Linux Mint Will Discontinue Its KDE Edition

The Linux Mint crew has confirmed today they will be discontinuing future releases of their KDE spin following next month's Linux Mint 18.3 release.

Linux Mint 18.3 will be the last version of this Ubuntu-derived distribution to feature a dedicated KDE Plasma Edition.

They are dropping their KDE support as the Linux Mint team envisions themselves as a "production distribution...a complete desktop operating system", and as part of that focus on their own Cinnamon Desktop Environment. But they will continue their support for Cinnamon-like desktops include MATE and Xfce where their custom tools still play nicely.

Moving past next month's Linux Mint 18.3 release, there will be no official KDE spins of this operating system but there is nothing preventing users from loading up the Kubuntu PPA, building KDE packages themselves, or taking similar third-party approaches for having a KDE desktop while riding the Linux Mint experience otherwise.

Linux Mint also confirmed they will be working on a Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 (LMDE 3) just as their continued fallback in case "Ubuntu ever disappeared." Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 will be based on Debian Stretch and should be released in Q1'2018 with Cinnamon 3.8.

These latest details via the Linux Mint blog.