After six months of development, Linux Mint developers announced the release of Cinnamon 6.4, version in which several innovations have been introduced that improve both the appearance and the functionality of the desktop environment.
And it is that in Cinnamon 6.4 A new design theme has been implemented that is characterized by Darker colors, higher contrast, rounded edges in the interface elements and wider spacing between applets and the panel. In addition to this, the new default Cinnamon theme, fixes styling and layout issues outside of Linux Mint, as the developers mention that “Outside of Linux Mint, Cinnamon looks pretty ugly.”
Another of the improvements that is presented in Cinnamon 6.4 is the renewal of the calendar applet as The appearance and layout of dialog boxes has been improved, incorporating the ability to use colored buttons on them. The Clutter library is used to render key popup dialogs, making interaction more fluid.
The dialog box for forcing applications to close when they freeze and stop responding has also been redesigned. on-screen indicator interface (OSD), used when changing the volume or brightness using the multimedia buttons and when switching virtual desktops, has been modernized.
A “Night Light” mode has been added, which changes the color temperature of the screen depending on the time of day, which helps reduce eye strain and improves sleep quality by reducing blue light at night (available on both X11 and Wayland)
Additionally, the notification system dialogs have been redesigned, with buttons closer together, and the option to display notifications in full-screen mode has been added.
On the other hand, Cinnamon 6.4 presents improvements in the windows, then it presents an optimized interface for switching tasks using Alt-tab, which now allows to show only the windows of the current monitor. The Handling of minimized windows has also been redesigned for a more efficient experience. In the main menu, the style has been updated, indents have been increased, and navigation using the numeric keypad has been made easier. Animations when working with menus have been simplified to make them more agile.
With regards to Image preview, support for JPEG-X format has been improvedL, allowing for more efficient viewing. A new status bar applet and password entry widget have been introduced, improving functionality and security.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- The power module now supports power consumption profiles, and DBus interface support has been added to manage these profiles more flexibly.
- The ability to install session files for Wayland has been added, improving compatibility with this graphical server.
- Fixed applet icons that sometimes appear oversized
- Added support for panel:highlight
- Cleaned up some start menu styles
- Updated switch style to match new background color
- Power applet menu style fix
- Replaced thumbnail with updated theme style
- Reduced horizontal padding of notification buttons
- Increased spacing in the main start menu
- Improvements to error reporting.
- The monitor's work area is now used to place windows on the screen
Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details in the following link
With regards to availability from Cinnamon 6.4 it is mentioned that sIt will be offered alongside Linux Mint 22.1, which is scheduled for release in the second half of December. As for the other distributions, Cinnamon 6.4 will be arriving gradually and in the case of Arch Linux It is now available.