Linux Mint 15 Most Ambitious Release Ever

Clement Lefebvre, Mint founder and lead, recently announced the public release of Linux Mint 15 Release Candidate. Mint 15 brings lots of fixes, two new tools, and several new features. In fact, Clem said, "Linux Mint 15 is the most ambitious release since the start of the project."

What's Coming in Mint 15?

The Mint Desktop Manager now has a choice of three "greeters." A new greeter for 15 supports code such as "HTML5, CSS, Javascript, [and] WebGL" and ships with several cool themes. The other greeters as well as the manager itself received a lot of bugfixes and improvements. The configuration has been updated and now "looks better and is more intuitive than before."

Two new original tools are introduced this release dubbed "Software Sources" and "Driver Manager." MintSources is a graphical software sources configuration tool with the ability to test mirrors to find the fastest one. "MintSources also features PPA, 3rd party repositories and authentication keys management."

New Software Sources tool

MintDrivers, or the new drivers manager, uses the Ubuntu back-end but Clem says it "looks a bit better." With it you can easily install proprietary code some find questionable. "Drivers are listed by package name, and their version are clearly stated (in the case of the nVidia drivers you can therefore choose according to a particular version instead of wondering what "current" or "updates" really mean)."

Other New Features include:

* Nemo updated to coordinate better with Cinnamon
* New Desklets (widgets for the desktop) and 1,075 commits for Cinnamon
* Cinnamon got its own screensaver
* All configuration tools are now in Cinnamon Settings
* New desktop "spices" interface
* GNOME fallback removed for Metacity
* MATE got a lot of code cleanup as well as 1800 commits
* Mint tools migrated to work with MATE
* The Software Manager got automatic pagination
* One can now search within particular categories in the Software Manager
* The Welcome screen got some bug fixes and appearance refresh
* New wallpapers, themes, splashes, etc.

See the announcement for download mirrors and torrent links. Check the release notes for known issues.