by ·12 Comments

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $1000 (3rd donation), Anonymous
  • $282, Weiland und Shmykov GbR aka “Docjones“
  • $138, Mika K.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Edgar B. C.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Philip C. Freytag aka “phil”
  • $100, Joshua W.
  • $100, James S.
  • $100, Jerry F.
  • $100, Desiree G.
  • $82.8 (7th donation), Orlando M. M.
  • $70.5 (5th donation), Wolfgang P.
  • $69, Matthias B.
  • $62, Richard B.
  • $60, Trenton I.
  • $55.2 (5th donation), Laurent P.
  • $50 (3rd donation), David Gagne aka “davidgagne80”
  • $50 (2nd donation), Carlos H. G.
  • $50, Georgene N.
  • $50, Gregor M.
  • $50, Jan C.
  • $50, Martin K.
  • $50, Ryan M.
  • $50, Andreas S.
  • $50, Aaron C.
  • $50, Yuan C. L.
  • $50, Steven Z.
  • $35.25 (13th donation), Marco R.
  • $30 (17th donation), Pete Molina aka “pmolina”
  • $30 (3rd donation), Terry Gillett
  • $30, Fergus M.
  • $28.2 (19th donation), Manuel F.
  • $28.2 (2nd donation), Reiner K.
  • $28.2, Alexandros T.
  • $27.6 (14th donation), Olli K.
  • $27.6 (3rd donation), Pasi K.
  • $27.6, Karol M. R.
  • $25 (7th donation), Kenny Hendrick aka “NprComputers“
  • $25 (4th donation), Michael L. aka “ddavid123“
  • $25 (2nd donation), A Webb aka “allen9013”
  • $25 (2nd donation), Norman B. D.
  • $25, Vernon H.
  • $25, Rebecca S.
  • $25, Gregg M.
  • $25, Larry P.
  • $25, Renee M.
  • $25, Frank K.
  • $25, Douglas J. B.
  • $25, Gerald L.
  • $20.7 (2nd donation), MartinF aka “badwolf9”
  • $20.7 (2nd donation), Joseph R. aka “killinjoe”
  • $20 (13th donation), Matthew M.
  • $20 (10th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
  • $20 (6th donation), Brian G.
  • $20 (5th donation), Henry W.
  • $20 (3rd donation), Trevor H.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Daniel J.
  • $20, Rikstation
  • $20, Gerald S.
  • $20, Bruno Eduardo Ramos aka “BeoR”
  • $20, Christopher C.
  • $20, Kevin S.
  • $20, Jeffery S.
  • $15 (3rd donation), Adriano R. aka “drr00t”
  • $15, Dylan R. aka “Hiro“
  • $15, Tomas Ciagadlak
  • $15, Herbs and Helpers
  • $14.1, Thomas S.
  • $14.1, Jens G.
  • $14.1, Mattias S. aka “DynamicMan”
  • $14.1, Anastasios Kontogiannis aka “tasosoulis“
  • $13.95, Stefan W.
  • $13.8 (12th donation), Paco C.C. aka “kannabix”
  • $13.8, Peter T.
  • $13.8, Ivan Bulychev aka “vanyok”
  • $13.8, Farid F. F.
  • $10.35 (4th donation), Ronald T.
  • $10.18, Renan L.
  • $10 (4th donation), Kiril Sotirov
  • $10 (3rd donation), George238
  • $10 (3rd donation), Ralf H.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Siniša Majstorović
  • $10 (3rd donation), Clemens N.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Haydn P.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Kim H. aka “grhdtj“
  • $10 (2nd donation), Timothy C.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10, Paul K.
  • $10, Nicholas M.
  • $10, Kenneth M.
  • $10, Alexey Z.
  • $10, Artem G. aka “shrewmus”
  • $10, Reilly B.
  • $10, Debra R.
  • $10, Tushar T.
  • $10, John H.
  • $10, Amir M.
  • $10, Jake Basile
  • $10, Dale B.
  • $10, Juan V. A.
  • $10, Jaroslav L.
  • $7.05 (2nd donation), Ralf Schmidt
  • $7.05, Caner Cuhac
  • $7.05, Salvatore S.
  • $7.05, Michael S.
  • $7, Alexander M.
  • $6.9, Camiel D.
  • $6.9, Kevin D.
  • $6.67 (2nd donation), Maxx Hogan
  • $6.67, Maxx Hogan
  • $5.52, Purushottam D.
  • $5 (6th donation), Michael Gstettenbauer
  • $5 (5th donation), Miljenko D.
  • $5 (4th donation), Jose P.
  • $5 (3rd donation), Kelley J. aka “Kelley Green”
  • $5 (2nd donation), Nebojsa R.
  • $5 (2nd donation), Michael C.
  • $5, Ashoka P.
  • $5, Terry W.
  • $5, Ihor H.
  • $4.14 (7th donation), Ulf S. aka “MonteDrago”
  • $2.07, Jere H.
  • $2 (3rd donation), StuzzHosting.com
  • $2 (2nd donation), Bhupendra Kumar Singh aka “B K Singh”
  • $2 (2nd donation), Javier C.
  • $1.92, Meine K.
  • $1.04 (10th donation), Inga Muste aka “TokRa“
  • $1 (12th donation), Cool Computer Tricks
  • $1, Alejandro U.
  • $0.25, Korbin B.

Sponsors:

Money raised in April:

* Donations: $4409.91 (129 donors)
* Sponsors: $1180.61 (118 sponsors)

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

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

  • Linux Mint 10 Julia: 52.19%
  • Linux Mint 9 Isadora LTS: 22.22%
  • LMDE: 8.70%
  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 7.60%
  • Linux Mint 8 Helena: 5.28%
  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 2.23%
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 1.11%
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 0.66%

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 2,796,004
  • Unique views: 3,511,885
  • Pageviews: 4,473,833
  • Page impressions: 2,649,639
  • Search queries: 7,775,406
  • Forum users: 36,308
  • Forum posts: 398,706

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1958 (2nd)
  • Distrowatch (traffic share): 3.9% (2nd)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 13,843th

Events:

Summary:

  • The mintCast project continues on it success and is quickly becoming one of the most popular Linux podcasts available to listeners. Check it out if you haven’t already done so. The mintCast team is also often present on IRC where it’s easy for them to keep in touch with both their audience and the Linux Mint development team.
  • A lot of development and bug fixes were done in April for the upcoming Linux Mint 11. The Update Manager in particular was greatly improved and made its way to both the Mint 11 and LMDE repositories. The Software Manager received many improvements too, though these weren’t revealed yet.
  • We received a $1,000 donation this month. Although it’s his 3rd donation to Linux Mint, the Canadian donor wants to remain anonymous. This important donation had a positive impact on our monthly stats, April being the last month in our release cycle and traditionally a quiet period from a financial point of view. Our overall daily income went down by 4%.
  • I apologise for releasing these statistics a little late. The RC release for Linux Mint 11 should be here in a few days, 2 of its 4 ISOs already passed QA. The stable release should be available in the end of May. We’ll also be working on a special magazine edition of the Linux Identity Kit for Linux Mint 11 which will promote the release and guide users through its use and installation in the USA.

by ·311 Comments

Linux Mint 11 – coming up May 2011

I received many emails and questions about Linux Mint 11, whether it was coming with Unity or Gnome 3, when it was going to come out and what should be expected from it… so, here’s a bit of information about our upcoming release.

ETA (Estimated time of arrival)

We’re on schedule.

Linux Mint 11 should have two releases:

  1. an RC release in the middle of the month
  2. a stable release by the end of May.

As always, we release “when ready” and we can delay a release if we’re not happy with its quality.

The Desktop

Linux Mint 11 comes with Gnome 2.32, the traditional Linux Mint desktop layout, mintMenu and the same desktop elements featured in previous releases.

Compiz is installed by default and so is fusion-icon, which lets you switch easily between Compiz and Metacity.

Software Selection

  • LibreOffice replaces OpenOffice.org as the default office suite.
  • Banshee replaces Rhythmbox as the default music player.
  • gThumb replaces F-Spot as the default photo application.
  • Gwibber is no longer installed by default.
  • padevchooser, paman, paprefs, pavumeter and pavucontrol are no longer installed by default.

Changes

  • The update manager is faster than before and comes with numerous bug fixes. It also features multiple UI improvements.
  • The deskstop settings tool is now desktop-agnostic and serves both generic settings (such as the ability to enable/disable fortunes in the terminal) and desktop settings specific to Gnome, KDE, Xfce..etc. In Xfce it will eventually replace mintconfig-xfce and mintdesktop-xfce.
  • The software manager looks much more polished. It loads marginally faster and now features a splash screen. Its templates were refined to give the user a much nicer browsing experience. The installation and removal of applications are now simulated before the application screen is shown, allowing the software manager to show precisely how much data is to be downloaded, how much space is required on the hard drive and exactly which packages are to be installed and/or removed.
  • Mint-x-theme comes with numerous improvements, bug fixes for Gimp, Banshee, Synaptic, Deluge and round radio buttons.
  • A new “apt download” command was introduced which downloads a .deb package locally along with all its dependencies.
  • Flash Square runs in native 64-bit while 32-bit users can choose between the stable 10.2 and beta 10.3 plugins and have both installed at the same time, easily switching between them using “update-alternatives”.
  • Firefox 4, Chromium and Opera come with an improved mint-search-addon plugin.

With the upstream changes in Unity and Gnome 3, some of the big Linux Mint projects (netdiscovery, restoration snapshots) were postponed and more time was given to ensure this release would feature a functional yet traditional desktop. In many ways, Linux Mint 11 feels like a more modern and more polished version of Linux Mint 10. In contrast with the many distributions adopting new interfaces, Linux Mint 11 will feature the best Gnome “2” desktop you’ve ever got to see.

Well, that’s what we’re aiming for anyway 🙂

Wish us luck and stay tuned for the RC release.

by ·47 Comments

Update:

The repositories are now working fine and everything is back to normal.

There simply were too many users for the bandwidth capacity of the server (and also for some of the mirrors). We removed the bandwidth limits on the server and everything worked as expected. We were using 75Mbps as opposed to the 20Mbps we are currently allowed. To face the demands associated with our growing user base we’re currently negotiating with our host to give our repositories more bandwidth. We’re also considering redundancy scenarios where we would have two repository servers sharing the load under the same sub-domain.

Original message:

We’re experiencing server issues with the Linux Mint repository at the moment.

While we’re investigating the problem, you can switch to one of our mirrors by launching the “Software Sources” tool.

  • From mintMenu: Menu->Administration->Software Sources
  • From the command line: sudo software-properties-gtk

Then simply click on “Download from Main Server”, select “Other”, and choose a mirror close to your geographical location.

Apologies for the inconvenience.