The Linux Mint project has finally released the beta builds of Linux Mint 19.1 in preparation forthe final release which is due by Christmas. The betas are available in three flavours, Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce. The team has already published many of the new improvements in previous blog posts but now they’ve also announced a new feature which will allow you to clean up old kernels which is handy as the boot sector was getting filled easily in Linux Mint 19.
With Linux Mint 19, a change was made that will suggest users install the kernel updates along with other patches, which wasn’t the case before. Over time the new kernels would get installed and old kernels would stick around unless you went into the kernels manager in the Update Manager and removed them manually, one at a time. This caused users to get warnings that their boot sector was nearly full. Now, there is a "Remove old kernels" button in the kernel manager which will let you select old kernels that you want to remove and delete them. The new manager also lets you know the status of a kernel, for example, if it is unsupported, superseded, or supported, and how long for.
Aside from 22 new wallpapers to spruce up the desktop, there’s also some new themes available. The Mint-Y, Mint-Y-Dark, and Mint-Y-Darker themes are now available in Aqua, Blue, Brown, Grey, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red, Sand, and Teal. The new choice of themes is great for those who want to get away from the dominant green theme.
To find out more and download the beta releases, check out each versions respective blog post: Cinnamon edition, MATE edition, Xfce edition.