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The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 8 “Helena” Xfce Community Edition RC1.

Quick steps:

Introduction to Linux Mint 8 Xfce:

Based on Xubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, Linux 2.6.31, Xfce 4.6.1 and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 8 “Helena” Xfce CE features a lot of improvements and the latest software from the Open Source World.

Featured improvements in this release: OEM installation, possibility to ignore updates, configurable menu places, multiple selection in the Software Manager, new system tray File Uploader with support for drag and drop and mutiple files uploads.

For a detailed overview of the new features and improvements included in Linux Mint 8 Xfce, please read “What’s new in Helena Xfce?“.

System requirements:

  • x86 processor
  • 256 MB of system memory (RAM)
  • 3 GB of disk space for installation
  • GA graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution
  • CD-ROM drive or USB port

Important information and known issues:

As an RC (Release Candidate) this release is targeted at developers and beta-testers who want to help Linux Mint find and correct bugs before the stable release. Please do not use this release as your main desktop. For a complete list of known issues read the Release Notes.

Feedback and bug reports:

Please report any bug you may find via the Linux Mint 8 Xfce RC1 Bug Thread and give us your feedback on this release by posting a comment right here on the blog.

Download Linux Mint 8 Xfce RC1:

You can download Linux Mint 8 Xfce RC1 via torrent or via HTTP:

Size: 695MB LiveCD
MD5Sum:  15a37a56b27c1c840ba50c2bc5fe77a3

Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.com/torrent/LinuxMint-8-Xfce-RC1.iso.torrent
 HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=50

Africa:

Asia:

Europe:

Northern America:

Oceania:

Enjoy!

Have a lot of fun testing this release candidate and let’s all hope it will help us make a great stable release.

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* News about Mint

Some news in the blog – a LXDE edition is on its way as well as the Helena XFCE edition Development started on Mint 9, a new menu and a completely new software manager are to be introduced

A new Software module in the Community website is based on the new software manager

Monthly Stats – February 2010 The overall income is up again, by 3% in February

mintCast, the Mint podcast, is  found here

* News about Linux

3D support on nouveau

Plasma Javascript Jam Session Contest

If you have Adobe Reader 9.3 and earlier Adobe advices you to upgrade for security reasons

A Fresh Look for Ubuntu

Ubuntu single sign on service launched – you have noticed it already if you log in to Launchpad

Ubuntu One Music Store

Zemlin’s blog – Microsoft/Amazon Deal: Nothing to See Here

The latest news about the kernel is always found here

* News about Open Source

Open letter to Google: free VP8, and use it on YouTube

Microsoft open-sources clever U-Prove identity framework

* News about IT

US government rescinds ‘leave internet alone’ policy – this could be serious

Echelon computers can’t cope with bad lines

According to Mcafee in the last quarter of 2009 135.5 billion spam mail were sent every day

Microsoft’s ‘Operation b49’ chokes Waledac botnet

Mariposa botnet busted by Spanish police

Google donates $2 million to Wikimedia

Google gets US approval to buy and sell energy

EU Commission Investigates – How Anti-Competitive Is Google?

Google wins patent for location-based advertising

Europe’s new front in the browser battle

‘Kneber’ Botnet Attacks PCs Worldwide

Comcast.net hacker who redirected Web traffic pleads guilty

*Hardware news

* Other news

New flaws in chip and pin system revealed – the researchers blog post – not quite easy to use as you must have some gadget between the card and the card reader

* Comic of the week


Credit goes to xkcd

* More about Linux Mint

How to donate

Home page

Blog The planet Wiki Forum Twitter Mintcast community.linuxmint.com

* Editors comment

As always – if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me – you can post a comment.

Enjoy life

Husse

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The “software” module was added to the Community Website.

The old “Software Portal” available for Mint 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 users contained approximately 400 applications. It was integrated with the main website and it was using the .mint format with mintInstall.

The new module contains every single package available in the repositories. So for instance, right now, it shows 30,592 packages. It’s integrated with the community website and it uses apturl which will come pre-installed in Linux Mint 9. It will also allow the new upcoming version of mintInstall to review packages straight from the application.

Reviews

Reviews now relate to packages, not to releases, so if you review a package now, your review will continue to be available after Mint 9, 10 and so on get released. You can see how long each review was written so obsolete data isn’t an issue. At any time you can update your review of a package and reset its timestamp. As a consequence we’re hoping to get a lot more reviews from the community in this module than we previously had in the Software Portal.

A review is basically a score and a comment. The comment is a one-liner. The score ranges from 1 to 5 depending on how much you like the application you’re reviewing.. 1 is for packages you hate, 2 for packages you don’t like, 3 for packages you think are so-so, 4 for packages you like, 5 for packages you think are “awesome” (or “brilliant” depending on where you live) 🙂

The overall score of a package is the sum of all the (individual score – 3). The rationale behind this, is that a 3 is neutral, and so you can impact the overall score of each application by -2, -1, 0, +1 or +2 depending on how much you like it. The more people like a package the higher the score… and vice-versa.

Screenshots (updated)

You can upload screenshots by clicking on the “no screenshot available” picture. Once your screenshot is uploaded, it will be under review by the admins. If approved it will then appear in the module.

Feedback

Happy reviewing, and don’t hesitate to give us some feedback.

Note: The categories are a bit mixed up. This is an issue we’re aware of. We’ll fix this in the coming days.