Late this February the Linux Mint team announced that the Release Candidate (RC) of Linux Mint 12 LXDE had been rolled out to the public. Today, March 9, the Linux Team announced that Linux Mint 12 LXDE shed its RC tag; the final version of the operating system that features the fast and lightweight LXDE desktop has been released to the public. You can grab Linux Mint 12 'Lisa' LXDE straight from the Linux Mint site here.

If you’re already on Linux Mint LXDE RC, to upgrade you need only apply any level 1 and level 2 updates that you see in the Update Manager. If you’re on a previous version and you want to upgrade, detailed instructions on how to do so are available here.

If you do not know what new bits and pieces the Linux Mint 12 LXDE operating system has to offer, here’s a quick look at what’s new:

• 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). The hybrid ISOs are compatible with Unetbootin and Startup Disk Creator.
• DuckDuckGo, the privacy-oriented search engine praised by Opera Software, 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.
• Features these upstream components: Ubuntu 11.10, Linux 3.0, LXDE 0.5.0.

For additional information on what Linux Mint 12 LXDE has to offer, check out this “What’s new” webpage and for info on known issues check out the “Release notes.”

Linux Mint 12 LXDE works on any system that meets the following requirements: x86 processor, 256MB of RAM, 3GB of disk space, a graphics card that’s capable of 800x600 resolution, and a CD/DVD drive or USB port.