Cinnamon is a fantastic, yet underrated Linux desktop environment that features a user interface that does not get in the way and is beginner-friendly.
Of course, many of you might already be users of Cinnamon desktop, thanks to Linux Mint.
So, allow me to take you through some really awesome features that are being introduced with the new Cinnamon 6.2 release, which has arrived months after the previous major release.
Let's get started.
Cinnamon 6.2: What to Expect? 🤔
Packed with many important fixes and improvements, Cinnamon 6.2 brings about things like the workspace switcher now supporting the closing of workspaces with a middle-click, a fix for the reported battery status, with reporting of pending charge/discharge states under “Power Management”.
Then there's the new screen lock delay options to choose from (5 or 10 seconds), searchable keybinds, improved Flatpak support, a switch to GNOME Online Accounts GTK and the search bar being shown by default when choosing an application.
Moreover, users can now see their profile picture in the panel, and in case it doesn't load, the placeholder image will be loaded instead. Cinnamon Spices also received some useful tweaks like support for keybindings and the preservation of file permissions for downloaded Spices.
Other Changes and Improvements
Those were not all the changes, there are a bunch of other notable changes too:
- A new “Science” category in the menu.
- New action icon included with the Mint-X theme.
- Improvements to the window behavior when connecting a monitor.
- A padlock being shown on the network icons when a VPN connection is active.
- Addressed a bug for NVIDIA users that caused breakage with Online Accounts.
You can get additional information about this release in the official changelog.
📥 Get Cinnamon 6.2
The best way to get this release of Cinnamon would be with the upcoming Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” release, which will be based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
But, you will have to wait for it, as it's still undergoing development. Plus, this iteration of Cinnamon is bound to receive further tweaks before the final release happens, so you will get a refined experience when it arrives.
If you can't wait, then you can either get the source from GitHub, or install a rolling release distro like EndeavourOS, which features this release of Cinnamon.
The Arch Linux repo hosts this release, so you can easily get it on any Arch-based distro.
Suggested Read 📖
Ankush Das
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