You can download Linux Mint from the Linux Mint website.
Read below to choose which edition and architecture are right for you.
Cinnamon, MATE or Xfce?¶
Linux Mint comes in 3 different flavours, each featuring a different desktop environment.
Cinnamon
The most modern, innovative and full-featured desktop
MATE
A more stable, and faster desktop
Xfce
The most lightweight and the most stable
The most popular version of Linux Mint is the Cinnamon edition. Cinnamon is primarily developed for and by Linux Mint. It is slick, beautiful, and full of new features.
Linux Mint is also involved in the development of MATE, a classic desktop environment which is the continuation of GNOME 2, Linux Mint’s default desktop between 2006 and 2011. Although it misses a few features and its development is slower than Cinnamon’s, MATE runs faster, uses less resources and is more stable than Cinnamon.
Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment. It doesn’t support as many features as Cinnamon or MATE, but it’s extremely stable and very light on resource usage.
Of course, all three desktops are great and Linux Mint is extremely proud of each edition. Although there are more features and better support in some editions than others, and some do run faster and use less resources than others, they’re all great alternatives and choosing the right edition is largely a matter of taste.
Other than their features and performance, Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce also represent three different desktop environments, with different menus, different panels and configuration tools. The right one for you is the one where you feel at home.
If you are unsure which desktop to choose start with the Cinnamon edition. Try them all eventually when you have the time. All three of them have their own audience within the Linux Mint community and they’re all very popular.
32-bit or 64-bit?¶
64-bit is recommended.
The 32-bit ISO images are provided for compatibility with older computers. 32-bit processors are extremely rare nowadays and most computers are able to run in 64-bit. If your computer was manufactured after 2007, you probably have a 64-bit processor.
If you have an old computer and you are unsure whether or not it can run in 64-bit, read X86 Chronology.
You can try to boot Linux Mint 64-bit on your computer. If it isn’t compatible, nothing bad will happen. You will just get an error message.
Linux Mint 20 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2025. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop experience more comfortable.
Known issues
Shutdown timeout
For your convenience, the shutdown timeout is reduced to 10s.
If you rely on lengthy operations to finish before shutdown, read /etc/systemd/system.conf.d/50_linuxmint.conf and override the timeout value in /etc/systemd/system.conf.d/60_custom.conf.
Grub2 theme in HiDPI
If the grub2 theme looks too small in your HiDPI monitor, install the «grub2-theme-mint-2k» package.
Snap Store
The Snap Store is disabled in Linux Mint 20. For more information on this or to re-enable it read https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.html.
Virtualbox
If the screen is black when launching Linux Mint in Virtualbox, change the VirtualBox graphics controller to «VMSVGA». Do this by opening up the settings for your VM and select Display -> Graphics Controller.
If the screen is garbled when launching Linux Mint in Virtualbox, switch to console with HOST+F1 (e.g. the RIGHT Ctrl key, no ALT) and back to tty7 with HOST+F7.
Another workaround is to disable «nested paging» (in the System -> Acceleration settings) and to increase the video memory to 128MB (in the Display settings).
Note: This issue only affects the live session. You don’t need these workarounds post-installation.
To add support for shared folders, drag and drop, proper acceleration and display resolution in Virtualbox, click on the «Devices» menu of Virtualbox and choose «Insert Guest Additions CD Image». Choose «download» when asked and follow the instructions.
Benchmarks have demonstrated that, in most cases, home directory encryption is slower than full disk encryption.
The move to systemd caused a regression in ecrypts which is responsible for mounting/unmounting encrypted home directories when you login and logout. Because of this issue, please be aware that in Mint 20 and newer releases, your encrypted home directory is no longer unmounted on logout: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-session/+bug/1734541.
Guest sessions
You can still enable guest sessions in the «Login Window» utility, but this option is now disabled by default.
Touchpad drivers
The default touchpad driver in this edition is «libinput» (provided by the xserver-xorg-input-libinput package).
If you experience problems with it, you can switch to another driver called «synaptics» (provided by the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package).
To know which driver is used by your input devices, run the following command:
grep -i «Using input driver» /var/log/Xorg.0.log
When both drivers are installed, «synaptics» takes priority.
To switch to the «synaptics» driver, install it with the command:
apt install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
Then log out and log back in.
To go back to using «libinput», simply remove the «synaptics» driver:
apt remove xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
Then log out and log back in.
Note: You can also try installing the «evdev» driver (provided by the xserver-xorg-input-evdev).
To install the complete version of WINE, open a terminal and type:
apt install wine-installer
Among other things, this will install wine-desktop-files, which adds menu entries for regedit, your C:\ drive and other items which are missing from upstream WINE.
Sound and microphone issues
If you’re facing issues with your microphone or your sound output, please install «pavucontrol».
This will add «PulseAudio Volume Control» to your menu. This application has more configuration options than the default volume control.
DVD Playback with VLC
If VLC does not find your DVD player, click on Media->Open Disc, and specify ‘/dev/sr0’ as the disc device.
Other issues
Linux Mint 20 is based on Ubuntu 20.04. Make sure to read the Ubuntu release notes.
Username and password in the live session
In the live session, the username is «mint» and the password is empty (i.e. just press Enter if asked for a password).
Moving windows which don’t fit in the screen
If your screen resolution is too low, some windows might not fit in the screen.
While pressing the ALT key, you can grab any part of a window with the mouse and move it across the screen.
Installing multimedia codecs offline
To download the multimedia codecs into an installable archive:
Boot from the Linux Mint ISO on a computer which is connected to the Internet
Open a terminal and type «apt download mint-meta-codecs» (without the quotes)
This creates a «mint-meta-codecs.tgz» archive
On computers which do not have an Internet access, you can decompress this archive and run ./install.sh (or alternatively «sudo dpkg -i *.deb») to install the multimedia codecs.
Solving freezes during the boot sequence
Some graphics cards don’t work well with the open-source driver present in Linux Mint.
If Linux Mint freezes during boot time, use the «Compatibility Mode» boot option.
In this mode you should be able to boot Linux Mint and install it on your computer.
After the installation, reboot the computer and wait for the boot menu to appear.
