distribution release , the second update of the Linux Mint 19.x branch based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and supported until 2023. The distribution is fully compatible with Ubuntu, but differs significantly in the approach to organizing the user interface and the selection of applications used by default. Linux Mint developers provide a desktop environment that follows the classic canons of desktop organization, which is more familiar to users who do not accept the new methods of building the interface of Unity and GNOME 3. DVD builds based on shells are available for download (), () and ().
What's New in Linux Mint 19.3 (, , ):
- Includes versions of desktop environments ΠΈ , the design and organization of work in which the development of the ideas of GNOME 2 continues - the user is offered a desktop and a panel with a menu, a quick launch area, a list of open windows and a system tray with running applets. Cinnamon is based on GTK3+ and GNOME 3 technologies. The project evolves the GNOME Shell and the Mutter window manager to provide a GNOME 2-style environment with a more modern look and feel, using GNOME Shell elements to complement the classic desktop experience. MATE continues the development of the GNOME 2.32 codebase and is completely free from crossovers with GNOME 3, allowing you to use the traditional GNOME 2 desktop side by side with the GNOME 3 desktop.
- In Cinnamon, for each zone of the panel (left, center, right), it is possible to define its own text size and size of symbolic icons.
- Added the ability to customize what actions are visible in the context menu in the Nemo file manager.
- Xfce desktop updated to release .
- A new indicator has been added to the system tray with tips and suggestions for solving potential problems in the system. For example, the indicator prompts you to install missing language sets and multimedia codecs, warns you about a new version of Linux Mint, or indicates that additional drivers are available.
- The ability to define the time output format has been added to the language settings.
- Support for screens with high pixel density (HiDPI) is almost brought to full readiness, which covers all applications included in the base distribution of all editions of Linux Mint, with the exception of Hexchat and Qt5Settings. Changed icons with flags in the language settings and in the interface for selecting repository mirrors, which looked blurry due to scaling on HiDPI screens. Cinnamon fixed issues with theme previews on HiDPI screens.
- The XAppStatus applet and the XApp.StatusIcon API are proposed, which implement an alternative mechanism for placing icons with application indicators in the system tray. XApp.StatusIcon solves problems with Gtk.StatusIcon, which is designed to use 16px icons, has HiDPI issues, and is tied to legacy technologies such as Gtk.Plug and Gtk.Socket that are not compatible with GTK4 and Wayland. Gtk.StatusIcon also implies application-side rendering, not applet-side rendering. To solve these problems, the AppIndicator system was proposed in Ubuntu, but it does not support the full functionality of Gtk.StatusIcon and, as a rule, requires applets to be redesigned.
XApp.StatusIcon, like AppIndicator, takes the rendering of the icon, tooltip, and label to the applet side, and uses DBus to pass information through applets. Applet-side rendering provides quality icons of any size and solves display problems. Supports transfer from applet to application of click events, which is also carried out through the DBus bus. For compatibility with other desktops, the App.StatusIcon stub has been prepared, which detects the presence of an applet and, if necessary, rolls back to Gtk.StatusIcon, which makes it possible to display icons of old applications based on Gtk.StatusIcon.
- Enabled as default media player
, which provides a GUI based on the GTK3 library for the MPV console video player. Celluloid replaced Xplayer, which was based on GStreamer / ClutterGST and supported video rendering only using the CPU (using MPV allows you to use hardware acceleration mechanisms). - For taking notes, instead of Tomboy, which pulls in Mono dependencies and does not support HiDPI, the Gnote application is proposed, the only drawback of which is the inability to minimize to the system tray.
- Instead of the GIMP graphical editor, a very simple and more understandable for beginners Drawing application has been added to the basic package, which supports drawing, scaling, cropping and transforming.
- The XAppIconChooser widget supports defining default icon sizes and custom icon categories. This widget is also used in the logo selection menu.
- Blueberry, the Bluetooth configurator, has been completely redesigned with improved device detection and problem diagnosis, as well as an expanded range of supported hardware.
- Added the ability to select a mouse pointer theme for the login screen in the LightDM display manager settings.
- We continued to improve applications developed as part of the X-Apps initiative, aimed at unifying the software environment in editions of Linux Mint based on different desktops. X-Apps uses modern technologies (GTK3 for HiDPI support, gsettings, etc.) but retains traditional interface elements such as toolbars and menus. Among such applications are Xed text editor, Pix photo manager, Xreader document viewer, Xviewer image viewer.
- The photo manager provides the ability to select a quality mode for displaying photos in slideshow mode;
- Xed text editor (a fork of Pluma/Gedit) added support for opening links with a right-click;
- In the Xreader document viewer (an offshoot of Atril/Evince), buttons for viewing annotations have been added to the panel;
- Added Ctrl+0 key combination to reset zoom in Xviewer.
- Added hardware detection tool to boot menu of iso image
(βHardware Detection Toolβ). - Changed the design of the boot menu and boot splash screen.
Source: opennet.ru