We have reported earlier that the Linux Mint developers released the Beta ISO images of the forthcoming Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" computer operating system, which is available as both Cinnamon and MATE editions.

Read our previous story if you want to see the Linux Mint 18 Beta MATE Edition screenshot tour. In this article, however, we would like to highlight some of the major new features implemented in the Linux Mint 18 Beta Cinnamon Edition, which ships with the Cinnamon 3.0 desktop environment, customized with the Mint-Y theme based on the popular Arc GTK theme and the Moka icons.

Powered by a long-term supported kernel from the Linux 4.4 series, Linux Mint 18 Beta Cinnamon Edition is based on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, inheriting most of its core components and software applications, the majority of which were updated to their latest versions.

Under the hood of Linux Mint 18 Beta Cinnamon Edition

Among the applications pre-installed in Linux Mint 18 Beta Cinnamon Edition, we can mention Mozilla Firefox 46.0 web browser, Mozilla Thunderbird 38.7.2 email and news client, LibreOffice 5.1.2 office suite, Transmission 2.84 BitTorrent client, Pidgin 2.10.12 IM client, HexChat 2.10.2 IRC client, and GIMP 2.8.16 image editor.

Additionally, the Synaptic Package Manger 0.83, Banshee 2.6.2 music player and library manager, as well as the in-house build Pix 1.0.1 image viewer and organizer, Xplayer (Videos) 1.0.5 video player, Xed 1.0.5 text editor, Xreader 1.0.6 document viewer, and Xviewer 1.0.3 image viewer applications are also installed by default.

You too can download the Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon Edition operating system, as Live ISO images for either 64-bit (recommended) or 32-bit hardware architectures, and install it on your personal computer to get an early taste of what's coming to the final Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" release later this month or in early July. Again, please try to keep in mind that this is a pre-release version, not ready for production use.