Linux Mint Is Getting a Night Light Feature in Cinnamon, Framework Laptop Support
Linux Mint 22.1 is in the works, slated for release this December, and it will come with the soon-to-be-released Cinnamon 6.4 desktop environment, which will introduce a brand-new theme and a Night Light feature to help reduce eyestrain when working at night on your computer.
The new Night Light feature will replace the Redshift implementation used in previous Linux Mint releases and be integrated into the settings. In addition, it will work with both Wayland and X11 sessions as Linux Mint is still working on defaulting to Wayland in the future release.
Original Post:
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Monthly News – October 2024 – The Linux Mint Blog
The team is working on adding Night Light support in Cinnamon.
Night Light consists in reducing the amount of blue light emitted by the screen. It makes the color of your monitor warmer as you get closer to bed time to help reduce eyestrain and improve sleep quality.
In the past Linux Mint shipped with Redshift to provide this functionality. Redshift wasn’t integrated in the settings though, it only worked in Xorg and it was auto-configured by something called geoclue which is no longer functional.
The team is hoping to have this feature fully integrated into the Cinnamon desktop and working out of the box, both in Wayland and Xorg.
Adding Three:
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Linux Mint and Framework Laptops Join Forces
The October 2024 edition of Linux Mint’s Monthly News brings exciting updates, including a significant announcement about collaboration with Framework Laptops, having potential to advance Mint’s compatibility with hardware designed with flexibility, repairability, and sustainability in mind.
For those unfamiliar, unlike most traditional laptops, which are often difficult or impossible to repair or upgrade, Framework laptops are built to be user-friendly, making it easy to replace or upgrade components. This modular approach extends the laptop’s lifespan and promotes sustainability by reducing e-waste.
According to Clement Lefebvre, the driving force behind the Linux Mint project, the team recently received Framework’s Laptop 13, and initial impressions are promising.
Linux Mint is Adding a Native 'Night Light' Feature to Cinnamon - OMG! Ubuntu
Earlier versions of Linux Mint included a third-party app called Redshift to provide similar ‘blue light’ filtering functionality.
However, when the Mozilla location service shut down earlier this year the geo-location capabilities powering Redshift (which allowed the feature to automatically start at sunset for a user’s location) stopped working.
Linux Mint’s developers felt asking its users to work-around the breakage by entering their location’s longitude and latitude coordinates manually in the app was a tough ask given its a distro focused on and famed for being user-friendly.
So on its arrival, Linux Mint 22 removed Redshift from the default install entirely (although the app remains available in the Linux Mint repos for users to install if they want).
Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop to integrate Night Light for improved eye comfort
The popular Cinnamon desktop environment is taking steps to integrate Night Light, a feature that has become essential for many computer users. Night Light reduces the amount of blue light emitted from your monitor, gradually warming up screen colors as evening approaches. The aim is to lessen eyestrain and encourage better sleep by signaling to your body that it’s time to wind down.
Linux Mint users may recall that this functionality was previously available through Redshift, a tool included in past distributions. However, Redshift was limited in scope. It only worked with Xorg, lacked direct integration within the system settings, and depended on geoclue for automatic configuration -- a dependency that has since become obsolete.
Now, the Linux Mint development team is looking to make Night Light a seamless part of the Cinnamon desktop, promising easy access and configuration through built-in settings. The goal is to offer out-of-the-box functionality across both Wayland and Xorg, broadening compatibility and making this visual comfort tool more robust and accessible.
GamingOnLinux:
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Linux Mint partners up with Framework, also working on Night Light for Cinnamon desktop | GamingOnLinux
Some fun Linux distro news for you this morning as the Linux Mint team have a fresh blog post up on what they've been doing and it's quite exciting to see.
The first thing is that for the Cinnamon desktop environment they're working on a Night Light feature. Previously they shipped Redshift but now they're working on one that's properly integrated, and plan for it to work with both Wayland and Xorg. On top of that they're also continuing the work to port key Cinnamon dialogs to Clutter.
A fun announcement in the post is that they've begun working with Framework, who make the popular modular laptops. According to Mint lead Clement Lefebvre, Framework want "to achieve full compatibility with Linux Mint and the Cinnamon desktop" and their laptops are "packed with components we don’t have or technologies which we hadn’t really focused on yet" so it will "boost new areas of development for us". Lefebvre now has a Framework Laptop and seems to like it quite a lot.
Neowin:
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Linux Mint working to bake Night Light directly into Cinnamon - Neowin
Linux Mint has announced that it is working on adding Night Light support natively in the Cinnamon desktop environment, years after Ubuntu and GNOME-based distributions added it. Until now, Mint has been using Redshift as a crutch to deliver blue light reduction.
If you've ever tried to set up Redshift on Linux before, you'll know it's not the most reliable software with the geolocation component frequently breaking depending on your Linux distribution of choice. By baking this feature direct into Cinnamon, it will make the experience much more reliable.
Another drawback of Redshift is that it is not integrated into Cinnamon's settings and it doesn't work on the new Wayland, which Linux Mint will transition to in the future.
For anyone not familiar, Night Light is a feature that reduce the blue light emitted by your display, usually after sunset. This allegedly helps you get to sleep at night as the blue light isn't tricking your brain into thinking it's daylight.