LINUX MINT 21.1 Vera is WINDOWS, and I'm fine with that!

hey everyone this is Nick and for such a small version number change Linux Mint 21.1 is a big big release not necessarily in how you use it or it's new features but more in terms of how it looks and it definitely looks like Windows but of course it also adds a ton of features that Propel Linux Mint into the more modern Linux world we currently live in so let's take a look at everything new in mint 21.1 and let's take a look at today's sponsor thanks to Chasm for sponsoring this video Chasm workspaces lets you stream containerized apps and Linux desktops straight to your browser without anything to install whether you need to run a full desktop for development use different browsers safely without compromising your own computer or try a specific application without an install Chasm has Linux based images for everything they're all open source and available directly on Docker Hub and they even have support for any arbitrary virtual machine including Linux Android windows and other virtual machines that can't be containerized and they refresh the whole user experience to be more legible and easier to use the chasm VNC rendering technology which is used to stream all of this to your browser is also open source and now supports resolutions up to 4K 60 and Chasm workspaces Community Edition can be used for self-hosting and it's available for free directly on their website click the link in the description below to get started with Chasm workspaces OK let's open with the elephant in the room and that's how Linux Mint looks mint has always looked kind of bland and old in my opinion that muted green with pale gray accent colors on virtually everything you overall click it always kind of felt stale but green has been mint's brand basically since it started and it's still a huge part of its look even on its website and logo and well mint 21.1 does away with all of that the default look is completely different first the green accent color is gone it's now a very usual blue probably a bit lighter and more vibrant than what you would find in gnome's advice maybe more on par with Katie's Breeze and this accent color is also used in less places hovering over menu items doesn't highlight them in blue it's now kinda gray same goes for the panel clicking on something doesn't turn it green anymore and the window buttons now use blue as well the whole theme has been tweaked to be lighter on the eyes in the file manager for example you don't get that big black background for the side panel it's now pale gray and selectors and buttons also now use gray instead of the accent color even selecting a folder or file in that file manager only highlights the name of the item and not the whole icon and speaking of icons gone other colored folders now they're your basic Manila yellow color with a stripe on top of them to use your favorite ax encounter even window controls have changed icons and now look well more familiar if you're coming from a certain popular operating system and look before you panic you can still revert to the older Linux Min theme including the colored folder icons and all the green everywhere you can they're still there that default look is also complemented by a new cursor theme called bibata which is thicker and loses the traditional pointer tail but again you can still use the previous ones if you prefer which I do sounds received an update as well and are now using material design V2 sounds from Android and okay I have to say it all these f efforts to make Linux Mint look more modern and less green and gray and drab they're really appreciated I always felt that men's default looks were holding it back in the eyes of potential switchers to Linux saying that mint is often the number one distro people recommend even if you could change those looks after the fact The Faults matter but this change this is controversial first and foremost because it's very clear that it aims to emulate how Windows looks the default blue the manila folders the window controls coupled with the traditional mint cinnamon layout which is a carbon copy of what Windows 7 8 and 10 offered it all makes for a pretty simple to understand goal mint has always been the number one distro recommended for Windows users and this move makes it even clearer that it's the goal it sets out for itself and I'm okay with it I mean if I can point anyone who wants to switch to Linux to a distro that looks good is stable robust and kind of emulates what you already know even if it's only on the surface if you're coming from Windows then I'm fine with it it works and in that I think mint 21.1 accomplishes that goal whether it was their design or not it now looks very much more like Windows more modern and I personally really like these looks but it's also a big dilution of men's visual identity and I can understand why people are a bit annoyed by it but in the end what is important is what Linux Mint represents and that's the perfect Gateway for potential window switchers and with these changes mint is an even better Gateway so I think goal accomplished now the second big change in mint 21.1 is its flat back support mint already supported installing flat back applications but it wasn't really designed around it well that's now the case the update manager means tool to update your applications and your system now supports flatback applications and runtimes so you can update everything in one place and you don't need the command line or a separate App Store like gnome software and mint software manager their App Store that only handles application installs not updates also gets the usual drop down menu to let you pick between the flat package or the regular dab package from the repos mint uses flat Hub by the way so you should get everything you need from there it's great to see mint adopt this packaging format they're one of the biggest user-facing distros and having them support flat pack better is a good step flat pack isn't perfect but it's very very clear that going forward it will be the default packaging format for all beginner friendly and user-facing distro so that support is welcome it's really not perfect though as Searchers in the software manager will return multiple instances of the same application which might confuse users compared to just letting them ignore the packaging formats or pick it on the application's details page another change is the way mint handles drivers first the driver manager the tool that lets you see if there are drivers you could install and install them well that now runs in user mode so you don't need to enter your password just to open the application if you're offline you will also get a dedicated screen to let you know why the app is empty and you can also use USB drives to install drivers for example if you plug in a live USB mint will be able to detect it and offer to mount it so you can install drivers from that that tool also now supports Deb conf which means that installing proprietary NVIDIA drivers with your boot enable should be more robust mint still comes with cinnamon as its default desktop environment and the desktop got some changes this time around as well cinnamon 5.6 comes with a new Corner Bar which is another callback to Windows default layout it's a small vertical applet stuck to the far right of the default panel hovering over it allows you to peek at the desktop by hiding all windows complete with a blur effect if you want but you can also click that corner bar with the left Mouse button or the middle Mouse button and configure what which click does between either showing the desktop showing the desk lats showing the workspace selector or showing the window selector that little applet replaces the previous show desktop button that was on the right of the main menu in the context menu when right clicking on the desktop you can now directly access the display settings and the default desktop icons were cleaned up with the removal of the home folder the computer the trash and the network icon since these are all available from the file manager there is no reason to have them on by default but you can restore them in the preferences if you want now this reasoning also applies to all desktop icons since everything is accessible through the file manager you should just not have any desktop icons at all or you should have as many as you want it's your computer after all Nemo the file manager also gets a few changes like showing the dates in the list view in a mono space font improving the path bar by letting you click on the current path to toggle the location URL bar while navigating to a different folder will bring the path bar back smaller changes include a search entry in the shortcut settings so you can look at all the various shortcuts you might want to change preferred applications are now featured by categories you can configure the duration for which notifications will stay visible the themes list is now sorted between dark and light themes and current and Legacy themes and you also get window placement mode back in the window manager those are all pretty small tweaks but they should still make the experience a little bit nicer now still that themes list should really just be split between a theme selector and an accent color selector because that current list is getting very crowded oh and also mint won't bug you for your password as often as it once did for example uninstalling a flat pack app that you install for your user and not the whole system won't require a password same goes for removing local shortcuts and local applications you only installed for yourself and synaptic and the update manager will also remember if you entered your password recently so they won't ask for it for every single action and finally you can also now configure the mouse pointer theme and size for the login screen if you use wapinator the file sharing app on a local network you'll be happy to know it is now more secure and the web app manager now lets you tweak more settings when creating a web app especially the presence of a navigation bar in the window and if you want to browse privately for that web app not many changes to the default apps in mint 21.1 but then again it's not like they were missing a lot of features as per the mate or xfce variants they get the exact same changes for the themes the cursors the applications and the desktop the only thing they don't get is the Corner Bar the display entry in the right click menu on the desktop the file manager improvements and the reorganization of the various settings pages now there are the usual caveats for every version of Linux Mint it's still based on Ubuntu although you do have an addition based on Debian just in case which means that if Ubuntu messes up at some point they have a backup plan they still remove snaps from Ubuntu which is also pretty good for a desktop distro Snaps are great on servers but on the desktop there is no reason to prefer them over flat pack or regular packages there are still no touch pad gestures for laptops which sucks and the big thing is still no word on Weyland support X11 still works for the moment but mint hasn't started working on Wayland at all as far as I know or they've been super quiet about it they use a window manager based on matter and they use gtk which are gnome components which do have Waylon support but there are still going to be some work to be done for cinnamon itself to support Weyland and Implement portals and Global shortcuts and desktop and windows sharing all that stuff and not having any idea if the men's team is going to work on Wayland support or not is not great Weyland as a protocol is now feature complete with the recent edition of real fractional scaling and X11 isn't getting more secure or isn't getting any new features at all so I don't think mint wants to be stranded as the only last distro and desktop that doesn't support it apart from that though mint is still mint despite its branding changes that really make it clear they want to be the number one distro for Windows switchers they retain their main goal which I always took to be provide tools and graphical utilities for everything you can out of the box provide a simple and logical experience customization options for people who want to work differently and generally a robust and stable experience for day-to-day computer use and whether they're green blue pink or yellow hello they still provide that they are still the number one distro I would recommend to anyone moving from Windows maybe even more so now so men's 21.1 it's now become basically Windows as the default desktop experience but it's still a fantastic distro that I still heavily recommend and if you don't like the new look changes don't worry you can revert all of them all the themes are still there so it's no problem just like it's no problem to run Linux on any of today's sponsors devices because tuxedo is a company based in Germany and they ship worldwide a big range of desktops and laptops that ship Linux out of the box so don't bother buying a Windows computer and trying to install Linux on it because you never know if things are going to run right now or in the future when you buy from tuxedo you know that Linux is going to run well on it and they have devices for every price point and every use case whether you want to game or just a lightweight laptop or a workstation they have it all and they're all customizable upgradable repairable you can even have your own custom keyboard layout laser etched on the keys of your laptop or your own logo laser etched on the lid so check out the link in the description below if you want a device that runs Linux and you want to support linux's development tuxedo device are really great so thanks for watching this video I hope you enjoyed it if you did don't hesitate to like to subscribe to turn on notifications to write a comment and if you didn't like it there's always that dislike button it still works and you can write me a comment to let me know what you didn't like exactly and if you really enjoyed the channel and what I'm doing here you can always click on the super thanks button underneath this YouTube video there's a PayPal Link in the description and there are also links to my patreon memberships and YouTube memberships both get access to a weekly podcast where I talk about Linux tag open source my personal life and the channel and you also get to vote on the next topics that I'll cover on the channel as well so thanks for watching and I guess you'll see me in the next one bye [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 298,563

Keywords: linux, open source, linux distro, linux help, linux tutorial, linux 2022, linux tips, distro, linux for beginners 2022, linux tutorial 2022, linux mint 21.1, linux mint 21, linux mint vera, linux mint 21.1 vera, linux mint install, linux mint 2022, linux mint 21 vanessa, linux mint vs ubuntu, linux mint cinnamon, linux operating system, linux mint 21.1 cinnamon, linux mint 21.1 upgrade, linux mint mate, linux mint 21.1 new features, linux mint, linux mint 21.1 review

Id: AEaDbbweDIY

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 28 2022