Thanks to one of our regular readers who constantly monitored the development progress of the Linux Mint 18 operating systems, we've been informed that the final ISO images are now available for download for both Cinnamon and MATE editions.

At a first glance, it would seem that Linux Mint project leader Clement Lefebvre has approved the ISO images earlier today, June 28, 2016, for landing. Therefore, we checked the Irish mirror, where the ISOs usually appear first, and it looks like they are already available for download in their final, production-ready form.

Of course, there's no official announcement on the Linux Mint website, at least not at the moment of writing this article, as most probably Clement Lefebvre is waiting for all the mirrors to be synchronized with the main one, which could take even a day. However, the release notes for both Cinnamon and MATE editions are already live.

Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, ships with the Arc GTK theme

As the Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" release notes remain unchanged from the Beta release announced three weeks ago, we can tell you what's new in the Cinnamon and MATE editions. As such, both are based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system and ship with Linux 4.4 LTS kernel.

The Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon flavor is built around the latest Cinnamon 3.0 desktop environment, adds great improvements to the Update Manager, both visual and under the hood, and introduces a new look and feel based on the popular Arc GTK theme and Moka icon set, called Mint-Y, but not enabled by default.

There are also many other under-the-hood improvements in Linux Mint 18, such as HiDPI support, X-Apps, introducing new applications designed for Linux Mint (Xed, Xviewer, Xreader, Xplayer, and Pix), MDM 2.0 login manager, GTK3 support for most of the included apps, and the addition of the Gufw graphical firewall configuration tool.

On the other hand, the Linux Mint 18 MATE edition is built around the MATE 1.14 desktop environment, and it looks like it comes pretty much with the same system improvements and updated components as the Cinnamon flavor. Linux Mint 18 will be supported with security updates until 2021. You can also download Linux Mint 18 right now via our website. W00den D3sk was kind enough to make a video overview of Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon Edition and let us share it with our readers. Enjoy!