Applications, applets, and other tools that I recommend for use on Linux Mint Cinnamon X11
I’m new to the community, but I’ve been using Linux for a long time (since 2009), and I want to share a list of applications I recommend for everyday work on Cinnamon X11.
Used on Linux Mint 22.3 Cinnamon X11:
Native Applications
- LibreOffice (office suite)
- Notes (native note manager)
- Pix (image viewer and editor)
- GNOME Terminal (terminal emulator)
- NEMO (file manager)
Essential Applications
- Brave Browser (main web browser)
- Fooyin (main audio player)
- Albert (launcher)
- CopyQ (clipboard manager)
- Flameshot (screenshot tool and editor)
- VLC (main video player)
- SimpleScreenRecorder (screen recorder)
- Stacer (Linux optimizer)
- KDE Connect (smartphone synchronization)
- qBittorrent (torrent client)
More Applications
- Akregator (RSS reader)
- Disk Usage Analyzer (SSD space analyzer)
- Web Apps (convert web tabs into apps)
- Audacity (audio editor)
- Brave Origin (web browser)
- Calibre (EPUB reader)
- CherryTree (note manager)
- Drawing (image editor)
- Emote (emoji picker)
- Firefox (for using chatbots in Web Apps)
- FreeTube (ad-free YouTube client)
- FSearch (advanced file searcher)
- Gbrainy (memory games)
- GIMP (advanced photo editor)
- GParted (partition editor and manager)
- HandBrake (video converter)
- Hardinfo (detailed system information)
- JDownloader (download manager)
- KColorChooser (color picker)
- Kdenlive (video editor and converter)
- KeePassXC (password manager)
- Kid3 (audio tag editor)
- MEGAsync (cloud storage and synchronization)
- MPV (audio and video player)
- Nicotine+ (Soulseek P2P client)
- Obsidian (personal notes database)
- Okular (PDF viewer)
- Onboard (on-screen keyboard)
- PlayOnLinux (for running .exe games or applications)
- Proton VPN (VPN)
- Clocks (set alarms)
- RetroArch (video game emulator)
- Telegram (Telegram client)
- Upscayl (AI image upscaler/editor)
- Yandex (web browser)
- ZapZap (WhatsApp client)
Web Applications
- ChatGPT (through Firefox)
- DeepSeek (through Firefox)
- NotebookLM (through Firefox)
- Gemini (through Brave)
- Qwen (through Brave)
- Grok (through Brave)
- Perplexity (through Brave)
- Duolingo (through Brave)
Applets
- “Weather” by mockturtl (ambient temperature)
- “Desaturate All” by klangman (grayscale screen)
- “Direct” by claudiux (directory shortcuts)
- “CPU Temperature Indicator” by claudiux (CPU temperature)
- “Enhanced Notifications” by hilyxx (notifications)
- “Automatic Dark/Light Themes” by guillaume-mueller (automatically switches themes)
- “Uptime” by vatanuki.kun (view system uptime)
For the Terminal (sudo apt install _)
- yt-dlp (download videos) (
sudo apt install yt-dlp) or and (yt-dlp -U) to update it - fastfetch (basic CPU/system information)
- htop (visual process viewer)
- cava (audio visualizer, bars only)
- cliamp (audio visualizer + song selector)
- sensors (view system temperatures)
- ncdu (file size viewer)
- vnstat (internet usage monitor)
- gdebi (install .deb files)
- bpytop (terminal system monitor)
- ffmpegthumbs (video thumbnails in NEMO)
- imagemagick (image converter)
Brave Browser Extensions
- Stream Live (Twitch streamer notifier)
- BetterTTV (custom Twitch emotes)
- Unhook (remove YouTube features)
- Search by Image (Google image search using clipboard)
- Return YouTube Dislike (restores YouTube dislikes)
- Minimal Theme for Twitter / X (minimalist X/Twitter version)
- DeepL (translate text inside the browser)
- Youtube Select and Search (To fast search in Youtube from contextual menu)
- Download Image with One Click (download original-size images instantly)
If you have an older machine with hardware acceleration, you can install the extension:
- Enhanced H264ify
Additional Brave Settings
Type brave://flags/ into the address bar and enable the following:
"Enable Containers"→ set to"Enabled"(allows independent sessions in separate tabs without logging out)"Compact horizontal tabs design"→ set to"Enabled"(makes tabs and the search bar more compact)
Actions for NEMO
- Send with KDE Connect (send files to smartphone)
- Convert File (convert images)
- Mount Archive
- Mediainfo-gui (Multimedia Propierties)
Others
- Xbanish (hide the mouse cursor while typing)
- AudioRelay (stream audio between Android and Linux)
- AudioShare Server CMD (use your phone as speakers)
- Scrcpy (mirror Android screen on Linux)
- Speedread Master (speed reading tool)
Recommended Font Settings
- Font:
"Ubuntu Sans Medium"size11 - Scaling factor:
.9
(to make everything slightly more compact, including browser menus, etc.)