A few months ago, Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” was introduced with many useful changes, like Linux kernel 6.14, support for accent colors on XDG Desktop Portal XApp, blur effects on the login screen, and an improved Software Manager.
The next release in line, Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena”, has now arrived as a point release, with interesting refinements to the Cinnamon desktop alongside new tools for system management.
I haven’t tried this with Cinnamon but with other Desktop Environments you can run your own Window Manager inside it, if that’s something you’d like. That way you can take benefit of background services and desktop integrations of the DE but use any WM you like.
i3 under Xfce or KDE is very common, for example.
Sadly I’m a gnome fan 🥲
Thats super cool though, thanks for sharing, I’d not heard of that! I might try seeing if any of the cinnamon utilities work and are useful in GNOME though, just out of curiosity