The development team behind the Linux Mint operating system announced on Wednesday, the 11th of January, that the Release Candidate (RC) of Linux Mint 12 codename “Lisa” has been released to the public.

If you have a system that meets the system requirements (32-bit or 64-bit processor, 512GB RAM minimum or 1GB recommended, 5GB of disk space, graphics card capable of 800x600 resolution, and a DVD-ROM drive or USB port), you can now get Linux Mint 12 KDE RC and try out the new features it has to offer.

Speaking about new features, Linux Mint 12 KDE RC’s main new features are:

• The latest and recently released KDE 4.7.4.
• Hybrid ISO images to effortlessly make bootable USB sticks that act like a liveDVD (this is the first Linux Mint release to use Hybrid ISO images)
• DuckDuckGo, the privacy-oriented search engine that Opera Software praises, is set as the default search engine. You can of course change the search engine to something else if you so desire. But if you take the time to find out what DuckDuckGo has to offer, chances are you will not want to change.

If you would like to get Linux Mint 12 KDE RC and put it to the test, download links are available on the Linux Mint blog here.
If you would like to learn more about the features in Linux Mint 12 KDE RC, check out this “What’s new” page.

In related news, Linux Mint recently announced that its new main sponsor is Blue Systems, a German company that is known for sponsoring free and open source projects such as Netrunner and KDE-projects like kcm-gtk-config. For the entire duration of 2012 a new full-time developer will be contracted to work on the Linux Mint team, and it’s all thanks to Blue Systems’ support.