Welcome to the Linux Mint Newsletter
A security flaw in the DNS protocol has been fixed. This is for all operating systems and every appliance connected to the internet. Probably one of the most serious threats to the internet so far. Some background here – updates already in mintUpdate, please update your system. A warning has been posted in the forum
* News about Mint
I can’t guarantee it but it seems that a release of the Elyssa KDE edition is immanent – we are testing a beta with all problems hopefully solved. It is no easy task to make a good KDE edition. I also think the XFCE edition is near a public beta
Clem has been busy and posted a bunch of interesting info
Sections of the Mint repository
Some news about development We had to postpone the developement of QT frontends for the Mint applications in the KDE CE. The implications of Ubuntu 8.04.1 for development are considered
The implications of branding has been discussed. We like freedom, but not the freedom to use the Mint name and logo in any way or fashion.
Elyssa is used by 60% of the Mint users
mintInstall 4 released in Romeo (Romeo is the “unstable” branch of Mint repositories)
How should the Mint tools be named? This has wide implications and mintUpdate 2.8 will be released soon as “Update Manager”
There’s a poll for the naming here
The forum is growing and so is the interest for it from spammers. Please help keep the forum neat and report all spam you see.
The repositories were down for about half of July 7 It’s unclear if this was a hacker attack but there seems to be attempts to take the site down
* News about Linux
Linux Magazine has an article covering what they call “Spawn of Ubuntu” (which includes Mint)
GNOME hires Stormy Peters as Executive Director She has a past as an executive in HP
Xandros acquires Linspire – this obviously happened behind the scene and was not made public until some two weeks after it took place
openSUSE Build Service 1.0 Released The openSUSE Build Service allows developers to create and maintain packages for openSUSE and many other Linux distributions, including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, Red Hat, and Ubuntu.
ATI promises faster Linux drivers
A new version of Gentoo was released
Greg Kroah Hartman on the Linux Kernel (Youtube video)
An interview with Mark Shuttleworth
* News about IT
Samba 3.2 released
Web threats hits 12 month high
Vmware changes CEO and puts in a Microsoft veteran as CEO
The Windows version of VLC has a security flaw
As I stated in an earlier newsletter the Swedish law permitting bugging of all electronic communication that passes the country boundaries is aimed at Russia
The US congress passes amendments to the “FISA” Act which is similar to the Swedish act (Haven’t found a good link for this)
* Hardware news
Threats to the GPS system has been reported recently
The world may run out of some rare elements needed to make computer chips in a few years time
* Trivia and other links
* More about Linux Mint
You find the Wallpaper of the Week in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always – if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me – you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
thanks
hmm i don’t really understand what “openSUSE Build Service” is for and why they would want to create packages for ubuntu?
whats the idea behind it and whats the goal?
openSUSE Build Service is used to build packages and in the spirit of open source made available for all sorts of builds
It is a bit strange as openSUSE does not use deb packages but I suppose it’s just to say thank you
I am afraid of my own strong imagination then, i prefer to stay away
from the news that mention the name SUSE or anything similar to…
Clem and the Mint Team,
Thanks for Mint! It is wonderful and you have freed me from that other OS. I’m never going back. I recommend you to all of my friends. Say, how about some Mint themed items in your store, like T-shirts, Golf shirts, coffee mugs and especially a Linux Mint badge to cover up those “Made for Windows” badges that are on my Linux machines? I’ve been a supporter since 2.2 and buy all my CDs through On-Disk. My girlfriend was complaining about how slow her MS machine was and how it spent most of it’s time virus checking and downloading. Well, I put Mint 2.2 on the machine and she learned how to use it in about 5 minutes. She doesn’t want to go back to MS and won’t even let me update her to 5.0. She says she LOVES her Mint computer.
Cheers and Thanks from Tucson, Arizona USA.
Juan Martinez Tiocfaidh ár lá