 Linux Mint and I have an interesting history, but whenever a new release of Linux Mint comes out, I always do like to take a look at it. Recently, Linux Mint 21 was released and I figured it is time to take a look and see what new features there are to enjoy. So today, we're going to be taking a look at Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon Edition. Now, the Cinnamon Edition is Linux Mint's flagship edition, and it's the one that most people probably download. And for good reason, the Cinnamon Edition of Linux Mint is always really good and really solid. So let's go ahead and see what new features there are. So here we have a VM of Linux Mint 21, and from what I can tell, the look and feel of this is going to be exactly the same as Linux Mint in the past. So there's not a ton here in terms of look and feel that you're going to discover has changed between the last major version and this version. Now, one feature that you might notice if you use Bluetooth on Linux Mint that has changed is that Linux Mint has changed from Blueberry to BlueMan as a backend for handling Bluetooth devices. So when you connect to a Bluetooth device, you're going to be actually using BlueMan. Now, I'm not actually sure how this differs from how it looks before, but if we search for Bluetooth here, this is what the Bluetooth manager looks like. And like I said, I'm not sure what this looks like before, if it is any different or not, but for sure it's using a different backend. It's using BlueMan. Now, most people, I don't think even know what the difference between Blueberry and BlueMan is. They have switched to BlueMan because they want to have a desktop agnostic solution for Bluetooth, whereas the Blueberry solution was developed by the GNOME people. So this is more of a situation where they're less reliant on one specific organization. Which is something that Linux Mint does often. They try to be as unreliant on other things as possible in a lot of cases. And as you see, the BlueMan demon crashed here. I'm assuming that's probably because I'm on a VM. So it's probably not a big deal. Another thing you might notice as you're going around the system is that they've improved the file manager so that it will show icons for specific things. So for example, app images, EPUBs, MP3s, and things in the past had no thumbnails whatsoever. They just had an icon of some kind. So when you were viewing a long list of things, you would have a mixture of things that had thumbnails and some things that didn't have thumbnails. Now, I can't show you this because I have nothing on this system. But they've improved it now so that when you have an app image at EPUB and MP3, some raw pictures or a WebP, they will now have thumbnails instead of just an icon. The Sticky Notes application has seen some updates. It now has the ability to duplicate notes. So if you have a note here, this is a note, very clever. You should now have the ability to duplicate it. So once you've written the note, you can right click on the note itself and click Duplicate Note. And then you have two sticky notes that are exactly the same. So another improvement to this application is that when you've selected the option here to cycle colors, it will no longer choose just random colors. It will actually cycle through the colors that are available. So once we have that set, if we choose a new note here, we'll see then it creates a note in a different color and then it will just cycle through them like so. And that means it's not random anymore. The SysTray icon for notes has also been restyled and they fixed it so that when you do you spawn a new note, it spawns in this fashion here instead of just being all over the place. If you've used Linux Mint in the past, you'll know that Linux Mint does automatic updates and also provides system snapshots through time shift. And in the past, you really wouldn't know if either of those things were being done. It would just kind of happen in the background. Now they've created a little process monitor that will appear down here in the bottom right hand corner. If I can show you this, it appears down here as a little gear. It will tell you that it's either doing a system snapshot or your system is being updated in the background. And then once the process is done, it will alert you to any actions that you might need to take. There have also been several improvements to Xapps. So time shift is now maintained as an Xapp and its translations are done on Launchpad. So that's for languages. In our sync mode, it now calculates the required space for the next snapshot. It skips if the performing of that snapshot will lead to less free space than one gigabyte on your disk. So if you are running low on disk space, it just won't do the snapshot at all, which is nice. When Warpinator fails to find other devices, amongst other solutions, it now provides links towards its Windows, Android or iOS counterparts. So if you don't know what Warpinator is, it is a program that allows you to transfer files between applications. So if you have two Linux Mint devices, you can actually transfer files between them without having to actually install any other software. Now, one something that is new here is that they have links here to the Android, iOS and Windows applications, which you'll need if you want to transfer files between Mint and those devices. So Warpinator is actually a really cool little application that I've planned to take a look at in the future. Finally, Cinnamon 5.4 is here. There are several changes that you should probably be made aware of. Cinnamon 5.4 is a major rebase of its window manager. Muffin is now based on Mudder. So Mudder is the window manager that is in GNOME, and Muffin is now based on Mudder 3.36. And its code base is much closer to the upstream than before is what they're saying now. With that change, you'll see changes in the Display Settings panel. So this has been backported from GNOME Control Center and directly into the Cinnamon Control Center. It's no longer using X-Rander buttons that is being controlled by the window manager itself, at least according to their release notes. Another big change is that no matter what type of application you're using, whether it has a GTK header bar or not, Cinnamon will now render it with a header bar even if it doesn't have a header bar by default. This is to enable consistency for the themes that Cinnamon provides. They've also improved the rounded corners so that the grab targets are easier to get to. So one of the problems I had before when I tried Linux Mint is these grab targets, which you'd hover over the corner and the cursor wouldn't change so you couldn't actually grab and drag it anywhere. A lot of times it was actually kind of closer to being out here than actually on the corner. Now as you see, the grab targets are much easier to find, even with a mouse that isn't all that accurate in a VM. So that is quite good and definitely an improvement over the past. Also, they've improved the wallpaper selection so that if that's something that is important to you, you can check that out by right clicking on the background, click Change Desktop Background, and you'll see that there are quite a few wallpapers here to choose from, which is cool. So we'll actually go ahead and change the wallpaper, make it look real nice. So that is Linux Mint 21 and overall first impressions are that this is a stability release. This is not a brand new highfalutin magical new features release. You're not going to find anything here that is going to rock the boat from Linux Mint 20 to 21. There are some very small, very nice features that they've added and a lot of tweaks to make usability even better. Other than that, it's a fairly minor release and that's okay. People like me who enjoy choice a lot will probably be a bit disappointed that there isn't something that is at least a little bit new and shiny. But for the vast majority of people who just want to use their computer and get on with their day and they don't care that there's something new and shiny, this is a good release. And if you are into Linux Mint and I highly recommend you give it a try, you'll probably discover that is probably one of the most stable Linux distributions that you'll be able to try. So that's Linux Mint 21. If you have comments on it, you can leave those in the comment section below. You can follow me on Twitter at the Linuxcast. You can follow me on Macedon or Odyssey. 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