The developers of the Linux Mint distribution have announced their intention to release the next version at the end of December 2026, which implies a shift to an annual release schedule instead of biannual as before. The new release strategy has not yet been finalized, and discussions continue on issues such as the duration of the development cycle, maintaining a freeze stage for interim releases before the official launch, transitioning to a semi-rolling update model (similar to the LMDE approach), and starting the publication of alpha versions.
The reason cited for extending the development cycles is that preparing a release takes a considerable amount of time and limits the ability to innovate. With frequent releases, much of the time is spent on testing, fixing bugs, and preparing the release rather than improving and adapting the distribution to changes in the Linux ecosystem.
Additionally, it should be noted that the next release of Linux Mint will utilize the live-installer, previously used in the LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition), and will implement the Wayland protocol in the Cinnamon desktop environment. The live-installer will replace the Ubiquity installer and will support OEM installations, operation on systems with BIOS/EFI, secure boot mode (UEFI SecureBoot), working with LVM partitions, and disk encryption based on LUKS. The Linux Mint 23 release will be based on the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS package base, Linux kernel 7.0, and Cinnamon desktop environment 6.7.
Source: opennet.ru
