14 DAY TRIAL // While we are eagerly waiting for the final release of the Cinnamon 2.6 desktop environment to become available in the main software repositories of our favorite Linux distributions, Clement Lefebvre has announced that we can install it in a Beta form in Linux Mint.
Therefore, all users of the Linux Mint 17.1 (Rebecca) and LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) 2 (Betsy) operating systems can upgrade their Cinnamon desktops to version 2.6 from the "Romeo" section of the software repositories included in the respective distributions.
"Cinnamon 2.6 reached feature-freeze on the 15th of May and was recently given 2.6 labels. As we’re still bug-fixing it and it’s all very fresh out of the oven it wasn’t officially released/announced yet," says Clement Lefebvre. "Early builds were added to the “Romeo” section of the LMDE 2 Betsy and Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca repositories."
To install Cinnamon 2.6 in your Linux Mint 17.1 or LMDE 2 distro, open the Software Sources application from the Start Menu, click the "Official Repositories" tab, check the "Unstable packages (romeo)" option, and then click on the "Update the cache" button.
Close the Software Sources app and open the Update Manager to upgrade the Cinnamon packages. When the update operation finishes, restart your Cinnamon session of the new version to be applied correctly. Be aware though that this is a pre-release version that contains unresolved issues!