The team behind the Linux Mint open-source operating system recently announced that Linux Mint 13 Xfce RC (Release Candidate) has been rolled out to the public. Download links for the 32 and 64-bit editions of the operating system are available here. Please note that in order to run the OS your system must have at least 256MB of RAM, 5GB of free disk space, and a graphics card capable of 800x600 resolution.

Before you go get Linux Mint 13 Xfce RC, let’s take a quick look at what’s new, shall we?

Linux Mint 13 Xfce Release Candidate – Main New Features

• Upstream components – Xfce 4.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Linux 3.2.
• Xfce – the 4.10 edition of this lightweight desktop environment comes with several improvements. A complete look at the edition’s new features is available here.
• MDM – this is a new Display Manager that offers more features than any other currently available Display Manager.
• mintMenu and MATE applets – the xfapplet plugin that let Xfce users run Gnome applets within the Xfce panel has been updated; it supports MATE applets now. mintMenu, which has been improved to support Thunar, is perhaps the most popular MATE applets one could run.
• Artwork – the latest Mint-X and Mint-Z themes are featured, there’s a collection of photographs from an Irish artist that can be used for the background, and support for GTK3 has been improved.
• Yahoo! – the default search engine has been changed to Yahoo! because it’s the first major search engine to share revenue with Linux Mint.

Additional information on what’s new in Linux Mint 13 Xfce is available here.

Linux Mint 13 carries the codename Maya. Lead Linux Mint Developer Clem Lefebvre explained that the name was chosen after his daughter’s name. And his daughter’s name was chosen in reference to the Maya civilization, the character Maya Toitovna from Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, and the German book, comic book series and animated television series “The Adventures of Maya the Bee.”