The new Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon Edition long-term support release offers five years of upgrades, tweaks, improvements, and stability through 2019. Mint 17 has spiffed up its appearance and made changes so apps launch faster and use fewer resources.

Linux Mint 16 "Petra"

This month's DVD brings you two great versions of the Ubuntu derivative Mint on a double-sided Live DVD. Linux Mint 16 Mate and Cinnamon are two notable alternatives to the Ubuntu desktop.

This month we bring you two great desktop distributions: Mageia 3, from the all-volunteer community that forked the commercial Mandriva Linux distribution, and Linux Mint Debian, a semi-rolling distribution based on Debian Testing.

The DVD attached to this issue brings you a pair of the world’s most popular Linux distributions. Mint 15 “Olivia” is the latest release from the ever-friendly Linux Mint, a desktop distro based on Debian and Ubuntu that keeps the emphasis on simplicity and ease of use. Mint tops the DistroWatch downloads list and describes itself as: “The 4th most popular home operating system after Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, and Canonical’s Ubuntu.”