Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" beta edition available with KDE 5.8 by default

Much is the love that I have for Linux Mint, It has long been my main distro alternating with Arch Linux (and various derivatives), that is why every time a new edition of this excellent Linux flavor comes out I share it with you. This time it was the turn of the Linux Mint 18.2 beta "Sonya", which is now available for download with the KDE, Cinnamon, Mate and Xfe desktop environment

Clement Lefebvre reported in the official launch announcement of this new edition that Linux Mint "Sonya" will be supported until 2021 and comes equipped with a large number of improvements and new features.

Linux Mint 18.2 "Sonya" Features

Among the many new and improved features of Linux Mint we can mention the following:

• The default desktop environment is KDE Plasma 5.8, supported by the Kubuntu team.
• Available variants with Cinnamon, Mate and Xfe desktop environments.
• Based on Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (Xenial Xerus).
• Includes Linux 4.8 kernel.
• An extensive and beautiful variety of Artwork.
• Improvements in the update manager, perfecting its policies when making changes to the operating system and changing the levels with which they classified updates according to their impact on the OS.
• The update manager now provides more help information, including documentation for, among other things, changing the kernels, viewing the grub menu, among others.
• Support for Ubuntu HWE kernels was added in kernel updates.
• Added new keyboard shortcuts and menu options.
• Incorporation of mintupdate-tool, a tool that will automate updates according to our criteria.
• Added the ability to massively select packages in the software sources.
• The root account is locked by default.
• Apt support for the "markauto" and "markmanual" commands for marking packages.
• Many other things

How to download the Linux Mint 18.2 Beta "Sonya"

It is worth noting that since it is a beta, its use in a production environment is not recommended, from my appreciation the distro is quite stable and I particularly feel that the changes in the update manager are very well achieved.

To download the Linux Mint 18.2 Beta "Sonya" you can access the official download url of the version from here. where you can select the desktop environment of your preference (Cinnamon, KDE, Mate or Xfce), they are distributed for 32-bit and 64-bit architecture.