The Linux Mint team has announced availability of Linux Mint 18.1 KDE beta, development release for upcoming Linux Mint distribution featuring KDE Plasma as default desktop environment. Linux Mint 18.x series is based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and hence will be supported till 2021.

Linux Mint 18.1 KDE Preview

Notable highlights of Linux Mint 18.1 KDE beta release includes:

  • Plasma desktop 5.8
  • Update manager includes a new column to indicate the origin of update.
  • Update manager highlights Kernel updates a more prominent way.
  • Software Sources tool to choose between different available mirrors for package installation and updates.
  • linux-firmware 1.157.5 and the Linux kernel 4.4.0-53.
  • Linux Mint 18.1 features a superb collection of backgrounds.

For more details, see release notes, release announcement and feature list of Linux Mint 18.1 KDE beta.