In the past, Canonical would push out Ubuntu in April and October and Linux Mint releases would follow just a month later usually in May and November. However, the Linux Mint 22 cycle has been slower, likely due to the wait for Cinnamon 6.2 which got released recently; this is the primary desktop environment of Linux Mint.
According to the Linux Mint Community website’s ISO Images page, the Mint 22 Cinnamon edition ISO began testing 17 hours ago and is still being tested. Provided that this test passes, we should see a few other spins be tested and a couple of day later, the beta should be released. The beta testing will go on for a couple of weeks for bugs to be found be a final release is made available.
Linux Mint 22 is a new major version of Mint, the last version was 21.3 and based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS which is now two years old. Linux Mint 22 switches to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as its base so should feature newer software packages. This version, along with the successive point releases every six months, will be supported for five years until 2029.
Linux users have a reputation for distro hopping frequently but if you’ve got to that stage now and just want to settle on one distro and actually be productive then Linux Mint is a great choice because of how long each version is supported for.
When the beta gets released in the next week or so, we should have a list of new features to share with you directly from the Linux Mint team. There will be download links too in case you decide to try out the beta on your machine, however, it’s probably best to only install it on secondary machines in case there are any serious bugs. As mentioned before, the final release usually arrives after two weeks of beta testing.
Update: The Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce ISOs of Linux Mint 22 have all been approved for beta release according to the Linux Mint Community website. We are still waiting on an announcement from the Linux Mint team, once that"s ready look out for a new Neowin article which will include ISO download links and an overview of the new features.