The stable release of Linux Mint 19 will be announced “at the end of the week” according to Clem Lefebvre who runs the project. The new update, dubbed ‘Tara’, has been in testing for much of June but as of the end of the week it’ll be production ready and will receive updates until 2023.
If you want to grab the update early you can do so now by downloading it from one of the global mirrors but there’s a tiny chance that these may be changed if a big issue is found. Simply head on over to the Linux Mint Mirrors page and choose a mirror from your country or another that’s close, then go into the Stable directory and see if the ‘19’ folder is there, if not try a different mirror, or if it is dive in and look for the ISO image that you want; Mint 19 comes in 32- and 64-bit versions with Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce editions available to choose from.
If you’re on Mint 18.3 and want to upgrade your existing installation, this will be possible. According to Lefebvre, the upgrade path between Linux Mint 18.3 and Mint 19 will be similar to the upgrade path from 17.3 to 18. If you’re waiting to upgrade, there are few things you can do to prepare. Firstly, create a back up of your data using Timeshift so you can restore if the upgrade breaks your system. Secondly, make sure you update older versions of Mint to 18.3 in preparation for the upgrade to Mint 19. Lastly, if you still use the MDM login manager, switch to LightDM with the following commands:
sudo apt install lightdm lightdm-settings slick-greeter
sudo apt remove mdm
sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm
With Linux Mint 19 more or less ready to go, the team will begin accepting pull requests and merges again as work begins for Linux Mint 19.1 which is due in Q4 2018. According to Lefebvre, 19.1 will include some features that had to be postponed for Mint 19.
Let us know in the comments if you will upgrade to Linux Mint 19 or plan to stay on an older version of the distribution.
Source: Linux Mint
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