Clement Lefebvre, head of the Linux Mint project, has published a blog post revealing that Linux Mint 20.2 is codenamed "Uma" and is set for a beta release by the middle of June. The new release will still be based upon Ubuntu 20.04 LTS but comes with an upgrade to the Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce desktops and comes with newer hardware enablement stacks that ship with Ubuntu LTS point releases.
Linux Mint 20.2 will feature a new XApp (apps made by the Mint team) called Bulky that allows the users to rename files in bulk on both the Cinnamon and MATE versions of Mint. On Xfce, the Thunar file manager already comes with an embedded bulk renamer so Bulky won’t need to be shipped with the Xfce edition of Mint.
Another change in Linux Mint 20.2 is the inclusion of Nemo 5.0, the file manager on the Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint. With Nemo 5.0, users can now perform a content search in addition to a file’s name. The new content search will look for search terms within documents and return the document to the user if the search finds anything relevant.
The local file-sharing program Warpinator, which was released with Linux Mint 20, has also been updated. Now, users can select which network interface they want to share files on if they have several available. Additionally, a new option to compress files that are sent has been added, this should reduce the amount of time it takes to send large files.
Finally, the NVIDIA Prime applet has been updated to fix an issue where the applet would disappear from the tray. It also contains support for computers with AMD/NVIDIA hybrids.
Linux Mint 20.2, just like the rest of the 20.x series, will be supported until around April or May of 2025. At that time, it will stop receiving software updates and users will need to upgrade if they want their system to stay secure.