What’s new in Linux Mint 20 & LMDE 4

Linux Mint 20 will be based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. At the same time, LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition, Debian version) 4 is coming soon. The LMDE version is based on Debian GNU/Linux and offers rolling releases, instead of regular Linux Mint based on Ubuntu.

Recently, the official Linux Mint blog has released information about the new features of Linux Mint 20 and LMDE 4.

LMDE 4

LMDE 4 will be released first, based on the improved Debian 10 package, which will bring all improvements on Linux Mint 19.3, including HDT, boot fixes, system reports, language settings, HiDPI and, new boot menu, Celluloid, Gnote, Cinnamon 4.4 and XApp status icons. Some features missing from LMDE 3 are also ported from Linux Mint.

LMDE 4 will also support Btrfs submodule and home directory encryption:

NVIDIA driver in the boot menu

There has always been Nouveau (open source driver) compatibility issues on some NVIDIA cards. In most cases, people have to use nomodeset, but when Nouveau cannot recognize the chipset at all, there are no graphics at all. In LMDE 4, a new entry has been added to the boot menu to install the NVIDIA driver on the fly, and live sessions and installed OSes can be used immediately:

Cinnamon 4.6 display settings

The next version of Cinnamon will allow the frequency of the display to be selected, which is a very loud feature.

At the same time, Cinnamon 4.6 will also introduce a fractional zoom function. Currently, the zoom ratio is 100% (normal mode) or 200% (HiDPI mode) and is the same for all displays. The zoom ratio will be different for each screen in the future, and users can set it to a value between 100% and 200%.

Bloom ratio mode can solve many display problems, such as sharpness problems caused by HiDPI and multi-monitor support. By being able to set the scaling for each display separately, it is desirable to achieve higher pixel density and allow better compatibility between HiDPI and non-HiDPI display.