It's been a month since Clem Lefebvre press the button and deliver us Linux Mint 22.3, codenamed Zena. Since then there have been many internal developments, and the February noteThe article, which discusses what happened in January, includes many of these new developments in the Mint project. Perhaps it's worth discussing them in a different order, because at the end of the article it mentions that they might adopt "a longer development cycle."
Clem is very pleased with what they're doing. They're an independent project, and this allows them to make changes like sticking with an LTS base, not implementing snaps—something I think many users appreciate—and developing an alternative to GNOME that doesn't feel like GNOME. All of this requires effort, and two releases a year, plus LMDE, puts them a bit under pressure.
Linux Mint and its potentially longer development cycle
«Whether we're "distributing" (for example, with KDE) or actively developing solutions (for example, with XApp and Cinnamon), we dedicate a lot of time to release management. Releasing frequently is important because it means we receive a lot of feedback and bug reports when we introduce changes. We follow the same process over and over again. It's a process that works very well and produces these incremental improvements version after version. But it's very time-consuming and limits our development ambition. With a release every six months plus LMDE, we spend more time testing, fixing, and releasing than actually developing.«.
Ultimately, they're considering changing that and adopting a longer development cycle. This would happen just as a new LTS is coming out and they've run out of codenames. The codename issue isn't important, but the other matter is.
Clem advises us to stay tuned, but it's unclear exactly what will happen with the development cycle. One possibility is that they'll release a version per year, but would that also apply to Cinnamon?
Other new products in January
Having explained the above, we now focus on the new developments that took place in January 2026. Linux Mint as a project received a record number of donations, and version 22.3 was a successful release.
Looking ahead, they are continuing to work on improving input methods. They discovered that many users want to use keyboard overlays that don't match their physical keyboard when using messaging apps. To address this, they are working on making it possible to configure a specific keyboard when setting up an input method.
In the next release, the administration tool will handle account and administrative details. The issue is that many desktop projects are adding these features, so others that rely on them will be left without them.
Cinnamon and Wayland Screensaver
Currently, the Cinnamon wallpaper only works on X11. It's a standalone application that runs its own process and uses GTK. For the next release, Linux Mint will implement a new wallpaper that will replace the current one. It will work on Wayland and X11 and will be rendered natively by the Cinnamon compositor.
Among the benefits, transitions will be smoother during screen lock, it will have better visual integration, and it will fully support Wayland. Currently, Wayland support is still experimental. In the very distant future, they will likely abandon X11 and focus solely on Wayland, but the plans for the present and future, at least in the medium term, involve supporting both protocols. Linux Mint generally does what's best for its users, and this also applies here.
The next version of Linux Mint should arrive in mid-2026. When the time comes, the new release schedule should be confirmed… or not. What is certain is that it will be based on Ubuntu 26.04 and will include the new features announced in the January release note.