Monthly News – August 2026

Key points

Linux Mint's monthly news for August 2026 previews work planned for the next Mint release: a redesigned document library and two new XApp applications, an EPUB reader and a calendar. Everything shown is still in development. The post also reports July donations.

XApp project

• XApp, which started inside Linux Mint and is now used by many desktops and distributions, has a new website listing its components: xapp-project.org.

Library (Thingy)

• Documents are now grouped by type instead of by the application that opens them, so it no longer matters which applications are installed.
• The sidebar has predefined groups for common document types; you choose which are visible and in what order.
• You can create your own groups and decide which file types they hold, for example a group limited to one work directory that mixes several document types.
• Individual items can be removed from the list, or the whole list of recently opened documents cleared at once.

Xepub, a new EPUB reader

• It appears in the desktop as "Book Reader".
• Navigation between chapters, search inside the book, and bookmarks.
• It remembers where you stopped when a book is reopened.
• Selecting a word opens a menu of search engines to look it up in a dictionary, on Wikipedia or in a translator. The engines and their URLs are configurable.
• Selecting a passage highlights it as an annotation, with a colour of your choice and an optional note.
• Zoom level and fonts are adjustable.

Clockenstein, a new calendar

• It appears in the desktop as "Calendar" and is the latest addition to XApp.
• It handles multiple calendars: local ones, Google Calendar and CalDAV services such as Nextcloud. Events can be created, edited and assigned to a calendar.
• It tracks the state of each remote calendar and reports connection and synchronisation problems in the application. A calendar that cannot be reached still shows its events but becomes read-only until the connection returns.
• It has its own daemon and notification agent, so syncing and reminders work whether or not the application is open. Reminders can be dismissed or snoozed.
• It provides interfaces for desktop environments to interact with it and even to replace its notification agent. The Cinnamon clock applet is fully compatible, so calendar events remain visible from the panel.

Funding

• July donations: $15,693 from 438 donors.
• Patreon: 2,369 patrons contributing $5,217 per month.

Summary by DistroNews, based on the original post.