Linux Mint 22.3 Zena focuses on polish and Cinnamon refinements

Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena” is a classic point release that emphasizes polish, quality-of-life fixes and refinements to its default Cinnamon desktop, making it a solid choice for everyday use. Under the hood, Mint 22.3 sticks with the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base updated to 24.04.3 and ships with Mint’s kernel based on Linux 6.14 plus Canonical’s Hardware Enablement (HWE) stack that can include improvements up to Linux 6.18.

The Mint team warns this kernel may have issues with VirtualBox and older Nvidia cards that rely on the unsupported 470 driver. The reviewer tested the release on two PCs and found it ran almost perfectly, with the main exception being manual adjustment of VirtualBox graphics settings; built-in apps such as LibreOffice 24.2.72.2, Firefox 146 and Thunderbird 128.14 worked as expected, and Steam support is included.

Cinnamon 6.6 brings a redesigned application menu with a sidebar for avatar, places and favorites, improved input handling, and groundwork for Wayland and modern multi-monitor setups. The System Reports tool has been renamed System Information and now shows USB, BIOS, GPU and PCI details; a new System Administration menu adds more boot controls.

Other user-focused changes include monochrome XApp Symbolic Icons, Nemo file manager support for pausing and resuming file operations, Timeshift and Mint Backup enhancements (including pausable snapshots and an "Include All" backup option), and a reduced default shutdown timer of 10 seconds instead of 90.

Key Topics

Tech, Linux Mint, Virtualbox, Cinnamon