The next installment of the Linux Mint 20.2 is codenamed “Uma”. There are some new apps and tweaks that are promised by the team. A quick rundown of the announcement in this post.
Linux Mint 20.2 is the second installment of the Linux Mint 20.x series followed by the Linux Mint 20.1 “Ulyssa” which was released on January 2021. With this announcement, we are already in the mid-life cycle of the 20.x series. Linux Mint 20.2 is codenamed “Uma” following the trends of having names that start with “U” in this release.
Being a point release, you should not expect any major changes or enhancements. Mostly bug fixes, backports, and app introduction which are safe to introduce without creating many regression problems are on the plate. That said, let’s take a look at what’s coming.
Table of Contents
Linux Mint 20.2 Uma Expected Features
Bulky
A new XApp is introduced named “Bulky”. Its primary function is renaming the files and directory in bulk. It supports regular expression search as well. Bulky is available as XApp in MATE and Cinnamon desktop. For the Xfce desktop, the Thunar file manager already has a built-in bulk file renamer.
Nemo searches in file contents
The Cinnamon file manager Nemo brings file content search in its next release which is going to be available in “Uma”. Today, Nemo only searches in the file and directory names for matching search criteria. With this enhancement, Nemo can search inside the file contents for a keyword. The team says that Regular expressions and recursive folder searches will be supported. This will be available with Nemo 5.0. This feature will be very useful for many users who use Linux Mint as a daily driver and work with many files as part of their workflow.
Warpinator Updates
Warpinator which is one of the best Linux Mint app used to transfer files across the Network (Wired and Wireless), brings more enhancement. In the next version, it gives you the ability to select the Network Interface which you want to use for file transfer. If you have both Wired and Wireless ethernet, you can select which one you want to use to share files to another device on the same selected network interface.
Not only that, but it also brings compression settings which enable “3 times faster” transfer across devices – provided both the machine have the compression enabled.
AMD support in NVIDIA Prime applet
“Nvidia-prime-applet 1.2.7 was backported recently. It contains a fix for a regression in ubuntu-drivers-common which made the applet disappear.
It also contains support for computers with AMD/NVIDIA hybrids (i.e. systems with an integrated AMD GPU and a discrete NVIDIA GPU).”
Other Updates
The Linux Mint 20.x series is based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Hence, Linux Mint 20.2 also remains with the stable Ubuntu release. So, Kernel and other applications stay with their latest LTS versions as of Ubuntu 20.04.
Linux Mint 20.2 Uma release plan
Linux Mint 20.2 final releases on August 2021 – September 2021 timeframe.
The Linux Mint 20.2 BETA is expected by mid-June 2021.
Following this release, the third installment of the Linux Mint 20.x series expected by end of 2021, following that a new release in 2022.
Closing Notes
There is no daily build I found where you can check these features as of today. SO, wait for the BETA copy which is due within weeks from now. Linux Mint always brings very cool and usefull apps for its millions of user base. The native Mint apps look very trivial – but they really bridge the Gap for desktop users which other DEs lacking.
