Clement Lefebvre, the leader of the Linux Mint project, has explained that the new release schedule for the distribution will mean a different type of releases for the next couple of years.

The newly-launched Linux Mint 17 is now based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and all the next major builds will use the same codebase, which will be Linux Mint 17.1, 17.2, and 17.3. The upcoming Linux Mint 18 will be based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, if everything goes according to plan.

This type of approach will free a lot of time for the developers, who will be able to integrate more changes in the large releases and to focus on the stability and improvements for the intermediary versions.

“During the next 2 years, popular applications will be backported to 17.x and the team will continue to bring improvements and newer desktop environments with each new release. Security updates will also be served until 2019.”

“Whereas the team would normally focus on the next release, this time around the next release is 17.1 and it shares the exact same base. So although 17.1 will be a distinct release and users will opt-in to upgrade to it, that upgrade path will be trivial and both releases will be fully compatible and represent the same development target,” said Clement Lefebvre in a short message on the official website.

Linux Mint is one of the most used operating systems, right after Ubuntu. It’s been in this position for a long time and it shows no indications that it might be slowing down.

You can download Linux Mint 17 right now from Softpedia.