After several weeks of hard work stabilizing things in the Linux Mint beta, Clement lefebvre creator and leader of the project, is pleased to announce the long-awaited release of the stable version of Linux Mint 22 which has been baptized with the code name “Wilma”.
Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” arrives built on the basis of the most recent version of Ubuntu, which is the version of Ubuntu LTS 24.04 (which was released last April), also offers the Linux Kernel 6.8, app improvements, Cinnamon 6.2, Nemo improvements and more.
Main new features of Linux Mint 22 “Wilma”
Among the most important changes and new features presented by the new version of Linux Mint 22 “Wilma”, we can find that the system has been built on the basis of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. With this, several of the most important features of this version of Ubuntu are carried over, among them is Linux Kernel 6.8, Pipewire sound server by default, as well as that the configuration of the active repositories has been converted to use the deb822 format, whose support has been added to the graphical package management interface.
Regarding the new features of the distribution, Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” arrives with the recent version of Cinnamon 6.2 and which includes in Nemo the «Design Editor» tool, which allows you to customize the location of actions in the menu according to the user's preferences. This tool supports creating nested submenus, linking or redefining icons, using separators, renaming elements, and a drag-and-drop layout.
In addition, “GNOME Online Accounts GTK” application was added, which provides an interface to manage connections to cloud services such as Google Drive. Unlike the standard GNOME online account, this new application It is available in versions for GTK4 and GTK3, adapted to work in various distributions and user environments such as Cinnamon, Budgie, Unity, MATE and Xfce.
GNOME Online Accounts GTK
On the other hand, now themes now support GTK4 and due to migration of some applications GNOME to libAdwaita and the end of support for the Mint theme, several applications have been replaced on Linux Mint 22 with older versions using GTK3.
In the installation interface of the Software Manager program, Unverified Flatpak packages in the FlatHub directory are hidden by default. This includes packages generated by third parties, such as the Chrome package on FlatHub created by a user known as refi64.
Has significantly reduced Software Manager startup time; The main screen with a list of recommended application categories now appears almost instantly. Furthermore, sand improved multithreaded execution, a new settings page was added and the ability to display a slideshow in the banner area was implemented.
As well, several applications have been improved, for example in Stick (grades), now you can customize the default position when creating a new note and adding the ability to create a note from the command line, in xed (text editor) added the “Duplicate” button to the edit menu and the Ctrl+Shift+D key combination to duplicate selected text. An option was also added to decide whether or not to exit the program when closing the last tab. Timeshift now asks for confirmation before deleting a snapshot and in WebApp Manager, web applications created and launched in Firefox implement adaptive display of menus and toolbars, hidden by default but visible when opening the tab.
Of the Other changes and improvements that stand out of this release:
- Following the discontinuation of development of the Hexchat IRC client, the project has migrated to the Matrix network. Added Element Matrix client, implemented as a standalone web application.
- The classic deb package with the Thunderbird email client is maintained, unlike Ubuntu 24.04, where it has been replaced by a snap package.
- JPEG XL support has been added to the Pix photo manager and thumbnail generation tool.
- Added a new thumbnail generator, xapp-thumbnailer-gimp, to the repository for the image format used in GIMP.
- All applications that use the libsoup2 library to work with the HTTP protocol have been migrated to the libsoup3 branch.
- The Plymouth Home Screen and Slick-Greeter Login Screen have improved support for High Pixel Density (HiDPI) displays.
- Xfce now allows you to customize the size of icons and colors in the system tray.
- The ISO image supports FAT32 in FST (File System Transpose) mode.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that after installation, users can remove unnecessary language packs to free up disk space. Only packages for English and the optionally selected language are retained. The installation ISO image includes language packs for only 8 languages, including English and Russian, dynamically downloading other languages if necessary during installation over a network connection.
Interested in learning more about it, you can check the details in the following link
Download and try Linux Mint 22 “Wilma”
For those who are interested in being able to test this new version, you should know that the generated builds are based on Cinnamon (3 GB), MATE 1.26 (3 GB), Xfce (3 GB). Linux Mint 22 is classified as a long-term support (LTS) release, for which updates will be generated until 2029.
The link of download is this.