14 DAY TRIAL // Developers have explained that the upcoming MATE 1.12 branch will get some pretty cool improvements, and those changes will also land in the new Linux Mint 18 that is scheduled for next year.
If you're a MATE fan, then you know that it takes quite a while until a new version of this desktop environment gets in stable shape. For example, MATE 1.10 gathered a huge list of new features and changes, but it also took developers a long time to release it. The desktop environments are complex pieces of software, so any kind of modification needs to be tested and retested.
Another interesting aspect of the development part of MATE is that the people who are working on the desktop are actually involved in other projects as well, like Ubuntu MATE or Linux Mint Mate, so you can expect them to push changes that are beneficial for all systems and especially for theirs. This is why we see news about the incoming MATE 1.12 on the official Linux Mint website.
MATE 1.12 is going to be an exciting release
We only see a small number of changes in the announcement made by the Linux Mint team, but there are already quite a few interesting things reported by the developers.
"HiDPI support was improved for HTML themes in MDM. The detection of HDMI TVs was also much improved. HiDPI would kick in by mistake on TVs which didn’t report their screen size correctly. That was fixed and some of these fixes will also be ported towards Cinnamon," wrote developer Clement Lefebvre, the leader to the Linux Mint project.
According to the changelog, the touchpad support has been improved, the session management has been refined (the screensaver is no longer activated when using VLC, for example), multiple monitors are now better supported, the support for Compiz (window manager) has been improved, and numerous other features have been added.
There is no word on when all of this will be available in a distro, but it's nice to see just how big the progress is with MATE 1.12.