The Linux Mint Blog

In Bianca we were trying to support as many languages as we could translate isolinux in. In Cassandra we decided on a set number and prioritized the CD space for new applications. With only 3 languages left the Cassandra live CD supported English, Spanish and French.

In Celena and future versions of Linux Mint, the live CD will support only one language: English. This of course doesn’t prevent the installation of other languages and the compatibility of the distribution with them, it just means that by default only English will be installed and by default the liveCD will run in English.

All French and Spanish speaking users will have to do the same as people using other languages: Open the “Control Center” and add support for their language using the “Language Support” option.

It is indeed a tough decision, particularly at this stage now that the Spanish Mint Community is becoming so vibrant not to be able to give them Spanish “out of the box”.

Starting with Celena Linux Mint will maintain its own Firefox package. Based on the Ubuntu package it will include Linux Mint’s own modifications and prevent Ubuntu rebranding when Firefox gets a security upgrade.

For the user this means:

– The default Firefox homepage won’t be impacted when Firefox gets upgraded any more.

– There might be a slight delay between the moment when Ubuntu releases an upgrade for Firefox and the moment when Linux Mint does the same.

For this to work the Mint package will use a different versionning scheme, removing dots between minor numbers. For instance Firefox 2.0.0.6-ubuntuX in Ubuntu will correspond to Firefox 2006-mintX in Linux Mint.

So Mint 4.0 might very well be called Daryna 🙂

Anyway… Celena should hit the download mirrors very soon now with only one BETA release preceeding the STABLE one.

With KDE and XFCE editions developped in parallels by Jamie Boo Birse and Merlwiz the team is going to be able to focus on Daryna “before” gutsy gets out! Of course, there is no way Daryna would be released before Gutsy, but the gap separating the two should be greatly reduced.

So far Daryna should simply be a merge of Celena’s and Gutsy’s innovations plus a few goodies such as mintServe and mintSupport.

New features in Celena: mintUpload, mintAssistant, PDF printing, stability and speed improvements, better base, new artwork.

New features in Gutsy: Compiz Fusion, Graphical Configuration Tool for X, Desktop improvements (deskbar, tracker, fast user switching),  2.6.22 kernel, AppArmor, better hardware support (Broadcom wifi chipsets for instance), more up to date package base (Thunderbird 2.0 etc..).

Daryna should compile all of these together.

New mint-tools currently in alpha or beta stage could be added as well or come in later on within  a Mint 4.1 release.