The Linux Mint community has announced release of Linux Mint 18.1 Serena Xfce and KDE editions. These releases includes packages updates and usability improvements to provide a better user experience.

Linux Mint 18.1 a long term supported (LTS) release based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and it will continue to get critical security updates till 2021. Thereafter, the release will be discarded and users are expected to upgrade their system to a newer release.

Linux Mint 18.1 Xfce Desktop

The major highlights in both KDE & Xfce flavors can be summarized as follows:

• KDE Plasma 5.8
• Whisker application menu in Xfce flavor is upgraded to version 1.6.2
• A new cross desktop compatible collection of common applications, X-Apps developed by Linux Mint project which includes text editor, media player, document viewer..etc. All these apps are inspired by old gnome school applications.
• Improved update manager which include option to sort package updates based on origin and displays kernel versions in a more clear way.
• Better language support which includes translated text for more packages.
• World Wide availability of packages
• Updated MDM - Mint Display Manager
• Banshee music player is replaced with Rhythmbox
• Improved artwork
• Linux Kernel 4.4

For more details, see separate release announcements for Xfce & KDE flavors of Linux Mint 18.1.