14 DAY TRIAL // Clement Lefebvre, the leader of the Linux Mint project, has had the pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability for download and testing of the Beta build of Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" Xfce operating system.
Prominent features of Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" Xfce Beta include support for additional window and compositing managers, among which Openbox, Compiz, and Compton, screen-tearing improvements, as well as new versions of the Software Sources, Update Manager, and Driver Manager tools.
Moreover, the MDM display manager now features enhanced HiDPI support, the X.Org Server, Mesa and Linux kernel 3.19 core components have been upgraded, which should improve the support for certain hardware components, and fglrx (ATI/AMD drivers) and ndiswrapper (Windows wireless drivers) are supported.
"Linux Mint 17.3 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 Clement Lefebvre. "This new version of Linux Mint contains many improvements."
Linux kernel 4.2 is available in the default repositories
Another interesting fact about the Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" Xfce Beta operating system is that users will be able to upgrade the default kernel packages to Linux kernel 4.2, which is available in the default software repositories of the distribution, even though it is still based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
Other changes brought about by Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" Xfce Beta include improvements to the default artwork thanks to the addition of a superb set of wallpapers, LibreOffice 5 office suite, a revamped welcome screen, the addition of the Orca screen reader and magnifier tool, and support for OpenVPN.
Last but not least, the mintlocale utility now handles the input methods, replacing im-config, the Inxi utility has been updated to support multiple GPUs, and the memory swap is no longer encrypted by default. Also, hibernation now works out of the box in Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" Xfce.
If you would like to take this Beta build of Linux Mint 17.3 "Rosa" Xfce for a test drive, we invite you to download the Live ISO images for 64-bit and 32-bit computers right now from our website, just please try to keep in mind that it's a pre-release version, not suitable for deployment in production environments.