by ·36 Comments

Donations & Sponsorships:

Many thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint:

Donors:

  • $150, Jim D. aka “jajodo”
  • $135, Dr J. C. aka “Medicine Man“
  • $108 (2nd donation), Achim Leybach
  • $100 (2nd donation), Jordan S.
  • $100, Pascal A.
  • $100, Bruno C.
  • $100, Stephen P.
  • $100, Onofre Properties and Rentals
  • $100, Somers Rocks Press
  • $100, altair4
  • $100, Robert C.
  • $94.5, Olivier R.
  • $91, Balázs G.
  • $81.25 (2nd donation), Ian M. aka “iMitch403”
  • $81 (3rd donation), Jan W.
  • $78, Orlando M. M.
  • $67.5, Niranjan Radhakrishnan aka “niranj”
  • $65 (2nd donation), Edwin Vervliet aka “edwin”
  • $65, Jozsef B.
  • $61.75 (2nd donation), Ian M. aka “iMitch403”
  • $60 (2nd donation), David Gagne aka “davidgagne80”
  • $54.6, Nick Prosch
  • $52 (2nd donation), Olaf L. aka “olligod”
  • $51 (2nd donation), Suyog B.
  • $50 (7th donation), Jonathan B. Horen aka “JBHoren“
  • $50 (2nd donation), Richard H.
  • $50, John M.
  • $50, Carlos H. G.
  • $50, Glenn R.
  • $50, William R.
  • $50, Simon N.
  • $50, Paul E.
  • $50, 21st Century Cabinets
  • $50, Paul C
  • $50, Tim M.
  • $50, Michael L. aka “ddavid123”
  • $50, Philip M.
  • $50, Carl G.
  • $47.25, Sebastian W.
  • $47.25, Christian aka “nert”
  • $40, Johh D.
  • $40, Dale R.
  • $39 (5th donation), Wolfgang P.
  • $37, Jarosław N.
  • $35 (11th donation), Pete Molina aka “pmolina”
  • $35 (2nd donation), Sung P.
  • $33.75, J J. V. K.
  • $33.75, Harald T.
  • $33, Maxim A. aka “Sp1ker“
  • $33, Scott N.
  • $30 (2nd donation), Derek L.
  • $30, Jun Q.
  • $30, Graham J.
  • $27 (14th donation), Manuel F.
  • $27 (4th donation), Miguel Cunha Duarte aka “mcduarte2000“
  • $27 (2nd donation), Salvador T. S.
  • $27 (2nd donation), Gilles Jurek
  • $27, Christian P.
  • $27, Prepress by Sloane
  • $27, Andreas G.
  • $27, Ronnie T.
  • $27, Miss anon aka “Anonymous “
  • $27, Molnár P.
  • $26 (13th donation), Marco R.
  • $26 (8th donation), Olli K.
  • $26 (2nd donation), David T.
  • $26, Douglas H.
  • $26, Jon C. K.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Kamal G.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Kenny Hendrick aka “NprComputers“
  • $25 (2nd donation), Ventura M
  • $25 (2nd donation), Edward Comer aka “celem”
  • $25, Norman B. D.
  • $25, Dror C.
  • $25, Adam M.
  • $25, James J.
  • $25, John B.
  • $25, Kenneth D. H.
  • $23.45, Borja L. S.
  • $21, Илья Ш.
  • $20.25, Ian P.
  • $20 (7th donation), Matthew M.
  • $20 (3rd donation), Mark B.
  • $20 (2nd donation), David S.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Chad S. aka “seca”
  • $20 (2nd donation), Juhani K.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Jeffrey DeVries
  • $20 (2nd donation), Anonymous
  • $20, Roger P.
  • $20, John B.
  • $20, Trevor H.
  • $20, Kimberly P.
  • $20, Erling D.
  • $20, Jackson C. aka “Splintercat“
  • $20, Robert L.
  • $20, Zachary S.
  • $20, Martin H.
  • $20, Tom B.
  • $20, Russell N.
  • $20, Todd M.
  • $20, Daniel J.
  • $20, Roy C.
  • $20, Shreyas G.
  • $20, Robert K.
  • $20, Roger G.
  • $20, Hugh Dowling
  • $19.5, Simon C.
  • $18 (2nd donation), DLX Company
  • $18, Graham T.
  • $17, David R.
  • $16.2 (2nd donation), Kevin D.
  • $16, Vivian P. aka “VRP”
  • $15 (16th donation), slw
  • $15 (2nd donation), Michael C.
  • $15 (2nd donation), Greg Dawes aka “Greg-NZ”
  • $15, Vincent A.
  • $15, Stephan K.
  • $13.5 (10th donation), Temel Balci
  • $13.5, Michael T.
  • $13.5, Jörn G.
  • $13.5, Martin J.
  • $13.5, Volker K.
  • $13.5, C R. P.
  • $13.5, Ricardo J. G.
  • $13.5, Siniša M.
  • $13 (12th donation), Emil Pavlov aka “emil_pavlov”
  • $13, Christian B.
  • $13, Helmut T.
  • $13, Attila B.
  • $10.8, Vagn B. J.
  • $10 (6th donation), William S. aka “Supergoo”
  • $10 (3rd donation), Jose P.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Paul B.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Luis D.
  • $10, Mark C.
  • $10, Nobutoshi K. aka “FOUNCID”
  • $10, Alexandr Bobylov
  • $10, Dan N.
  • $10, Thomas M.
  • $10, Jacob T.
  • $10, Francisco Hernández aka “frankh73”
  • $10, Barry J. C.
  • $10, Jesus R. P.
  • $10, David C.
  • $10, Chandrasing P.
  • $10, John M.
  • $10, Andy’s Pens
  • $10, Justin P.
  • $10, Colin R.
  • $9.45 (5th donation), Sylwia Bialczak
  • $9, Kaarel K. aka “Kaar3l”
  • $8, Bernhard N.
  • $8, Jamie F.
  • $7 (2nd donation), Tiaan Steynberg aka “Jesica“
  • $7, Zoe Q.
  • $6.75 (2nd donation), Ulf S. aka “MonteDrago”
  • $6.75, Barry M.
  • $6.75, Michael L.
  • $6.75, Sven B.
  • $6.75, Kalle F.
  • $6.5, Ronald T.
  • $6.5, Fabio N.
  • $5.4, Álvaro S. T.
  • $5 (4th donation), Michael G.
  • $5 (3rd donation), Rashed aka “Rashed“
  • $5 (2nd donation), Susann aka “Blogger Su“
  • $5, Ankit M.
  • $5, Dominic B.
  • $5, Guillermo E. D.
  • $5, Jamie H.
  • $5, O.Mehmet. Y. aka “mehmet7”
  • $5, John F.
  • $5, Irondojo.com
  • $5, Simon R.
  • $5, Mr D. S. V.
  • $5, Owen G.
  • $4, Thomas L.
  • $3, Michał S.
  • $2.5 (2nd donation), Le T.
  • $2 (2nd donation), Craig Stock aka “craig10x”
  • $2, Philip C.
  • $1.5 (2nd donation), Charles Vlk aka “kunk”
  • $1.35, eCommerce24h.pl
  • $1.33 (2nd donation), Anton Konnoff
  • $1 (6th donation), free backlinks
  • $1 (3rd donation), Gonzalo C. aka “gcosta“
  • $1, Efriel Elyasa
  • $1, jk
  • $1, Ruben D. G.

Sponsors:

Money raised in October:

* Donations: $5283.08 (189 donors)
* Sponsors: $929 (84 sponsors)

http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php
http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

  • Linux Mint 9 Isadora LTS: 56.26%
  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 12.36%
  • Linux Mint 8 Helena: 11.49%
  • Linux Mint 10 Julia: 10.14%
  • LMDE: 3.79%
  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 2.32%
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 2.30%
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 1.34%

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 2,579,663
  • Unique views: 3,293,483
  • Pageviews: 4,239,064
  • Page impressions: 2,148,044
  • Search queries: 6,623,880
  • Forum users: 38,553
  • Forum posts: 321,498

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1430 (3rd)
  • Distrowatch (traffic share): 5.1% (2nd)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 17,846th

Events:

Summary:

  • October was an exciting month for us, with all the attention culminating around a single event, the release of Linux Mint 10 RC. The new artwork was well received within the community and we noted people were excited by the new features. I’d like to thank all the translators who are participating in translating it at the moment, and also all the people who raised bug reports. We’ve fixed a lot of bugs since the RC release, and even though nothing critical was found, the feedback gave us the opportunity to bring additional yet significant improvements. The stable release of Linux Mint 10 should be ready early this November and we’re hoping it will be among the most popular desktops we’ve ever released.
  • We’re traditionally hit by the gap between Ubuntu and Linux Mint in the release cycle, when there’s a new Ubuntu system out there, and no up-to-date Linux Mint released yet. Surprisingly this year, we managed to close this gap to a minimum with an early RC release and a longer delay between RC and stable. Our user base didn’t fluctuate by 10% like it usually does and our income is actually up this month.
  • Last month, I expressed worries about the low amount in donations compared to 2009. I don’t really know how to express the gratitude I feel towards the community right now, but it’s huge… you reacted more than we ever hoped. Almost twice as many people donated and we managed to collect more this month than we ever did before: $5283. This is a fantastic sign of support. It’s not only inspiring and motivating, it’s also extremely comforting going forwards and it shows us the level of support we’re having from you. Very few projects out there manage to get this far without corporate backing and focus on commercial activities. Thanks to you, we don’t have to worry about that, we’re at the top, fully focused on the distribution itself, and it’s all community-funded. It’s hard to describe how special this is and I feel really thankful and privileged by this.
  • The blog was moved to its own dedicated server in the USA. As a result both the website and the blog are now more responsive.
  • Coming up, we’re getting close to a stable release of Linux Mint 10 early November, a second LMDE release with the same features and an improved installer in December. Work also started on the other editions and we’ll have more news about them in the coming days.

by ·35 Comments

Just a quick note about the translations. We’re getting close to a stable release for Linux Mint 10.

Make sure the system is fully translated in your language by visiting this page: https://translations.launchpad.net/linuxmint/isadora

Note: Don’t worry about the mention of “isadora” in the URL, we kept the translations on the same branch as Mint 9 to avoid wasting valuable time with Launchpad.

by ·123 Comments

Since Mint 10 RC was release, I’ve received many questions, so here’s a little Q&A:

Upgrading to Mint 10:

– Will I be able to upgrade from Mint 10 RC to Mint 10 stable without reinstalling?

–> Yes, simply apply any level 1 and 2 updates that appear in the Update Manager.

– Can I upgrade my Mint system to Linux Mint 10?

–> Yes. Wait for Mint 10 to be released as stable, then follow this tutorial.

– After upgrading to Mint 10, my menu icons are tiny…

–> The size of the icons is now expressed in pixels. Right-click the menu, go to Preferences and change the icon sizes for favorites, applications, system and places to your liking (we personally recommend 48, 22, 16, 16).

– While upgrading to Mint 10, I’m experiencing problems with mintdesktop…

–> This was fixed, unfortunately it still affects you as you’re upgrading mintdesktop to its new version. Create an empty file called “Default” in “/etc/gdm/PostLogin/” and proceed with the upgrade.

Installing Mint 10:

– Does Mint 10 include mint4win?

–> Yes.

Using Mint 10:

– Where’s the update manager gone?

–> The Update Manager only runs on installed systems. It won’t run from the live session anymore.

– Where’s the Mint 10 user guide?

–> We’re working on it and it will be ready when Linux Mint goes stable.

– I can’t see application icons in the Software Manager, where are they?

–> Brief answer: In the package mintinstall-icons

–> In depth answer: We’re ambitious and so are upstream developers. Pushing for better software and more features every 6 months means that our vision of the desktop simply doesn’t fit on a CD anymore. We do want to please everyone and there’s no plan to abandon the liveCD, but the reference desktop for us is quickly becoming the liveDVD. If you want to experience Linux Mint as it’s designed and meant to be, you need to get the DVD edition. There’s two ways to do so, either download the DVD ISO, or install from the CD and click on “Upgrade to the DVD Edition” from the Welcome screen. The DVD Edition isn’t Linux Mint plus more, it is Linux Mint. The CD Edition is missing some of that (Java, VLC, Samba, DejaVu fonts, F-Spot, app icons in mintinstall, openoffice.org-base, artwork..etc) and so we recommend you upgrade to the DVD Edition using the welcome screen (or install mint-meta-gnome-dvd manually).

– Why can’t I share files and folders anymore?

–> You simply need to upgrade to the DVD edition, which includes Samba and nautilus-share. Click on “Upgrade to the DVD edition” in the welcome screen (which you can run by typing “mintwelcome” in a terminal), or install the mint-meta-gnome-dvd package.

– Which Virtualbox shall I install?

–> We recommend virtualbox-nonfree. As we upgrade virtualbox in the repositories, this package will always point to our latest available version. It also provides USB support.

– Which Flash package is the recommended one?

–> We recommend mint-flashplugin (32-bit) and mint-flashplugin-x64 (64-bit) which provide the latest version of Flash Square from Adobe. Upstream packages from Ubuntu are not recommended (they tend to be obsolete and run in 32-bit mode on 64-bit systems) and the same goes for nspluginwrapper. Do not install these packages in Linux Mint unless you’re experiencing issues with Flash or crashes in Firefox.

Look and feel:

– Is it me or is Mint trying to look like Mac?

–> Well… there’s a trend out there towards the glossy and the minimalist/slick looking… and to say that Mac hasn’t had an influence on this would be ridiculous. With products such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad, and even with the lines of the iMac, and the glossiness of their OS, they’re setting the tone and acting as pioneers in IT. But that trend is also followed by Ubuntu (I think that’s quite established by now) and Microsoft Windows, it simply reflects the demand and the popularity of that kind of look, and it’s not only there in IT, it’s everywhere. Look at Web 2.0. Didn’t that start it all on our screens even before Mac changed their look? Look at modern kitchens, with their glossy black and chrome appliances, plastic corrian tops.. it’s there as well and it’s popular. The computer is becoming an appliance and its look needs to follow the trend that’s popular at the moment. Mint 10 is a step forward in that direction, and whether the influence comes from Mac or not, it doesn’t really matter. We believe it’s the right way to go.

– I’d like to keep the theme, but I don’t like the brushed metal in the menu…

–> We anticipated the fact that the brushed metal would be popular but wouldn’t please everybody, so we made two themes: “Mint-X” and “Mint-X-Metal”. They’re both the same with the exception of the menu. If you change the theme to “Mint-X”, your menu will then lose its brushed metal aspect and look like the rest of the desktop. Also note that you can give apply a distinct theme to the menu than to the rest of the desktop. Go in the menu preferences and give it, say an Aurora look if you want.. you can make it look really different if you want.

– Can the border width be increased or the theme improved a little?

–> It’s hard to resize windows at the moment and we’re working on increasing the border width. This should be fixed with the stable release. We’re also in contact with the artist behind Clearlooks Revamp (on which Mint-X is based) and I’d like to work with him on improving things. He’s done an outstanding job on Clearlooks Revamp, and though I’m happy with the modifications that we brought to it for Mint-X, I’m sure he’s got a lot more talent and ideas than us to bring this even further, so we should expect to see improvements to it.

– Where’s Shiki gone?

–> On the DVD edition (either upgrade to it, or install mint-meta-gnome-dvd).

About LMDE:

– Will LMDE get all the new Mint 10 features?

–> Absolutely. LMDE will 64-bit support, an improved installer, bug fixes and all Mint 10 features this December.

– Can I get the Mint 10 look in LMDE?

–> Yes. It’s there in the Romeo section of the LMDE repositories. You’ll need to install the “mint-x-icons” and “mint-x-theme” packages.

Other questions:

– How come the blog and the website go down every time there’s a new release?

–> First, I’d like to apologize for the slow website/blog and for the downtime yesterday. Now, onto the good news. We optimised the way we’re serving RSS feeds and this should result in much better performance for our website.The blog was moved to the USA. You probably noticed the fact that you’re now looking at blog.linuxmint.com as opposed to linuxmint.com/blog.The website is still in Germany but it’s not sharing its server with other services anymore.Both the website and the blog now have their own dedicated servers. The forums and community website still share the same dedicated server in Canada, but this will change in 2011.