The Linux Mint development team recently announced the official release of Cinnamon 6.6 , a major update that comes after a year of intensive work. This new version not only refines the desktop's aesthetics with a completely redesigned application menu, but also introduces profound under-the-hood changes to improve Wayland compatibility and maintain the customization that characterizes this environment.
Among the most notable technical innovations are the forking of key libraries to ensure theme support and new tools for root-level system administration.
A revamped and flexible app menu
In this new version of Cinnamon 6.6, the most visible change is the transformation of its main menu. The developers worked to find a balance between aesthetics and functionality, resulting in a more modern and compact design. The new design features:
- New sidebarThis now includes the user's avatar, quick access to favorites and most used applications, as well as clearly separating bookmarks.
- Compact categoriesThe category list has been visually optimized using symbolic icons, making navigation quick and easy.
- full customizationThe developers have listened to the community. It's now possible to move the power buttons (power off, sleep, lock) to the bottom or the sidebar. The search bar can also be relocated, and most importantly, Hide items you don't useallowing for a minimalist menu if you wish.
New tools: Information and Administration
The former "System Reports" utility has been renamed "System Information ." It no longer simply reports errors, but now provides a comprehensive overview of the computer's hardware. Four new sections have been added, detailing:
- Connected USB devices.
- PCI components.
- GPU information.
- BIOS data (firmware, motherboard and boot modes).
Simultaneously, the "System Administration" application is being released . This tool runs with root privileges and, for the time being, allows management of the "Boot Menu," facilitating the modification of startup parameters and the visibility of GRUB without the need to manually edit text files.
The road to Wayland and the independence of libAdwaita
On the technical side, Cinnamon 6.6 introduces significant improvements to overcome GNOME's customization limitations, as the team has replaced the libAdwaita library with libAdapta , a custom fork. This allows applications to maintain a consistent appearance with the rest of the system and support custom themes, something that libAdwaita restricts.
In addition, support for Wayland has received priority attention:
- Keyboard management: Complete rewrite to ensure keyboard layout change and improved support for input methods (separating IBus from traditional configurations).
- On-screen keyboard: Libcaribou is abandoned in favor of a modern solution that supports design change.
- Emphasis colors: The xdg-desktop-portal-xapp package now scans the GTK theme to correctly apply the accent color to standalone applications (such as Flatpaks).
Other improvements
The update is completed with a series of adjustments designed for daily use:
Native Night Light: A new app controls the screen's color temperature, automatically reducing blue light based on the time of day to prevent eye strain.
Smart Notifications: Now you can sort them to show the most recent ones first and they include unread message counters.
Alt+Tab for Monitor: When switching windows, only the applications present on the monitor you are using will be displayed.
XSI Icons: Adwaita's symbolic icons are replaced by the proprietary XApp Symbolic Icons set.
Finally, if you are interested in learning more, you can find the details at the following link.
Regarding the availability of this new version, we can mention that Cinnamon 6.6 will be the default desktop environment in the upcoming Linux Mint 22.3 (Zena) distribution, and as for the packages for other distributions, these will be gradually arriving in the repositories of the main distributions.
For example, it is already available in Arch Linux.