The next Linux Mint Cinnamon edition is knocking on the door and a Release Candidate was put out yesterday. This release will bear the version number 17.1, and it is codenamed “Rebecca”. In this overview I will look at the release candidate for Mint 17.1, focusing on the main new features in Cinnamon, which ships the latest bleeding edge version in Rebecca, and will accompany it with screenshots for the desktop and the new changes that went into it.

Cinnamon has reached version 2.4 in Mint 17.1:

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Okular is the KDE document viewer with support for a wide range of formats, different view modes and various viewing and selection tools. Okular can be used to open basically any type of document, from PDFs to mobile formats, text or CHM files.

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Most of the file managers included in distributions have an interface which usually provides a left panel and a main widget to display files and folders, and some even have an option to split the view left/right, like Nautilus in GNOME or Dolphin in KDE. But they don’t follow this view mode by default, and usually they can’t save this choice so it will be displayed like this the next time the application starts (there are exceptions – see Konqueror who will use profiles and will be able to save interface changes). On the other hand, there are the twin-panel based file managers like Krusader, Tux Commander or EmelFM2, from which GNOME Commander is also a part of, with the twin-panel mode enabled by default.

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Although there are many image viewers for Linux, most of them are GTK-based and KDE is left behind with not so many options. Of course, there are applications like Krita or Kolourpaint, but these are image editors, not just simple viewers. Gwenview is the default image viewer in KDE, and it does its job very well. Not only it has enough features to accommodate the more demanding users (like ratings, file browser or thumbnail view), but its functionality can be extended using the KIPI plugins, a KDE set of image plugins used by applications like DigiKam as well, besides Gwenview.

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Kalzium is a periodic table application for KDE which not only displays detailed information about elements and allows you to view the periodic table using different schemes, but also allows you to perform various calculations, plot data depending on various factors, or balance chemical equations. It is a useful educational tool which can be of great aid learning about chemical elements.

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Double Action is a new action shooter game based on the Source engine and distributed freely on Steam. It is pretty fun to play and incorporates some movement tricks that you can do while playing, like sliding or diving with simple key/mouse combinations.

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Exaile has been a bit quiet in the past two years with maybe only one or two stable releases, but nevertheless, it’s one of the full-featured music players for GNOME which are on par with applications like Rhythmbox or Banshee in terms of features. However, over the past two months a new stable release, 3.4, has been put out under the slogan “We’re not dead yet”, as well as an incremental 3.4.1 release, which shipped on November 1. To be honest, Exaile has so many features that I could go on writing a lot more than an article to cover them all, so let’s have a look at some of the most notable ones.

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Flow ‘N Play is a new video player written in Qt which features a pretty slick and simple interface which provides only the basic features for playing movies.

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Stunt Rally, a free, beautiful 3D rally game for Linux based on VDrift and OGRE, has reached version 2.5, bringing new game features and a few bug fixes.

(Image credit)

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There are quite a few terminals out there, and some of them follow the drop-down style. GNOME has Guake, a GTK-based terminal emulator with lots of features, but there is also Tilda or Final Term, while the KDE de-facto terminal is Yakuake.

Drop-down terminal applications have the advantage that they can be shown or hidden using a single global hotkey, and they usually make it easy to resize their size, change the time of the drop-down animation, keep it on top of other applications.

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CherryTree is a notes-taking application which organizes your notes into a hierarchical tree, has support for text formatting, and is written in GTK2/Python. Lately this application has got a lot of attention due to rich features and frequent updates. It also comes by default in distributions such as MakuluLinux MATE Edition.

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LibreOffice 4.3.3 has been officially released earlier today, being an incremental bug fix release over the stable 4.3.x series.

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In the past I have reviewed MakuluLinux MATE Edition, which came with a very polished and beautiful interface, but also bundled in the ISO a big number of applications to be installed. At the time the MATE edition made a very good impression on me, so I kept a close eye on the development of Makulu.

So now it’s time to look at the brand new MCDE – MakuluLinux Cinnamon Debian Edition – which features Cinnamon 2.2, is based on Debian Testing and ships with components that make it a great choice for gamers, beautiful themes and wallpapers and rich customization options, a custom control center and many more features.

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