The Linux Mint team has just released Linux Mint 22, a new major version of the free Linux distribution. With Windows 10's end of support coming up quickly next year, at least some users may consider making the switch to Linux.
While there are other options, paying Microsoft for extended support or upgrading to Windows 11, these options are not available for all users or desirable.
Linux Mint 22 is a long-term service release. Means, it is supported until 2029. Unlike Microsoft, which made drastic changes to the system requirements of Windows 11 to lock out millions of devices from upgrading to the new version, Linux Mint will continue to work on older hardware, even after 2029.
Here are the core changes in Linux Mint 22:
- Based on the new Ubuntu 24.04 package base.
- Kernel version is 6.8.
- Software Manager loads faster and has improved multi-threading.
- Unverified Flatpaks are disabled by default.
- Preinstalled Matrix Web App for using chat networks.
- Improved language support removes any language not selected by the user after installation to save disk space.
- Several under-the-hood changes that update libraries or software.
Kde, gnome, wayland wms like hyperland and ~~budgie~~ edit: apparently not wayland but keep it in the list.
I've never heard of half the ones you mentioned so age difference chacks out. Deepin looks nice.
Btw mate was my choice as well when I last tried mint, it felt faster and less annoying in the first 5 minutes.
MATE is how almost all Linux distros used to be. It's my beloved mostly because of the age thing haha. I was excited about GNOME 3 at first because the thinking at the time was "Oh, they're a good set of developers, they gave us our beloved GNOME 2, after all. GNOME 3 will develop into the wonderfully customizable, stable, and user friendly DE GNOME 2 was"
13 years later... Nope. Or... GNOPE. None of that has panned out. GNOME 3 is just as unstable and frustrating for sustained use as it ever was. Their libadwaita moves have been total horseshit. GTK 4 sucks. Meanwhile KDE and Qt have been becoming stronger and stronger, better and better, and more and more if you're running a GTK based DE you're gonna wind up with some Qt dependent apps anyway because... Well... Qt doesn't suck. I'm for sure going to wind up with a mostly Qt based system in the nearish future.
Quick correction, gtk4 is awesome, its just gtk3 but better, everything you dont like about it is libadwaita