They are backporting the upgrades and new features of Mint 16 for you if you want it. Petra backports available in Linux Mint 13
Apparently if you were running Mint 13 you could not get the listed things, or at least the newest ones. Since they are backporting them then people running Mint 13 LTS will have them. There have been huge improvements in both Mate and Cinnamon since the versions 13 was released with, so I'm sure they want people to have those.
That is really odd So instead of Upgrading to Mint 16, you can install features of Mint 16 in Mint 13?
Could be wrong, but I believe that Mint 13 is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which is not only supported far longer than the other releases, but supposedly is also more stable. The Mint guys probably think that without backporting recent features, their Maya release would be hopelessly outdated and practically useless; like Ubuntu 12.04, it is safe to assume that they are keeping a much older kernel. For a comparison, Ubuntu Precise, which is my main OS, is still running Gnome 3.4 while Fedora 20 came out yesterday with Gnome 3.10! Even if I really like the Long Term Support concept, there is no way I will keep Ubuntu 12.04 longer than April 2014, when Trusty Tahr (14.04 LTS) is released.
Of course Fedora is up to 20... I can't keep up. I've been using Fedora 18 on my server for months now I hope Ubuntu 14.04 will be the new stable release.
14.04 is the next LTS release, and Mint 17 will be Mints next LTS release. And yeah Mint wants their long term release (Mint 13), that is supported until 2017, to have access to some of the improvements that have come around. I think it was a good call.
Mint 13 is based on Ubuntu 12.04 which is a Long Term Support release. Mint 14 is based on Ubuntu 12.10, which is a regular release. And Mint 15 is based on Ubuntu 13.04 which is also a regular release. Ubuntu 14.04 will be the next Long Term Support release which is what Mint 17 will be based on.
The way I understand it, the LTS releases will continue to get security fixes for the kernel used in the releaes. But most software will remain at the old version it was when the LTS was released, but they apply security fixes to the critical software. So you have stability for a long time in LTS releases, but the tradeoff is that you will be using older software versions. If you follow the 6 month release cycle and get each new version, you have newer software at the risk of encountering a few bugs. However, if you wait with upgrading to the newest version until a few months after release, then I would bet they have fixed any serious issues.
