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PayPalThe popular Linux Mint has a big new stable version available with Linux Mint 22.3 "Zena" supported up until 2029 as it's a long-term support release. Bringing with it a whole lot of improvements across the board, it's a genuinely good distribution overall that focuses on a no-nonsense approach to just getting you going.
Not much has changed from the Beta that I previously reported on but here's a refresher.
There's a new System Information app to help you see more about your PC and hopefully figure out any problems. With screens that cover a range of details like crash reports, USB info, GPU, PCI, BIOS and general system info. Plus a System Administration tool that currently lets you configure the boot menu.
Probably one of the biggest changes is Cinnamon 6.6 with improved Wayland support, thanks to changes to keyboard layouts and input methods along with the Cinnamon window manager (muffin) also seeing improvements for Wayland. The new and improved input support is fully compatible with Wayland for both traditional layouts and IBus input methods. The on-screen keyboard also had an overhaul to be native to the Cinnamon desktop, with added support for input methods and keyboard layout switch.
Lots more like the new layout for the main Mint Menu, which looks a lot more modern and it's configurable too. The Nemo file manager got smarter with pausing and resuming of file operations, better thumbnails and improved search accuracy. There's also a notifications badge on the window list for apps,
There's a whole lot more, I'm just cherry-picking some fun bits.
See the release announcement and new features page for more info.
Going by Valve's latest data we can see around 9.27% of Linux gamers on Steam use it, making it one of the most popular Linux distributions for gaming overall.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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legluondunet 2 hours ago
Last edited by legluondunet on 14 Jan 2026 at 7:58 pm UTC
Quoting: legluondunetWhen will they update Flatpak version? They still provide an old 1.14 version...impotants bugs have been fixed since 1.14 version.Probably in the next version, which will be based on the upcoming Ubuntu LTS (26.04). Honestly, I got a bit disappointed with Mint during the current LTS cycle (24.04), since they haven't updated Xfce and MATE with their newer versions.
For reference: the Mint team updated their Xfce flavor (from 4.16 to 4.18) in Mint 21.2. Now, Xfce 4.20 is more than one year old and it could have been part of two Mint releases at this point. Things got even worse for MATE users, since the newest MATE release (1.28) is almost two years old.
I know that Cinnamon is their baby, but it feels odd that in the previous LTS they updated the Xfce during a point release and now completely ignored it - it wouldn't be so bad if they didn't do that before. And if my memory serves me right, Xfce is the second most popular Mint version.
Quoting: legluondunetThey still provide an old 1.14 version...They depend on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and LTS Ubuntu releases tend to be awfully outdated, unfortunately.
Caldathras 20 minutes ago
Quoting: PenguinFor reference: the Mint team updated their Xfce flavor (from 4.16 to 4.18) in Mint 21.2.
Uhm... I have Mint 21.3 XFCE currently. It ships with Xfce 4.16. The update actually happened with Mint 22.0. We likely won't see Xfce 4.20 until Mint 23 comes out.
As @AsciiWolf pointed out, it has to do with the base version of Ubuntu they rely on. The only exception is Cinnamon, which the Mint Team manages themselves.
Last edited by Caldathras on 14 Jan 2026 at 9:11 pm UTC
Well, hurrah!
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