Linux Mint 14 approaches with release candidate

Nadine with the Cinnamon desktop

Linux Mint founder Clement "Clem" Lefebvre has announced the availability of a release candidate for version 14 of his project's Linux distribution. Code-named "Nadia", the RC of Linux Mint 14 is based on Ubuntu 12.10, and is available with either Cinnamon or MATE as the default desktop environment.

The Cinnamon desktop, the project's own fork of the GNOME Shell interface used in GNOME 3, has been updated to version 1.6, while the MATE GNOME 2.x fork has been upgraded to the more recent 1.4 release – in a reply to a comment on the announcement blog post, Lefebvre says that the KDE and Xfce editions of Linux Mint 14 are planned for December. Nadia is the first version to include the project's new Nemo file manager, a fork of GNOME's Nautilus file manager. The Linux Mint developers decided to create Nemo following controversial changes in version 3.6 of Nautilus, which Lefebvre called "a catastrophe" because they removed features which he considered to be requirements.

Linux Mint 14 running the MATE GNOME 2.x fork
Source: Linux Mint The MDM display manager – first introduced in Linux Mint 13 and based on the GNOME Display Manager (GDM) – has also received "a lot of attention" and gained new features. MDM now supports legacy GDM 2 themes, 30 of which are installed by default; more than 2,000 additional themes are available from gnome-look.org. Other changes in MDM include better support for user lists and icons, and improvements to user switching, as well as "numerous bug and security fixes".

An overview of the major changes and new features can be found in the release notes and on the New features in Linux Mint 14 page. The release candidate for Linux Mint 14 is available to download as a 32- or 64-bit DVD ISO image with either Cinnamon or MATE. Users testing the release candidate are asked to provide feedback and report any bugs that they find by leaving a comment on the announcement blog post. The current stable release of Linux Mint is version 13, code-named "Maya", from May.

See also:

• Linux Mint founder calls Nautilus 3.6 "a catastrophe", a report from The H.
  
• HealthCheck: Linux Mint, a feature from The H.

(crve)