Linux Mint project leader Clement Lefebvre announced the immediate availability of the beta of the next operating system Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 "Cindy" Cinnamon.
With the recent arrival of Linux Mint 19 Tara, the Linux Mint team is now concentrating all its efforts on the Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 "Cindy" distribution, which is based on the latest stable version of the Debian distribution instead of Ubuntu, as the main version of Linux Mint, and now we have with us the first beta for public testing with the Cinnamon desktop environment.
“Outside of bug fixes and security updates, Debian packages remain the same, but Mint and desktop components are constantly being updated. When the updates are ready they will come to Linux Mint Debian Edition, while they are lined up to be included in the next stable release.”, Mentions Lefebvre.
In the first beta of Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 "Cindy" Cinnamon the latest security patches and software updates for Debian 9 Stretch are included available in the stable repositories until July 31st, the latest version of the Cinnamon 3.8 graphical environment, as well as all the tools created by the team that are also available in Linux Mint 19 Tara.
As Clement Lefebvre mentions in the announcement, the main goal of Linux Mint Debian Edition is to offer the development team a way to see how viable this distribution would be and how much effort it takes for a potential switch from Ubuntu to Debian in case the original version disappears.
In addition to this, LMDE tries to offer its users an experience similar to the original Linux Mint, after all they use the same management system and package base. Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 "Cindy" Cinnamon in its final version would arrive next month, but right now you can download and review the beta version.
This version will come with the ability to encrypt with luks?