New features in Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon
Linux Mint 18 is a long term support release which will be supported
until 2021. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and
many new features to make your desktop experience more comfortable to
use.
Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" Cinnamon Edition
X-Apps
A new project called "X-Apps" was started and its goal is to produce
generic applications for traditional GTK desktop environments.
The idea behind this project is to replace applications which no
longer integrate properly outside of a particular environment (this is
the case for a growing number of GNOME applications) and to give our
desktop environments the same set of core applications, so that each
change, each new feature being developed, each little improvement made
in one of them will benefit not just one environment, but all of them.
The core ideas for X-Apps are:
- To use modern toolkits and technologies (GTK3 for HiDPI support, gsettings etc..)
- To use traditional user interfaces (titlebars, menubars)
- To work everywhere (to be generic, desktop-agnostic and distro-agnostic)
- To provide the functionality users already enjoy (or enjoyed in
the past for distributions which already lost some functionality)
- To be backward-compatible (in order to work on as many distributions as possible)
Within Linux Mint, you won't need to adapt to X-Apps, because in many
cases, they're very similar or exactly the same as the applications you
were already using. For instance, Totem 3.18 (which is available in the
Linux Mint 18 repositories) is radically different than Totem 3.10
which shipped with Linux Mint 17, but Xplayer 1.0 (which is the default
media player in Linux Mint 18) is exactly the same. The goal of the
X-Apps is not to reinvent the wheel. Quite the opposite in fact, it's to
guarantee the maintenance of applications we already enjoyed and to
steer their development in a direction that benefits multiple desktop
environments.
Xed is based on Pluma and acts as the default text editor.
Starting a new text file in Xed
Xviewer is based on Eye of GNOME and acts as the default image viewer.
Viewing a picture in Xviewer
Xreader is based on Atril and acts as the default document and PDF reader.
Reading a magazine in Xreader
Xplayer is based on Totem and acts as the default media player for music and videos.
Watching a music video in Xplayer
Pix is based on gThumb, which is an application to organize your photos.
Organizing pictures in Pix
Note that the GNOME apps, MATE apps and Xfce apps these X-Apps
replace are still available in the repositories. You can install them
side-to-side to X-Apps and compare them to decide which ones you like
best. X-Apps do integrate better however with your environment, not only
in obvious ways (with traditional interface) but also in the way they
support desktop environments.
Update Manager
The update manager received many improvements, both visual and under the hood.
The main screen and the preferences screen now use stack widgets and
subtle animations, and better support was given for alternative themes
(toolbar icons are now compatible with dark themes, application and
status icons are now themeable and dimmed text is now rendered with
dynamic colors).
Two new settings were added to let you see and select kernel updates.
Even though these aren’t really updates, but the availability of
packages for newer kernels, the manager is now able to detect them and
to present them for installation to you as a traditional update. These
are level 5 updates but the new settings let you configure them
independently.
Kernel updates can be configured independently and appear as traditional updates
The kernel selection window was completely redesigned and is now
preceded with an information screen which explains what kernels are, how
to select them at boot time and what happens to DKMS modules when
multiple kernels are installed.
Linux Mint no longer ships lists of fixes and lists of regressions
specific to particular kernels. With so many kernel revisions, so many
fixes and so many regressions happening sometimes on a daily basis, this
information was quickly outdated. Instead, it was replaced with links
to relevant sources of information. For instance, if you select a
particular kernel you can now quickly access its changelog and see all
the bug reports marked against it.
Kernel changelogs and bug reports are now quickly accessible
The update manager was already configurable but it wasn’t clear how
to configure it, and why. In particular, the concepts of regressions,
stability and security weren’t clearly explained. To raise awareness
around these concepts and to show more information, a new screen is
there to welcome you to the update manager and to ask you to select an
update policy.
Choosing an update policy
This screen is complemented with a help section which explains what’s at play and what to consider when choosing a policy.
Although this screen is only shown once and its main purpose is to
present information, it can also be used as a quick way to switch
between sets of preferences and it can be launched from the
Edit->Update Policy menu.
Mint-Y
In 2010, Linux Mint 10 introduced a beautiful metallic theme called
"Mint-X". 6 years later trends have changed significantly. Many
interfaces and websites changed their style to look more modern. 3D
elements and gradients were replaced with simpler shapes, cleaner lines
and plain colors.
To respond to this new trend, Linux Mint 18 introduces "Mint-Y", a brand new theme based on the very popular
Arc theme from
horst3180 and
Sam Hewitt's beautiful set of
Moka icons.
Mint-Y looks modern, clean and professional. It embraces the new trends, but without looking too "flat" or minimalistic.
There are three variations of the theme. One is light:
Mint-Y
Another one is dark:
Mint-Y-Dark
And the third one is a mix of light and dark, using light widgets but with dark titlebars/toolbars/menubars:
Mint-Y-Darker
Theming is a very important aspect of the operating system, because
for your experience to be comfortable, your computer doesn't just need
to work well, it also needs to make you feel at home. With this in mind,
Mint-Y will be given time to mature and it won't replace Mint-X, but
complement it.
In Linux Mint 18, both Mint-X and Mint-Y are installed, and Mint-X is still the default theme.
Mint-Y is a work in progress and it will continue to change and to improve, with your feedback, after the Linux Mint 18 release.
System improvements
In 2007, Linux Mint 3.1 introduced the "apt" command, a handy
shortcut to apt-get, aptitude, apt-cache and other commands related to
package management, and since then this command was improved, slightly,
release after release. In 2014, Debian came up with the same idea but
implemented it differently. Although their "apt" command was missing
some of the features we supported, it also introduced a few
improvements. The Debian "apt" command made its way into Ubuntu and many
tutorials now refer to it. In Linux Mint 18, "apt" continues to support
all the features it previously had, but also now supports the syntax of
the Debian "apt" and benefits from the improvements it introduced. Here
is an overview of some of the changes:
- "apt install" and "apt remove" now show progress output.
- New commands were introduced to support Debian's syntax. "apt
full-upgrade" does the same as "apt dist-upgrade", "apt edit-sources"
the same as "apt sources" and "apt showhold" the same as "apt held".
The add-apt-repository command now supports the "--remove" argument, making it possible to remove PPAs from the command line.
Linux Mint 18 ships with
Thermald, a daemon which monitors thermal sensors and prevent CPUs from overheating.
exFAT file systems are now supported out of the box.
Btrfs support is back and installed by default again.
Artwork improvements
The default theme used in the login screen received the following improvements:
- To prevent passwords from being typed when no users are
pre-selected (thus, when the login screen is waiting for a username to
be typed or selected), no dialog is shown by default. Instead, the login
screen suggests to select a user. Cases where usernames need to be
typed (for instance for LDAP users) are still supported, but you need to
press F1 before you can type on the keyboard.
- Slight improvements were made in the way elements of the
login screen appear on the screen, giving the theme extra polish and
better quality.
Linux Mint 18 features a superb collection of backgrounds from
Andy Fitzsimon,
Helena Bartosova,
David Cantrell, dking, Jeremy Hill, Jan Kaluza ,
Konstantin Leonov, Rene Reichenbach, and Sezgin Mendil.
An overview of some of the new backgrounds
Other improvements
HiDPI support is largely improved in Linux Mint 18. Firefox, all
the XApps (Xed, Xviewer, Xreader, Xplayer, Pix) and most of the Mint
apps (mintdesktop, mintsystem, mintwelcome, mintlocale, mintdrivers,
mintnanny, mintstick, mint-common, mintupdate, mintbackup and
mintupload) migrated to GTK3.
Popular applications such as Steam, Spotify, Dropbox or even
Minecraft were added to the Software Manager and are now easier to
install.
All editions now support OEM installations.
Gufw, the graphical firewall configuration tool, was added to the default software selection and is now installed by default.
Main components
Linux Mint 18 features Cinnamon 3.0, MDM 2.0, a Linux kernel 4.4 and an Ubuntu 16.04 package base.
LTS strategy
Linux Mint 18 will receive security updates until 2021.
Until 2018, future versions of Linux Mint will use the same
package base as Linux Mint 18, making it trivial for people to upgrade.
Until 2018, the development team won't start working on a new base and will be fully focused on this one.
Source Linuxmint.com 
