Linux Mint e una distribuzione Linux basata su Ubuntu che ha come obbiettivo di fornire una esperienza subito pronta all’uso dato che include plugin per browser, codec audio/video, supporto ai DVD e Java di default. Fornisce dei programmi custom per la gestione e installazione della distribuzione.
Versione 18.1: Serena
Questa versione contiene:
MATE 1.16
Linux Mint 18.1 features the latest MATE 1.16, which brings many bug fixes and updated translations.
In MATE 1.16, the following components also switched to GTK3:
- The notification daemon
- The MATE policykit library
- The session manager
- The MATE terminal
Application Menu
In the MintMenu application menu, the Google CSE search engine was replaced with DuckDuckGo.
Wikipedia searches are now localized and point to the version of Wikipedia in your language.
Online search engines can be disabled in the preferences.
Xed
New search bar
Xed, the text editor, was given a brand new search bar.
When searching, the text is no longer obstructed by a dialog box. Instead, the search bar appears at the bottom of the editor.
The search finds results while you are typing and you can jump from one result to the next by pressing Enter.
This makes it much easier and faster than before to find or replace something.
You might be used to this kind of search already, as it is used in other popular applications such as Firefox, Eclipse or Sublime (which it was inspired from).
UI improvements
Xed also received the following UI improvements:
- Full support for dark themes
- A red bar (like in Nemo), to warn you when Xed is running with administrative privileges
Note: The screenshot above shows Xed running as root with the Mint-Y-Darker theme to highlight this.
Xplayer
Monitor blanking
Xplayer, the media player, was given the availability to blank other monitors.
If you have more than one monitor, you can now press the “Blank Other Monitors” button when playing a video in full screen. Your video will continue to play and all your other monitors will turn black.
The blanking can be toggled back and forth and automatically stops if you leave fullscreen or close the player.
This feature is also available if you plug an external monitor to a laptop, so it allows you to blank the external monitor, or to blank the laptop itself without having to close the lid.
You could already do this by switching monitors off manually, or by closing laptops lids, but that was troublesome for some people because of power management settings, the settings daemon reinterpreting your monitor configuration (thus moving your windows) or in the case of issues with energy saving (that’s common on Dell monitors for instance).
Other improvements
Xplayer is now fully compatible with EXIF orientation tags. In other words, it will now automatically detect and automatically rotate videos which were captured sideways or upside down.
The rotation plugin is now enabled by default, so you’ll also be able to manually rotate videos out of the box. Just press Ctrl+R or click on “View -> Rotate” to rotate a video.
The subtitle plugin is now also enabled by default. If you’re watching a movie and you want subtitles for it, just click on “View -> Subtitles -> Download Subtitles”.
Other improvements given to Xplayer include:
- Improved MPRIS support (also enabled by default)
- Full support for dark themes
- Integration improvements (the sidebar is now hidden by default and Xplayer was given the generic name “Media Player”)
X-Apps
Xviewer
Interpolation was improved in the XViewer image viewer, reducing pixelation and aliasing in zoomed pictures.
The ability to rotate pictures was provided by a plugin. It is now part of the core application.
Xreader
The Xreader PDF and document viewer received many bug fixes and improvements which were backported from Evince and Atril.
The main view now features HiDPI support.
Shadows look better.
Libxapp
The X-Apps project continues to facilitate cross-desktop efforts at producing better environments.
New libraries and resources were made available to help cross-desktop development, not only in X-Apps applications but also in other projects.
For example, Xplayer’s ability to blank other monitors isn’t implemented in Xplayer itself, but in libxapp, and this feature is available to other applications.
Part of the keyboard layout management in Cinnamon 3.2 is implemented in libxapp too, and that also is available to other applications or other desktop environments.
Update Manager
A new column is available to show where updates come from and sort them by origin.
Kernel updates in the main view are shown with more clarity than before and their version is made more prominent.
MDM
The MDM display manager, which is responsible for the login screen, received many technical improvements:
- The login screen now forcefully applies keyboard layout configuration. This fixes a long-standing issue with Logitech wireless keyboards.
- In cases where monitor plug names are not available (which is the case in Ubuntu Xenial due to a regression in GTK+), monitors can now be selected by ID.
- XDG_DATA_DIRS is now modified much later in the login sequence. Among other consequences, this fixes support for Flatpack.
- Fixes were made in the shutdown sequence and the execution of PostSession scripts.
- SIGHUP signals no longer kill the session.
System improvements
In the default software selection, Banshee was replaced with Rhythmbox.
Banshee was a great application but it suffered many regressions lately, due to lack of development upstream and its reliance on Mono.
Rhythmbox provides most of its features and we made sure it integrated properly with our various environments:
- Rhythmbox is supported by the Cinnamon sound applet and screensaver.
- To ensure proper integration in MATE and Xfce, Linux Mint is now involved in the development of rhythmbox-plugin-tray-icon.
This release ships with linux-firmware 1.157.5 and the Linux kernel 4.4.0-31.
Artwork improvements
“folder-color-switcher” now supports theme inheritance. You can modify the color of your folders even if you’re using Mint-Y or Mint-X-Dark.
Linux Mint 18.1 features a superb collection of backgrounds from Anders Jilden, Andres Nieto Porras, Alberto Restifo, Graziano Capelli, David Marcu, Dorin Vancea, Emma Hall, Eric Kilby, John Chavez, Joe Gardner, Juergen Donauer, Jan Vasek, Kace Rodriguez, Lionello DelPiccolo, Maxime Staudenmann, Petra Fischer, Philippe Wuyts, Robert Lukeman, Sylvain Guiheneuc, Stephen Radford and Sam Schooler.
Cinnamon 3.2
New screensaver
The screensaver in Cinnamon 3.2 was redesigned and rewritten from scratch in Python. Not only does it look better, but it’s also much faster, more responsive and more customizable than the old one.
Background slideshows set in Cinnamon continue to play in the new screensaver.
On laptops the battery power is shown, so you can see if you’re running low without having to log in.
We also thought about music fans. You no longer need to unlock the screen to mute the sound, and if you’re throwing a party and using your computer as a jukebox, you can have the media controls right there in the screensaver, so you can let people skip to the next song without giving them access to your session.
The screensaver can also show if you missed notifications (not their content, for privacy reasons, but how many).
Better look and feel
Thanks to upgrades and new implementations, Cinnamon 3.2 brings back some visual changes which had been disabled in the past for stability reasons:
- Background changes are now complimented by cross-fade animations.
- Lists, such as the list of applications in the main menu, now use fade effects to render their edges.
It is now possible to make Cinnamon play a sound when a notification pops up. This is a new setting available in “System Settings” -> “Sound” -> “Sound Effects”.
The most striking difference in the new Cinnamon though is the removal of “box pointers”. The shape of the menus used to “point” to their parent object, creating a gap between applets and panels and making it hard for applets to properly stick to the edges of the screen.
Improved hardware support
Cinnamon 3.2 features support of iio-sensor-proxy. On computers equipped with compatible accelerometers, Cinnamon is able to auto-rotate to respond to orientation changes.
In addition to “synaptics”, the new “libinput” touchpad and input driver is now also supported.
Vertical panels
Cinnamon 3.2 supports vertical panels, so you can now place panels on the side of the screen.
Other new features
Here are more new features which were introduced in Cinnamon 3.2:
- You can peek at the desktop by hovering the show-desktop applet
- The sound applet can now control multiple players and switch between them.
- The application menu now features full keyboard navigation (and performance improvements)
- Bumblebee users can right-click any program in the application menu and launch it with optirun by selecting ‘Run with NVIDIA GPU’
- When seeking help, you can upload your system information on the Internet, from the “System Settings” -> “Info” screen.
- In the Nemo preferences, you can enable an option which goes to the parent folder when you double-click an empty area
Other improvements
Cinnamon 3.2 also brings the following improvements:
- Window manager, session and settings daemon:
- QT 5.7+ support
- Improvements to unredirect heuristic and borders/maximization
- Fixed special cases which could lead to Cinnamon crashes
- Fixed cursor-size changes being ignored
- Control center:
- Fixed new network connections secrets
- New keyboard layout options
- Settings API:
- Revamped Xlet settings: separate process, new visual style, support for pages and sections, automatic highlight, new JSON backend..etc.
- New date chooser widget
- Applets:
- Keyboard applet: support for multiple layouts using the same flag or language code
- nemo:
- File operations: reduced the time for reliable transfer rate
- Expanded grid width to canvas
- Improved trash monitor
- Fixed –geometry option when Nemo is already running
- Desktop: Don’t rebuild the desktop any time _NET_WORKAREA changes, prevents crashes in some situations
- Image converter: Additional dimensions added
- Nemo preview: Upgraded to Webkit2, multiple bug fixes, support for EXIF rotation
Risorse
La distribuzione può essere scaricata da:
- 64 bit Cinnamon (1,7GB): http://mirrors.kernel.org/linuxmint/stable/18.1/linuxmint-18.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso
- 64 bit Cinammon torrent: https://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-18.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso.torrent
- 64 bit Mate (1,5GB): http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/linuxmint-cd/stable/18.1/linuxmint-18.1-mate-64bit.iso
- 64 bit Mate torrent: https://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-18.1-mate-64bit.iso.torrent
Il sito web della distribuzione è: http://linuxmint.com
Screenshot
Conclusioni
Questa versione sarà supportata fino al 2021.