Linux Mint 15 Olivia officially released

Linux Mint released version 15 ‘Olivia’ after posting a release candidate in mid-May. Based on Ubuntu 13.04, the new Linux Mint release features heavily updated Cinnamon and MATE environments, and comes with its own driver installation tool.

The Cinnamon desktop environment has been updated to version 1.8 and includes an improved Nemo file manager. Desklets are also supported, widgets that can be placed on the desktop. The other desktop environment that Linux Mint 15 has on offer is MATE. Version 1.6 of MATE makes the transition to GLib, while the file manager, called Caja, has also been updated in this desktop environment. Minor improvements have also been made to the software manager.

Olivia includes some new tools developed by the Linux Mint team. For example, the Software Sources application offers help with installing software and keeping it up-to-date. Repositories can also be managed with it. The second newcomer is the Driver Manager. Proprietary video and Wi-Fi drivers can be easily installed through this application. Linux Mint 15 ‘Olivia’ includes an option to extensively theme the login screen provided by the MDM login application through support for HTML5, JavaScript, WebGL and CSS.

Linux Mint 15 is based on Ubuntu 13.04 and therefore runs on Linux kernel 3.8. The iso images, with a size of approximately 1GB, contain MATE or Cinnamon in 32bit and 64bit variants respectively.