenty, so the app can load its stuff faster.
As another example, in the past 4-5 years Gnome Shell has been using more memory and CPU than KDE Plasma (which has become very efficient), but to Gnome's credit has also seen constant improvements. It's not a deal breaker in any case. Another scenario: I've seen macOS tests with 8GB total RAM + compression, high memory pressure, 30GB swapped and the system was still running. That's quite the number :)
Another thing that happens with high memory usage is the kernel cache gets smaller, because it can only occupy the space between 2.3 GB and 33.6 GB in our example.

[ronaldcraig]

Not sure of your setup but I use a NV 3080 and I've never had a crash before installing the nVidia drivers. Installing the NV drivers, for me, was a cake-walk. After installing the drivers I increased the refresh rate on my 38" 4K monitor to 144Hz and it works great.

[markgray]

I'm a newbie to linux mint, i have been a windows user for many years and with each new version of windows they have took more and more control away from the user and windows 10 is so bad. I made the switch to linux cinnamon mint. And i love it. It reminds me of the old days when i had control of my own system. Anyway i would recommend Linux cinnamon mint to anyone who is sick of windows.

[DarkTrepie]

Only legit issue I've had with Mint 21 so far is Apt complaining about the pgp keys for the few PPAs I use being saved in a deprecated location. But that was easy enough to fix after a little searching and they have mentioned in the latest Mint Blog post that it will be fixed in 21.1.
So far Mint has been the best distro for me. But I'm thinking about switching the the LMDE version sometime soon.

[kjn]

How do you install pgAdmin 4 on this?

The setup guide on pgAdmin website does not work at all, the gpg-key thing is wrong.

And even when you manually put the trusted-keys correctly, and apt is able to find the pgadmin -package, the desktop-software wont start at all....

[colinreece]

I have always been on Windows and a while ago I did try a couple of Linux distos, some I was not keen on but I went back to Windows. Recently I got in to upgrading old PC's from spare parts and on one I thought I would try Linux again, I watched a video describing the different versions and decided to try Mint Cinnamon, it reminded me a bit of Windows and found it fairly easy to navigate. I'm still learning but I did fathom a few things myself. I got online and tried my streaming website for movies and the picture quality was great. By the way I was using an oldish 2GH GPU, I have 32GB ram, a bit overkill I know but still, I put an i3 3240 3.40GHz CPU in, not the fastest but it worked good. So up to now I like it.

[JR-eyoo]

Mint has been my most used distro for the last few years

[yekutielbenheshel]

Nice! Thank you! I was trying to decide between upgrading from Linux Mint 20.3 to Linux Mint 21 or installing Debian Stable or, perhaps even Linux Mint Debian. As long as Canonical doesn't "go nuts"—they did their "Amazon thing" years ago, this time around they are doing their "Snap thing"—I'd rather use a distro based on Ubuntu than one based directly on Debian. In maintaining Ubuntu, Canonical adds some nice polish to Debian that I'd prefer to have.