Linux Mint 10 released

The Linux Mint development team have announced the arrival of version 10 of their Linux Mint operating system, code named "Julia". Linux Mint aims to be user friendly and to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including support for DVD playback, Java, plug-ins and various media codecs. It is currently the third most popular distribution on DistroWatch.com behind Ubuntu and Fedora.

Supported through April 2012, Linux Mint 10 is based on Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" and features version 2.6.35 of the Linux kernel, X.org 7.5 and the 2.32 GNOME desktop environment. Users that install Linux Mint with the CD edition can now upgrade to the DVD edition and install missing codecs from the new welcome screen. The Linux Mint Menu has received several new features and usability improvements, such as GTK themes and bookmarks support, the ability to highlight newly installed applications to make them easier to find and better search functionality.

The Linux Mint 10 desktop. Other changes in the latest stable release include Software Manager improvements, like new application icons and better categorisation, a new look and feel, which includes a new light theme and dark background, and various Update and Upload Manager updates. Package updates include version 3.1.4 of the Thunderbird email client, Firefox 3.6.10, the 2.7.3 release of the Pidgin IM client and OpenOffice.org 3.2.1.

More details about the release can be found in the release notes and on the What's new in Linux Mint 10 page. Linux Mint 10 is available to download for 32 and 64-bit systems from the project's site and a user guide and upgrade instructions are provided. The OEM Edition provides the same features as the standard version, but without including proprietary software, patented technologies or support for restricted formats.

At the time of this writing, the Mint site is experiencing some issues due to scheduled server downtime as the project is moving its data center from Germany to France, impacting the two dedicated servers that host the www.linuxmint.com website and the packages.linuxmint.com repositories.

See also:

• Linux Mint Debian released, a report from The H.

(crve)