I'm glad to inform you that one of the most compelling Linux distributions in todays Unity/Gnome3 Linux situation Linux Mint 12 final version has been released. Linux Mint 12 developers did their best to please us faithful Gnome 2 users by making few Gnome 3 extensions to mimic Gnome 2 user experience and by supporting Gnome 2 fork named Mate Desktop environment.

What's new in Linux Mint 12 you might ask?

• Linux 3.0 kernel
• Based on Ubuntu 11.10 but without Unity
• GNOME 3.2 + Mint Gnome Shell Extensions (MGSE)
• MATE Desktop Environment (alternative to Gnome 3.2 + MGSE)
• Mozilla Firefox 7.0 and Mozilla Thunderbird 7.0
• LibreOffice 3.4

Download links

At the time of writing this article Linuxmint.com hasn't been updated with new download links yet so here are some of the download mirrors:

• http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/debian/mint/stable/12/
• http://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/linux/linuxmint/stable/12/
• http://mirror.umd.edu/linuxmint/images/stable/12/