Many bugs were fixed in preparation for the final release:
apturl is now fully functional
adding PPA repositories was fixed
MATE received a critical update to mate-session-manager (this bug prevented MATE to be started from the login screen for i386 users)
mintMenu was ported to MATE
packages now open with gdebi
mgse-menu received keyboard navigation and multiple bug fixes
mgse-windowlist was given a brand new look and now looks extremely similar to the Gnome 2 window list
mgse-bottompanel now makes it possible to switch between workspaces using the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Alt+Arrow keys
Mint-Z now features silver-looking bottom panels, menu and window list which look similar to Mint 11, as well as a new theme called Mint-Z-Dark which features black components and looks like an improvement of the MGSE desktop from the RC release.
The ability to open directories as root was added to Gnome 3
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1875
Not the real final release, as seen on the LinuxMint web site.
Torrent deleted.
replaced by linuxmint 12 gnome cd nocodecs 64bit iso