The Beta Releases for Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon and MATE are available now. That means it won't be long until the final release. Here's my experience with them so far.

If you want to give it a go, you can check out the near-final release candidate build that’s available for 32 and 64-bit systems. The operating system is freely available for download on their site.

Linux Mint’s Cinnamon backgrounds. Linux Mint 17.2 uses Cinnamon 2.6, which is a big update. A lot of effort was spent on making Cinnamon lighter and faster.

The new release of Linux Mint is imminent, so here is a look at both the Cinnamon and MATE versions.