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A new version of the Cinnamon desktop environment has been tagged for release – a sure-fire sign that the Linux Mint 22.1 beta is on the way!

As the flagship desktop of Linux Mint, Cinnamon 6.4 will come preinstalled in Linux Mint 22.1 when it’s released at the end of December (though should beta testing reveal issues the date could slip into early 2025).

But this post isn’t about Linux Mint 22.1, but Cinnamon. Linux Mint may develop, maintain, and cheerlead the desktop but it can installed on nearly every Linux distribution out there, including Ubuntu (which also has an official Cinnamon flavour).

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the majority of the new features in Cinnamon 6.4 as I’ve written about them over the past few months.

A recap never hurts though, does it?

Cinnamon Desktop 6.4: What’s New?

The new theme in Cinnamon 6.4

The headline feature in Cinnamon 6.4 is hard to miss: a new default theme. It now makes use of darker colours, increased border radius, and hooks into the system-set accent colour throughout.

Cinnamon’s default theme is NOT the same theme found in Linux Mint, as the distribution applies its own theme with its own branding on top. Yes; Cinnamon themes are a thing – a memo those who complain about Cinnamon’s ‘dated appearance’ missed.

But the new default Cinnamon theme goes beyond a few colour changes and some rounder corners.

Clutter is now used for the majority of modal dialogs, including logout/shutdown session; force quit prompts; keyring unlock; wi-fi network connections/WPS; keeping/reverting display resolution or monitor changes, and more.