Month-to-month Information – March 2023 – The Linux Mint Weblog

April 3, 2023

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Many due to you all to your assist and your donations!

At this time we’re revealing a few of the visible modifications we’ve been engaged on in preparation for the subsequent launch.

Introduction

In Linux Mint 21.1, we launched the next enhancements:

Mint-Y was became a less-accentuated theme with vibrant colours and new place icons
The outdated look was supplied through Mint-Y-Legacy for individuals who didn’t like these modifications
A number of common third celebration themes (Yaru, Numix, Breeze, cursor themes..) was added

This was properly acquired and it supplied quite a lot of choices for customers to select from.

That mentioned, just a few points caught our consideration.

The massive number of themes and coloration variants created litter and made it tougher for customers to find a selected theme.

Some icon themes work properly with some management themes however not with others. The welcome display screen supplies a method to shortly swap from mild to darkish and from one coloration to a different however it has its personal limitation: It solely works with the Mint-Y theme and solely in our distribution.

With this in thoughts we determined to design an answer which might work for any theme and any distribution and which might make it a lot simpler to browse and choose with out having to undergo lengthy lists of put in themes and with out worrying about compatibility.

Oh, and the striped place icons weren’t as common as we had imagined. That is one thing we bought very early in your suggestions. We labored on that too.

Simplifications

No brown

Brown and Sand are shades of the identical coloration (identical hue). We’re introducing coloration tones so one in all them needed to go.

No stripe

The stripe on the place icons was cute however it wasn’t properly acquired. Individuals needed extra selection when it got here to colours. The stripe coloration wasn’t seen sufficient to work properly with folder-color-switcher.

The stripe was subsequently eliminated, making the icons look much like these from the Papirus icon theme, which they have been based mostly on.

No mono icons

One of many actually cool issues about Gtk (the toolkit utilized by most functions in Linux Mint) is the way it helps “symbolic” icons.

Symbolic icons are designed to offer good distinction and to be recognizable in all sizes. Gtk dynamically modifications the colour of those icons based mostly on the background coloration which is behind them.

Take a look on the “Copy” menu merchandise beneath:

This menu is from Nemo which makes use of symbolic icons. As you may see, the icon modifications coloration and goes from black to white when the menu merchandise is hovered. It matches the label.

Compared, have a look at the menu merchandise beneath:

This menu is from Caja, it makes use of a standard icon, also called “fullcolor”. That is an icon which is rendered simply the best way it seems. Gtk doesn’t change its colours dynamically.

As you may see it doesn’t look as good. The “Copy” label will get inverted to white however the icon retains its unique coloration and lacks distinction.

And this explicit icon isn’t only a fullcolor icon… it’s a monochrome fullcolor icon. We use fullcolor icons in dialogs, within the app menu and that’s OK so long as these icons are literally colourful. The issue right here is that this fullcolor icon is monochrome.

You see, the pattern these days is to have monochrome motion icons. It’s what we’re used to and what we count on. It could possibly both be achieved accurately, utilizing symbolic icons:

or achieved badly, utilizing mono icons:

To stop this type of challenge all of the functions and tasks we develop use symbolic icons. This ensures they appear advantageous with any themes, whether or not the themes are darkish, mild or mild and darkish.

An utility which makes use of fullcolor icons will solely work properly with some themes. An utility which makes use of symbolic icons will work properly with any themes.

Till now Mint-Y supplied monochrome fullcolor icons. This was achieved to make fullcolor icon functions look good (virtually much like the symbolic look) however at a value. First it solely labored with mild themes, so every coloration variant needed to be duplicated, to offer each a Mild and a Darkish icon theme. Second, it doesn’t matter what, this couldn’t work with themes which blended darkish and lightweight parts (Mint-Y-Legacy-Darker or Arc-Darker as an illustration).

That is Transmission, one of many few functions which nonetheless depends on fullcolor icons. It seems good as a result of Mint-Y supplies monochrome icons which look much like its symbolic icons.. however this utility options the identical theme compatibility points as caja.

In Linux Mint 21.2 we are going to take away all monochrome icons and all Darkish icon themes. In functions which nonetheless use them, fullcolor icons will default to Adwaita.

Whether or not or not they appear higher is subjective, however a minimum of they may work in every single place.

Cinnamon “Types”

The following iteration of Cinnamon will introduce a brand new idea referred to as “kinds”. A method has as much as three modes: blended, darkish and lightweight. Every of those modes can include coloration “variants”. A variant is a mix of themes which work properly collectively. The concept behind kinds, modes and variants is to make it actually easy to modify to one thing that appears nice, and to shortly browse what’s there, regardless of what number of particular person themes are put in and with out having to search out parts which match one another.

Once you open the theme settings, you will notice this:

Within the fashion combo you’ll see common kinds corresponding to Adwaita, Mint-X, Mint-Y and so on.. select one mode and the colour variants will present up.

You may swap between kinds, modes and coloration variants with just a few clicks of a button.

If you wish to tune issues or choose a mix of themes which isn’t proposed, you may click on on “Superior settings” and get again to the acquainted settings window the place you may select every theme individually.

Mint-L

Mint-Y-Legacy was renamed Mint-L.

In the event you benefit from the “Darker” themes, it’s by no means been simpler to pick out. And now that the mono icons are gone it’s suitable with fullcolor functions.

Two-tone place icons

The stripes are gone on place icons and every coloration acquired stunning two-tones icons.

Listed here are just a few examples, Aqua:

Pink:

New colorways

Previously we tried to cowl all the colours of the rainbow and to ensure they weren’t too related to one another. This was a mistake. Most individuals like blue or aqua. We nonetheless want to offer number of course, however it shouldn’t matter if two kinds are related, so long as they create one thing tangible and so they’re each common.

So with this in thoughts, we introduced in one other orange mixture. This one makes use of Yaru (from Papirus, impressed from the Yaru theme from Ubuntu):

And from blue to inexperienced we’ve bought 7 stunning variants. Right here’s Teal utilizing Cyan icons:

Distributions and third celebration themes

Every thing will work out of the field for everyone. We wish Cinnamon kinds to work properly for us but in addition for different distributions and third celebration theme artists.

Cinnamon kinds are outlined in JSON recordsdata in /usr/share/cinnamon/kinds.d/. These recordsdata are learn in alphabetical order and kinds can override each other if they’ve the identical title. That is achieved to let distributions and/or theme artists outline their very own kinds. Cinnamon supplies fashion definitions for Adwaita. Mint supplies extra fashion definitions for its personal themes.

We additionally made it comparatively straightforward for artists to generate Mint-Y icon themes. Listed here are SUSE and Gulf examples:

In the event you’re all in favour of defining Cinnamon kinds or producing your individual Mint-Y colorways don’t hesitate to get in contact with us.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Donations in February:

A complete of $10,206 have been raised due to the beneficiant contributions of 369 donors:

$500, Brandon P.
$200 (sixth donation), Robert E.
$140, Valerie E.
$135, Guillaume aka “Poukame”
$130, Gilbert G.
$108 (eleventh donation), Jack W. S. aka “kundalinijack”
$108, Dirk S.
$108, Harland F.
$100 (ninth donation), John M.
$100 (fifth donation), Sivaguru
$100 (third donation), John B.
$100 (2nd donation), Brady B.
$100 (2nd donation), James Ok.
$100, Garry S.
$100, Jeffrey A.
$100, Jose G.
$100, Marcia S.
$100, Richard H.
$100, Todd W.
$75, Kelly E.
$54 (sixth donation), Jonathan. H
$54 (sixth donation), Udo J.
$54 (fifth donation), Henrik Simonsen
$54 (fifth donation), Jyrki A.
$54 (third donation), Bert-jan W.
$54 (third donation), Florian L.
$54 (third donation), Gonzalo M. aka “Alvenn”
$54 (third donation), Stephan Tietz
$54 (2nd donation), Carsten H.
$54 (2nd donation), Charlotte B.
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$54 (2nd donation), Theeuwes J.
$54, Achim L.
$54, Armin M.
$54, Arnim R.
$54, Blasio M.
$54, Brendan J O.
$54, Hannes S.
$54, Jan J.
$54, Johannes D.
$54, John O.
$54, Marco Isidoro R.
$54, Michaël J.
$54, Oliver W.
$54, Peter Ok.
$54, Philip W.
$54, Triston L.
$50 (69th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (twelfth donation), An L.
$50 (eighth donation), Chester L.
$50 (eighth donation), Greg C.
$50 (seventh donation), Derek B.
$50 (sixth donation), Fred W.
$50 (4th donation), Joseph R. aka “FloodGate1”
$50 (third donation), Chris F.
$50 (third donation), Christian L.
$50 (third donation), Gerard S.
$50 (2nd donation), Adrian O.
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$50 (2nd donation), Harold F.
$50 (2nd donation), John W.
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$50, nameless
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$50, Dutchman Brass LLC
$50, Florence S L.
$50, Jeremy M.
$50, Joseph W.
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$50, Robert A.
$50, Robert C.
$50, William Z.
$43 (2nd donation), Gerbert L
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$33, Luke F.
$32 (ninth donation), Harry F.
$32 (2nd donation), Samuel B.
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$32, Donna S
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$32, Jonas E.
$30 (thirteenth donation), B. H. .
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$30, Terrence C.
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$22 (ninth donation), Karl Ok.
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$22 (4th donation), Roger Ok.
$22 (third donation), Artur Ok.
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$22, Andreas M.
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$22, Daniel P.
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$22, Fabio Cuppo
$22, Francisco A.
$22, Giovanni M.
$22, Helmut M.
$22, James B.
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$22, Johannes H.
$22, Kai D.
$22, Lutz S.
$22, Maarten R.
$22, Manuel M.
$22, Marc W.
$22, Marek R.
$22, Neil E.
$22, Olaf S.
$22, Patrascu Ionel
$22, Pepe V.
$22, Richard D.
$22, Robert B.
$22, Ronny O.
$22, SARL Editions BEIJING
$22, Stefan Ok.
$22, Uwe G.
$22, zrtomir .
$20 (thirty fourth donation), John D.
$20 (ninth donation), Peter R.
$20 (sixth donation), Charles S.
$20 (sixth donation), Robert D. aka “MacDhai”
$20 (fifth donation), Allen S.
$20 (fifth donation), David Ok.
$20 (fifth donation), Jerry L.
$20 (4th donation), Nameless
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$20 (4th donation), Michaela B.
$20 (third donation), Derry H.
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$20 (third donation), Jan G. aka “mantu”
$20 (third donation), Louis D.
$20 (2nd donation), Christian D.
$20 (2nd donation), Geoff A.
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$20 (2nd donation), Nikola V.
$20 (2nd donation), Normand D.
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$20 (2nd donation), Roderick W.
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$20, Arlen B.
$20, Brian Higgins Classical Guitar
$20, Christopher J C.
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$20, Graham G.
$20, Issam B.
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$20, James P.
$20, Janus transport
$20, Jeremy B.
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$20, Kyle S.
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$16 (79th donation), Johann J.
$16 (third donation), Henk-jan J.
$16 (2nd donation), Helmuth P.
$16, Johann L.
$15 (4th donation), Nathan G. aka “Inside Painters in Baytown TX”
$14,
$13 (forty ninth donation), Michael R.
$12 (one hundred and thirty fifth donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
$12 (third donation), John W.
$11 (forty fourth donation), Francois-R L.
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$11 (twelfth donation), Alan B.
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$11 (sixth donation), Eduardo Ok.
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$11 (fifth donation), Peter P.
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$11, David F.
$11, Davor Ok.
$11, Emil P.
$11, Endre N.
$11, Felix P.
$11, Gerold H.
$11, Gm H.
$11, Henrique Carlos A.
$11, Hugh S.
$11, Hynek P.
$11, Ingrid M.
$11, João Luís O.
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$11, Kostas Ok.
$11, Magali L.
$11, Marcus R.
$11, Mario A.
$11, Mark Maslov
$11, Oliver Ok.
$11, Paul R.
$11, Raymond B.
$11, René G.
$11, Roberto L.
$11, Thorsten Ok.
$11, Tomasz F.
$11, Tomaz S.
$11, Yann R.
$11, Yunus G.
$11, Želimir S.
$11, Zlatko
$10 (83th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (77th donation), Frank Ok.
$10 (sixtieth donation), Rick R.
$10 (thirtieth donation), Philip Woodward
$10 (twenty seventh donation), Carpet Cleansing Winnipeg
$10 (twentieth donation), Pawel M.
$10 (fifteenth donation), Aimee W.
$10 (thirteenth donation), Jorge R.
$10 (eleventh donation), Kitchen Renovations Kelowna
$10 (tenth donation), multi model style retailer
$10 (seventh donation), apuestas deportivas
$10 (fifth donation), Wojciech S.
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$10 (2nd donation), Andrii S.
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$10, Abraham L.
$10, Byron V.
$10, Charles W.
$10, Dumpster Leases Macon Georgia
$10, Eli B.
$10, Jezweb aka “Australian WordPress Web site Designers”
$10, John H.
$10, Kamloops Retaining Wall
$10, Lloyd B.
$10, Native Building Bentonville
$10, Michael D.
$10, Michael Thomas Belrose
$10, Roger F.
$10, Ryan S.
$10, Stefan S.
$10, Wardell B.
$9, Maic S.
$8 (ninth donation), Marius @Superior AF Tech
$8, M. Sazzadul H.
$7, Ricardo C.
$6 (4th donation), Diego A. O.
$6, Johnny S.
$6, Reinhold S.
$150 from 35 smaller donations