Today, we have sad news for existing Linux Mint 3.0 and Linux Mint 3.1 (GNOME, KDE and Xfce editions) users, as starting October 19th, these operating systems will no longer be supported, and the users will not receive security/critical fixes and software updates anymore. Cassandra and Celena were based on Ubuntu 7.04, which will also reach end of life on the same day.

The software repositories will remain open for a while after they reach end of life, but in this time users are encouraged to upgrade their systems to Linux Mint 4 (Daryna), or to do a fresh install of Linux Mint 5 (Elyssa).

Linux Mint 3.0 Cassandra was released last year on May 30th, was based on Ubuntu Feisty (also compatible with its software repositories), and was the first Linux Mint distro to introduce the highly expected mintInstall and Software Portal technologies, which make Linux Mint what it is today!

Celena, also known as Linux Mint 3.1, was released four months later, on September 25th. It was also based on the Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Linux distribution, and it brought more new mint tools, such as mintAssistant and mintUpload.

What is Linux Mint? Linux Mint is an elegant, easy to use, up-to-date, 100% free and comfortable Linux desktop distribution based on the very popular Ubuntu operating system. It offers paid commercial support to companies and individuals. Also, free community support is available from the forums and the IRC channel.

If you're new to Linux Mint and you want to test it, we suggest you grab Linux Mint 5 right now from Softpedia, or wait for the upcoming Linux Mint 6 (Felicia), which will be released next month.