Monthly News – January 2015

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We wish you all a very Happy New Year 2015. This year is only just started and unfortunately terrible things happened already. Our job isn’t to comment World news though but to focus on what we have all in common, a very constructive and positive passion for computing and for Linux in particular. I hope we’ll continue to make people happy this year and by doing so I’m sure we’ll have a lot of fun and happiness as well.

To start the new year we shared exciting news about the new MintBox Mini. I’d like to thank our friends at CompuLab, it’s always a pleasure to be working with them.

The latest MintBox, smaller than ever

In November last year, probably as a consequence of the Linux Mint 17.1 release, the traffic doubled on our repositories and intensified in December to a point where our server could no longer serve enough concurrent connections. During a week or so this resulted in very slow response times, download speeds or even in timeouts and errors in various APT applications (apt-get, the Software Manager, the Update Manager, Synaptic etc..). We would like to apologize for this. Although it’s good news to see more people use Linux Mint, issues which affect everybody like this are our worst nightmare. A cluster was put in place and two servers now handle requests for the main repositories. We’re happy to report that they’ve been running smoothly for a few weeks now. Traffic also increased on other servers and the next thing to break was this very blog. You might have seen the temporary announcement while it was being moved to a faster server (or an error page while it was down). Altogether we have close to 10 dedicated servers in various places all around the World but some of them were acquired at a time when our audience was just a 10th of its size. We need to continue to scale and get to a position where traffic can double again without breaking anything. It’s an easy yet important task.

LMDE 2 “Betsy” received a lot of updates this week and its “Mint” packages are now almost on par with Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca. The next step is to adapt the Debian Jessie base and port all the changes and fixes already applied for Linux Mint 17.x on top of Trusty. This should take a week or two and we might be in a position to open up a BETA some time in February and to start welcoming feedback from people interested in helping us test this new distribution. Similar to Linux Mint 17.x, LMDE 2 “Betsy” will be using the traditional sysvinit. The move to systemd could happen with Linux Mint 18 and LMDE 3, giving this new technology and the Linux ecosystem 2 years (or more) to mature and to iron out integration and compatibility issues. Cinnamon in particular is built without systemd support by default and the development team is planning to change this in version 2.6 to give the DE the ability to switch at runtime between systemd and consolekit/upower without the need to recompile anything.

Pre-ALPHA “Betsy” running Cinnamon 2.4, sysvinit and GTK 3.14

January is an exciting month for us. Everything we implemented has been delivered and a new development cycle is starting. After a quick maintenance release on selected projects (muffin, cinnamon, cinnamon-desktop, nemo) we’re ready to switch our Cinnamon labels to 2.5.x, to merge pull requests, to talk about big ideas and to decide what we want to achieve in the next 6 months. Many great ideas are yet to be implemented, thanks to your feedback we’ve a huge backlog of items we want to focus on. Developers are free to choose what they want to work on but also conscious of the needs of our distribution and what is most important to you. Personally I want to continue to improve the system layer and the Mint tools as these benefit all editions, but I’m also planning on improving performance and snappiness in Cinnamon. Sticking to LTS boosted our development and it showed us how quick we were at developing new features. The adoption of tools such as Github made it really easy for new developers to join us and for people outside the team to contribute new designs and new implementations. I can’t wait to tackle some of the items on our Roadmap and it’s very exciting not to be able to predict what great improvements will land in 17.2, where they will come from, who will implement them and what aspects of the operating system they’ll improve.

Last month we received $14,000 in donations. 509 people donated to us. The amount of support we’re getting from you has always been exceptional, but what happened in December was unprecedented. We’ve never received so much and from so many different people before. I don’t know what to say only that I’m delighted to see so many people happy with what we’re doing and wanting us to continue. I already feel privileged to be able to work on something I love and to feel that community around me. I really enjoy working with the Mint developers as well and I’m excited because after we worked together for 6 months, like me they were able to enjoy seeing it all released in 17.1, like me they were able to read your feedback and your reactions and now they’ll get what is somewhat like a Christmas bonus after a fantastic year, as their budget includes a portion of the donations. It’s great to be able to share and create with great people, and it’s all thanks to you who support us, who promote us, who support each others, who feed us with ideas and information on how to make it better and better. So this is a big thank you to all of you and here’s to another great year. Let’s see what we can do 🙂

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors:
Linux VPS Hosting
Silver Sponsors:
ThinkPenguin.com
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
7L Networks Toronto Colocation *
BayLibre
compute.ch gmbh
David Salvo
Michael Sartain
Milton Security Group
Sysnova Information Systems		 Community Sponsors:

To become a sponsor or to see the full list of Linux Mint sponsors, please visit: http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

Donations:

A total of $14,080 was raised thanks to the generous contributions of 509 donors:

  • $1000, Hamoni K.
  • $520.47, Helene W.
  • $500, Adam Z.
  • $200 (2nd donation), Daniel G.
  • $200, Connie E.
  • $150 (2nd donation), David Clearwater
  • $150, Russell G.
  • $120, Info-Assist srl
  • $100 (9th donation), Anonymous
  • $100 (3rd donation), Philip W.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Timothy P.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Ross W. aka “Roscoe_Oz”
  • $100 (2nd donation), Nick E.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Linus G.
  • $100 (2nd donation), George C.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Jung-Kyu Park aka “bagjunggyu“
  • $100, Adam B.
  • $100, Joseph L.
  • $100, Christoph K.
  • $100, Brian P.
  • $100, Cecilio M.
  • $100, Peter K.
  • $100, Charles K.
  • $100, Robert W.
  • $100, Christophe C.
  • $90, Nicholas G.
  • $80 (2nd donation), Ram R.
  • $75, Rodney S.
  • $65.06 (15th donation), Pasi K.
  • $65.06, Ramona L.
  • $65.06, Maurizio M.
  • $65, Jimmy M.
  • $60 (2nd donation), More Linux
  • $60 (2nd donation), Günter K.
  • $60 (2nd donation), Jan Joris Vereijken
  • $60, Sascha K.
  • $60, Anne V. D. B.
  • $60, Risto S.
  • $60, Rolandas R. aka “Elektronas“
  • $60, Marco I. R.
  • $60, Nicolas T.
  • $60, Alfred B.
  • $60, Dr. Andreas Ploeger
  • $60, Susan S.
  • $55, Flaviano P. S. Matos aka “Flaviano E. Pires”
  • $52.05, Paul S. T.
  • $50 (57th donation), Matthew M.
  • $50 (6th donation), Marcus M.
  • $50 (5th donation), ranti
  • $50 (4th donation), Anthony C.
  • $50 (3rd donation), Rich H.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Kirk True
  • $50 (2nd donation), Jiri B.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Roy B.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Robert F. C.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Mark H.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Claus F. B.
  • $50, Juan M. F.
  • $50, Tor G. L.
  • $50, Kenneth Z.
  • $50, Richard W.
  • $50, Daniel V.
  • $50, Zoran D.
  • $50, Shubhankar L.
  • $50, Donald I.
  • $50, Dirk H.
  • $50, Brett H.
  • $50, Edward Z.
  • $50, David M.
  • $50, Louis S.
  • $50, Michael C.
  • $50, Benjamin S.
  • $50, Dominic B.
  • $50, Alina S.
  • $50, linoskoczek
  • $50, Mike M.
  • $50, Ryan R.
  • $50, Jaydip G.
  • $50, Luis R.
  • $50, Christopher T.
  • $50, John W.
  • $48, Olaf K.
  • $45, Lucinda G.
  • $40 (2nd donation), Stuart S.
  • $40, John T.
  • $40, Ernest K.
  • $40, Stephan S.
  • $39.04 (58th donation), Olli K.
  • $39.04, William S.
  • $39.03, Frank R.
  • $36 (3rd donation), R.S.
  • $36 (2nd donation), Rene V. D. H.
  • $36, Marcel S.
  • $36, Tomislav K.
  • $36, Günter S.
  • $35.75, Phillip K.
  • $35, Paul S.
  • $35, Saliba O.
  • $30 (11th donation), Ion B.
  • $30 (4th donation), John K. aka “jbrucek”
  • $30, Colin B.
  • $30, Jörg S.
  • $30, Alan B.
  • $30, Eelco M.
  • $30, Richard H.
  • $30, Jean P. S.
  • $30, Pieter van de Ven
  • $30, John H.
  • $30, Frank M.
  • $30, Zdenek S.
  • $30, Roman J.
  • $30, David A.
  • $30, John C.
  • $30, Wolfgang L.
  • $30, John W.
  • $30, Anthony G.
  • $28.62 (2nd donation), Joseph Mc D.
  • $28, Daniel S.
  • $26.02 (2nd donation), Samuel H.
  • $26.02, Christian S.
  • $26.02, Jarle S.
  • $26.02, Ute S.
  • $26.02, Conor O.
  • $26.02, Detlef W.
  • $26.02, Bernard D.
  • $26.02, Markus N.
  • $26, Michał M.
  • $25 (39th donation), Ronald W.
  • $25 (21st donation), John M.
  • $25 (11th donation), Robert H.
  • $25 (4th donation), Nicklas L.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Real F.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Edward H.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Scott L.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Joseph G.
  • $25 (2nd donation), Florin F. aka “FLOW”
  • $25 (2nd donation), Arun M.
  • $25 (2nd donation), Michael C.
  • $25 (2nd donation), Michael S. aka “Mickey6”
  • $25, Hans Peyrot
  • $25, gjnjEbay
  • $25, William A.
  • $25, Tomislav P.
  • $25, Chris M.
  • $25, Andrew P.
  • $25, Ernesto G.
  • $25, Henry W.
  • $25, Jeffrey V.
  • $25, Kyle G.
  • $25, David H.
  • $25, Kris J.
  • $25, Jaan S.
  • $25, M L. P.
  • $25, Shelley B.
  • $25, Andrew C.
  • $25, Mayer S.
  • $25, Jeffrey Z.
  • $25, Alex S.
  • $25, Kurt D.
  • $25, William P. aka “erni”
  • $24 (3rd donation), Samir D.
  • $24 (3rd donation), William M.
  • $24 (2nd donation), Stephen G.
  • $24 (2nd donation), Per J.
  • $24 (2nd donation), Michael S.
  • $24 (2nd donation), Bruno N.
  • $24 (2nd donation), Johann J. A.
  • $24 (2nd donation), Pavel B.
  • $24 (2nd donation), Peter M.
  • $24 (2nd donation), Patrick S.
  • $24 (2nd donation), Mark A.
  • $24, Dimitris R.
  • $24, Dick S.
  • $24, Gerhard D.
  • $24, Patrick C.
  • $24, Ken P.
  • $24, Peter C.
  • $24, Ingolf B.
  • $24, Matthew J.
  • $24, Volker N.
  • $23.83 (2nd donation), Alfredo T.
  • $20 (15th donation), Utah B.
  • $20 (7th donation), Antony P.
  • $20 (6th donation), Mark R.
  • $20 (5th donation), Jorgebadad aka “jungle_boy”
  • $20 (4th donation), Kevin S.
  • $20 (4th donation), Carl K.
  • $20 (3rd donation), Vasanth S.
  • $20 (2nd donation), M. J. Stewart aka “Mason”
  • $20 (2nd donation), Sven K.
  • $20 (2nd donation), William E.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Gareth C.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Jimmie D.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Just Classic Cars Parts PL aka “Greg“
  • $20 (2nd donation), Antonio B. aka “hapihakr”
  • $20 (2nd donation), Larry P.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Bob Tregilus
  • $20, Donald C.
  • $20, Fernando R. A.
  • $20, Chap-liong O.
  • $20, Sourav G.
  • $20, Iliyan G.
  • $20, Jeff M.
  • $20, Steve D.
  • $20, Tim L.
  • $20, Lukas I.
  • $20, Giacomo Paganelli
  • $20, Ed M.
  • $20, Rogério S.
  • $20, Corbin E.
  • $20, Scott P.
  • $20, Peter S.
  • $20, Shannon C.
  • $20, Rijumati W.
  • $20, Adam C.
  • $20, William L.
  • $20, Peter C.
  • $20, Charles W. B. I.
  • $20, Josef H.
  • $20, Peter H.
  • $20, Brian S.
  • $20, Richard H.
  • $20, William C.
  • $20, Scott A. aka “lwarranty”
  • $20, Claus C.
  • $20, Vitali V.
  • $20, Aidan B.
  • $20, Trey M.
  • $20, Michael B.
  • $20, Michael T.
  • $20, Dushyant S.
  • $20, Barry C. D. J.
  • $20, Robert M. J.
  • $20, Jerome F.
  • $20, Adrian S.
  • $20, Raymond C.
  • $20, Frank S.
  • $19.52, Philipp S.
  • $19.41, Karl S.
  • $19, Baranov E.
  • $18 (9th donation), Dominik K. aka “doke“
  • $18 (2nd donation), Martin S.
  • $18, Nicole B.
  • $18, Javier M.
  • $18, Fredrik E.
  • $18, Philipp H.
  • $18, Oliver G.
  • $18, Viktor V.
  • $18, Olivier A.
  • $18, Philipp M.
  • $18, Ms R. J. W.
  • $18, Nicola G. D. G.
  • $18, Gotzon B.
  • $17.1 (2nd donation), François P.
  • $16.4 (2nd donation), C Ebrey
  • $15 (4th donation), Ian B.
  • $15 (2nd donation), Terry Phillips aka “Terryphi”
  • $15 (2nd donation), Julian M. aka “muhlber”
  • $15 (2nd donation), Kevin O.
  • $15 (2nd donation), bwjpg
  • $15, Joacim M.
  • $15, Lewis G.
  • $15, Brad T.
  • $15, James D.
  • $15, W E. G. J.
  • $15, Rick D.
  • $14.31 (3rd donation), David W.
  • $13.37 (3rd donation), Bolko S. aka “Lokalpatriot”
  • $13.01 (16th donation), Raymond E.
  • $13.01 (5th donation), Ke C.
  • $13.01 (4th donation), Gerard C.
  • $13.01 (2nd donation), An H.
  • $13.01 (2nd donation), ConorCork
  • $13.01 (2nd donation), Alexandre L.
  • $13.01 (2nd donation), Brandon W.
  • $13.01, Janos W.
  • $13.01, David M. R.
  • $13.01, Jonathan W.
  • $13.01, Friedrich B.
  • $13.01, Guillaume P.
  • $13.01, Krob Y.
  • $13.01, Nihat A.
  • $12 (16th donation), Mark W.
  • $12 (5th donation), Nicolae Crefelean aka “kneekoo“
  • $12 (4th donation), Christian B.
  • $12 (4th donation), Doriano G. M.
  • $12 (4th donation), Luca D.
  • $12 (3rd donation), Catalin Toader aka “catatoa”
  • $12 (3rd donation), Matúš L.
  • $12 (3rd donation), Eoin E.
  • $12 (3rd donation), Émilien K.
  • $12 (2nd donation), Petr V.
  • $12 (2nd donation), Antonios B.
  • $12 (2nd donation), Juergen F.
  • $12 (2nd donation), Davide A.
  • $12 (2nd donation), Martin R.
  • $12 (2nd donation), Dominik K. aka “DrSky“
  • $12, Grigorios M.
  • $12, Marcel R.
  • $12, Georgios S.
  • $12, Khaelenmore Thaal aka “Silverwing”
  • $12, Jb H.
  • $12, Hauke L.
  • $12, Mike F.
  • $12, Josephine H.
  • $12, Stefan S.
  • $12, Carsten P.
  • $12, David M.
  • $12, Tendero M.
  • $12, Плотцкий А.
  • $12, Udo F.
  • $12, Daniel C.
  • $12, Florian R.
  • $12, Eduardo M. C.
  • $12, Brendan C.
  • $12, Dr, B. G.
  • $12, Robert C.
  • $12, Ovidio A. H.
  • $12, Isidoro H. N.
  • $12, Javier F.
  • $12, Josef R.
  • $12, Víctor C. M.
  • $12, Favario L.
  • $12, John C.
  • $12, Patrick D.
  • $12, Horst K.
  • $12, W. Georgi
  • $12, Meiko M.
  • $12, Marco V.
  • $12, Danilo C.
  • $12, Josef M.
  • $12, Andree G.
  • $12, Sven W.
  • $11.91 (2nd donation), Alfred H.
  • $11.91, Andrew B.
  • $11.91, Manfred W.
  • $11.91, Mario M.
  • $11.91, Marek B.
  • $11 (4th donation), Jaime C.
  • $11, Glen G.
  • $11, Planet Earth Rock n Roll
  • $11, Nandan S.
  • $10.41, Marcin B.
  • $10 (45th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (12th donation), Charlie Robinson
  • $10 (9th donation), Mark C.
  • $10 (6th donation), Trey H. aka “Ubuntaur”
  • $10 (5th donation), James D. aka “Spearmint2”
  • $10 (4th donation), Graham A.
  • $10 (4th donation), Ubozhenko A. aka “Aleksdem“
  • $10 (4th donation), Paul W.
  • $10 (4th donation), Antoine T.
  • $10 (4th donation), Hormis K.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Wilson G.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Alan T.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Larimar Media aka “Larimar Media“
  • $10 (3rd donation), Glen C.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Michel S.
  • $10 (2nd donation), John J. aka “Sankaty”
  • $10 (2nd donation), Itoi H. aka “kibidango“
  • $10 (2nd donation), Gevork P.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Alexander D.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Jeffrey H.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Pavel P.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Theis H.
  • $10 (2nd donation), K Soulsby
  • $10 (2nd donation), Ian E.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Nutu T.
  • $10, Robert P.
  • $10, Gunnar C.
  • $10, Scott D. M.
  • $10, David S.
  • $10, Jim S.
  • $10, Jim M.
  • $10, Richard W.
  • $10, Hermon C.
  • $10, Mihai K.
  • $10, Anders H.
  • $10, William M.
  • $10, Valentin A.
  • $10, Elias J.
  • $10, Mikhail S.
  • $10, Murat K.
  • $10, Dmitri B.
  • $10, Ryszard O.
  • $10, James C.
  • $10, Karoly G.
  • $10, Kouji Kobayashi aka “Kouji“
  • $10, Glenn S.
  • $10, Massimo T.
  • $10, Briggs G.
  • $10, Mirko A.
  • $10, Jan O. A.
  • $10, Adriano R.
  • $10, Larry J.
  • $10, Lael B.
  • $10, George C.
  • $10, Anatoli R.
  • $10, Robert D.
  • $10, Bradley S.
  • $10, Francois R.
  • $10, Paul S.
  • $10, Allen S.
  • $10, David W.
  • $10, Trevlig aka “J0el“
  • $10, Piotr K.
  • $10, Gabriel R.
  • $10, Kuryshev B.
  • $10, Jon F.
  • $7 (3rd donation), Yevgeniy A.
  • $6.51 (2nd donation), Endijs L.
  • $6.51, Antun K.
  • $6.51, Patrick H.
  • $6.51, Dirk H.
  • $6 (8th donation), anonymous
  • $6 (7th donation), Toronto Maple Leafs Blog
  • $6 (3rd donation), Athanasios F. aka “thanosfrag”
  • $6 (3rd donation), Rafael B. M.
  • $6 (2nd donation), Michael M.
  • $6 (2nd donation), Benjamin T.
  • $6 (2nd donation), Gonzalo T. M.
  • $6 (2nd donation), Lukas
  • $6 (2nd donation), Peter B.
  • $6 (2nd donation), Martin J.
  • $6, Turky A.
  • $6, Leonardo R.
  • $6, Martin R.
  • $6, Dirk M.
  • $6, Michael B.
  • $6, Zahir N.
  • $6, Andrea F.
  • $6, Christian S.
  • $6, Salvador P. D.
  • $6, Piotr M.
  • $6, Eddie V.
  • $6, Marvin H.
  • $6, Katrin A.
  • $6, Bertrand S. J.
  • $6, Timo T.
  • $6, Emanuele S.
  • $6, Jacek M.
  • $5.95, Steven G.
  • $5 (14th donation), Carlos W.
  • $5 (11th donation), Miljenko D. aka “ljacmi”
  • $5 (8th donation), CW P.
  • $5 (4th donation), Cristiano S.
  • $5 (3rd donation), Erick P.
  • $5 (3rd donation), Sonmez S.
  • $5 (3rd donation), John V. D.
  • $5 (3rd donation), Mauricio Hernández aka “Wicho”
  • $5 (2nd donation), SEO Genetics
  • $5 (2nd donation), James S.
  • $5 (2nd donation), Riaz V.
  • $5, Thomas A.
  • $5, Karol Zalewski aka “Zal“
  • $5, Katharine R.
  • $5, Antonio C. D. N. N.
  • $5, Nazarii K.
  • $5, Monty W.
  • $5, Hanaah K. L.
  • $5, Riccardo P.
  • $5, James M.
  • $5, Kevin H.
  • $5, Krzysztof D.
  • $5, William P.
  • $5, Timothy C.
  • $5, Goran V.
  • $5, Earl H.
  • $5, Jerry D.
  • $5, John M.
  • $5, Daniel P.
  • $5, Alexander B.
  • $5, Randolph W.
  • $5, Ruben C. M.
  • $5, Pedro H. D. A. K.
  • $5, Owen M.
  • $4.76, Ghebriele Y.
  • $4.19, Doug Fisherman aka “Dangerous Goods”
  • $3.5 (2nd donation), Carpet Cleaning London aka “ParadiseCleaning“
  • $3.5, Michail I.
  • $3, Stanton P.
  • $3, Sergey K. aka “void”
  • $3, Nishanth P.
  • $3, Dominic M.
  • $37.45 from 25 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

Rankings:

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  • Alexa (website ranking): 6656th

47 comments

  1. Wow, I’m so excited to see LMDE 2 Betsy taking shape, and looking forward to it’s release. Giving time for systemd to mature is a great move. Also. I’m very glad to see that moving Mint to Ubuntu’s LTS base and Debian Stable base is giving the Mint team the time to make Mint even better. Here’s to a Great 2015 🙂

    Reply

  2. No post about December 2014 donations ?

    Edit by Clem: I should have mentioned it, it’s silly… this would normally have been “Monthly News – December 2014” and the donations you see here are the donations we received last month indeed. I thought it was a bit strange though, especially since we don’t just cover past events but also look ahead at what is coming, to always publish monthly news, month after month, and call them after the previous month rather than the current one. Magazines for instance either release their monthly issue during or prior to the month. If they were to release them after the month has passed, you’d always think you’re reading old news. Or maybe I’m wrong… let us know what you think if you think this is a mistake.

    Reply

  3. Happy to hear the news about LMDE2. I’m not an expert but I wonder how you could stick with sysvinit while the debian base is using systemd?

    Edit by Clem: Provided we’ve enough resources to do things ourselves we can decide anything we want 🙂 In this particular case it’s easy… Debian Jessie is compatible with both init systems.

    Reply

  4. @Niks (2) – “No post about December 2014 donations ?”

    Last paragraph of the post. Mint’s monthly news post always contains the donation amounts from the previous month. 😉

    Reply

  6. Hi Clem,

    Thanks for the good work. But for me and some people Cinnamon keep freezing all the time.

    I don’t know if you are aware of this issue but maybe you can fix it with the others devs :

    https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/2946

    Thanks

    Edit by Clem: That’s critical and taken very seriously but it’s the consequence of a bug we’re yet to identify. In other words, many different bugs can result in a desktop freeze (and we’ve solved many since 2.0). One of them was fixed recently and is coming via an update to muffin in the days to come, it fixes the particular case where a Steam notification freezes the desktop.

    Reply

  9. Will LMDE ask to update to Betsy when it’s ready? Or will we have to manually change our sources?

    Edit by Clem: I can’t say just yet as I don’t want to comment on something that might end up being different. So far we didn’t commit to a trivial upgrade.

    Reply

  10. You guys are killing it! Keep it up! One new feature I’d like to see is some kind of privacy enabled browser. What with all the news about NSA, Google, Facebook, etc. eroding personal civil liberties, it would be nice to have an i2p enabled browser or something similar (that actually works) somewhere in the software manager. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic Clem.

    Edit by Clem: It’s like everything, as the situation gets more and more tense solutions will arise to face demand. When these solutions become popular they’ll get easy to install and enough notoriety for Debian to include them. When they become mainstream they’ll get in the scope of national agencies and become useless 🙂 Talking about i2p I saw a tutorial already on community.linuxmint.com which pointed to a PPA.

    Reply

  11. Nice work, as always. But i have a question:
    Why did you put “kdenlive” in the Source of Rebecca? Is there a big diffrence between 0.9.6 (out of trusty) and the 0.9.8 in the Mint Repository?
    I found one: There are no translation Packages for e.g. german language…
    Can you fix this?

    Edit by Clem: I’m adding this issue to the roadmap. Version 0.9.8 was imported along with KDE 4.14 as a backport.

    Reply

  12. Great to see the success of Mint! It’s well earned, as is the amount of income you guys get. May it increase even more. 🙂

    I have only one major request for the next release: please disable hibernation by default in 17.2. Hibernation causes too much problems on too much hardware combinations.

    Of course users can disable hibernation by adding a hack to /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/90-mandatory.d, but the default reliability of Mint is important as well….

    Reply

  13. LMDE 2 will be interesting distro to look at I’m sure! 🙂 Congratulations for your work so far, Clem and team!

    And I’m very glad to read that you will be working on Cinnamon perfomance improvements. In this way I will be able to prove my room mate how slow is his new Windows 7 (on his beast laptop) compared to my old but beautiful Acer with Cinnamon! 😀

    Reply

  14. Hi Clem, thanks for the great work! But I’m wondering if you would plan to update chromium frequently, just as you update firefox and thunderbird? Thanks again!

    Reply

  15. Some great news Clem. Mint keeps getting better.

    Two things that I would love to seem are:

    1. A progress bar or something similar for the Transmission panel icon so that you can tell how far along a torrent or group of torrents is; and
    2. Some way to queue copy operations in Nemo…perhaps as a right click option if there is already a copy operation in progress. That way the HDD doesn’t get smashed with multiple simultaneous copy operations.

    Just some suggestions as possible improvements.

    Keep up the awesome work. Can’t wait for 17.2.

    Gabriel

    Edit by Clem: Point 2 is planned already. Point 1 was heard as feedback before, we need to look into it.

    Reply

  16. Looking forward to LMDE Betsy – but will it be available in MATE edition? All we hear about is cinnamon!

    Also, will it still be possible to use systemd with LMDE if we want to, either by using init=/bin/systemd or installing systemd-sysv?

    I’m running LMDE MATE 64-bit with systemd at the moment – no real problems.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Andy, yes to both of your questions.

    Reply

  17. Thanks for all your work!
    Is there any chance to see a Gnome3 edition in one of the next versions?
    What about KDE Plasma 5 in 17.2?

    Edit by Clem: Hi, because we already support 4 desktop environments, we have no plans for a GNOME edition. Plasma 5 will eventually replace KDE 4, we’re keeping an eye on it and considering it with each new release. We’re a conservative distribution though and favour mature/proven software over bleeding edge. Plasma 5 is promising, we just need to be patient and make sure it’s fully ready to take over.

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  19. “The upgrade path from Linux Mint 17 to Linux Mint 17.1 is now open for all editions (Cinnamon, MATE, KDE and Xfce).” And “to start the new year we shared exciting news about the new MintBox Mini.” These were really good news. Thanks. Greetings.

    Reply

  20. “Edit by Clem: Point 2 is planned already. Point 1 was heard as feedback before, we need to look into it.”

    Cool. Thanks Clem. I had mentioned these feature requests before but was not sure if it was read so posted again (sorry). All the best.

    Gabriel

    Reply

  21. Let me state up front that this is not a complaint. Mint 17.1 is the best Linux distro I’ve ever used and I love it. After 60 trips around the sun, not much gets me excited any more, but the Mint Box Mini announcement had me feeling like I was 35 again. It’s the perfect combination of power, speed, and price for my needs and I was certain I would be buying one.

    Currently running the 64 bit version of Mint 17.1 Cinnamon in a VM for Java/Python/Perl/Postgresql development work on a resource constrained MacBook Pro. The Mint Box Mini seems like a perfect solution to offload those development needs while still being able to access the Cinnamon desktop from my primary computer. However, I’ve been testing Mint 17.1 Cinnamon on an older 32 bit PC and trying to access it via xrdp. I can’t get it to work. I spent the past couple of days searching the Mint user forums for a solution to no avail. I’m not the only user with this issue. The best I’ve been able to achieve is getting xrdp to work (not well) with Mint Xfce which is sub-optimal. I’ve had no problem getting this use case to work on the same set of computers using CentOS 6.

    If Cinnamon can’t can’t be accessed via xrdp, then the Mint Box Mini won’t work for me. Is the Cinnamon/xrdp problem being addressed?

    Edit by Clem: Hi, I wasn’t aware of this. I found an issue for it though at https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/934. Please don’t hesitate to comment on that issue. Also let us know if this works with other accelerated DEs (GNOME Shell for instance). Xfce isn’t accelerated, MATE either (which comes as default on the Mintbox Mini). I’d be interested to know if it still work with Xfce/MATE when compositing is enabled, and/or when the WM is switched to Compiz.

    Reply

  25. Congratulations to you and the lads Clem, (especially the QA team)
    I think the fact that there are not a list of people flaming this release speaks volumes 🙂

    The Mintbox mini sounds good, certainly would be nice to have it connected to my TV and use it to make my TV smart:-). But I checked Software Manager and XBMC (Kodi) was not in it. I read on the internet that I can install Ubuntu on the Mintbox, so I can then add XBMC(Kodi) so I can stream movies/sports/music to my TV, but that’s probably a lot of hassle. Anyway, its supposed to be a small pc not a media centre I know that!

    I would one day like to see a split screen in Nemo, a bit like the look and feel of Mozilla Filezilla. It would make life a lot easier for copying and pasting between folders.

    Reply

  26. Gerry 25 You can turn on an extra pane in Nemo. View / Extra pane, or F3 (with my keymappings, anyway). Worth a look to see if this works for you. xbmc is in the software manager for me, so I don’t know why it is not there for you.

    Very much looking forward to seeing where 17.2 takes us. 17.1 has had some really great features introduced.

    Reply

  27. Wow! I’ve been looking forward to the day when Mint would receive over $10K in a month, but this is just super!! You guys (Mint team) are worthy of much more. Please keep up the good work. You know you are doing something very right when you get such a great response from the people you serve. Great Job!!!

    Reply

  28. Will the installer of LMDE be the same as in the Ubuntu based distribution?

    Edit by Clem: No, it’s our own installer called “live-installer”. LMDE is already using it. In Betsy it features a lot of improvements though.

    Reply

  31. I am not sure this is the place to post this, if not sorry. Why can’t you people write your Mint so it will just “auto update” to the next Ver. IE 16 to 17 ?? I put mint 16 on my Win 7 64 bit computer as a duel boot, It works fine. But it looks to me a pain to upgrade to Mint 17 on it. I don’t want to mess up my Win 7. I put mint 16 on so I could look at it.
    If you code writers want the masses to use mint, than make it more for the masses, not code writers

    Reply

  32. @ 30 keith

    Creative Sound Blaster Z PCIe

    Operating Systems Supported
    Microsoft Windows 8 (32/64-bit) ; Windows 7 (32/64-bit)

    only this company can give you support for linux and not mint team! for now they don’t support linux as you can read.

    Reply

  33. It’s up to the kernel and drivers developers. Mint developers can’t give you some additional device support, they rely on what upstream (Ubuntu) delivers.

    Reply

  34. This is a very nice cheap PC. I would really like a “consumer” barebones unit with the following specifications…..

    AMD A10 Micro-6700T
    One Gigabit Ethernet port
    One HDMI 1.4a port
    802.11ac
    One microSD card slot
    One mSATA/M.2 SSD slot
    3.5mm stereo audio jacks
    Two USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports each
    One SO-DIMM DDR3L slot
    2 Years warranty

    Call it the Fitlet-c and $100 sounds about right to me for one of these. I like it to be as simple as possible and cramming in the maximum performance it can for the price.

    An M.2 Type 2280 128GB SSD costs about $80-$100. An mSATA SSD is still cheaper at around $75 for 128GB. An 8GB SODIMM is about $70. A fully functional LinuxMint PC (with decent performance) for $250-$275 is an excellent proposition.

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  35. Really glad to see the donations looking this good! With all the work done on Cinnamon it is certainly well deserved! I see more and more distros releasing Cinnamon editions and it is clearly gaining a great deal of popularity!

    Other distros choosing Cinnamon says a lot! This also makes Cinnamon much more widely available to the masses. This is especially nice for those of us that were having problems with the Ubuntu base on our hardware.

    Congratulations on the record breaking donations! Also, congratulations on the latest MintBox! Thank you for all the hard work that went into the latest version of Cinnamon!

    Reply

  36. Really glad to see the donations looking this good! With all the work done on Cinnamon it is certainly well deserved! I see more and more distros releasing Cinnamon editions and it is clearly gaining a great deal of popularity!

    Reply

  37. Hi Clem,

    Happy new year and you / team deserve all the goodness. I am glad to have contributed my bit this month (through a friend in US-Vasanth S)

    I couldn’t get to discuss this with your over IRC. Any plans for certification of Cinnamon (against latest 2.4) x-lets (Applets, desklets, themes,extensions) in spices site . A lot of them could are already obsolete / broken. Also, a filter to not show / download incompatible ones will save some bandwith. With the Spices ecosystem growing, i suppose it makes sense to categorize them. (Utilities, Social, Games, ets)>> https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/2813

    P.S. But, am glad that with Cinnamon 2.4 incompatible x-lets are caught and notified to the user.

    Reply

  38. – I’ve been using Linux since 1998, and I have invested a lot of time trying to help people out as much as I can with installation and other issues and tips. I have been working on computers before that time way back in the 8088 and 8086 XT days. I’ve install many distro versions of Linux over the years and I really like the way Linux Mint looks. I installed Linux Mint 17.1 MATE on a single core Athlon 1Ghz tower which is running great with Compiz even. What a revamped system! PURE JOY!

    – If you gave me “one” wish.. “one thing” that you would do in regards to your spin, is to put effort towards “legacy” systems. I do see that both MATE and Cinnamon disable 3d video and other enhancements if the video card does not support that… which is great.. but I really wish that you would make a separate version that was optimize for older legacy systems. Yes.. there are other distros that are for legacy systems. But I feel that you could mod Linux Mint to be even better then the “light” systems out there. Thanks for reading this, Happy New Year.

    Reply

  41. Hey Clem And Linuxmint Team Linuxmint 17.1 Is Awesome it is totally Flawless 17.1 Is The Best One Yet I Found A Fix For anybody that can’t get sound from there sound-card just plug the speakers into a different jack on an old gateway laptop someone gave me I just plugged the speaker plug into the pink jack and got good sound
    This May Work For Other Linux Distros As Well

    Keep Up The Good Work

    Reply

  42. Im using a lmde. It’s nice beautiful distro, and i want to say thanks to all developers and people who involved to development and community. My question is how will I have to update my lmde from 1 release to lmde 2 betsy? Via ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’ or burning boring update cd’s or something like this? And what troubles can i get while migrating? Thank u for your support! 🙂

    P.S: Im so sorry for my bad english skills 🙂

    Reply

  43. “Similar to Linux Mint 17.x, LMDE 2 “Betsy” will be using the traditional sysvinit. The move to systemd could happen with Linux Mint 18 and LMDE 3, giving this new technology and the Linux ecosystem 2 years (or more) to mature and to iron out integration and compatibility issues.”

    Well, I did not expect that, but honestly it sounds like a hell of a good decision. I myself wanted to wait for systemd to mature before installing a distro with it on my main computer, Betsy is becoming even more interesting to me! Thank you for what you do. Congrats to all the team, I wish you and any reader of this comment a happy new year!

    P.S: Does Linux Mint 17.x really use sysvinit and not Upstart?

    Reply

  44. Hi guys, I switched over to using Linux Mint from Ubuntu due to the lack of flgrx support in that distro. I’m a heavy gamer so I was pleasantly surprised to see the propitiatory amd drivers work very well on the Cinnamon version of Linux Mint 🙂 Also, the interface resembles Windows 7 a lot so it is easier to use.

    I dual-boot this distro along with Windows 7 (I am using the windows 10 technical preview as well). I have not been disappointed with Linux Mint in the slightest and will continue to use it as long as it’s around.

    Keep up the good work, you guys!

    Jared

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  45. I wish that you would update some of the packages in your repository. Libre Office for example is getting old. Version 4.4 has some very unique changes. That is one of the disadvantages of your long term support model. Some key packages should be brought forward.

    Reply

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