The launch of the new version of linux mint 20.1, version that continues with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS base and 5.4 Kernel, in addition to that we can find that new versions of the desktop environments have been integrated, as well as various improvements to the system.
The distribution is fully compatible with Ubuntu, but it differs significantly in the approach to organizing the user interface and the selection of default applications. Linux Mint developers provide a desktop environment that conforms to the classic canons of desktop organization, which is more familiar to users who do not accept the new construction methods of the GNOME 3 interface.
Main new features of Linux Mint 20.1
Linux Mint 20.1 includes a new version of the Cinnamon desktop environment, in which sperformance optimizations have been carried out, including about 5% faster rendering at 4K resolution, a reduced load on window management and faster execution of JavaScript CJS bindings, translated to use the SpiderMonkey 78 JavaScript engine (Mozjs78).
We can also find Spice compatibility improvementsAs instead of being explicitly linked to Cinnamon version numbers, plugins are now perceived as compatible by default with the next version of Cinnamon.
Moreover, in the application menu, Search results are ordered by relevance.
Added support for sleep mode and then hibernation, where the system first goes into sleep mode, but if it does not wake up within a certain time out, it wakes up and goes into deep hibernation.
Also added a web application manager which allows you to create shortcuts to frequently used sites to quickly open them in a separate window without elements of the browser interface, by analogy with launching common applications.
Web application icons appear in the task list (Alt-Tab), menu, and dashboard as common application icons. The program is compatible with ICE web application manager which is used for similar tasks in the Peppermint OS distribution.
In addition, we can find that added the ability to quickly access the list of the most popular files, selected by the user by analogy with the lists of selected programs and directories.
The list of favorite files is displayed in a separate section from the application menu, via a separate applet in the panel, in the file selection dialog, in the file manager sidebar, in the application menus Xed, Xreader, Xviewer, Pix and Warpinator as well as in the file opening dialog of any GTK application.
Of the dMore changes that stand out:
- Improved support for Flatpak packages.
- Added a mode that allows you to display the panel only when the menu is open.
- A Hypnotix digital television viewing program has been added, which allows you to view television programs, videos and series using the IPTV protocol.
- Reworked support for printers and scanners.
- HPLIP driver package updated to version 3.20.11.
- In Linux Mint 20.1, the ipp-usb and sane-airscan packages are available in the repositories
- Continuous improvements to applications developed as part of the X-Apps initiative
- Xviewer now has the ability to customize the primary and secondary mouse wheels.
- Pix photo manager now has the ability to filter images by rating.
- Added ability to customize clock display format on login screen (Slick Greeter).
- The Celluloid video player has hardware accelerated video decoding enabled by default.
- The driver manager has been moved to PackageKit, working with dependencies and the interface for selecting dependencies has been improved.
- A classic deb package with Chromium has been added to the repository, replacing the stub package provided in Ubuntu, which installs a standalone Chromium assembly in snap format.
- The cinnamon-control-center, cinnamon-settings-daemon, and nemo-extensions components have been carried over to the Meson assembly system.
- The update manager interface and the mintupload utility have been modernized.
Download Linux Mint 20.1
To download the ISO files of the different flavors of this new edition, you can download them directly from its official website of the project.