by ·170 Comments

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 6 “Felicia”. Congratulations and thanks to all the people who contributed to this release, to all the translators, to the upstream developers and projects which made this possible and above all to the development team for their continuous support.

Quick steps:

  • Download the ISO.
  • While it’s downloading look at the new features in Linux Mint 6, read the User Guide and make sure to quickly go through the known issues.
  • After the ISO is downloaded verify the MD5 (as described in the user guide).
  • Burn the ISO at low speed and enjoy Linux Mint 6.

Introduction to Linux Mint 6 and new features:

Based on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, Linux 2.6.27, Gnome 2.24 and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” comes with a brand new “Software Manager”, FTP support in mintUpload, proxy support and history of updates in mintUpdate, mint4win (a Windows installer), tabbed browsing in Nautilus and a lot of other improvements. For a complete list of new features read: What’s new in Felicia?

Introduction to the Universal Edition:

The Universal Edition is a customized version of the Main Edition with the following differences:

  • It comes as a liveDVD instead of a liveCD
  • It comes with built-in support for English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Hindi, Urdu, Greek, Finnish, Danish, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Czech, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Ukrainian, Thai, Turkish, Arabic, Korean, Hebrew, Catalan, Croatian, Esperanto, Farsi and Serbian.
  • It comes with no codecs, no support for restricted formats and no proprietary components.
  • It features an extra item in the Sound & Video menu which launches the installation of all missing codecs via a built-in .mint file

The purpose of the Universal Edition is to bring a localized live system to non-English speaking users of Linux Mint and to facilitate the distribution of Linux Mint in countries where software patents are enforceable. This edition replaces the previously called “Light Edition”.

System requirements and known issues:

A minimum of 512MB of RAM is recommended for the liveCD. 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.

To use mint4win, the Windows installer, we recommend a minimum of 256MB of RAM.

For a list of known issues read the Release Notes.

For upgrade instructions read this blog post.

Download Linux Mint 6:

You can download the Main Edition via torrent or via HTTP:

Size: 664MB LiveCD

MD5Sum: 484121e3f4ade5eb28b1358de05f2c1e

Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.de/downloads.html
HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=31

And for the Universal Edition:

Size: 1.2GB LiveDVD

MD5Sum: 0391350d55bab0dc89edc511f0df7a21

Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.de/downloads.html
HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=32

Europe:

Northern America:

Rest of the World:

Order Linux Mint 6 on CD/DVD:

Our partner on-disk.com ships Linux Mint 6 Worldwide for as little as $10. They also contribute $5.41 to Linux Mint for each CD/DVD sold.

The Main Edition can be purchased as a liveCD from here.

The Universal Edition can be purchased as a liveDVD from here.

Enjoy!

Have a lot of fun with “Felicia” and let us know what you think. Reviews will be answered and your feedback will be used to improve the distribution before the next release. We hope you enjoy this release as much as we enjoyed making it and we wish you a very nice experience with Linux Mint.

by ·111 Comments

The upgrade tool is ready. It makes upgrading from Linux Mint 5 to Linux Mint 6 trivial. Now, having said that… this is still a risky operation.

Warning

The recommended way to install Linux Mint is to perform a fresh install. We’re planning to release Linux Mint 6 tomorrow so I personally recommend you wait until then and go the safe way, try the ISO, see if it works well with your computer and then decide to upgrade, or even better, to perform a fresh install.

With all these warning you probably wonder why I’m trying to convince you not to use the tool I just wrote. It’s been properly tested, it works well but it still presents a risk. Even though I prefer people to perform fresh installs from the live CD, a lot of people asked for this tool. As usual I provide a choice and a recommendation. If for any reason you can’t afford loosing your current system, then stay away from this tool.

How to

From Linux Mint 5 Elyssa, install the package “mintupgrader-elyssa-main” and run the upgrade tool from the menu (“Upgrade to Linux Mint 6” in the Administration category).

When the upgrade is finished. Reboot the computer by opening a terminal and by typing “sudo reboot” (without the quotes).

Give us your feedback and for those who make it all the way to Felicia, enjoy Linux Mint 6.

Edit: This tool is designed for the Main edition.

by ·89 Comments

As you probably know the release of Linux Mint 6 is coming very soon. In fact the ISO itself is ready and some of you may have already found it in one of our mirrors. Be patient and bear with me for a few extra days. Although the ISO is ready, a few other things remain to be done before we can officially release Mint 6 Felicia.

I’m currently working on the Universal Edition (which replaces the “Light Edition”, comes with a text-based grub for improved compatibility, removes codecs from the Main Edition and adds language packs on a live DVD media). The reason it’s taking time is because I still don’t have broadband… and the size of some of the language packs makes it difficult for me to perform this ridiculously simple task 🙂

I just finished editing the Linux Mint 6 User Guide. If you want to help please read it and report any typos/mistake you may find in it:

http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/stable/6/user-guide/english.pdf

The Software Portal is ready but one thing is missing: Your ratings and reviews. The new Software Manager (mintInstall 5) is a great tool but it relies on YOU to know which apps are popular and which apps are not. So PLEASE log in the Software Portal and start rating and reviewing the applications for Mint 6:

http://linuxmint.com/software/?sec=categories&release=4

To be realistic we’ll probably be fully ready and announcing the officialy release of Linux Mint 6 early next week. That leaves you a few days to review the user guide and the rate applications in the software portal.

Sorry again for the delay. Thanks for being patient and thanks to all of you who contribute and help Linux Mint get better all the time.