The Linux Mint project has released a monthly newsletter today to keep the community up to date on the latest developments and upcoming releases of this popular Ubuntu-based operating system. Last month, Clement Lefebvre, head of the Linux Mint project, revealed the fact that the team is currently working on Linux Mint 19.3, which is expected to undergo many improvements and updates during the Christmas season. Now, Clement Lefebvre reveals the codenamed “Tricia” for Linux Mint 19.3. Based on the latest Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS. Linux Mint 19.3 “Tricia” will come with an upgraded kernel and graphics stack, including the Linux 5.0 kernel family and the X.Org 1.20 display server to enhance Modern hardware compatibility.
Many improvements to Linux Mint 19.3
Date format
The default date format was fixed in Cinnamon and MATE. It will now properly follow the locale set by LC_TIME, and this locale is configurable in the Language Settings.
XAppStatusIcon
Work on the XAppStatusIcon API is finished. Applets were added to Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce. LibAppIndicator was patched. We’ll have crisp icons in all environments in 19.3, HiDPI compatible, with support for symbolic icons and without rendering issues.
New logo
New splash screens were made for Grub:
Grub boot screen
and Plymouth:
Plymouth boot splash animation
Celluloid
Xplayer and VLC will be replaced by Celluloid 0.17.
Celluloid 0.17
The mpv based player will be properly integrated within the OS and provide much better performance.
Gnote
Tomboy will be replaced by Gnote 3.34. With the exception of the tray icon, Gnote provides the same functionality as Tomboy but it is built on modern technology.
Gnote 3.34
With Tomboy gone we no longer need Mono in Linux Mint. Tomboy was also one of the very few remaining apps we shipped by default which didn’t support HiDPI.
Xfce
Xfce will be upgraded to 4.14, based on GTK3 and with initial support for HiDPI.
