Developers release lts release Linux Mint 17.2

The developers behind the Linux distribution Linux Mint released the lts release codenamed “Rafaela” on Tuesday. The operating system comes in two flavors by default: one with the MATE and one with the Cinnamon desktop environment.

The release released on Tuesday is intended for the long term. This also means that the developers will support the so-called long-term support edition until 2019 with updates. Several popular Linux distributions use the principle of lts versions, which often prove useful for companies.

Linux Mint 17.2 takes up 9GB and needs at least 512MB of ram. Those who have an Nvidia GeForce GPU can suffer from black screens, freezing and so-called kernel panics. The developers advise these users to install the system and fix the problems later with drivers.

‘Rafaela’ is available in two official spins: one with MATE and one with Cinnamon. MATE is a fork of the classic Gnome 2, while Cinnamon offers the same look & feel but is based on more recent code from Gnome 3. Before the lts release, the developers tinkered with the update manager, the mdm image manager and smaller things.