Earlier this month, the Linux Mint 21 betas arrived for public testing. Just 12 days later, the Mint team has begun testing the ISO images for the final, stable release of Linux Mint 21. We usually see ISOs being tested several days before the launch of a new Linux Mint version, but sometimes they can fail, which delays things slightly.
Linux Mint 21 is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, which arrived in April. This means that Linux Mint 21 can be installed on a computer when it comes out and will receive security updates until 2027. This long lifespan is great for people who want to run Linux on production machines because they won’t have to reinstall the operating system for five years.
Linux Mint 21 is a pivotal release, not only has the Timeshift backup tool been adopted by the Linux Mint XApp programme, but there’s a new graphical Upgrade Tool now. With Upgrade Tool, Linux Mint users will be able to perform in-place upgrades between major versions of Linux Mint. Previously, you could only graphically upgrade between point releases. The preferred method for major upgrades before was a clean install, but a command line option was available too.
The Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint 21 is bumped to version 5.4 with this release, and it will bring a major rebase of the window manager, Muffin. A decision was also taken with Linux Mint 21 not to include system-oom which kills tasks in low-memory environments to prevent the computer slowing down too much.