Great news for Linux Mint 10 'Julia' fans who were waiting for the KDE edition to graduate out of RC (Release Candidate) and be released as a final, stable version. That is precisely what happened today, the 23rd of Febraury. Lead Linux Mint Developer Clem Lefebvre has just announced the fact that Linux Mint 10 KDE Final is out.

"The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 10 KDE," said Lefebvre. "To upgrade from Linux Mint 10 KDE RC, simply apply any level 1 and 2 updates (if any) available in the Update Manager. We look forward to receiving your feedback. Thank you for using Linux Mint and have a lot of fun with this new release!"

If you want to get the 32-bit Linux Mint 10 KDE Live DVD, you can download it here.
If you would like to get the 64-bit Linux Mint 10 KDE Live DVD, you can download it here.
HTTP mirrors for the 32-bit and 64-bit editions as well as torrent links are available on the Linux Mint blog here.

I know you’re anxious to get Linux Mint 10 KDE, but before you go get the operating system, perhaps you would like to take a glance at its new features. Here’s what’s new, in brief:

• Based on KDE 4.6.
• The Software Manager uses application icons and better organizes items to offer you a nicer browsing experience.
• You can right click a package and tell the Update Manager to ignore updates for that package.
• You can view the size of your selected updates in the Update Manager.
• Several improvements have been made to the Upload Manager: the system tray icon is launched automatically at startup if services are defined; the File Uploader merged with the Upload Manager; a connection can be tested while defining it by pressing the appropriately named Check connection button; uploads can run in the background; uploads can be cancelled; the upload dialogs are more Firefox-like visually, they measure the upload speed and calculate an ETA.
• Various system improvements: the latest Adobe Flash “Square” plugin, a new metapackage called "virtualbox-nonfree", using unsigned repositories issues a validation request not a warning, the "highlight" command used by "apt" is faster and more reliable, the mintsystem adjustment system is now LSB compliant, Python-rsvg, htop, choqok, moc, kmymoney, ofx, gimp, kftpgrabber, b43-fwcutter, linux-wlan-ng, linux-wlan-ng-doc, setserial and sl-modem-daemon were added.

An in-depth presentation on what’s new in Linux Mint 10 KDE is available here.