Linux Mint 22 beta sprinkles Cinnamon desktop on Ubuntu

The Linux Mint project has released the beta version of version 22, codenamed "Wilma" and featuring the latest Cinnamon desktop. The beta of Mint 22 is based on Ubuntu 24.04 Noble Numbat, the latest LTS release that appeared late in April. The maintainers have a detailed What's New page detailing the features in this release …

[corb]

The interface inconsistencies revolving around Gnome apps on non-Gnome platforms are annoying enough to push me to look for alternative apps that are not affected. It's pretty fruitless, though.

Re: Mate -- Fedora 40 has release 1.28. Externally, I see no change from 1.26 other than the addition of a system info app.

[Doctor Syntax]

I see it not so much "accessories must diverge from their upstream GNOME bases" as upstream GNOME diverging from everything else. Maybe some of the old apps will be forked to remain at Gtk3. The UI of pdf shuffler or whatever it's called now isn't just looking out of place on my KDE Devuan, it's disappeared entirely. Fortunately I found a Java equivalent; it also looks a bit out of place but it works.

[NATTtrash]

pdf-arranger perhaps working for you?

https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger

[Doctor Syntax]

That's shuffler's latest incarnation. No, it doesn't. For now I'm using PDF Juggler.

[bofh1961]

The further Cinnamon moves away from Gnome the better

I'll be sticking with LMDE 6 for the time being, hopefully we'll get the Cinnamon updates soon.

[navarac]

Runs fine

LM22 runs fine on my test hardware (not VM). Only issue I have found is that turning screensaver to 'never' is ignored unlike with LM21.3. I had to move to the Nvidia 555 drivers from default open source for Steam (Train Simulator) and adjust Proton to Proton 8. LM21.3 was on open source video driver and Proton Experimental on this machine. No other issues for my "work" (!?) flow.

Otherwise, a solid offering, as always.

[Mockup1974]

We don't more than Plasma, Gnome and Xfce.

>One of the interesting aspects is that the What's New article discusses some of the problems facing the maintainers of distros based around GNOME and Gtk tools, especially since the GNOME 46 release.

In hindsight, all this could have been avoided. Mint's Cinnamon, Ubuntu's Unity (and to a lesser degree, Ubuntu's current Gnome-based desktop), Solus's Budgie, Pop_OS's (current, Gnome-based) Cosmic desktop - all of these are fighting against Gnome, trying to make a sane desktop based on Gnome technology. All of these should have instead pivoted to Qt or even just added their manpower to KDE, fixing bugs, adding features, and shipping their distro with a customised version of Plasma that shows their idea of a desktop.

The question that needs to be asked is: "Why did you try to create a new desktop based on Gnome, when you think Gnome is doing it all wrong and will fight you every step of the way?"

Xfce and Mate, while also GTK-based, have the excuse of being older than Gnome and a fork of Gnome 2, respectively, so they have their own raison d'etre.

[Liam Proven]

Re: We don't more than Plasma, Gnome and Xfce.

[Author here]

> all of these are fighting against Gnome, trying to make a sane desktop based on Gnome technology.

You make a good point.

I think an awful lot of infighting could be avoided if they would just work together. I do get the fundamental disputes between C vs C++, Gtk vs Qt vs EFL, and so on, but even so, if the projects using C and Gtk just got together and cooperated a lot of this could be fixed.

Even inside the "fork of GNOME 3" camp, there's Cinnamon, GNOME Classic, GNOME Fallback, and Zorin OS, all doing the same basic thing: remodelling the Javascript-based GNOME Shell into something more like the classic Win9x desktop.

GNOME stands for _GNU Network Object Model Environment_. It was meant to be component-based, and thus lend itself to replacing parts at the user's will. Not any more. It should be again.

[keithpeter]

"All of these should have instead pivoted to Qt or even just added their manpower to KDE"

Probably shouting into the void here but how would you have made this come about, given that this is free software and anyone can fork a project? Basically what institutional arrangements would you use to enforce the 'should'?