What's new in Linux Mint 19.2 Tina

Linux Mint is one of the most used Linux distros out there, and for good reason, since it offers a very stable and user friendly experience. The Mint team has released Linux Mint 19.2, codenamed Tina, with a bunch of improvements all around, so let's take a look at what's new !

What I use to make my videos:

Under The Hood
Nothing much has changed here. Mint 19.2 is an incremental upgrade, and still based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. They don't plan to change that until 20.04, which will be the next LTS, and the next base for Mint. Since Ubuntu 18.04 received the newer nvidia drivers in its updates repository, Mint also benefits from that, and thus offers much more up to date drivers than it used to. Apart from that, the kernel is still 4.15, and Mint 19.2 will receive updates until 2023, so don't worry about losing support !

Look and Feel
Cinnamon is now in version 4.2. While not much has changed visually, there still are a few improvements to how the distro looks. A whole new collection of wallpapers has been added, to refresh the default backgrounds, and the Mint-Y theme has been tweaked a bit, generally darkening most of the various colors used in the headerbars and titlebars, the sidebars, and the progressbars. This results in a more contrasted theme, and better legibility, although you'd be hard pressed to notice it a first glance. These changes are also applied to GTK2 apps, such as GIMP, where they should be more visible.
More importantly, Mint now uses the Ubuntu fonts instead of the Noto fonts. This change is nice, I think, and I always liked the rounded and legible fonts Ubuntu created for their own distro, so seeing them used elsewhere is always good.

Desktop
This is where the main changes are: first Cinnamon's memory consumption has been greatly reduced. The developers mention a reduction of about 30% in RAM usage. In my own tests, Mint Cinnamon, while idle, used about 1 Gb of RAM out of my 8, and the amount of RAM your computer has. There seems to be an improvement, compared to the 1.2 Gb Mint used when I reviewed 19.1.
The window manager now has reduced input lag, most noticeable when draging windows around, and you can enable or disable Vsync without restarting Cinnamon, as well as choose between various Vsync methods. This is a pretty good feature I'd like other desktops to add as well.
The default menu is now able to differentiate between duplicate applications, for example if you install something through the repos and through Flatpak, both entries will now be correctly identified in the menu so you know which one you're using.

Finally, the scrollbars can now be configured, allowing you to overriding the theme's given width and change it to something that suits you better, and enabling or disabling overlay scrollbars.

Applications
Mint's apps have seen a few changes here and there. The file manager, Nemo, can now pin files and folders in a specific directory, so they now appear in bold, and at the top of the list. This makes finding specific files a lot easier, if you work with them regularly.
Most apps now support the control +Q and control + W keyboard shortcuts to close a window or close the application.
X-ED, the text editor, now supports quickly commenting blocks of code with control + / , which is going to be mainly useful for developers, and XReader now has a zoom selector that can be added to the toolbar

The Mint system tools are where the work has been focused, though. First, you can now see how long each kernel is supported in the kernel manager, and you can queue the removal or installation of various kernels, without having to wait for each task to complete. Outdated and unused kernels can also be removed automatically in the preferences.

Finally, the system reports tool has been tweaked : its layout is now more legible, and a new system info page has been added, which should allow easier copy/pasting of this kind of information for bug reports and online help.

A lot of other minor improvements have also been added to the system, to make the experience of using the update manager a lot smoother.

All in all, Mint 19.2 Cinnamon is an incremental improvement, but it's still a no brainer if you're using Mint already. The file pinning feature in Nemo, and the performance improvements alone are worth it, and the stability of the distro's base is still a big draw if you need a production machine that won't bother you with borked updates.

Linux Mint also brought these updated apps and features to its MATE and XFCE editions, which were updated at the same time as the Cinnamon one.

[TheLinuxEXP]

Did you already update ? Have you tried Mint before ? Let me know !

[joeloveslinux]

I updated to 19.2 (Mate) a few days ago. So far so good.

[naseef]

Linux Mint is probably the perfect Linux distro for Windows users and others who are new to Linux. It has everything you need. I am not a huge fan of the default green look tho.

[stigmanmagros]

Cinamin and Mate Desktops im in love with these desktops :D

[revilum]

I just realized that there is on the official KDE Youtube channel a playlist with the title reviews and the only 2 videos which are in the playlist are your videos :D

[NikiDaDude]

It's another good incremental improvement, Mint has been my go-to desktop for a few years now.
Cinnamon itself is probably the main reason I'm using Mint, and I love how the devs manage to make it even better with each version.

[EricAdamsYT]

Good overview. I installed it on my XPS 15 laptop and it ran very smoothly which is a change from 19.1 which never seemed to be just right. Most of this is due to the 18.04 base but they must have made some changes to improve the performance (beyond just Cinnamon). Thanks Nick!

[baenbo]

if views < 100:

print("Early!")

[JeradBenge]

I'm an Arch user, but... I will give this new version of Cinnamon a try via Manjaro Cinnamon. I setup my brother with Manjaro Cinnamon a while back, and he doesn't miss Windows 10 at all.

[motoryzen]

1:58 to 2:10. Yeap..they've done a good job with cinnamon ram usage. 16GB's of ram here..and it barely even clears 510MB's while I focus/hightly cinnamon process in Mate-System Monitor ( yes..I prefer that over the stock cinnamon system monitor) and move the mouse around vigorously.

[meliodas.]

BTW I love the hot corners ( I think there's a change there too)

[dogameda]

One day I will install mint just to play with customization, it's seems amazing

[iodreamify]

Having used this release briefly myself i can vouch for the performance latency improvements. But what's going on at 2:17 ? That window dragging looks a bit weird. Was that something during the recording? :)

[AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Nick. I had used Mint for a few months about 5 years ago and ran LMDE on a Thinkpad for a few years. I tried Cinnamon on Ubuntu for a bit but just don't like it. I am still interested in what's going on with Mint and glad that it serves sio many people so well. btw i use pop

[meliodas.]

Performance improvement is so great ! It's not super smooth, but it's far better and usable than cinnamon4.1 on my entry level laptop.

[Kneedragon]

er... the kernel is 4.15.(large number) when you install. Once you have the latest version of the update manager, check 'view' - 'Linux Kernels' and see what's available. I am running ~
Linux Main 5.0.0-25-generic #26~18.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Aug 1 13:51:02 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
~ which seems to be the most recent one for me. That's 16 days old right now, and it was about 6 days old when I installed it.
I am expecting an upgrade to 5.2.(something) in the next 6 weeks or so.
If you don't ever open the kernel tab, then you will get backported updates to the kernel you have (4.15.x let's say) but far more recent kernels are easily available, and that has been the case for years.

[luizotavio]

Linux Mint Tina now features interests on the themes: zombies, butts and horses

[tubeMonger]

Mint is perfect for those who want to do productive work. It just works.

[yashsavla]

Has the bug of freeze at 99% percent while coping a file been resolved ?

[eddiedowning]

I try all different os and something keeps bring me back to mint cinnamon