Linux Mint Devs to Ship Thunderbird as a Native DEB Package in Linux Mint 22

Linux Mint 22 will also ship with PipeWire as the default sound server and support the new Deb822 format in the Software Sources tool.
Marius Nestorby Marius Nestor0
Linux Mint 22 Thunderbird

Linux Mint lead developer Clement Lefebvre published a new monthly newsletter where he shares more details about some of the major changes coming to the next Linux Mint 22 release related to Thunderbird, PipeWire, and other components.

As you may know, Linux Mint 22 (dubbed Wilma) is currently under development and it should be released sometime in June or July 2024, based on Canonical’s upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system series.

In February, Canonical announced that they plan to switch the Mozilla Thunderbird app, which is the default email client in Ubuntu, to a Snap package rather than a native Debian package (DEB). This will become the default in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Since Linux Mint doesn’t ship with Snaps, the devs have decided to package Thunderbird as a DEB package for the upcoming Linux Mint 22 release. This is the second app Linux Mint devs must package in the native DEB format after Mozilla Firefox.

“Since we don’t want to ship with Snaps we had to choose between removing Thunderbird from the default software selection or packaging it. We decided to package it,” said Clement Lefebvre. “Thunderbird will continue to be available in Linux Mint 22 as a native .deb package.”

In other news, Linux Mint 22 will switch to PipeWire as the default sound server, the Pix image editor will receive support for JXL images, the Software Sources tool will support the new Deb822 format, a new thumbnailer for GIMP (.XCF) files was implemented, and there will be some localization improvements in Linux Mint 22 that will also save some disk space.

“Preinstalled packages for languages other than English and the one you select will be removed at the end of the installation. This was not optimized in previous Linux Mint releases. The removal of these packages in Linux Mint 22 will save a significant amount of disk space post-installation,” said Clement Lefebvre.

On top of that, Linux Mint 22 will also ship with two new XApps, namely Jargonaut, an IRC client to replace the discontinued Hexchat app, and GNOME Online Accounts GTK, a fork of GNOME’s Online Accounts tool that can be used by GTK3 applications.

Last updated 4 weeks ago

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