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Linux Mint 27 arrives next month, and I like it already: New features and other upgrades to expect
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It starts with a surprise version number: Linux Mint 27 instead of 24. But the next release brings far more changes than that.
Linux Mint, my favorite Linux desktop distribution, is ready for a fresh start.
Its lead developer, Clement “Clem” Lefebvre, announced earlier this year that the team behind it was considering slowing Mint’s release cadence because the old twice-a-year release cycle was time-consuming and constrained their ability to make major changes. So it is that the next release, Linux Mint 27, will appear in your Christmas stocking.
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The developers officially changed the designation on Oct. 13th when Mint changed both its release cadence and its numbering. Clem’s happy about the change: it “was a tough decision to make, but we’re really starting to see it pay off. We’re taking on projects and implementing changes which would previously have been considered too large or ambitious.”
The new Mint will use Ubuntu 26.04 Long Term Support (LTS) as its base. As before, it will offer Cinnamon, Xfce, and MATE desktops.
Earlier development snapshots had been labeled Mint 23 “Alfa.” That title was explicitly a placeholder while the team decided its release strategy. Its final name is Adrien. Moving ahead, release numbers will be based on the upcoming year. Clem said, “We’ll no longer use point releases, so the release after that will be 28. You’ll upgrade from 27 to 28 to 29, and so on.” Instead of girls’ names, Mint will use boys’ names for distro titles.
On Halloween, Clem announced the top changes in Mint 27. It starts with Mint bringing hibernation back into its supported desktop configuration through a dedicated Sleep Modes page in its System Administration tool. The page is intended to make enabling and configuring hibernation easier, including addressing its swap-space requirements.
It may not sound like much, but Clem explained it’s actually rather a big deal. “When you close the lid of your laptop, it goes into a sleep mode called “Suspend”. This mode is very useful… but it has a major limitation: It uses power.” People often forget it’s not really off and that your laptop will eventually run out of power. When that happens, “the outcome is worse than a normal shutdown. The session is gone, and the battery is empty.”