Distrowatch donates $400 to Linux Mint

Linux Mint just received a donation of $400. This is the single biggest donation the project received since it was started in 2006. The donation came from Distrowatch in association with LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com.

Distrowatch is known to donate a part of its income to upstream projects and distributions on a monthly basis. This single donation of $400 makes it the second biggest Linux Mint donor.  By the past Distrowatch donated a total of $18,183 to the following projects:

* 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF – Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
* 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NdisWrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
* 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a Powerpack competition), Digikam ($408) and SabayonLinux ($450)
* 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350), lighttpd ($400), Damn Small Linux ($350), NimbleX ($450), MEPIS Linux ($300), Zenwalk Linux ($300)
* 2008: VLC ($350), Frugalware Linux ($340), cURL ($300), GSPCA (Linux webcam support) ($400), FileZilla ($400), MythDora ($500)

As you can see Distrowatch isn’t only one of the most popular websites about Linux, it’s also one of the biggest financial supporter of small distributions and upstream projects.  On behalf of the Linux Mint distribution I would like to thank Distrowatch, and in particular Ladislav Bodnar, for this donation and for all they’ve done for our project. Linux Mint is a successful distribution but it wouldn’t have been as popular if it wasn’t for websites like Distrowatch which allowed users to know about it in the first place. Today, we’re receiving the biggest donation since we started Mint. I feel really grateful. Thank you Distrowatch, Ladislav, and also thanks to LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com for being part of this.

Many thanks for supporting us,

Clem.

19 comments

  1. I would also like to express my appreciation to Distrowatch, LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com for their generous donation! Distrowatch is a great site and they have written some very nice reviews about LinuxMint, they have done a lot to help us out.What an awesome surprise!

  2. Distrowatch is where I found out about Mint in the first place!
    Very well managed. I read DW Weekly every monday.

  3. Dear Distrowatch,
    Thank you for your blood donation. Your blood (type Green) is going to be used to help save Linux Mint machines worldwide.

    The Global Linux Life Support Team

  4. I would also like to thank Distrowatch, LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com for their donation
    But
    It’s about what Bill Gates earns per second….

  5. I first used Barbara and upgraded all the way finding it better and easier to use along the way,especially the workplace switcher feature.
    Well worth supporting and good to see so many do so.

  6. GREAT news! Thank you Distrowatch, you are doing a great service to the whole Linux community, and to Mint in particular!

  7. This is great news. I too learned about Linux Mint from an article posted on Distrowatch. And as all the others above have said: Thank You Distrowatch, LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. Your support of the Linux community is an ideal model; exemplary indeed.

  8. Yep, Thanks to Distrowatch, LinuxCd.org and OSDisc.com for your
    generous donation to Linux Mint.

    I found out Linux Mint through Distrowatch. I think Distrowatch
    is one of the most important Linux Sites nowadays without no doubt.

    Everything rocks on Distrowatch!

    Thanks again.

  9. “I would also like to thank Distrowatch, LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com for their donation
    But
    It’s about what Bill Gates earns per second….”

    So what? Fu.k Bill and evil M$…

    Thanks Distrowatch!

  10. Belovedmonster: Right now add it up to the sum of money generated through other donations and advertising. My main priority at the moment is to become financially independent (from my company, mostly) so that I can start working full time on this project. I’m half way there at the moment.. they know about my situation and I’m doing the minimum core time with them. I’ve also partitioned my time between my company, my family and Mint so I’m guaranteed time on a daily basis to focus solely on Linux Mint. So it’s already become more than a spare-time activity. I’ve also registered the Linux Mint income with the Irish tax system and it’s officially considered a second job now. The next step for me is to claim non-paid leave, as a try out.. to see if it makes sense leaving the company altogether to work on Mint full time or if it’s still too early for that. Also, apart from that the money comes handy when it comes to pay for things (servers, hardware, ads campaigns..etc).. but mostly money buys time. The more money we have the more people can be paid to leave their job and work full time for us.. starting with me.

  11. Clem, its my experience that people are far more likely to donate to a project when you give them a specific funding target and a pretty bar graph showing how much has been raised so far.

    I really think you should find ways to make the most of this on a semi regular basis, maybe a couple of times a year, come up with a specific funding drive where you ask for a specific amount to be raised in a specific time frame. Hell, Ardour do it every month with an ever increasing monthly target (check out their webpage!). I just think from a psychological stand point people like seeing their money achieve a specific goal rather than get lost in a sea of on going donations.

    I mean it all boils down to what you are comfortable with asking the community to do, but for example I think if you made an announcement that you were going go full time but to make the transition smooth you needed to raise X amount, I think people would be more than willing to donate. If you don’t like that idea I’m sure you could come up with other ideas if and when you need a cash injection for a specific goal, but yeah, consider a big funding drive before you go full time.

    Just in general I think you could be a little more in peoples faces about asking for donations. At the moment calls for donations are pretty much invisible. Like no one would object to a blog post once a month that reminds people that Mint is run entirely from community contributions at the moment and to please donate if you can. And why doesn’t the weekly newsletter not contain any references to where to go to donate? That seems like an obvious place to stick a link to the donation page.

    I guess what I’m saying is you need to be more willing to ask for donations to get donations, especially now putting food in your family’s mouth is going to depend on it.

  12. ..exactly to the point…one example , I have donated to open office and other open source projects before…Linux is uniting people of all cultures and countries.. and you are an integral part of it all!!!
    i will donate to mint linux…juct ask for the donations and i believe you will receive them.

    william

  13. Clem,

    I just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you for all of the work that you have done, as well as your testers to make Linux Mint such a great distro.

    Distrowatch has been helping many small distros, and some of the larger ones with donations, but this is the first one that I have seen that goes to a really deserving group.

    Good luck with all of your personal endeavours, and I hope that you will be able to do this full time!

    Thank you so much.

    Tak178

  14. Congratulations for receiving the Distrowatch donation of the month. 🙂 I just love Linux Mint and I wish you all the best. Part time has done a lot to the project. It would be great if you could live off Linux Mint and I certainly hope you will reach that point. I had a few favorites during the last few years and only Kurumin Linux made a very strong impression on me before Linux Mint. Now I give, install and recommend Linux Mint without any worries. 😀

    What I would love to see in the future is a minimalistic Gnome version – needing less RAM (if possible) and a nice tool to easily remaster a Linut Mint CD/DVD. I’m talking about the ability to add/remove certain applications, so we can generate our own Mint CDs. For example, I have one system that’s about to die and I can only use it with live CDs. I made my own script to install the needed applications and placed it on a USB memory stick but you know how it’s like… apt-get update/install/clean etc. It takes a little time before the system has everything I need on a daily basis. I know about Remastersys but as I’m not an _advanced_ Linux user I still wonder if I could pull it off. I will probably give it a try but it would feel much better to have one special Mint application for this task. 🙂 Maybe one day…

    Many thanks for your work!
    Nick

  15. Congratulations for the donations and a work well done, keep it up guys! Would like to extend my appreciate to Distrowatch team as well for keeping linux distribution alive and flying all these years!

  16. Great to hear that a big linux portal actively supports Mint and all other developers of Linux Software. 5 out of 6 Machines at my house run Mint only and nobody has complained since we made the switch about crashes and other software problems anymore. Linux is on its best way to become what it´s supposed to be and such a generous donation will not only help the Mint Team, but also the whole Linux community. Thank you a lot.

    fudda

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