I'm not sure who thought of it first, Microsoft or KDE, but the fact is that we have floating panels both in Windows 11 and in any Linux distribution with Plasma +6. The KDE one is available in stable version since 2022, specifically since Plasma 5.25, but it was not until version 6 of the desktop when the project decided to make it the default. Today a new month has started, and among other things that means that Linux Mint has published a newsletter with some news. Among them, an image with the future app menu for Cinnamon.
It will look like the image above, and exactly the same as the one below. The image above these lines is an image prepared to fit well in the header, and it has been obtained by taking what is in the following image and pasting it into a current version of Linux Mint — from DistroSea, all things considered; the image below is the one we found in the Linux Mint newsletter about what occurred in February.
New menu for the future Linux Mint
They do not provide much information about it, only that they have started the redesign, which It's for Cinnamon and that the project is led by Joseph. The current one is glued to the bottom panel, just like the one in Plasma 5 or Windows 10. The future one will float. When will it arrive? Although they haven't mentioned it, probably in mid-2025, when they release the next version of Cinnamon.
Clem has used the note to warn that the Firefox certificate will expire on March 14, which is why it must be updated. If not, versions lower than Firefox 128 will have problems with their configuration, add-ons, signed content and DRM-protected playbacks. The solution is to open the update manager and apply whatever is pending.
Otherwise, there have been improvements on the Linux Mint website and usage data: Linux Mint 22.1 is now running on 70% of machines, and to no one's surprise, Cinnamon is the preferred option.