14 DAY TRIAL // Linux Mint creator Clement Lefebvre announced a few moments ago the release and immediate availability for download of the Linux Mint 18.3 "Sylvia" Cinnamon and MATE Beta editions.
Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) and running the Linux 4.10 kernel, Linux Mint 18.3 continues the long-term support (LTS) of the Linux Mint 18 series, which will receive updates and security patches until 2021. Both the Cinnamon and MATE editions have been released today with updated software and many new features.
The Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon Beta edition features the latest Cinnamon 3.6 desktop environment, which comes with support for GNOME Online Accounts, libinput support as a replacement for the Synaptics touchpad driver, a much-improved on-screen keyboard, as well as a revamped configurator for Cinnamon spices.
Cinnamon 3.6 also adds HybridSleep support, improvements for the Nemo file manager extensions, the ability to display other workspaces in the window list, a new button in the network applet to rescan for wireless networks, support for animated GIFs in nemo-preview, and a bunch of performance and stability improvements.
Revamped Software Manager with Flatpak support, HiDPI improvements
Common to both the Cinnamon and MATE editions of Linux Mint 18.3 Beta is a revamped Software Manager app that simplifies the way applications are installed and supports the Flatpak universal binary format for GNU/Linux distributions. Also, the Backup Tool has been revamped to make it easier to backup your files.
"It is now dedicated to making a backup of your home directory, nothing less and nothing more. It saves all your files into a tar archive. When restoring a backup, files are restored in the exact same place they were before, with their original permissions and timestamps," reads the release notes.
Both Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon and MATE Beta editions come with new Timeshift and System Reports applications, the first allowing users to create system snapshots, and the latter designed to make it easier to report crashes. The Xreader and Xed XApps received various improvements as well in this release.
Other improvements include better spell-checking support, the ability for Driver Manager to detect CPUs and present users with the latest microcode, as well as support for mintMenu to list recently used apps. As expected, the Linux Mint 18.3 MATE Beta edition features the MATE 1.18 desktop environment.
You can download the Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon Beta and Linux Mint 18.3 MATE Beta Live ISO images for either 64-bit or 32-bit architectures right now through our web portal. However, please try to keep in mind that these are pre-release versions, not suitable for use in production environments.
