Update 23/July/2024: The Linux Mint 22 Stable ISOs have passed the verification checks. We should get an official release announcement soon. If you would like to download the final release before the release announcement, you can get the Cinnamon, Mate, and Xfce versions from this official mirror.
The Linux Mint Community website now reports that the Cinnamon, Mate, and Xfce editions of Linux Mint 22 are undergoing final tests before they"re released. Officially, Linux Mint 22 is still in the beta testing phase, but the current ISO checks won"t take very long, and we"ll get an announcement soon after.
The beta of Linux Mint 22 was released 20 days ago, on July 2. It includes Linux 6.2, new wallpapers, and a better Software Manager. A week after the beta came out, its head, Clem Lefebvre, said that the stable release could be more than two weeks away. At the time, 109 bug reports had been filed, and 53 had still not been solved.
Lefebvre said that Linux Mint 22 would be a solid base for the future but that several issues were threatening to extend the beta testing period, and that has manifested. At the time, Neowin reported the following:
"There are bugs related to AppArmor security changes leading to application crashes, there are hardware acceleration playback libraries making Xorg crash, and there are issues with Flatpaks and Mint Install."
We also mentioned in that article that Mint 22 will be supported until 2029, so a few extra weeks of testing are really not that big of a deal. The extended beta testing follows a longer-than-usual wait for the beta to arrive.
Like other Linux Mint series, the Linux Mint 22 series will feature three-point releases after new Ubuntu versions come out. These point updates will feature new desktop changes made by the Mint team, however, they are optional and you can stay on a previous version and continue to get updates as normal.
Many of Mint"s users like this aspect because they can install Mint, forget about it, and get on with their work. Even if users do decide to upgrade, the changes are very conservative, so you don"t need to sit there for ages figuring out a new layout.
Source: Linux Mint