After 6 months of development, the Linux Mint distribution developers have released Cinnamon 6.0, a user environment release aimed at providing a classical Gnome 2-style environment with support for successful elements interactions from Gnome Shell. Cinnamon is based on GNOME components, but these components are supplied as periodically synchronized forces without external dependencies with GNOME. The version number change to 6.0 signifies a continuation of the tradition of using certain decimal numbers to number stable versions (5.6, 5.8, 6.0, etc.). The new release of Cinnamon will be included in the Linux Mint 21.3 distribution, planned for release in December.
Basic innovations include:
- Added experimental support for working with the Wayland protocol. The porting is in the initial stage, so many possibilities available when launching Cinnamon based on X.org are not yet or incorrectly working in a Wayland basis. However, when launching in Wayland, it is already being used to control windows, virtual desktops, and most applications and components, including the file manager and panel. Full support for Cinnamon in Wayland is planned before the release of Linux Mint 23 in 2026.
- The capabilities of the Hypnotix IPTV player have been expanded. Users can now maintain a common list of selected television channels without being limited to specific providers. This means all the channels of interest can be kept in one place, even when using multiple television providers. Additionally, a built-in feature has been added to download and install new versions of the YT-DLP application used for viewing YouTube.
- Users now have the option to use images in AVIF format as desktop wallpapers.
- For more visually appealing background gradients, the formation of the background gradient (Lightbox) now involves dysering, which simulates shades by mixing existing colors.
- A new feature allows users to change the size of the window with the menu editor.
/Reports, release notes, official announcements.