Linux Mint Debian 2 Release Candidates Released

Just as teased Monday, Clement Lefebvre today announced released candidates for Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 MATE and Cinnamon. LMDE is based on Debian and similar to Linux Mint in appearance. 32 and 64 bit DVD images are now available for testers as direct downloads or torrents.

Linux Mint Debian Edition is a companion distribution to Linux Mint based on Ubuntu and they are similar in appearance, but Lefebvre said LMDE is "slightly faster than Linux Mint and it runs newer packages." Despite that Lefebvre warned LMDE is "targeted at experienced users" making it "a bit harder to use and harder to find help for." In today's announcements, the founder of Mint said that "Life on the LMDE side can be exciting. It's more risky, but more exciting."

Earlier today Lefebvre announced the immediate availability of LMDE 2 RC MATE and Cinnamon images for testing. Some of the package versions this release include Linux 3.16.7, GIMP 2.8.14, Firefox 36.0.1, and LibreOffice 4.3.3. The release notes mention a few known issues such as sometimes the MATE session fails to load making the resulting desktop "ugly." There's a note for multi-core 32-bit users and the Live image login information is included just in case. See the full announcements for LMDE 2 RC Cinnamon and MATE for download links and more information.