The Linux Mint developers have been hard at work continuing to develop new features following their recent Mint 22.3 release. There is continued enhancements around keyboard support, a new administration tool for users, and there are also considerations being made around moving to a longer development cycle between Linux Mint releases.

The Linux Mint project today published their January 2026 development report where they went into more detail on these different ambitions for this desktop-focused OS. Also worth noting is a new development effort around a screensaver for their Cinnamon desktop that will be Wayland compatible.

Linux Mint's Cinnamon screensaver right now only works under X11. They are going to develop a new Cinnamon screensaver that will serve as a replacement and work under both X11 and Wayland. The new screensaver will also be rendered by Cinnamon's window manager for better integration and security.

Besides being Wayland-compatible, the new Cinnamon screensaver aims to provide a smoother transition/animation during screen locking and a more integrated look and field.

"Wayland support so far has been “experimental”. Once all the pieces are in place, we can support it and start testing it as a potential solution. We know there are pros and cons to X11 and Wayland, and we want to support both. Supporting Wayland doesn’t mean we’ll start using it by default, but it makes it a possibility. As always, we’ll end up using what works best for most users."

More details for those interested via the [1]Linux Mint blog .



[1] https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4991