14 DAY TRIAL // We've been informed today by one of our readers that the roadmap for the upcoming Linux Mint 18.1 operating system has been published online, revealing many of the features coming to the popular GNU/Linux distribution later this year.
Work on the Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" release is now over, and the final Cinnamon and MATE editions have been made available for download on the project's website, but an official announcement is yet to come from the Clement Lefebvre, leader of the Linux Mint project.
Earlier today, we've told you that the Linux Mint team is hard at work finishing the KDE and Xfce editions of the Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" operating system, which should arrive next month, in July, along with the upgrade path from Linux Mint 17.3. We've also said that they gathered new ideas for the next major release, Linux Mint 18.1.
Snap and Flatpak support coming soon to Linux Mint
Well, according to the Linux Mint 18.1 roadmap, users should expect to get the Cinnamon 3.2 and MATE 1.16 desktop environments, which are currently in development too, as well as support for the new universal binary formats, namely Snap and Flatpak.
The MATE 1.16 will be completely ported to the GTK3 toolkit, and most of the X Apps introduced in Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" will get some quality improvements. Moreover, it looks like the in-house built tools, such as Mint Update, Mint Welcome, Mint Menu, Mint Install, and Mint Sources, won't be forgotten either.
HiDPI support will come to more applications in Linux Mint 18.1, including GIMP, VLC Media Player, Pidgin, Banshee, HexChat, and Tomboy, along with improvements to the apps that have already received support for High Dots Per Inch displays. As for the Cinnamon 3.2 desktop environment, we wrote a separate, in-depth article with all of its new features and improvements.