Linux Mint 20.1 "Ulyssa" Is Now Available for Download, This Is What's New

The highly anticipated Linux Mint 20.1 “Ulyssa” distribution is now available for download as Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce editions from the official download servers.

Linux Mint 20.1 is based on the Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS point release in the Focal Fossa series and comes with the long-term supported Linux 5.4 kernel series. It comes as an update to the Linux Mint 20 “Ulyana” release, which is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and supported until 2025.

As expected, Linux Mint 20.1 includes various refinements, updated packages, as well as some new features to make your Linux Mint experience more enjoyable. But if you’re already using Linux Mint 20 and you have all the updates installed on your system, there’s no need to download the new ISO images.

One of the major changes in this release is a new application called Web Apps that lets you turn any website into a desktop app. All Web Apps run in their own window and have their own icons, appear in the Applications Menu, Panel and Alt-Tab selector, can be pinned to the Panel, and you can create as many Web Apps as you like or need.

“It’s easier to multi-task between applications on the desktop than it is between tabs in a web browser. As more and more useful tools are available on the Web, it was important for Linux Mint to make it easier to create web-apps,” said Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint Project Leader.

Another new app was introduced in Linux Mint 20.1, namely Hypnotix, an IPTV player for M3U playlists. It’s included in all three editions, supports live TV, support movies and TV shows, and comes with a free IPTV provider called Free-IPTV, which offers free and publicly available live TV channels.

Among the improvements that landed in Linux Mint 20.1, there’s better support for HP printers and scanners thanks to the latest HPLIP drivers, hardware-accelerated video playback by default in the Celluloid media player, PackageKit as default driver manager, and Chromium web browser as a native package.

Some the in-house built Linux Mint apps were updated as well in this release to look and act better than ever. For example, the Xed text editor can now automatically close brackets when editing source code, the Pix image editor can now filter images by rating, and the Xviewer document viewer now features configurable behaviors of the primary and secondary mouse wheels.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that you can now configure the clock format in the login screen. Moreover, Linux Mint 20.1 features a unified filesystem layout is now provided by default, merging the /bin, /sbin, /lib, and /lib64 directories with /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/lib, and /usr/lib64.

On top of all the above, the flagship Cinnamon edition features the latest and greatest Cinnamon 4.8 desktop environment, which brings many new features and various enhancements, and an “Add to Favorites” option across all Linux Mint apps and GTK3 apps that makes it easier to bookmark and access your favorite files.

The MATE edition ships with the latest MATE 1.24 desktop environment and the Xfce edition with the Xfce 4.14 desktop environment as the recently released Xfce 4.16 didn’t make it. You can download Linux Mint 20.1 “Ulyssa” right now from various download servers using the links below or from the official website.

Please note that the Cinnamon [EDGE] ISO image comes with a newer kernel, namely Linux 5.8, in case you need support for special hardware.

Edit: Linux Mint 20.1 has been officially announced on January 8th.