Linux Mint has forked and modified many GNOME and GTK purposes to maintain them working with the Linux distro’s customized theme help. The staff is now attempting a brand new method that will enable extra present apps to work, with out intensive modification or totally killing theme help.
Linux Mint has pushed again towards many fashionable tendencies within the desktop Linux ecosystem, just like the rise of Snap packages and the decline of user-configurable themes. The first Cinnamon desktop environment additionally has a extra conventional taskbar, purposes menu, and applet bar than you get in GNOME Shell. Nevertheless, all these modifications make it tougher to combine newer variations of system elements and purposes.
The Linux Mint builders stated in a weblog put up, “A yr in the past we complained about libAdwaita, not as a result of it was unhealthy, however as a result of it didn’t help us. Purposes made with this library solely correctly built-in with GNOME and broke performance in Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce. With the discharge of Linux Mint 22, GNOME Apps which used libAdwaita had been downgraded again to their GTK3 variations in order that they may proceed to operate correctly within the desktop environments we help. This was a short lived resolution till these purposes both bought changed, eliminated, forked, or till we discovered a approach to proceed to make use of them.”
Linux Mint is engaged on some adjustments to assist it keep fashionable sufficient to work seamlessly with newer GTK4+ and GNOME purposes. The staff “made just a few adjustments in libAdwaita to not use its personal stylesheet,” and added libAdwaita help to the built-in Mint-X and Mint-Y themes. Flatpak libAdwaita purposes may use the system accent coloration. The result’s that GNOME Calendar, Foliate, and different libAdwaita-based purposes use the anticipated system colours.
On the similar time, the default Mint themes are getting some minor tweaks to slot in higher with libAdwaita apps and different fashionable interface tendencies. Some highlighted parts now use a blue coloration, and the colour values for gentle and darkish backgrounds are actually barely completely different. The staff says this makes “the darkish theme and Cinnamon parts are softer and far nicer wanting” and “the themes look extra fashionable.” Linux Mint is simply altering some coloration values, nothing Earth-shattering.
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Why Linux Mint Is My Main Distro
Since I began utilizing Linux over a decade in the past, I’ve been a Mint fan. Over time I’ve tried utilizing different distros—and tried some actually bizarre stuff, usually in service of How-to Geek—however Linux Mint has at all times remained my day by day driver and I’ve by no means significantly thought of eliminating it. Right here’s why I prefer it.
These updates ought to assist Linux Mint use fashionable Linux purposes whereas nonetheless giving its customers a point of management over their most popular expertise. The staff isn’t able to throw within the towel on theme customization, however sustaining increasingly parallel variations of GNOME purposes simply isn’t a great use of anybody’s time.
Linux Mint additionally confirmed that Mint 22.2 can be named ‘Zara,’ and LMDE 7 can be named ‘Gigi’. The present model remains to be 22.1.
Supply: Linux Mint