// ITS FOSS — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
Here's Everything New Coming to Linux Mint 27 This Christmas
Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distribution equipped with its own desktop environment and a set of XApp tools that make it a truly unique package that caters to both beginners and power users alike.
For years it followed a familiar rhythm of new releases roughly every six months, with girls' names being used in alphabetical order from Ada in 2006 to Zena in 22.3 for naming individual releases.
That flow has since shifted as the developers settle on a longer development cycle, which sees them move to one major release per year with no point releases in between.
Version numbering and naming also change with this, as the number now points to the year ahead, taking users from 27 to 28 to 29, and boys' names take over from the girls' names.
Linux Mint 27 "Adrien" is the first release under this new strategy. It is planned for Christmas, builds on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and comes with a five-year support period.
So, with this feature rundown, we are following the monthly news posts since January and are sticking to changes that are new in Linux Mint 27.
Cinnamon's Wayland session is no longer experimental. Both X11 and Wayland are fully supported in the next Cinnamon release, with Wayland nearly level with X11. This makes the flagship experience of Linux Mint Wayland-ready, bringing it up to the level of other mainstream distros like Fedora and Ubuntu.
Much of the groundwork revolves around everyday interactions. Windows and menus map properly, focus stealing is prevented, and crashes across Cinnamon, Muffin, cinnamon-session, and Xwayland are fixed.
Multi-monitor setups and KVM switches are covered too. 🔥
Graphics get attention as well. Hardware acceleration is supported, including GBM over EGL for NVIDIA cards, while HiDPI scaling reaches cursors and Chromium-based apps such as Slack and VS Code.