A new look app menu, expanded search abilities in the file manager and a modern on-screen keyboard are among new features in Linux Mint 22.3, which just hit beta.
Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena” is the fourth and final update in the Linux Mint 22 branch, building on the many changes the Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” delivered in early autumn.
Linux Mint 22.3 is based on Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS, so inherits all of the foundational goodies from its upstream kin, including the Linux 6.14 kernel (with access to the Ubuntu HWE updates – Linux kernel 6.17 and Mesa 25.2 are due in the coming weeks).
Anyone installing Linux Mint 22.2 gets near-full access to the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS repos, but as Linux Mint doesn’t allow users to installs snap by default — support can be enabled manually — both Firefox and Thunderbird come as regular DEB packages.
For a look at what’s new in this beta, read on.
Linux Mint 22.3: What’s New?
New Mint Menu
The Cinnamon desktop got a facelift in 22.1, developers added a metallic blue sheen to the default GTK theme in 22.2, and Linux Mint 22.3 introduces a major revamp to the Mint Menu applet (the Cinnamon desktop’s ‘Start Menu’ analog, if you will).
The new menu keeps the 3 column layout and search bar (moved to the bottom), yet it looks different thanks to a full-height sidebar with user account picture; symbolic app category icons; app description text; and a row of session action buttons.
The new menu is still resizeable by dragging out from its corner, but more customisable as developers added a raft of new Configuration options to let you craft a menu setup to suit your tastes (e.g., search bar position, session row, full colour or symbolic icons, etc).
The list of “favourites” in the sidebar no longer repeats apps that are pinned to the desktop panel by default, so Text Editor, Calculator and Character Map shortcuts replace the duplicate Firefox, Nemo and Terminal shortcuts respectively.
New monochrome icons
Linux Mint 22.3 now uses the XApp Symbolic Icons (XSI) set, a distro-agnostic pack of symbolic icons that GTK application developers can rely on (rather than adding their own).
The distro previously used GNOME’s symbolic icon set. Upstream development priorities have shifted, and newer versions of the Adwaita symbolic icon set removes a number of symbolic icons that non-GNOME apps were using.
To avoid users seeing broken or missing icons within UI elements or apps, the XSI project was created.
New App: System Information
Linux Mint 22.3 includes a ‘new’ System Information tool (it’s a revamped version of its old one, but the changes are bold enough to make it seem new).
The new app makes it easier to inspect and identify your system’s hardware capabilities and drivers without running multiple terminal commands. Beyond the standard system overview (version, kernel, window manager, etc), the tool offers four new sections:
- USB – shows attached devices, speed, power draw and controller capacity
- GPU – lists graphics card model, driver and hardware acceleration status
- PCI – details internal components like type, brand and driver info
- BIOS – displays motherboard details, BIOS version and secure boot status
A welcome addition to Mint’s app arsenal, for sure.
Nemo File Manager Changes
Power users, perk up: Nemo now lets you search filenames using regular expressions (regex). It was already possible to search file contents with regex, but not filenames.
But, now you can. Just hit the regex button in the search bar to get crafty with your searches using regex syntax to surface files with predictable naming patterns (there’s built-in validation to flag any wonky expressions before they run).
Want to find screenshots taken after December 1st and 8th that follow a ‘Screenshot-20251002.png‘ format? Pop Screenshot-2025100[1-8].png into the search box. To find all PDFs with ‘The’ in the file name, type in ^The.
Most Linux Mint users will stick to traditional text searches (and that’s absolutely fine) but regex is great for specificity. A solid power-user buff (and Nemo isn’t exclusive to Linux Mint, so this will be available on other distros and desktops too).
Nemo also now supports pause/resume for file operations (being able to pause a large file transfer is a solid quality-of-life improvement); while Nemo Actions installed from Spices (Mint’s online hub) can show icons, making the context-menu extras easier to spot.
I didn’t know that Nemo supports dual-pane file management (aka ‘Split View’) – probably because it required knowing to press the F3 key to activate it. Well, now you can add a dual-pane button to the Nemo toolbar, putting it in reach (out of sight, out of mind and all that).
Finally, if you regularly work with document templates, Nemo 6.6 adds a template manager in its Preferences panel. You can access templates when you right-click in an empty part of a folder and select “Create New Document”.
New On-Screen Keyboard
Developers have rewritten Linux Mint’s on-screen keyboard (OSK) to drop the use of libcaribou in favour of a native Cinnamon implementation. Besides looking (a lot) nicer the new OSK also supports input method switching from the OSK.
Visually, the new on-screen keyboard better marries the myriad of other visual changes Cinnamon has seen in recent updates. Practically, OSKs are useful even if you don’t run Linux Mint on a tablet or convertible laptop: they’re handy when your Bluetooth keyboard batteries run out!
Keyboard layout and language handling in Cinnamon 6.6 is considerably better. The keyboard settings and its respective panel applet now handle traditional XKB layouts and IBus input methods the same way, displaying them together, and allowing easy switching.
But the most important factor is it works in Wayland, geeing along Cinnamon’s steady progress towards providing a ‘no caveats’ experience on Wayland.
Night Light applet improvements
A new Night Light applet is available to add your desktop panel in Cinnamon 6.6.
This applet is not interactive (so no scrolling your mouse wheel to adjust intensity). It’s basic toggle to turn the blue-light filtering feature on or off.
Cick to turn it on, click to turn it off or right-click to open Night Light settings.
Inside of settings, there’s a new ‘always on’ option for Night Light. This saves you having to create weird schedules like 0:00 to 23:59 if you’d prefer to keep it enabled continuously.
Workflow and desktop tweaks
Other improvements in Cinnamon 6.6 that Linux Mint 22.3 offers:
- App icon badging to show unread notification counts (right-side)
- Workspace Switcher can show icons for open apps on workspaces
- Window Tiling options grouped in their own section in Windows module
- Alt + Tab gains an option to show windows from the current monitor only
- Hot corners can now be enabled even in full-screen mode
- Cornerbar applet can cycle through workspaces using mouse wheel
- New Thunderbolt module for configuring attached TB devices/hubs
A couple of applet buffs:
- Calendar applet refreshes remote calendars when event list is opened
- Notifications applet recency can be configured, e.g., newest at top
- Network applet can handle multiple VPN connections being active
- Sound applet album art no longer disappears when changing volume
When using fractional scaling you can now choose whether to scale up or scale down, which proves handy if working on a multiple monitor setup with varying HiDPI.
Scale down makes your system render everything at a higher resolution and then shrink it to fit (the traditional approach). This looks sharper but uses more GPU. Scale up renders everything at a lower resolution and then enlarges, which can look a bit blurry, but impacts performance less.
Of note, I have noticed on my laptop with integrated Intel GPU that when fractional scaling is enabled I end up with no animations, a sluggish UI and the most awful screen tearing… I’d be curious to know if anyone else encounters this.
Other software changes
Linux Mint’s default software selection has changed from 22.2, and as many apps saw bigger improvements in the previous point relates, there are only some minor changes of note, including the following:
- Timeshift tool lets you pause/resume active snapshots
- Warpinator supports IPv6 and the ability to send text messages
- Hypnotix now automatically hides the cursor when viewing fullscreen
- Captain can now install multiple packages from
apt://URLs - Update Manager system tray notifies if system restart advised
Plus, there are translation updates, bug fixes, security and dependency bumps to other apps.
Download Linux Mint 22.3 Beta
You can download the Linux Mint 22.3 beta from the Linux Mint website.
System requirements are the same as for other 22.x series releases, so you’ll need a 64-bit Intel/AMD PC and 2GB RAM. Better specs = better experience, as always.
Check over the list of known issues/problems before trying it. As this is a beta, expect bugs, regressions, and the odd quirk or two. Report issues you encounter on the Linux Mint GitHub (that link specifically) so devs can look at/resolve issues before the stable launch.
To upgrade to the stable version of Linux Mint 22.3 (once it arrives) from this beta, simply install software updates as they arrive.
You will be able to upgrade Linux Mint 22, 22.1 or 22.2 to Linux Mint 22.3, but only once the stable release arrives. Expect this to arrive at the end of December or early January, but as Linux Mint follows a “when it’s ready” release schedule, there’s no fixed date.
Finally, all releases in the Linux Mint 22.x series are supported with updates through 2029.