Linux Mint 15 "Olivia" released

The Linux Mint 15's Driver Manager
Source: linuxmint.com

Linux Mint 15 "Olivia" is the "most ambitious release since the start of the project", according to the release announcement. Its new features include a Driver Manager for installing proprietary AMD and NVIDIA graphics drivers; unlike the program that is included in Ubuntu, the Driver Manager displays the details of the available driver versions. Another new addition is a package repository manager that can also be used to manage PPAs.

As usual, the new Linux Mint is available with the Cinnamon and the MATE desktops. The Cinnamon variant uses Cinnamon 1.8, which was introduced in early May with major new features including desklets, a new screen saver and screen locking tool and software for managing Spices (bundles of extensions, desklets and themes); new features in Cinnamon's Control Center mean that users need no longer rely on GNOME's Control Center when configuring certain components that Cinnamon adopts from GNOME 3. The Mint variant with MATE, the desktop derived from GNOME 2, now uses version 1.6, which was introduced in early April and offers improved theming support for GTK3 applications. The associated Nautilus-2-based Caja file manager includes an improved "Places" sidebar.

The package repository manager
Source: linuxmint.com The Mint editions with either desktop are each available for 32-bit and 64-bit x86 systems and as variants with or without multimedia codecs that may present problems in some countries. Available free of charge from numerous mirror servers, the ISOs are about 1 GB in size and can also be used to create USB installation media. The release notes say that EFI is supported; Secure Boot should be disabled.

Linux Mint 15 is based on Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" and includes many of this version's improvements, for example the jump to Linux kernel version 3.8 and Mesa 3D 9.1. Further information on the new version of Linux Mint can be found in the release announcement, the overview of new features, the release notes and in the general documentation.

The H has an in-depth review of Linux Mint 15 in Linux Mint 15: A better Ubuntu for the desktop.

(sno)