New features in Linux Mint 10

Linux Mint 10 comes with updated software and brings refinements and new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

Linux Mint 10 "Julia"

The Welcome Screen

Some people can't use DVDs and some people live in countries where magazines can't safely distribute codecs and patented technologies. It's a pity for a modern operating system such as Linux Mint that so many people just can't enjoy it in all its glory. Well, we've solved that problem and you won't get penalized by this anymore. No matter what media you're installing Linux Mint from, the Welcome Screen will now give you the opportunity to install the missing multimedia codecs and to upgrade to the DVD edition.

No more 2nd-class experience for people without DVD drives or suffering from bad political decisions: Install missing codecs and upgrade to the DVD edition the minute you first-run Linux Mint.

The Menu

The Linux Mint Menu received new features and usability improvements.

Highlighted newly installed applications: The menu highlights your newly installed applications and makes them easier to find.

New applications are highlighted in the menu

Finding and installing applications: Available applications are easy to find too. The menu is aware of what's available in your repositories so you can search for software and install packages without opening the software manager.

Searching and installing software straight from the menu

Search engines: The menu isn't just the quickest way to open an application, it's also the quickest way to find just about anything. Whether you want to Google something up or find a Wikipedia article, just start typing and get there straight from the menu. You can also lookup words in the dictionnary and find tutorials, software, hardware devices (from the online Linux Mint hardware database), ideas, and even Linux Mint users that way.

You can find a lot of things, straight from the menu

GTK bookmarks: The menu now supports GTK bookmarks. If you enabled this option in the preferences, it will show the same bookmarks as your Nautilus file explorer.

GTK bookmarks are now supported by the menu

GTK themes: The menu now supports GTK themes. You can use this feature to make the menu look different than the rest of the desktop.

The menu can use a separate theme, to make it look different than the rest of the desktop

Other improvements:

The menu now registers itself as "mintmenu" in regards to GTK themeability. This means that GTK themes can define style sections that are specific to the menu. The default theme in Linux Mint 10 takes advantage of this by applying brushed metal on the menu.
The icon size for place and system items are now configurable.
Icon sizes are now expressed in pixels and range from 1 to 128. This makes it easier to customize the menu's appearance.

The Software Manager

The Software Manager gives you a nicer browsing experience, with a better categorization of software and the use of application icons.

Application icons in the Software Manager

The Update Manager

If you're not interested in receiving updates for a particular package, simply right click on it and tell the Update Manager to ignore updates for this package. The package will then be added to your "ignore" list and you won't receive any updates for it in the future.

Ignoring updates for a particular package in the Update Manager

The Update Manager now also shows you the size of your selected updates, so you know how much data you're about to download.

The Upload Manager

The Upload Manager isn't for everybody, but it's extremely handy for developers and administrators and it received many improvements in Linux Mint 10.

If services are defined, the system tray icon is now launched automatically at startup by Linux Mint. The "File Uploader" was also merged with the "Upload Manager".

You can now test a connection while defining it by pressing the "Check connection" button.

Upload services are easier to setup.

Uploads can be cancelled or run in the background.

The upload dialogs were improved and now look similar to the Firefox download dialogs. They measure the upload speed and calculate an ETA.

File uploads now show speed, ETA and can be cancelled or run in the background.

New look and feel

After 3 beautiful green/dark Shiki releases, Linux Mint is going back to its traditional light theme and dark background, but this time, it's giving the illusion of a metallic looking theme. It's called Mint-X and it's based on some of the most beautiful artwork available.

Backgrounds: The production of artwork for Linux Mint 10 was outsourced to provide this release with a choice of quality backgrounds. The default background is unbranded to give the desktop a more elegant look and you'll find quality alternative backgrounds installed by default.

Brushed metal: The desktop menu and the welcome screen were given brushed metal, to highlight the artistic direction towards which Mint is going and to underline the metallic aspect of the look and feel without impacting on the performance of the system.

Mint-X theme: Based on Clearlooks Revamp, with modifications made to the menu, rhythmbox and some of the widgets, a lighter metal tint and modified toolbars and menu bars.

Mint-X icons: Made from a collection of stunning application and status icons from "Faenza", as well as mintified versions of places and devices icons from "Elementary". This icon theme integrates very well with the desktop, while emphasizing applications by using colorful squary icons. Another set of icons, based entirely on "Elementary" is also available under the name mint-elementary-icons.

System improvements

Windows Installer: After a brief disappearance in the previous release, "mint4win", the Windows installer based on Wubi is back in Linux Mint.

This installer allows you to install Linux Mint as a program on your Windows C:\ drive, without touching your partitions.

Husse Quotes: In memory of our regretted friend and team member Mats Geier, aka "Husse", we packaged a collection of his best forum quotes and added them to the set of fortunes that randomly appear in the terminal.

Husse quotes randomly appear in the terminal

Usb-creator: The Ubuntu "Startup Disk Creator" was rebranded and added by default. With this tool you can easily export Linux Mint to a USB stick.

Put Linux Mint on a USB stick

Default software selection: P7zip, Gwibber, apturl and Startup Manager are now installed by default.

Local repository and Gnome-ppp: Linux Mint now includes a local repository activated by default. This repository is located in /usr/share/local-repository and it contains firmware for Broadcom wireless adapters and Gnome-PPP. You can also add packages to it and update the repository by running the ./update-repository script in /usr/share/local-repository.

Apt hold/held/unhold commands: New functions were added to the Linux Mint "apt" command. "apt hold", "apt unhold" and "apt held" are shortcuts to "dpkg --get-selection" and "dpkg --set-selections" which let you easily hold updates for selected packages.

Project changes

Community Website: The Linux Mint distribution started a huge project and published a new website dedicated to its community. Users can contribute and find ideas, tutorial, software and hardware reviews, and they can vote and comments each others' contributions. Through this website you can easily get in touch with people who share similar hardware, see how they made it work, find what works best with a particular release, read tutorials, contribute your ideas to improve the distribution, see what software people like the most... and many other things. This is a place made by and for the community and a website where users can interact with each others to improve their experience with the distribution.

If there's one website a Linux Mint user should visit, it's this one!

CD & DVD: Linux Mint is now available both as a liveCD and a liveDVD. The DVD simply contains a few more packages which could not fit on the CD, such as Sun Java, Samba and ttf-DejaVu.

Community Editions: The KDE, Xfce, LXDE and Fluxbox editions are now considered official and no longer use the "Community" label.

OEM installation disks: Linux Mint now provides dedicated OEM ISOs. This installation method was confusing for home users and dedicated ISOs allow us to tailor the disk more specifically for resellers and manufacturers.

USA/Japan Distributors disks: The Universal edition was replaced by a new set of ISOs specifically designed for countries where distributors are vulnerable to software patents. These ISOs come as 32 & 64-bit liveCDs with patented and proprietary technologies removed. A menu item allows users to add the missing technologies with a single click. These ISOs allow magazines and distributors to easily provide Linux Mint to their audience in countries such as the USA and Japan.

32 & 64-bit: The Gnome and KDE editions of Linux Mint come in 32 & 64-bit, with ISOs for both architectures released at the same time.

Upstream components

Linux Mint 10 features the following upstream components: Ubuntu 10.10, Linux 2.6.35, Gnome 2.32, Xorg 7.5.