It’s been a little more than two weeks and you’re probably wondering where exactly is the stable release of Linux Mint 6 Felicia.

I was away for two weeks in Florida (great country by the way, I had never been to the US before) and I only got back last week. Then something came up and we got an opportunity to move closer to where our house will be built in the future, so I’m now moving house and I’m looking at between 1 and 2 weeks without an Internet connection…

Of course this is all a bit personal but as you may know Linux Mint isn’t maintained by a company hiring paid full-time employees, it’s still something the team does in their spare time and as you can see it can get impacted by personal events.

We’re now in December and Linux Mint traditionally release in the end of November, so although we don’t stick to a fixed schedule we’re considering ourselves a bit late. Having said that I’ve already started analysing the feedback the community gave since the release of RC1 and it looks like the quality of the RC release was very good. It’s missing Wubi support and there probably will be a few bug fixes between RC1 and the stable release but I’m confident both release will be quite similar and there’s still a possibility RC1 users might not need to upgrade (in other words, if most changes affect the CD itself, RC1 could be considered fit for usage).

Until I get broadband again, I’ll be setting up a temporary office for myself where I can work on Linux Mint and I can be connected to the Internet. Hopefully that will be enough to wrap things up for Linux Mint 6 and maybe even to develop the upgrade tool we mentioned before.

At home I received new equipment, a new desktop, some KVM switches and a 24″ screen for the sole purpose of working on both Main and x64 editions at the same time. Due to the trip to Florida and now to moving houses I’m not only getting late in releasing Mint 6, I’m also missing an opportunity to release Main and x64 editions at the same time, but don’t be mistaken, this is still my ambition and I’m confident both architectures will receive the same level of attention.

Another piece of good news is that we’ve worked hard before I left and a lot of people continued to work hard while I was away… so things should be moving fast in the months coming. I’ve seen the team upload a few CE ISOs and I don’t know if you remember my call for setting up a podcast team a few weeks back? Well someone stepped up and a team formed around him. Our new podcast is called “mintCast”, hosted by Charles Olsen and the very first episode is ready to be downloaded right here: http://www.mintcast.org/

Again I would like to apologize for the delay and the lack of news. Things happened quite fast and both this trip and moving to a new house were actually decided at the last minute. It had to happen in November and of course this was the worst timing ever for me and for Linux Mint 6.

Note: I might not answer emails for a little while as my number #1 priority is to get to a stable release for Mint 6. Things should get back to normal in about 2 weeks… 😉 I’ll keep everyone posted as to how things go.

Edit #1: All the furnitures are in place, the phone line is working and the DSL ordered. It’ll be another 10 days before broadband is ready but I got a 3G dongle so I can connect to the net in the meantime. It’s not ideal, but it means I can start working again. I catalogued all the bugs the community reported and I’m now in the process of reproducing/fixing them.