Linux Mint Unveils New Packages

For those who prefer their Linux a bit mintier, but aren’t terribly keen on everything installed via snap, the developers of Linux Mint have announced they’ll be bringing an official Chromium package to the next release of the distribution (20.1, aka Ulyssa). Unlike some Ubuntu-based distributions, Linux Mint users will be able to install Chromium from the traditional apt repositories, instead of having to go with the snap package (which is blocked by default). That installation is as simple as sudo apt-get install chromium -y.

This decision wasn’t just made because of snap. According to the Linux Developers, this was about release delays. To that, their official take is, “We noticed significant delays between official releases and the versions available in almost all Linux distributions. For this reason we set up our own packaging and we’re building directly from upstream.”

Chromium isn’t the only package getting attention in the upcoming release. The Linux Mint developers have also created an M3U IPTV player, called the Hypnotix IPTV player. This new media player will connect with FreeIPTV to stream a variety of television shows. Hypnotic IPTV player is very much in the developmental stage, but the prototype can be downloaded and installed already.

For more information about the development of Linux Mint 20.1, check out the official announcement.