It's based on Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS and the Linux 4.8 kernel

Jun 12, 2017 13:11 GMT  ·  By

After announcing the release of the Beta milestone of the upcoming KDE edition of the Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" operating system, Clement Lefebvre announced the availability of Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Xfce Edition Beta release.

Just like the KDE edition, the Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Xfce Edition is now in Beta, based on the Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system and shipping with the Linux 4.8 kernel packages provided by Canonical through the HWE (hardware enablement) kernel from the Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) series.

The biggest changes of the Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Xfce Edition Beta release are a much-improved Whisker application menu that was updated to version 1.7.2, a release that supports editing of launchers directly from the context menu, support for desktop actions, faster loading times for apps, and support for hiding category names, as well as the implementation of LightDM as default login manager.

"Linux Mint 18.2 features a brand new login screen. It uses the LightDM display manager by default along with the 'Slick' greeter and the 'LightDM Settings' configuration tool," says Clement Lefebvre. "LightDM provides excellent support for NVIDIA prime and multiple monitors and a smooth integration with various components used during the boot and shutdown sequences."

Another interesting change of the Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Xfce Edition Beta release is the addition of Xfce's Xfwm4 4.13 window manager, a development version of the upcoming Xfce 4.14 stable update that adds VSync support to prevent screen tearing, i18n improvements, as well as support for scaled cursor when zooming. Bluetooth support was improved as well in this edition.

Updated XApps, Update Manager and Software Sources improvements

While the KDE edition of Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" doesn't ship with any of the XApps, the Xfce flavor appears to include all of them, such as Xviewer, Xreader, Pix, Xplayer, and Xed, and each one comes with various improvements for a better software experience in Linux Mint. The in-house built Update Manager and Software Sources tools also received some improvements.

Don't hesitate to study the release notes if you're curious to know what exactly was changed in the new versions of these tools, but they are the same as those from the Cinnamon and MATE editions announced last week. Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Xfce Edition Beta also comes with linux-firmware 1.157.10 for better hardware support and supports the "markauto" and "markmanual" commands in APT.

We remind you that the root account has been locked by default in this edition of Linux Mint 18.2, so you'll need to use the "sudo -i" command with your own password to become root. You can download the Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Xfce Edition 64-bit and 32-bit Live ISO images right now from our website if you want to test out the Beta version, but please don't use it in a production environment.

New login screen
New login screen
LightDM Settings
LightDM Settings
OBEX support is built-in
OBEX support is built-in

Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Xfce Beta (13 Images)

Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Xfce Beta
New login screenBlueberry
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