Linux Mint 21.1: The Linux Desktop Is Better Than Ever

you can keep yours 11 . window and macOS operating system on your PC. On my desktop what I want is open source Linux. In particular, I want Linux Mint. Why? Because, it’s free, easy to use, and much more secure than its proprietary competitors.

Latest version, Linux Mint 21.1, Vera, is better than ever. If you don’t know it, let me introduce you.

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Linux Mint 21.1 is a comprehensive desktop operating system that includes everything you need for home and office work. It comes with LibreOffice 7.3.7 for office productivity, Firefox 108.0.1 to browse the web, Thunderbird 102.4.2 for email and calendar, and GIMP 2.10.30 for graphic editing. None of this will cost you a dime.

Mint gives you a choice of three skins: cinnamon 5.6, FRIENDand xfce. For me, the Cinnamon interface is the easiest to use. I recommend it to anyone looking to move from the Mac and Windows world to Linux. It is very simple to receive.

Experienced Cinnamon users will notice that the default theme has more vibrant colors. It also uses the blue Aqua theme by default, instead of the more familiar mint green. Instead of using the old one? No problem. Select the “Mint-Y-Legacy” option in the theme options and you’re good to go. You’ll find this and all other desktop customization options in the System Settings panel.

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The desktop itself has also been cleaned up. Now, by default, there are much fewer icons. The Home, Computer, Trash and Network icons are all missing. If, like me, you still like the icons, you can easily add them back through the System Settings panel. Mint gives you all the control you could want on your desktop to set it up in any way that pleases you.

The interface is also faster. There have been many changes under the hood to make the display much faster. I noticed this immediately on my home screen. The new Mint works as good as it gets on my 2020 Dell Precision 3451. This computer is equipped with an Intel 8-core 3GHz i7-9700 CPU. It also includes 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

This is more computers than Mint needs. Linux Mint will run on almost any computer. If your PC has 2GB of RAM and 100GB, any graphics card, and a monitor that supports 1024×768 resolution, you’re good to go. If you’re not sure if you’d like to give Mint a try, you can literally grab quite a few PCs from the thrift store to play with.

This version of Mint is built on Ubuntu 22.04known as jelly jellyfish. From there, it inherits many business-friendly features, such as full support for Active Directory (AD) with enhanced Group Policy Objects. So if you want to run Mint on an enterprise network with a Windows 2012 or newer AD Domain Controller, you’re good to go.

If you choose to do that, also know that Mint 21.1 is a long-term support (LTS) release. It will be supported for 5 years, i.e. until 2027.

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It also uses the Linux kernel 5.15. This comes with business features like improved support for the Windows NTFS file system and the SMB 3.0 file server in the kernel. This also improves its integration with Windows-based systems and file servers.

Because of this, Mint now also includes Blueman Bluetooth Stack. This improves Mint’s Bluetooth device support for keyboards, mice, and smartphones.

The latest Process Monitor notifies you when any important actions, such as backups, are happening in the background. The default use of Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) allows easy printer and scanner setup without drivers, although support for other drivers is also available.

Regarding the driver, Drive Manager no longer asks for the root user password. Package set it is also possible to remove packages, i.e. not only remove them, but also delete their configuration files. That means driver manager is now removing deleted drivers. This fixes a niche problem with discomfort NVIDIA Linux Driver when switching between different driver versions.

Mint is also now fully supported flat pack install the program from Software Manager and Update Manager. Flatpak allows developers to easily let users install packaged programs on their desktops. Both software installation user interfaces make it easy to see the difference between a regular installation and a Flatpak installation.

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Mint leadership has never reached the same level Snapzu program management. If you still want to use snaps — like me — do the following steps from the shell.

$ sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref

update $ apt

$ apt install snapd

And, although the Snap store won’t be integrated with Software and Update Manager, you can install Snap programs.

Arrive install Linux Mint 21.1, you can download it now. However, if you’re running Linux Mint 21, it’s trivial to upgrade to the latest version. With a 1 Gigabit fiber connection, it took me less than 15 minutes.

So, if you want a Linux project on holiday or you’re ready to say goodbye to Windows, give Mint a try. You will be glad you did.

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