The Linux Mint team has just released Linux Mint 22, a new major version of the free Linux distribution. With Windows 10’s end of support coming up quickly next year, at least some users may consider making the switch to Linux.
While there are other options, paying Microsoft for extended support or upgrading to Windows 11, these options are not available for all users or desirable.
Linux Mint 22 is a long-term service release. Means, it is supported until 2029. Unlike Microsoft, which made drastic changes to the system requirements of Windows 11 to lock out millions of devices from upgrading to the new version, Linux Mint will continue to work on older hardware, even after 2029.
Here are the core changes in Linux Mint 22:
- Based on the new Ubuntu 24.04 package base.
- Kernel version is 6.8.
- Software Manager loads faster and has improved multi-threading.
- Unverified Flatpaks are disabled by default.
- Preinstalled Matrix Web App for using chat networks.
- Improved language support removes any language not selected by the user after installation to save disk space.
- Several under-the-hood changes that update libraries or software.
Are there any VMs for running windows programs.specifically name brand 2D & 3D programs
Yeah, you can run any Windows program such a QEMU/KVM, and you can additionally run many Windows apps/games with WINE/Proton respectively
VMs? That would be just running VirtualBox with Windows installed as a VM. You can also use Qemu, but that is a bit harder to understand. Alternative, you can use Wine via WineGUI (https://gitlab.melroy.org/melroy/winegui/-/releases). I’m the developer of WineGUI to create a so called wrapper from Windows API calls towards the Linux kernel, so Wine could be faster and more optimized than running a whole Windows VM. Again, WineGUI allows you to easily manage Wine machines.