The Linux Mint team announced the release of the final version of Linux Mint 8 “Helena” KDE Community Edition earlier this month – that was for users with 32-bit processor machines. The Linux Mint team has now announced that the 64-bit version of Linux Mint 8 KDE has also been released as a final, stable operating system.

“The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 8 “Helena” KDE64 Community Edition. This KDE64 edition of Linux Mint 8 is identical to the KDE Edition but compiled for 64 bit processors (Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad, AMD Athlon X2 64 and all x86-64 compliant processors). It comes with all the improvements featured in Linux Mint 8 Helena KDE Edition,” announced Lead Linux Mint Developer, Clem Lefebvre.

To run Linux Mint 8 KDE64 you will need a 64-bit processor obviously, at least 4GB of available disk space on your hard disk, and at least 256MB of RAM. To get the most out of the operating system it would be best to have 10GB of available disk space and 512 MB of RAM.

Here is what you can expect to get from Linux Mint 8 “Helena” KDE64 Community Edition:

• Based on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic koala, Linux 2.6.31 kernel, KDE 4.3.4 and Xorg 7.4
• The graphical interface is now easier to use and it shows more content
• The Update Manager will automatically inform the user when a new version of mintInstall-data is available. This way the user does not have to manually refresh the Software Manager.
• Software Manager is aware of the APT status of each application.
• The user can mark several applications for installation/removal.
• The looks of the Update Manager have been improved.
• Update Manager now uses Synaptic to refresh the list of update. When Update Manager is visible, the user will see progress information on the screen.
• If a problem occurs, Update Manager displays an error message in the main window (previously the error message was displayed only in the logs).
• Software Sources tool can be accessed in the Edit menu (this is another Update Manager improvement).
• The user can define a list of packages for which updates will not be received. Wildcard characters can be used to define groups of package updates the user wants to ignore.
• Faster and more reliable update detection.
• The Windows compatibility layer installed by default.
• The software programs are installed by default as well: Minitube, Tucan, Google Widgets, Songbird, KDE partition manager, Guarddog.
• Network-manager-gnome replaces knetwork-manager
• Community editions use their own repositories
• Community editions can pin packages from the main edition.
• Mint tools are more modular they can now be installed without any configuration.

If you would like to get Linux Mint 8 “Helena” KDE64 Community Edition, you can download the operating system here.