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Choose the right edition¶

You can download Linux Mint from the Linux Mint website.

Read below to choose which edition and architecture are right for you.

Cinnamon, MATE or Xfce?¶

Linux Mint comes in 3 different flavours, each featuring a different desktop environment.

Cinnamon	The most modern, innovative and full-featured desktop
MATE	A more traditional, and faster desktop
Xfce	The most lightweight desktop

The most popular version of Linux Mint is the Cinnamon edition. Cinnamon is primarily developed for and by Linux Mint. It is slick, beautiful, and full of new features.

Linux Mint is also involved in the development of MATE, a classic desktop environment which is the continuation of GNOME 2, Linux Mint’s default desktop between 2006 and 2011. Although it misses a few features and its development is slower than Cinnamon’s, MATE uses less resources and can run faster on older computers.

Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment. It doesn’t support as many features as Cinnamon or MATE, but it’s extremely stable and very light on resource usage.

Of course, all three desktops are great and Linux Mint is extremely proud of each edition. Although there are more features and better support in some editions than others, and some do run faster and use less resources than others, they’re all great alternatives and choosing the right edition is largely a matter of taste.

Other than their features and performance, Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce also represent three different desktop environments, with different menus, different panels and configuration tools. The right one for you is the one where you feel at home.

If you are unsure which desktop to choose start with the Cinnamon edition. Try them all eventually when you have the time. All three of them have their own audience within the Linux Mint community and they’re all very popular.

32-bit or 64-bit?¶

From version 20 onward, only 64-bit is available.

The 32-bit ISO images on prior versions are provided for compatibility with older computers. 32-bit processors are extremely rare nowadays and most computers are able to run in 64-bit. If your computer was manufactured after 2007, you probably have a 64-bit processor.

If you have an old computer and you are unsure whether or not it can run in 64-bit, read X86 Chronology.

You can try to boot Linux Mint 64-bit on your computer. If it isn’t compatible, nothing bad will happen. You will just get an error message.

If you cannot boot or install Linux Mint because your hardware is too recent and is not properly detected see the Edge ISO Images chapter in the Linux Mint User Guide for an alternative ISO.

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Release notes

Linux Mint 20 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2025. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop experience more comfortable.

Linux Mint 20 «Ulyana» MATE Edition

Known issues

Shutdown timeout

For your convenience, the shutdown timeout is reduced to 10s.

If you rely on lengthy operations to finish before shutdown, read /etc/systemd/system.conf.d/50_linuxmint.conf and override the timeout value in /etc/systemd/system.conf.d/60_custom.conf.

Grub2 theme in HiDPI

If the grub2 theme looks too small in your HiDPI monitor, install the «grub2-theme-mint-2k» package.

Snap Store

The Snap Store is disabled in Linux Mint 20. For more information on this or to re-enable it read https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.html.

Virtualbox

If the screen is black when launching Linux Mint in Virtualbox, change the VirtualBox graphics controller to «VMSVGA». Do this by opening up the settings for your VM and select Display -> Graphics Controller.

If the screen is garbled when launching Linux Mint in Virtualbox, switch to console with HOST+F1 (e.g. the RIGHT Ctrl key, no ALT) and back to tty7 with HOST+F7.

Another workaround is to disable «nested paging» (in the System -> Acceleration settings) and to increase the video memory to 128MB (in the Display settings).

Note: This issue only affects the live session. You don’t need these workarounds post-installation.

To add support for shared folders, drag and drop, proper acceleration and display resolution in Virtualbox, click on the «Devices» menu of Virtualbox and choose «Insert Guest Additions CD Image». Choose «download» when asked and follow the instructions.

Home directory encryption

Benchmarks have demonstrated that, in most cases, home directory encryption is slower than full disk encryption.

The move to systemd caused a regression in ecrypts which is responsible for mounting/unmounting encrypted home directories when you login and logout. Because of this issue, please be aware that in Mint 20 and newer releases, your encrypted home directory is no longer unmounted on logout: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-session/+bug/1734541.

Guest sessions

You can still enable guest sessions in the «Login Window» utility, but this option is now disabled by default.

Touchpad drivers

The default touchpad driver in this edition is «libinput» (provided by the xserver-xorg-input-libinput package).

If you experience problems with it, you can switch to another driver called «synaptics» (provided by the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package).

To know which driver is used by your input devices, run the following command:

grep -i «Using input driver» /var/log/Xorg.0.log

When both drivers are installed, «synaptics» takes priority.

To switch to the «synaptics» driver, install it with the command:

apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Then log out and log back in.

To go back to using «libinput», simply remove the «synaptics» driver:

apt remove xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Then log out and log back in.

Note: You can also try installing the «evdev» driver (provided by the xserver-xorg-input-evdev).

Wine

To install the complete version of WINE, open a terminal and type:

apt install wine-installer

Among other things, this will install wine-desktop-files, which adds menu entries for regedit, your C:\ drive and other items which are missing from upstream WINE.

Sound and microphone issues

If you’re facing issues with your microphone or your sound output, please install «pavucontrol».

This will add «PulseAudio Volume Control» to your menu. This application has more configuration options than the default volume control.

DVD Playback with VLC

If VLC does not find your DVD player, click on Media->Open Disc, and specify ‘/dev/sr0’ as the disc device.

Other issues

Linux Mint 20 is based on Ubuntu 20.04. Make sure to read the Ubuntu release notes.

Tips

Username and password in the live session

In the live session, the username is «mint» and the password is empty (i.e. just press Enter if asked for a password).

Moving windows which don’t fit in the screen

If your screen resolution is too low, some windows might not fit in the screen.

While pressing the ALT key, you can grab any part of a window with the mouse and move it across the screen.

Installing multimedia codecs offline

To download the multimedia codecs into an installable archive:

• Boot from the Linux Mint ISO on a computer which is connected to the Internet
• Open a terminal and type «apt download mint-meta-codecs» (without the quotes)
• This creates a «mint-meta-codecs.tgz» archive

On computers which do not have an Internet access, you can decompress this archive and run ./install.sh (or alternatively «sudo dpkg -i *.deb») to install the multimedia codecs.

Solving freezes during the boot sequence

Some graphics cards don’t work well with the open-source driver present in Linux Mint.

If Linux Mint freezes during boot time, use the «Compatibility Mode» boot option.

In this mode you should be able to boot Linux Mint and install it on your computer.

After the installation, reboot the computer and wait for the boot menu to appear.

Add the «nomodeset» option as illustrated below:

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If your graphics card is from NVIDIA, once in Linux Mint, perform the following steps to install the NVIDIA drivers:

• Run the Driver Manager
• Choose the NVIDIA drivers and wait for them to be installed
• Reboot the computer

With these drivers the system should now be stable and you no longer need to use «nomodeset».

Note: If you’re using an Optimus card, you’ve nothing more to do. Upon reboot, a system tray icon should show up indicating which GPU is currently active. Click on it to switch GPUs.

Note: If you still cannot boot try one of the following solutions:

• Try with «nouveau.noaccel=1» instead of «nomodeset».
• Try with «noapic noacpi nosplash irqpoll» instead of «quiet splash».
• After the installation, use «Advanced Options» -> «Recovery mode» from the boot menu and choose «resume».

Choosing the right version of Linux Mint

Each new version comes with a new kernel and a newer set of drivers. Most of the time, this means newer versions are compatible with a larger variety of hardware components, but sometimes it might also introduce regressions. If you are facing hardware issues with the latest version of Linux Mint and you are unable to solve them, you can always try an earlier release. If that one works better for you, you can stick to it, or you can use it to install Linux Mint and then upgrade to the newer release.

Thanks to your donations and advertising Linux Mint is completely free of charge. We hope you’ll enjoy using it as much as we enjoy working on it.

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