14 DAY TRIAL // Linux Mint 17 RC “Qiana” MATE has been officially announced by its developer, although the ISO images have been available for a couple of days already.
The first two flavors for Linux Mint are always Cinnamon and MATE, and the current version makes no exception. This is just a Release Candidate and there still are a number of problems with the new operating system, but users can get a feel for it with the Live CD.
“Linux Mint 17 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2019. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use,” said the devs on their blog.
The Linux distribution is based on MATE 1.8, a desktop environment that is very light and that wants to fill a void left by GNOME 2, which was discontinued a few years back.
According to the changelog, Caja has received an option to use IEC units instead of SI units and a new “Open parent location” option in the search view context menu, the window manager Marco has received side-by-side tiling, the logout dialog now features a progress bar, the image viewer can now shuffle pictures in slideshow mode, the screensaver is now able to show the date and time, and clicking the middle mouse on the volume applet now toggles the mute function.
Also, the sticky note applet is now able to also perform the “undo” function, a new “command” applet has been added, an integrated yelp user guide has been added, MintMenu has received a huge amount of bug fixes, and MintDesktop now features a cleaner UI.
Just like the Cinnamon version of Linux Mint 17 RC “Qiana,” the MATE release gets the same enhancements for the Update Manager, Drivers Manger, Login Screen, Language Settings, Software Sources, and a few others.
The system requirements for the operating system have remained largely the same. Users will need a regular x86 processor, 512 MB of RAM, 5 GB of disk space (20GB would be optimal), and a graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution.
Check the official announcement for more details about this release. You can download Linux Mint 17 RC MATE right now from Softpedia.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only. It's recommended that you try the new distro in a virtual machine for the first time.