A new version of the Cinnamon desktop environment has been tagged for release – a sure-fire sign that the Linux Mint 22.1 beta is on the way!
As the flagship desktop of Linux Mint, Cinnamon 6.4 will come preinstalled in Linux Mint 22.1 when it’s released at the end of December (though should beta testing reveal issues the date could slip into early 2025).
But this post isn’t about Linux Mint 22.1, but Cinnamon. Linux Mint may develop, maintain, and cheerlead the desktop but it can installed on nearly every Linux distribution out there, including Ubuntu (which also has an official Cinnamon flavour).
Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the majority of the new features in Cinnamon 6.4 as I’ve written about them over the past few months.
A recap never hurts though, does it?
Cinnamon Desktop 6.4: What’s New?
The headline feature in Cinnamon 6.4 is hard to miss: a new default theme. It now makes use of darker colours, increased border radius, and hooks into the system-set accent colour throughout.
Cinnamon’s default theme is NOT the same theme found in Linux Mint, as the distribution applies its own theme with its own branding on top. Yes; Cinnamon themes are a thing – a memo those who complain about Cinnamon’s ‘dated appearance’ missed.
But the new default Cinnamon theme goes beyond a few colour changes and some rounder corners.
Clutter is now used for the majority of modal dialogs, including logout/shutdown session; force quit prompts; keyring unlock; wi-fi network connections/WPS; keeping/reverting display resolution or monitor changes, and more.
Cinnamon’s Clutter dialogs use separated buttons which can, context depending, use colour to highlight destructive or affirmative actions.
A combination of form and function, Cinnamon’s new dialogs tie together its visual changes as a whole since these modals now visibly belong to Cinnamon as a desktop, and don’t resemble the kind of dialog an app or underlying system process may throw.
Also benefitting from an uplift – literally – are applet menus. These now float a few pixels above the panel, giving the newly rounded corners plenty of room to shine. Most applets sport tighter layouts too, with Calendar and networks applets notably improved.
Desktop notifications reduce their excessive padding for a more compact appearance on screen (including when shown in the notification applet). The workspace switcher OSD has a design more in-keeping with the one found in GNOME Shell, which I like.
In all, a nice set of changes — but there’s more!
Other Cinnamon 6.4 changes
Beyond the aesthetic re-do, the newest version of the Cinnamon desktop brings plenty other changes, tweaks, and capabilities.
The most eye-catching —or eye calming, I guess— is a native ‘Night Light’ feature.
As I reported on earlier this year, Linux Mint chose to come up with its own approach after it had to remove Redshift from the default install due to Mozilla axing its location service.
This is disabled by default but can be quickly enabled from from Settings > Night Light.
Colour temperature can be adjusted using a slider, and the feature can kick in automatically (sunset to sunrise) or based on a custom schedule the user defines (e.g., 23:00 to 4:00).
Redshift still works, but its ‘automatic’ feature requires users to enter location co-ordinates via the command line.
One upside to creating its own implementation is Wayland support. Redshift is a tool designed for Xorg. Though Linux Mint doesn’t yet default to Wayland, it will in time, so creating a universal solution of its own that works for both, saves it effort in the long-run.
Cinnamon 6.4 also makes it much easier to find and enable an audio feature common to most Linux desktops, “overamplification”. Earlier versions of Mint had it too, but it was harder to find and not so obvious how to enable.
But now a simple checkbox is present on the Settings > Sound page which, when turned on, allows system volume to increase past 100% – useful for quiet video, but be wary of blown speakers!
The Power applet shows power modes available via Power Profiles Daemon per the FreeDesktop.org standard. This makes it easier to switch between ‘Balanced’, ‘Power Saver’, and ‘Performance’ modes with a click.
Linux Mint 22 doesn’t preinstalled the Power Profiles Daemon package but given that Cinnamon has been updated to surface those controls, there’s a good chance Linux Mint 22.1 will offer it – watch this space, I guess!
Elsewhere, Cinnamon 6.4 changes include:
- Menu renames ‘Quit’ to ‘Shut Down’
- Menu is now navigable using numpad arrows
- Option to only list windows from current monitor in grouped window list
- Option to show notifications in fullscreen mode
- Power Applet supports power profiles
- Minimised window opacity reduced in alt + tab switcher
- Volume change sound plays when dragging volume slider
- More compact (and pretty) music OSD when using media keys
There is a fair bit more, but in terms of the things people will notice in day-to-day usage, everything mentioned above are the main highlights — for now (Cinnamon 6.4 development isn’t finished).
You can look forward to enjoying these changes firsthand in Linux Mint 22.1 when it’s released at the end of the year. If you can’t wait, you may be able to get this update on rolling-release Linux distributions that package Cinnamon from source code.