- Edited
In their latest monthly news blog post, the Linux Mint developers talked about some interesting changes that they intend to make to their Linux distribution:
- They will make XApps more distro-independent than it is right now. XApps is a set of GNOME-forked applications by Linux Mint, which are still using GTK 3. Mostly, no one outside Linux Mint is using XApps and they address this in the blog post and how they made it in the first place to be Linux-Mint-centric so of course no one will use them. They will create a special organization for XApps so that it can be used by any Linux distribution or desktop.
They present a good point that libAdwaita apps in GTK4 can not be themed like other GTK applications, so they look out of shape just like in the latest Xubuntu 24.04:
- They call out libAdwaita and how it is only made for the GNOME desktop, with nothing else in mind. They won’t be shipping any libAdwaita-based application in their distribution.
Today these apps are losing menubars, themes, tomorrow they might come with no minimize button or anything GNOME doesn’t use.
In order to avoid these applications in the upcoming Mint 22 release, which will be based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, they plan to fork more of GNOME applications into XApps:
In Mint 22 GNOME Font Viewer was removed and the following applications were downgraded back to GTK3 versions: Celluloid, GNOME Calculator, Simple Scanm, Baobab, System Monitor, GNOME Calendar, File Roller, Zenity.
- They also address further points about libAdwaita:
libAdwaita is for GNOME and GNOME only. We can’t blame GNOME for this, they’ve been very clear about it from the start. It was made specifically for GNOME to have more freedom and build its own ecosystem without impacting GTK. We want to send a strong signal upstream and towards other projects. We cannot and will not support applications which do not support our users and environments. We can’t promote applications to our users which don’t support our users. The software manager will be vigilant towards that going forward and list compatible software by default.
I want to reach out to upstream developers here. If your application is only for GNOME, then by all means, ignore this and use libAdwaita, it’s made for that. If you intend to support all environments then don’t use this library. At the very least please get in touch with us so we’re aware of your intention and keep you listed as a supported app.
- They will be removing the Adwaita icon theme from Linux Mint Cinnamon version because it no longer follows the FreeDesktop standard, and looks out of shape in the latest version.
- Other changes include a better Flathub ownership indication in thier software center, using Matrix for their future communication app instead of IRC, and new partnerships with 3rd-party vendors for their infrastructure.