The latest Mint, codenamed Ulyana, is here and so is the herbaceous Jonni Bidwell to tell you all about it.

Jonni Bidwell

Summer is well upon us and what better way to celebrate the warmer days and longer evenings than to grab some fresh sprigs of mint from the garden, muddle yourself up a refreshing mojito (or a nojito if you’re driving), and relax with our exclusive guide to the freshest Linux flavour around.

Linux Mint 20 has hit the mirrors, and it’s one of the finest releases yet. It’s long been our go-to recommendation for people taking their first steps with Linux. Cinnamon, Mint’s homespun desktop, is ideal if you prefer a traditional home computing environment, in the style of Windows 7 (only much better, of course). For fans of Gnome 2, or for those people who are running lower-powered machines, don’t forget the Mate and Xfce editions, either. With this release, all three desktops have seen marked improvements.

But it’s not just for beginners. Built on the rock-solid foundations (and piggybacking off the bountiful repositories) of Ubuntu, Mint can be a powerhouse of productivity. Whether you’re coding, building websites, designing beautiful artwork, or writing features for dead-tree publications, Mint is an excellent choice.

However, it’s not all work (evidently - Ed), thanks to the latest Ubuntu kernel, Mint is a great choice for gaming. You should have no trouble getting your DRM-free titles from the likes of GOG or itch.io running. And if you prefer the dark side, we’ve even got a section on getting Steam up and running. If that’s not enough, check out our comprehensive companion gaming feature on page 70.

Whatever your computing goals, or even if you’re just inquisitive, we’ll show you how to boot Mint, install it and generally get the most out you’re new favourite operating system.

Going live

Prepare yourself a cup of tea and live medium. It’s about to get Minty.

After the Ubuntu LTS every second April, there follows in its stead a stream of distros based on it. Many of these are little more than vanilla Ubuntu with a new desktop and some bundled software. That’s fine, but other offerings go much further. And it’s these that we look forward to the most. Since the 20.04 release April 2020, we’ve already featured the excellent Pop!_OS (with its glorious introduction to tiling window managers, see our review in LXF264) and we’re looking forward to the elementary OS 6.0 release, whenever that may be. One we never fail to get excited about is Linux Mint. At last the wait is over, and we’re here with the refined coverage this release deserves.

We’d usually be telling you to fire up the cover DVD and taste the fresh minty flavours at this point. But our operation still isn’t up to making DVDs yet, and, let’s face it who even has an optical drive in every machine nowadays? We could have put it on the ISO image we’re offering for download, but there are plenty of Mint mirrors so why not nudge people towards the official downloads? Our handy three-step guide below should get you started. If you run into difficulty, our DVD FAQ (https://linuxformat.com/dvdsupport) might help. You shouldn’t need to disable Secure Boot (since Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu which has a signed bootloader) and the image is compatible with older (BIOS) and newer (UEFI) systems.

Once you’ve booted the live environment you’ll find a desktop that’s easy to navigate and has everything you need to get started. Wired connections should work out of the box, and there’s a good chance your wireless device will, too. Heck, your printer might even work without having to add additional drivers. Desktop Linux has certainly come a long way. Software-wise there’s Firefox, an IRC client and much more. Open the menu in the bottom left and start typing if you’re not sure where to look for a particular program. And if you want to add new programs, do so from Administration

Over the page you’ll find a guide to installing Mint, which should cover everything you need. If you’re not ready to commit to the whole installation endeavour, another option is to try Mint in a virtual machine (VM), using the cross-platform Virtualbox for example. This will give a deeper experience than the live environment (since any changes you make are persistent) and has the advantage that it won’t risk your currently installed operating systems. A VM will be slightly slower, and won’t be much use for serious gaming, but other than that will act just like a regular install.