Linux Mint 19.2 beta releases with Update Manager, improved menu and much more!

3 min read

This week the team behind Linux Mint announced the release of Linux Mint 19.2 beta, a desktop Linux distribution used for producing a modern operating system. This release is codenamed as Tina.

This release comes with updated software and refinements and new features for making the desktop more comfortable to use.

What’s new in Linux Mint 19.2 beta?

Update Manager

The Update Manager now shows how long kernels are supported and users no longer need to install or remove kernels one by one anymore. Users can now queue installations and removals as well as install and remove multiple kernels in one go. A new button called “Remove Kernels” has been added to make for removing obsolete kernels. There is also support for kernel flavors now. The Update Manager will now show a combobox for users to switch between flavors.

Improved menu

mintMenu, the main application menu, has received many bug fixes and performance improvements. Also,Even the search bar position and the tooltips are now configurable. In this release, the applet icon now supports both icon files and themed icons.

Software Manager

A loading screen now shows up when the cache is being refreshed in the Software Manager. Software Manager can now share the same cache and can also list the applications which were installed via other means (other than Software Manager). The cache used by the Software Manager has been moved to mint-common and is turned into a Python module that can recognize manually installed software.

New buttons added in the Maintenance section

In this release, two new buttons are made available in the “Maintenance” section of the “Software Sources” configuration tool:

Add Missing Keys: With the help of this button, users can now scan their repositories and PPAs and download any key that might be missing.
Remove duplicate sources: With the help of this button, users can find and fix duplicated definitions in their sources configuration.

Announcing MATE 1.22

The Mint team also announced that Linux Mint 19.2 will be shipped with MATE 1.22 which now comes with improved stability and bug fixes. MATE is the Linux desktop that started as a fork of GNOME 2 in 2011 due to the poor reception of GNOME 3.

What’s new in MATE 1.22?

It comes with support for metacity-3 themes.
This release features better-looking window and desktop switchers.
MATE 1.22 features systemd support in the session manager.
It has support for new compression formats and can easily pause/resume compression/decompression.

It seems users are happy with this news. A user commented on the official post, “Hi Mint Team. Great job so far. Looks very smooth – even for a beta. Menu is crazy fast!!!”

Few others are complaining about the graphical glitches they faced. Another user commented, “Hi team and thanks for your latest offering, there is a LOT to like about this and I will provide as much useful feedback as I can, I have had an issue with graphical glitches from Linux Mint 19x Cinnamon.”

To know more about this news, check out the official blog post.