Linux Mint 19 Release Date and Codename Has been Announced

Brief: This is a continually updated article to inform you about Linux Mint 19 release date, features and everything important associated with it. 

Linux Mint 19 codename has just been released. The first release of the upcoming Linux Mint 19 series will be called “Tara”.

Linux Mint 19 Release Date

Unlike Ubuntu, Linux Mint doesn’t follow a strict schedule. Therefore you only get an estimated release date for Linux Mint. Normally, a new major Mint version comes out around two months after the base Ubuntu release.

Linux Mint 19 series will be based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Considering that Ubuntu 18.04 is coming in April’18, you can expect Linux Mint 19 somewhere around May or June 2018. Linux Mint team has hinted the same.

Linux Mint 19 series will be supported until 2023.

Linux Mint version number trivia

A little bit of history and trivia here. You might already know that Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. Earlier, Linux Mint used to release a new version based on every release of Ubuntu, be it LTS or non-LTS release. But this was changed with Linux Mint 17 series which was based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release.

Instead of releasing a new version based on Ubuntu 14.10, 15.04 etc, Linux Mint team decided to keep the releases on Ubuntu LTS version. And thus instead of going like Linux Mint 18 directly, they released Linux Mint 17.1, 17.2.

So what is the difference between Linux Mint 17.1 and 17.2? They are both based on Ubuntu 16.04. So the base remains the same. However, 17.2 consists of several new improvements and features. This way anyone using Mint 17.1 will get all the new changes directly from the new ISO instead of getting 17.0 and then upgrading it after the install to get all those new changes.

If you were using Linux Mint 17.0, continuous system updates would automatically put you on 17.1, 17.2 and so on. Linux Mint 17 series will be supported till 2019.

Similarly, Linux Mint 18.x series is based on Ubuntu 16.04 and will be supported till 2021.

Linux Mint codename trivia

If you read my previous article about Linux distributions codenames, you already know that Mint uses a female name in alphabetical order. All releases in a series have codenames with the same alphabets. This is why Linux Mint 17.3 was called Rosa, 18 was called Sarah, 18.1 Serena, 18.2 Sonya and finally Mint 19 is codenamed Tara.

No prizes for guessing that 19.1 will also have a codename starting with letter T.

What’s new in Linux Mint 19?

The development of the new version has just started so it’s a bit early to give details about the new features in Linux Mint 19.

So far, the only information is that Linux Mint 19.x will use GTK 3.22.

GTK 3.22 is a major stable release for GTK3. From there on, the theming engine and the APIs are stable.

I’ll update this article with more details on Linux Mint 19 features in the future. Stay tuned.

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