2 applications were added to Linux Mint today.

The first one is the demo of a very popular game called World of Goo.

This is the demo version which lets you play the first “World” of levels in the game. It’s quite a lot for a demo and you’re guaranteed to get addicted. The full version of the game is about $20. I was very impressed with the quality of this game and with the fact that it was made available to Linux by its editors, so with their consent it’s now added to the pool of applications available to Linux Mint (repositories, portal, software manager).

The second one is an open source application called Bombono DVD.

I was contacted by the developer behind that project and I couldn’t see any reason why this software wasn’t already available in the Ubuntu repositories. So this got added as well and I hope to get your feedback on this.

Note: If you want to efficiently rate applications and help other users to find quality software, please use the Software Portal to do so: http://linuxmint.com/software/

To install these applications, refresh your cache (“apt update”) and install the packages “worldofgoodemo” and “bombono-dvd”. Alternatively, use the Update Manager to update the package “mintinstall-data” and then run the Software Manager.

Portal links:

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $250, Steven Borthick aka “stevenborthick” (USA) – http://www.stevenborthick.com
  • $154, Johannes L. (Finland)
  • $154, Roland G. (France)
  • $130, Daniel W. (World) – http://www.downloadstube.net
  • $110, ComunidadHosting aka “Apolo” (Spain) – http://www.comunidadhosting.com
  • $110, Adrianus Kleemans (Switzerland)
  • $100, Jordan S. (USA)
  • $100, Jason F. (USA)
  • $100, Anonymous (France)
  • $100, Eberhard R. (Switzerland)
  • $77, Paul S. (Luxembourg) – http://psweb.org
  • $77, Patrick Ciret (France)
  • $77, Lyudmyla H. (Germany)
  • $77, Carine K. (Luxembourg)
  • $50 (3rd donation), Gordon Hilliard aka “ghilly” (United Kingdom)
  • $50 (3rd donation), Edward B. (USA)
  • $50, Francois F. (France)
  • $50, Sigbjorn S. (Norway)
  • $50, George R. (USA)
  • $50, Sachi Wilson (USA)
  • $50, Tom H. (USA)
  • $50, Steve K. (USA)
  • $50, Brian D. (USA) – http://thehighwaygirl.com
  • $50, Eleanor W. (Singapore)
  • $50, James E. (USA)
  • $46, Daniel Blok (Netherlands)
  • $40, Slavoljub M. (Norway)
  • $38, Manuel F. (Portugal)
  • $30 (5th donation), Frank Bechstein (Germany) – http://www.gamer-site.de/
  • $30, Henry D. (USA)
  • $30, Kevin Dermott (United Kingdom)
  • $30, Dittmar S. (Germany)
  • $30, Janni L. (Denmark)
  • $25 (2nd donation), William S. (USA)
  • $25, Pete Molina aka “pmolina” (USA)
  • $25, Frank Swygert aka “farna” (USA) – http://farna.home.att.net/AMC.html
  • $25, Heather H. (USA)
  • $25, Diosdado D.-C. (USA)
  • $25, H B H. (USA)
  • $25, John N. (USA)
  • $25, Alexandr K. (USA)
  • $25, Jerry Basham (USA)
  • $25, Robert D B. (USA)
  • $25, Todd W. aka “MysticGold04” (USA)
  • $25, Peter T. (United Kingdom)
  • $20 (2nd donation), Phillip H. (Australia)
  • $20 (2nd donation), Bjorn S. Nielsen aka “bjornie” (Norway)
  • $20, Patrick Taylor aka “pataylo” (USA)
  • $20, David van Geest (USA) – http://60cycle.net
  • $20, Robert L. (USA)
  • $20, Ivan Y. (USA)
  • $20, Keizo M. (Japan)
  • $20, Brandon E. (USA)
  • $20, Ricardo Calimanis aka “ricardo.calimanis” (Brazil) – http://www.docstibr.net
  • $20, Brent McK. (USA)
  • $20, Jonathan F. (USA)
  • $20, I Wajan Aries D. (Indonesia)
  • $20, Svante L. (Sweden)
  • $20, Jennifer P. (Canada)
  • $15 (3rd donation), Marco R. (Italy)
  • $15 (2nd donation), Marcos Antonio S. (Italy)
  • $15, Ulrich K. (Germany)
  • $15, Stefan M. (Germany)
  • $15, Emil Pavlov aka “emil_pavlov” (Bulgaria)
  • $15, Jeff Reid aka “jlr1701” (USA) – http://channelsforthelight.com
  • $15, Matt Y. (France)
  • $15, Giancarlo M. (Italy)
  • $15, Anthony S. (USA)
  • $15, David C. (USA)
  • $15, Joachim M. (Austria)
  • $15, Alfredo A. from PROTECNALIA BCN INT, S.L. (Spain) – http://www.protecnalia.com
  • $11, Lee Sturman aka “Hammerlee” (United Kingdom)
  • $10 (2nd donation), Richard G. (USA)
  • $10, Mykhaylo V. (Czech Republic)
  • $10, Jan H. (Norway)
  • $10, Calin Aprodu (Poland)
  • $10, Ronald E. (USA)
  • $10, Claudio B. (Italy)
  • $10, Jordan T. (New Zealand)
  • $10, Amber H. (USA)
  • $10, Ted Peterson (USA)
  • $10, Levi P. (USA)
  • $10, Martin J. (United Kingdom)
  • $10, George F. (USA)
  • $10, Mark Rocha (India) – http://www.markrocha.net
  • $10, Dan Jackson (United Kingdom)
  • $10, Edwin R. (USA)
  • $10, Marc-Andre Turcotte aka “matmat07” (Canada)
  • $10, oscar799 (United Kingdom)
  • $8, Mark Broadbent (United Kingdom)
  • $7, Francisco C. C. (Spain)
  • $7, Mauro De Vita (Italy)
  • $7, Craig H. (New Zealand)
  • $7, Kurt Marquardt (Germany)
  • $7, Andrzej K. (Poland)
  • $5, Enrico Galli (Italy) – http://www.egw.it
  • $5, Alberto P. (Chile)
  • $5, Brooke Dukes aka “BandonRandon” (USA) – http://bandonrandon.com
  • $5, Tamas B. (United Kingdom)
  • $5, Joseph S. (USA)
  • $5, Andrej L. (Slovenia)
  • $5, Dale E. (USA)
  • $5, Nanda Kumar (India)
  • $5, Michael K. (USA)
  • $5, Matthew Mennecke (USA)
  • $5, Angel Israel O. C. (Mexico)
  • $5, Ian (United Kingdom) – http://www.printerforums.net
  • $5, Donna Fontenot aka “DonnaFontenot – DazzlinDonna” (USA) – http://www.dazzlindonna.com
  • $4, Sindre Smistad aka “ctrl_” (Norway)
  • $2, Max G. (USA)
  • $1 (2nd donation), Fredrik G. (Sweden)
  • $1, Chris (Ireland) – http://www.letblog.com
  • $1, Nandang H. (Indonesia)
  • $1, Vadim B. (Russia)
  • $1, Rory H. (United Kingdom)

Sponsors:

Money raised in November:

* Donations: $3502 (116 donors)
* Sponsors: $441.4 (49 sponsors)

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

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

  • Linux Mint 8 Helena: 32%
  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 53% (-28%)
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 8% (-3%)
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 4% (-1%)
  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 3% (-0%)

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 2,149,672 (+0%)
  • Pageviews: 3,784,756 (+3.5%)
  • Page impressions: 1,805,004
  • Search queries: 4,508,290
  • Forum users: 23,868
  • Forum posts: 203,951

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1414 (3rd)
  • Distrowatch (traffic share): 4.8% (2nd)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 20,352th

Events:

Summary:

  • November 2009 was the (9th consecutive) best month ever since the creation of Linux Mint.
  • The overall income is up 2%.
  • Our user base is the second largest in the desktop Linux market.
  • The community support continues to be outstanding, with 116 people gathering this month to donate a total of more than $3,500.
  • Linux Mint 8 was released and the x64 is already on the way, giving us the assurance that we will have time to develop a Debian Edition before the upcoming Linux Mint 9 in Spring next year.
  • Our Distrowatch traffic share is currently at 4.8%. It has never been so high before, and that’s a good indicator that our user base is growing again.

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 8 x64 Helena RC1.

Quick steps:

Introduction to Linux Mint 8 x64:

This x64 edition of Linux Mint 8 is almost identical to the Main Edition but compiled for 64 bit processors (Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad, AMD Athlon X2 64 and all x86-64 compliant processors). It comes with all the improvements featured in Linux Mint 8 Helena Main Edition.

System requirements:

An X86_64 64 bit processor (Intel Core 2, AMD X2 64, etc…) .

A minimum of 512MB of RAM is recommended. Once installed the system works fine with as low as 256MB RAM. The installation process deals with 2.5GB of data compressed on a 700MB CD and it can hang or fail on systems with less than 512MB RAM. If you have between 256MB and 512MB RAM you may have to try to install several times.

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.

The upgrade path from Linux Mint 7 x64 will be finalized for the stable release.

Feedback and bug reports:

Please report any bug you may find via the Linux Mint 8 x64 RC1 Bug Thread and give us your feedback on this release by posting a comment right here on the blog.

Download Linux Mint 8 x64 RC1:

You can download Linux Mint 8 x64 RC1 via torrent or via HTTP:

Size: 686MB LiveCD
MD5Sum: 7320db360aae3d2e119f4eeb6ca893bf

Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.com/torrent/LinuxMint-8-x64-RC1.iso.torrent
HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=46

Asia:

Europe:

    Northern America:

      Rest of the World:

      Enjoy!

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