Linux Mint 20 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2025. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop experience more comfortable.
The star of the show in Linux Mint 20 is a new application called Warpinator.
10 years ago, Linux Mint 6 featured a tool called "Giver" which could share files across the local network. Without any server or configuration, computers would automatically see each others and you could simply drag and drop files from one to another. When the Giver project was discontinued it had to be removed from Linux Mint and we’ve been missing that functionality ever since.
Warpinator is a reimplementation of Giver. Server configuration (FTP, NFS, Samba) is overkill for casual file transfers between two computers, and it’s a real pity to use external media (Internet services, USB sticks, external HDDs) just to share files when there’s a local network which could do just that.
With Warpinator, Linux Mint 20 brings back easy file sharing across the local network.
The main window shows you the computers on the local network which are also running Warpinator:
By clicking on a computer you can see more information about it and exchange files with it:
No more USB sticks or external drive are needed just to send a file.
Linux Mint 20 features improved support for NVIDIA Optimus.
The NVIDIA Prime applet now shows your GPU renderer and you can select which card to switch to straight from its menu.
The NVIDIA "On-Demand" profile is also now fully supported. When you run in that mode, it is your Intel card which renders the session and a menu option is available to let you offload a particular application to your NVIDIA card.
Select an application in the menu, right-click and select "Run with NVIDIA GPU". It’s that simple.
From the command-line, two new commands are available to offload to GLX or to Vulkan:
To boost compatibility and make it easier to boot Linux Mint 20 in live mode without NVIDIA drivers, "nomodeset" was also added to the "Compatibility Mode".
XAppStatusIcon received the ability to handle mouse wheel scrolling events and a new function similar to gtk_menu_popup() which makes it even easier than before to port applications from GtkStatusIcon.
In all editions (Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce) many of the tray icons were harmonized, given symbolic icons and HiDPI support.
Blueberry, mintupdate, mintreport, nm-applet, mate-power-manager, mate-media, redshift, rhythmbox all use XAppStatusIcon and give the tray a consistent look in Mint 20.
The performance of the Nemo file manager was improved. The new version tries to prioritize content and navigation and to delay thumbnails as much as possible. As a result, the content of directories shows up with generic icons before the thumbnails are rendered, but the improvement in performance is quite noticeable.
This also has a positive impact on performance in cases of heavy I/O and slow HDDS, such as when moving videos to external devices.
In the Display Settings, it is now possible to set the refresh rate.
Cinnamon 4.6 also introduces fractional scaling. Until now your scaling was either 100% (normal mode) or 200% (HiDPI mode) and it was the same for all your monitors. With Cinnamon 4.6 each monitor can have a different scaling and it can be set to values in between 100% and 200%.
In normal mode the resolution you set is the resolution you see. In HiDPI, at 200% scaling, the screen is showing twice the pixel density so everything looks sharper, but the resolution you see on the screen is only half the resolution of your monitor. Many HiDPI displays have a resolution which is actually quite small once HiDPI is activated.
Take a 13" Macbook Retina 2013. Its screen resolution is 2560×1600. That’s too much for a 13" screen; Applications, text and desktop items look way too small. In HiDPI mode, the screen shows twice the pixel density and everything looks really crisp, but look what happens to the resolution… it gets halved to 1280×800. The problem then is that 800px is not enough in terms of screen space, and some applications don’t even fit in it. A display like this one looks perfect in 1200px and that unfortunately means reducing the actual resolution to 1200px and not using HiDPI.
Another issue with HiDPI is multi-monitor support. You could plug an external monitor to this Macbook in the hope to stay in HiDPI on the laptop but to be in normal mode on the monitor. That wasn't possible before though, either all screens or none at all could be in HiDPI... and a non-HiDPI compatible screen set in HiDPI was just unusable.
Fractional scaling addresses these limitations. By being able to set the scaling for each monitor independently and allow for scaling values of not only 100% and 200% but also 125%, 150%, 175%, Cinnamon 4.6 tries to get higher pixel density and to allow HiDPI and non-HiDPI monitors to play well with each others.
In the example of the Macbook plugged to a non-HiDPI monitor, we’d typically set the Macbook to 150% and the monitor to 100%. Under the hood, the entire desktop environment would run in HiDPI mode, but the actual scaling of the Macbook screen would be reduced from 200% to 150% and the scaling of the monitor from 200% to 100%. We’d end up with a monitor which looks perfectly normal, and a Macbook screen which has a nice 1200px resolution and a "half-hidpi" 1.5 pixel density, which doesn’t look as crisp as full-hidpi, but looks crisper than in normal mode.
Middle-clicking the keyboard applet cycles keyboard layouts.
Cinnamon screensaver supports custom commands, making it possble to use alternative screen lockers with Cinnamon.
Xed received the ability to join lines together and to remove trailing whitelines before saving files.
Xviewer received fullscreen and diaporama toolbar buttons and remembers if its window was maximized.
In Xreader a print button was added to the toolbar.
To guarantee better support for modern Electron apps and indicators XappStatusIcon received mouse wheel support and SNI (StatusNotifier, libIndicator) support.
Gdebi, the tool used to open and install .deb files was given a new user interface.
The login screen (Slick Greeter) supports stretching backgrounds across multiple monitors.
The Mint-Y theme provides a nice variety of colors. A community project was started on Github to gather feedback and fine-tune these colors to find the right balance between colorful vibrant hues and contrast levels which don't take the user's focus away from the content being shown on the screen.
Yellow folders are also available.
As you enter the Linux Mint 20 desktop for the first time, the welcome screen will bring these colors to your attention and ask you which one you enjoy the most:
Linux Mint 20 features a superb collection of backgrounds from Alexander Andrews, Amy Tran, Bruno Fantinatti, Calin Stan, Callum Wale, Dario Trajchevski, David Marcu, Dean McQuade, Denys Nevozhai, Elizaveta Dushechkina, Jacob Heston, Jan Kaluza, Jason Leung, Jeremy Bishop, Juergen Donauer, Robert Bock, Sezgin Mendil, Thomas Tucker, Toa Heftiba and Vinícius Orsi Valente.
Apturl switched backend from Synaptic to Aptdaemon.
APT recommends are enabled by default for newly installed packages (not for upgrades).
Snapd is disabled by default and APT packages are not allowed to install it.
Live sessions running under Virtualbox automatically get their resolution bumped to a minimum of 1024x768.
This release ships with linux-firmware 1.187.
Linux Mint 20 features Cinnamon 4.6, a Linux kernel 5.4 and an Ubuntu 20.04 package base.
Linux Mint 20 will receive security updates until 2025.
Until 2022, future versions of Linux Mint will use the same package base as Linux Mint 20, making it trivial for people to upgrade.
Until 2022, the development team won't start working on a new base and will be fully focused on this one.
