Hello to all today in this article we will show you what is new in Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa”? Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa” has been in development for five months and is the new main line of Linux Mint after Linux Mint 20 “Ulyana”, which comes with a brand new Ubuntu base powered by Linux kernel 5.15 LTS and derived from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) and supported for the next five years, until 2027.
Linux is an open-source operating system (OS). The operating system is the software that directly manages the hardware and resources of a system, such as the CPU, memory, and storage. The operating system sits between the applications and the hardware and provides the links between all the software and the physical resources that do the work. There are several Linux distros. All versions of Linux Mint 21 are based on the latest version of Ubuntu with long-term support, 22.04. The system uses the most up-to-date version of Ubuntu. It also uses the most up-to-date LTS version of the Linux kernel, 5.15. Linux Mint developers say this is the most recent version of the kernel. Linux Mint developers say that this version will receive security updates until 2027, and future versions until 2024 will use the same package base.
What is New in Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa”
Linux Mint 21 is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, the latest version of Ubuntu with long-term support. This offers Mint users a number of basic improvements and archive updates, as well as a guarantee that they will receive security updates for the system for the next five years. Mint 21’s kernel is based on Linux 5.15, which features (among other changes) a new driver for the NTFS file system (useful when interacting with Windows partitions), improvements for the EXT4 file system (Mint uses EXT4 by default), as well as improved hardware support, security patches, bug fixes, and everything else.
Cinnamon 5.4
Linux Mint 21 comes with Cinnamon 5.4, the latest version of the relatively lightweight, WIMP-oriented user interface. In this iteration, developers base the desktop on a more modern version of Mother, with the goal of bringing the code base closer to Upstream and reducing delta. As a result, this update has significant improvements in performance, compatibility and stability.
Granted, Mint has always been quite fast, even on dated hardware, but the improvements in this area will be appreciated by users with high-end and mid-range hardware as well as low-end users. A related change sees Cinnamon’s window manager, Muffin, display all windows in the GTK theme, instead of using a mix of GTK (CSD) and Metacity (SSD) window types. Applications appear more consistent, regardless of toolkit choice, and window elements appear crisp and undistorted.
Top Features of Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa”
Ubuntu 22.04 and associated updates
Perhaps the most important change is the base of Linux Mint 21, which is now based on Ubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish.” The last major version, Linux Mint 20 “Ulyana,” was based on Ubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa” when it was released four years ago. The state of the world in 2020 was completely different, considering all that is happening.
That’s why many packages, version updates, and new performance improvements-all these under-the-hood updates-are coming to Linux Mint 21, including the latest Linux LTS 5.15 kernel, which brings increased support for hardware lineups and toolchain updates for programming, development, and networking.
Major changes in the Timeshift backup tool
A few months ago, the Mint team announced that it would take over the development of the popular Timeshift backup tool and develop it further as “XApps.” This is therefore a significant change. Why, you may ask?
Well, the developer of the Timeshift tool, Tony George, is busy with other projects. You may have heard of the “TeeJeeTech” applications for Linux. It was developed by Tony and had some interesting applications. However, he does not have time to focus on developing and improving Timeshift.
Now that Linux Mint maintains it, there are some new features in this version, such as Timeshift now using rsync mode (not btrfs mode) to determine how much disk space is needed for the next backup. Also, the backup process is stopped if the disk space after the backup is less than 1 GB.
WebP Support
WebP images are a relatively new image format developed by Google for the Web. It offers better compression and smaller size while maintaining good quality compared to traditional JPEG or PNG images.
WebP support (viewing, thumbnailing or editing images) in Linux Desktop requires the installation of some additional packages. Considering its popularity, the Linux Mint team has introduced WebP support in all desktop applications and variants.
This means that the Nemo file manager can display WebP image thumbnails and display them in xviewer. The Mint team always thinks of the end user first, because other distributions such as Ubuntu are still behind in default WebP support.
Final Words
We hope you enjoy our article on what’s new in Linux Mint 21 “Vanessa”! Linux is an operating system like Windows and Mac OS X, developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991. The operating system is the interface between software and hardware. It provides services to applications and manages computer hardware. So if you like our article, please share it with others.
I hope you understand this article, Linux Mint 21 Vanessa: Everything You Need To Know.
