Linux Mint 20.2 “Uma” Cinnamon released!

[clem]

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4102

[tmanager]

Thank you for all the hard work on this beautiful release.
It was somewhat anti climactic - just took about 10 minutes and one reboot - the only time I had my fingers crossed

[blueberrymint]

Just wanted to let anyone concerned know that there's a little issue with verification files downloaded from https://linuxmint.com/verify.php page, because gpg --verify sha256sum.txt.gpg sha256sum.txt command gives me this output:

Code: Select all

gpg: BAD signature from "Linux Mint ISO Signing Key <root@linuxmint.com>" [unknown]

The files from the blog post have a "Good siganture" output, thankfully.

[AZgl1800]

gtkHash did not come up with the right checksum, 1st time ever for me,

so, I followed along with Clem's instructions and it matched in Terminal.

Clem and to the Gang, you just earned another donation, looks like I need to set them up on AutoPay

currently I just have it running in VBox, but it was Fast, and Full Screen was immense, so wonderful, and it is just as fast and if it were running on the SSD in native form.

[franz_ste]

upgrading right now. Thanks for all the hard work

EDIT: 5min waiting. now up and running super smooth like before. bulky and warpinator are awesome <3

[bluecoat58]

My upgrade this morning went without a hitch. The memory leaks that got fixed seem to have done the job. Idle memory usage is cut in half. Good job guys!

[Lineman Maul]

Thank you for Uma, the newest Linux Mint version! I have been looking forward to meeting Uma for a month or so, and the new release did not disappoint. I have yet to try the highly acclaimed mint-upgrade; I decided to scrap dual-booting and install Uma on a fresh ssd instead. Linux Mint Cinnamon is now my only home. Thank you for building it!

The installation and following set-up took less than a few hours. The installer’s partition manager is quite robust and easy to look at. The entire installation gui is quite impressive really. Quite different from M$, where the Win10 installation mimics ReactOS.

Set-up is a cinch thanks to mintwelcome. Rsync makes restoring personal files a breeze. Commenting out grub_timeout_style and selecting “Delete downloaded packages after installation” in Synaptic were about the only customizations not explicitly laid out before me. Well done!

I have had the pleasure of playing with Uma for the past few days. Here’s a list of good, bads, and uglies:

Good:

1. Nemo search is awesome!
   • Not a big searcher, as I always know where I leave my things. Heard all the hoopla and tried it out on my ext4 and ntfs partitions. Very fast! Might even be Nemo’s flagship offering. Search seemed less obtrusive on ntfs than ext4, but don’t take that as a scientific statement. CPU spikes were a lot more pronounced searching ext4 than ntfs.
2. Notes overhaul
   • Being skeptical at first, since I found gnotes useful, I can finally appreciate what the Mint Team is thinking. Integrating the notes into the cinnamon desktop is a boon! I look forward to further integration with workspaces if possible.
3. Cinnamon Slideshow Controls
   • I love LM wallpaper, but sometimes a particular picture can detract from work. A quick method to change wallpaper was needed. Additionally, the pictures are of such high quality, users query their author. slideshow@cinnamon handles both. Very well done, thank you.

Ugly:

1. /snap/bin defined in $PATH
   • All that noise in the LM community regarding snaps, and this relic is still defined in $PATH? What’s up with that?
2. Product placement in FOSS wallpaper is knot wright
   • Yea, I’m going there. And, yea, I made an exception for Ulyssa’s beautiful Kyoto photo. But FOSS has been forked for less. Shame.

Bad:

1. qt5 disrespecting system settings is not qt
   • Specifically, the qt5 cursor doesn’t respect org.cinnamon.desktop.interface cursor-size. I suppose it’s an easy way to discern which window has focus. Annoying qt5ct doesn’t offer an option for cursor size either.
2. Gentrified qt5 UI when using LM dark control themes
   • virtualbox-qt is a salient example. Using a LM dark control theme creates light fonts on a light control background in some virtualbox panes. The high contrasts between panes are textbook sloppy.
   • I fixed this by changing the qt5 Palette color scheme to “darker”
     1. Run qt5ct in terminal or menu search “qt5 settings”
     2. Qt5 Configuration Tool window opens. Select Appearance tab. Switch Palette radio button to Custom. I found “darker” to work well with LM dark control themes.
     3. Users can also change qt5 fonts and icon themes, which also tend to disrespect LM system settings.

Let’s not end this on a bad note. LM is a standard bearer. So, of course I’m going to truncate the good and expand upon the bad. That’s just how honest criticism works, folks. And I told you all how to fix the bad, so technically the bad is moot.

LM is a stunner. She’s the operating system you bring home to mama. Uma even ensures you are well dressed before going out. I’m in love.

Rated: 9.55
Multiplier: 1.25 (because AWESOME=$(echo The\ LM\ Team))
Deducts: -0.01 (because Notes should have been integrated sooner )
Overall: 11.93/10

[edited 20211223: removed reference to biased source]

[Moem]

LM is a stunner. She’s the operating system you bring home to mama.

That's literally what I did, and guess what, my mother uses it every day and is quite happy.
(Yes, I broke your analogy. )

[marcurling]

Hello, on the page
https://www.linuxmint.com/rel_uma_cinnamon_whatsnew.php
Chapter Cinnamon 5.0 / Spice management
"Cinnamon 5.0 provides a new CLI and a Python 3 module dedicated to spice updates.

The new command line utility is called "cinnamon-spice-updater". It lists available updates and is able to apply them. Linux distributions can also rely on the new Python 3 module to integrate Cinnamon updates within their Update Manager like it was done in Linux Mint 20.2."

like it was done in 20.2 ? Isn't 'Uma' 20.2 and this needs to be corrected ?

Thanks for the nice job & best regards, Marc.

[xenopeek]

The new command line utility is called "cinnamon-spice-updater". It lists available updates and is able to apply them. Linux distributions can also rely on the new Python 3 module to integrate Cinnamon updates within their Update Manager like it was done in Linux Mint 20.2."

like it was done in 20.2 ? Isn't 'Uma' 20.2 and this needs to be corrected ?

The quoted part is about what is new in Cinnamon 5.0. Emphasis mine. This informs Cinnamon users on other Linux distributions about this new functionality in Cinnamon 5.0 and how their Linux distribution could integrate it. As noted at the end, this is included in Linux Mint 20.2. As also described under Update Manager on the same page.

[Foxy Stoat]

Found a bug with Sticky causing what appears to be at first glance, a hardware stuck pixel. I thought it was related to the wallpaper function of Cinnamon but turns out it's actually Sticky as I was able to kill it and reproduce it at will.

viewtopic.php?f=208&t=352976

Worth fixing as users could think their monitor might suddenly have become defective and they could spend real money buying a new one.