Linux Mint 21 Beta is now available for testing

[harlan4096]

Linux Mint 21 is almost ready. If you are interested in trying the next version of the popular Linux distribution early, you may download official beta ISO images to do so. All three Linux Mint desktop environments can be downloaded and tested.



Linux Mint 21 is powered by Linux Kernel 5.15 and Ubuntu 22.04 LTs, which means that the Linux distribution will be supported until 2027 with security patches.

Once the stable version of Linux Mint 21 released, Linux Mint 20.3 systems can be upgraded with the help of the new Linux Mint upgrade tool. It removes the need to run commands from a terminal window, and streamlines the upgrade process for most users because of that.

The beta release provides a good overview of the changes in the new Linux Mint version.

Note: Linux Mint 21 Beta has been released for testing. It is not advised to run beta operating systems in production environments. Most users may want to install it using virtual machines.

Here is a quick overview of important changes in Linux Mint 21:

• Blueman tool to manage Bluetooth settings. The previous tool, Blueberry, was a frontend for GNOME Bluetooth. The release of Gnome 42 caused incompatibilities with Blueberry, and the Linux Mint team decided to switch to Blueman instead.
  
• Support for WebP images, which means that you may open them in the image viewer and see them as thumbnails in the file manager Nemo.
  
• Timeshift system backup tool is now developed by the Linux Mint team. One of the improvements calculates the space requirement for the next snapshot and skips its creation if its creation would reduce the disk space to less than 1 Gigabytes.
  
• The Linux Mint team decided not to implement systemd-oomd, which Ubuntu uses to ensure that the system has enough RAM to operate. It does so by killing running applications on the system.
  
• OS-Prober remains enabled by default to make sure that the boot loader detects other operating systems, e.g., a Windows installation.
  

Additional information is available on the official Linux Mint blog.

It seems unlikely that additional major changes will be made to Linux Mint 21 before release. The development team will focus its energy on patching bugs and other issues, including major issues that beta testers report to the team.
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