Linux Mint 21.3 with Cinnamon 6.0 and experimental Wayland support is out

Linux Mint 21.3 has been released. The LTS distribution will be named Virginia, ship with an experimental version of Wayland as a display server, and include the Cinnamon 6.0 desktop environment by default.

Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia is a long-term support release that will receive support until 2027, write the makers. One of the most noticeable changes is the addition of Wayland to the desktop environment. After upgrading, users can opt for the default Cinnamon 6.0, the latest version of the GUI. It is also possible to try Cinnamon on Wayland. That is an experimental version where Cinnamon uses Wayland as a display server instead of Xorg. The makers say they want to switch to full Wayland support in the future, but that could take a long time. “That won’t happen in 21.3 or 22.x, but we want to be ready for it,” the developers write. Xorg therefore remains the default display server. Wayland has been gaining ground for years and more and more distros, including Fedora, are considering acquiring Wayland.

Cinnamon 6.0 is itself a major new release. In addition to the four standard add-ons, applets, desklets, extensions and themes, it has a fifth ‘spice’ called Actions. These are add-ons for the context menu in explorer. Furthermore, Cinnamon 6.0 has 75 percent scaling again, new gesture controls and customizable menu apps. Linux Mint 21.3 can also be used as a desktop environment with Xfce 4.18 and MATE 1.26.

Virginia comes with, among other things, note-taking app Sticky, batch tool Bulky and video app Pix. This includes minor changes, such as support for DBUS commands and automatic orientation of videos.

The distro is based on Linux kernel version 5.15 and has an Ubuntu 22.04 package base. The distro also has full support for Secure Boot.