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The Linux Mint project has released the Cinnamon 4.8 desktop environment, a major version that brings several new features and usability improvements for the next major Linux Mint release.
More than six months in development, Cinnamon 4.8 is finally here and it already made its appearance on the software repositories of the Arch Linux distribution. But, it is designed with Linux Mint users in mind, as they are the main target of this GNOME-based desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions.
The biggest new features in Cinnamon 4.8 include a new suspend-then-hibernate function that instructs the desktop environment to first suspend the system and then hibernate it after a certain period of time of inactivity.
The Nemo file manager received a much requested feature, namely the ability to add files or folders to favorites via a new right-click context menu option called “Add to Favorites.” These can be easily accessed from the “Favorites” section of the file manager, a new dedicated “Favorites” applet, a new section in the application menu, or from the “Favorites” file option of the app you want to open them with.
Since Snap apps are not supported in Linux Mint anymore by default, Cinnamon 4.8 further improves the integration of Flatpak apps for side-by-side installations to give user more options to install the apps they need if they’re not yet available in Linux Mint’s software repositories.
Other noteworthy changes include a new keyboard shortcut for displaying the applet menu, improved dragging of items, a new keyboard shortcut for muting the mic, support for dragging new launchers into the middle of the Window List applet, and improved tray icon support for certain Qt and Electron apps to make them look better on HiDPI/4K displays.
Another important changes in Cinnamon 4.8 can be found under the hood, as the Cinnamon Javascript (CJS) interpreter uses Mozilla’s newer Mozjs78 JavaScript engine. This makes Cinnamon start up much faster and easier to maintain by other GNU/Linux distributions outside of Linux Mint.
To further reduce the maintenance of the project, this release improves compatibility between Spices and Cinnamon by implementing a so-called multi-version capability, which enables Spices to provide different source code for different versions of Cinnamon, and a new way for Cinnamon to update Spices by always retrieving the latest versions.
Last but not least, Cinnamon now uses GNOME’s GIO Tools for accessing files from external locations instead of the gvfs-bin userspace virtual filesystem. Of course, there are also many bug fixes and smaller improvements to make Cinnamon more stable and reliable as a desktop environment for your daily work.
Cinnamon 4.8 will be the default desktop environment of the upcoming Linux Mint 21 “Ulyssa” operating system release, which will be based on Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (Focal Fossa) and expected to arrive sometime next month near the Christmas holidays.
If you can’t wait until then and you want to use Cinnamon 4.8 right now, you should consider installing a rolling release GNU/Linux distribution, such as Arch Linux, which already offers the Cinnamon 4.8 packages in its stable software repositories.
Last updated 3 years ago
