After several days of slowly seeing ISO images for the new version appear on mirrors, the Linux Mint project officially announced the release of version 22 of the distribution (based on Ubuntu 24.04) under the name "Wilma."
Among the innovations, the developers highlight improved support for various languages, a move to kernel version 6 (initially 6.8), pipewire for audio (though, of course, users can revert to pulseaudio), themes now support GTK4, DEB822 format support has been added, and HiDPI display support during boot has been enhanced.
Snap has still been removed, and applications such as Chromium and Thunderbird have been returned to DEB package format in the distribution’s repositories. To support cloud services, instead of Gnome components (libgoa/libgoa-backend migrated to GTK4, breaking compatibility with anything based on GTK3), a new utility called "GNOME Online Accounts GTK" was developed as part of a set of "replacement" applications, allowing this function to be used in any DE of the distribution (Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE; as well as Budgie and Unity). Additionally, a number of applications were reverted to GTK3 versions (Celluloid, GNOME Calculator, Simple Scan, Baobab, System Monitor, GNOME Calendar, File Roller, Zenity) to homogenize the environment.
As for flatpak support, it hasn’t been removed from Mint. However, unconfirmed flatpaks are not shown to users by default, while confirmed ones display the maintainer's name. If a user enables the display of unconfirmed flatpaks, they are all marked with a warning about their uncertain status. The Mint developers emphasize that blindly trusting flatpaks and installing everything is a risky venture.
Many software components boast various small improvements, from the Cinnamon environment to the xed editor. A thumbnail generator for GIMP files (xapp-thumbnailer-gimp — once again, within the XApp project) has even been added. Naturally, for such a festive occasion, new wallpapers have also been added.
It should also be noted that support for ZFS during installation has been removed — from the developers’ perspective, the ratio of users to the level of effort made supporting this option unjustified.
The distribution is considered LTS and will be supported until 2029.
Message from the project blog: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4731
New features and improvements: https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_wilma_whatsnew.php
Complete list of release notes and issues identified in it: https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_wilma.php
Source: linux.org.ru
