Linux Mint Xfce 201104 Has Been Officially Released

Clement Lefebvre and the community behind the Linux Mint project have announced a few minutes ago the final and stable release of Linux Mint Xfce 201104, a distro which is build on top of a Debian Testing package base and uses the same repositories as LMDE.

Linux Mint Xfce 201104 comes with a series of improvements over the previous release and they are as follows, according to the development team:

· A huge performance boost;
· A continuous flow of updates which allows users to keep their system up to date without waiting for new releases;
· A more mainstream desktop and software selection;
· An easier maintenance for the team which makes it easier to release in both 32-bit and 64-bit with every LMDE release.

The most significant improvement is the performance boost and the team has released a series of comparison figures for memory consumption in the 32-bit live sessions of Linux Mint Xfce and Linux Mint 9 Xfce.

· Mint Xfce: 114 MB RAM (Mint 9 Xfce: 153 MB RAM)
· Mint Xfce + Writer + Calc + Firefox: 177 MB RAM (Mint 9 Xfce + Writer + Calc + Firefox: 212 MB RAM)
· Mint Xfce + Writer + Calc + Firefox + Thunderbird + VLC + Rhythmbox: 220 MB RAM (Mint 9 Xfce + Writer + Calc + Firefox + Thunderbird + Gnome MPlayer + Exaile: 256 MB RAM)

This boost in memory consumption has given Xfce a larger software selection. Amongst other changes we can mention the replacement of  Exaile with Rhythmox as the default audio player, addition of VLC media player.  Linux Mint Xfce 201104 now boasts almost the same software that can be found in GNOME based distributions.

According to the development team, “with KDE 4 and Gnome 3 bringing drastic changes to their environments, and with the emergence of Fluxbox and LXDE on the lightweight scene, Xfce represents a nice alternative for PC desktop users who are looking for a light yet full-featured desktop solution. Its relevance is becoming more significant and this is another reason for us to support it in both 32-bit and 64-bit and to give it a mainstream software selection”.

Softpedia has recently announced that starting with April 29th, 2011, the Linux Mint 8 (Helena) operating system will no longer be supported with security or critical fixes, and software updates.

About Linux Mint

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.

Download Linux Mint Xfce 201104 right now from Softpedia.