by ·21 Comments

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $214.5 (5th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
  • $150 (2nd donation), funkajja
  • $129 (3rd donation), Orlando M. M.
  • $100 (3rd donation), Anonymous
  • $100 (3rd donation), Jordan S.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Roland Stohler
  • $100, Steve E.
  • $100, Connie E.
  • $100, Douglas G.
  • $100, Michelle F. P.
  • $100, Marc J.
  • $65, Branko B.
  • $65, Stephen C. E.
  • $64.5, Andreas S.
  • $64.5, Shaun H.
  • $64.36, Matthias M.
  • $53.53 (5th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
  • $50 (3rd donation), Richard H.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Michael L. aka “ddavid123”
  • $50 (2nd donation), G. Sheffield
  • $50 (2nd donation), Henry Dubb aka “Henry“
  • $50 (2nd donation), Darrel Norstrom aka “Darrel”
  • $50, Spencer S.
  • $50, Tom B.
  • $50, Michael M.
  • $50, F. D.
  • $50, Jeff R. aka “jlr1701”
  • $50, Christian H.
  • $50, Garry R.
  • $50, Michael T.
  • $50, Edgar B. C.
  • $40 (13th donation), Pete Molina aka “pmolina”
  • $40, Jason M.
  • $39 (3rd donation), Laurent P.
  • $35 (18th donation), slw
  • $32.5, Volker M.
  • $32.25, Robbert M.
  • $30 (8th donation), Philippe W.
  • $30, Clifton Redmon
  • $30, Michel S.
  • $30, Steven S.
  • $30, Torben C.
  • $30, Gordon W.
  • $30, Douglas W.
  • $26 (4th donation), DB. aka “Dick”
  • $26 (2nd donation), Carlo C.
  • $26, Ioannis P.
  • $26, Peter M.
  • $26, Hans-Rudolf R.
  • $25.8 (10th donation), Olli K.
  • $25.74, Eugen S.
  • $25 (6th donation), John M.
  • $25 (4th donation), Kenny Hendrick aka “NprComputers“
  • $25 (3rd donation), Bob Donnelly aka “rdonnelly”
  • $25 (3rd donation), Paul Bary
  • $25 (3rd donation), DLX Company
  • $25 (2nd donation), Anthony F H.
  • $25 (2nd donation), Dale R.
  • $25, Shwan O.
  • $25, Fu Y. C.
  • $25, Stuart S.
  • $25, James P.
  • $25, Gregory T.
  • $25, Michael V.
  • $25, Stephen S.
  • $25, Russell S.
  • $23, Todd B.
  • $20 (9th donation), Matthew M.
  • $20 (5th donation), Ludovic G. aka “Lewdsquirrel”
  • $20 (5th donation), Brian G.
  • $20 (4th donation), Anonymous
  • $20 (4th donation), Anonymous
  • $20 (3rd donation), Security Camera
  • $20 (3rd donation), Scott H.
  • $20 (3rd donation), Eugene C.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Bruce D. aka “travtek”
  • $20 (2nd donation), Charles E.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Charles E.
  • $20, Steve Q.
  • $20, Vinay M.
  • $20, David O.
  • $20, Gavin Heverly-Coulson aka “gavinhc”
  • $20, Divine P. I.
  • $20, Charlie B.
  • $20, RVStore.com aka “WSiaB“
  • $20, Michael G.
  • $20, Invisible Books
  • $20, Linda P.
  • $20, Richard J.
  • $20, Avery W.
  • $20, Joshua N.
  • $19.5, Ángel M. S. R.
  • $19.5, Lucien G.
  • $17.06 (2nd donation), Jacob B.
  • $15 (5th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
  • $15 (4th donation), Michael C.
  • $15 (3rd donation), Raphael C.
  • $15 (3rd donation), Jun Q.
  • $15 (3rd donation), John P.
  • $15, Danie V. D. M.
  • $15, Gerald C.
  • $15, Klaus K.
  • $15, Andrew O.
  • $14 (3rd donation), Tiaan Steynberg aka “Jesica“
  • $13, Daniel V.
  • $13, Mirko Z. aka “zanzi75”
  • $12.9 (2nd donation), Jacques aka “germanix”
  • $12.9, Juan G.
  • $12.9, John G.
  • $12.87 (14th donation), Emil Pavlov aka “emil_pavlov”
  • $12.87 (2nd donation), Crefelean Nicolae aka “kneekoo“
  • $12.87, Marcus S.
  • $12.87, Philip E.
  • $12.87, Segundo -zenairenet-
  • $12.87, Hugh O.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Nobutoshi K. aka “founcid”
  • $10 (3rd donation), Peter Portin
  • $10 (3rd donation), David M.
  • $10 (2nd donation), P. S. B. aka “fixpcpaul“
  • $10, Oscar L.
  • $10, Adelmo B. D. O.
  • $10, Minh T.
  • $10, Paul M.
  • $10, Jana S.
  • $10, Adriano R. aka “drr00t”
  • $10, Marc Y.
  • $10, Mike L.
  • $10, Robert S.
  • $10, David E.
  • $10, Garry M.
  • $10, Jonathan K.
  • $10, Saravanan S
  • $7.74 (4th donation), Kevin Dermott
  • $7 (3rd donation), Debra R.
  • $6.5, Regis P.
  • $6.5, Dimitrios S.
  • $6.5, Juan D. D. A. B. aka “JUANDE”
  • $6.5, Jean-noel C.
  • $6.45, Tobias P.
  • $6.45, Harri Mulari
  • $5 (4th donation), Paul B. aka “Dude”
  • $5 (3rd donation), Miljenko D.
  • $5 (2nd donation), Rosen (samcro) Raynov aka “samcro“
  • $5 (2nd donation), Guillermo Vives
  • $5, Andri Y. M.
  • $5, Andre T.
  • $5, Александр И.
  • $5, Dieter H.
  • $4 (3rd donation), Romeo C. D. aka “Yupy“
  • $3 (2nd donation), Chew Chean Hoe
  • $3 (2nd donation), Rosen (samcro) Raynov aka “samcro“
  • $3 (2nd donation), András N.
  • $2.45, Dustin K.
  • $2.15, Tammy and Sid aka “we love you!!“
  • $2, Ubozhenko A. aka “Aleksdem“
  • $1.4 (3rd donation), Romeo C. D. aka “Yupy“
  • $1.29, Luis Chavarria aka “Alex”
  • $1 (8th donation), Kay Pee Jewelers
  • $1 (2nd donation), Printer Forums
  • $1, ocean
  • $1, Harnesses for horses
  • $1, Kolektory słoneczne aka “Kolektory słoneczne“
  • $1, Slagle J.
  • $1, Jonas K.
  • $1, Chris D.

Sponsors:

Money raised in December:

* Donations: $4499.59 (165 donors)
* Sponsors: $999 (96 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: 39.18%
  • Linux Mint 9 Isadora LTS: 32.66%
  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 9.58%
  • Linux Mint 8 Helena: 7.93%
  • LMDE: 6.26%
  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 1.88%
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 1.65%
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 0.86%

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 2,852,279
  • Unique views:3,640,435
  • Pageviews: 4,664,378
  • Page impressions: 2,309,471
  • Search queries: 7,205,201
  • Forum users: 41,541
  • Forum posts: 349,050

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1493 (2nd)
  • Distrowatch (traffic share): 4.9% (2nd)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 15,359th

Events:

Summary:

  • December 2010 was a frustrating yet really exciting month for Linux Mint. The project went through its worst infrastructure problems as the servers, the team, and the overall scale of the project weren’t adapting quickly enough to cope with the growth and success of the Linux Mint desktop. The teams were re-organised with Oscar799 and Justin stepping up to take the lead of, respectively, the forums and the IRC. Personal incidents and server shortages lead to delays, and no efficient way to follow our testing process. The KDE edition which was supposed to get an RC in December was postponed, and LMDE was only released late in the month with an issue on its 32-bit ISO which called for a re-spin early in January. The forums, in the meantime, were down almost every day… So, new servers were bought, tests were done, teams were changed and money, for the first time, was introduced within some of the teams. Radical changes were made and though we’re still halfway through and there’s still a lot more to be done to adequately scale the project, by the end of the month, we were much better prepared.
  • Despite its need for a 32-bit re-spin, LMDE got extremely popular. With support for 64-bit, features on-par with the latest Linux Mint 10, and a second release showing the team’s commitment to maintaining it, LMDE doubled its user base and now represents more than 6% of all Linux Mint users.
  • Sponsors are at an all-time high, and a lot of money was received from donations. It’s hard to explain the feelings you can get from receiving such a large amount of support. Imagine being in a room with 165 people, who all came to help… This month, a Brazilian gentleman helped us for the 5th time, to donate more than $200. And then there’s companies behind and the sponsors, R1Soft for instance who sends us $231/month and Vault Networks, SevenL, Goscomb Technologies and Nutime who provide us with free dedicated servers. This is extremely motivating, it constantly reminds me of the passion we all have in what we’re doing and the one we manage to inspire. Things were tough this month so I’m a little more talkative than usual about this, but I just wanted to talk about this a little, as it really helps and I’m extremely grateful for this. Our November stats were a month late as we prioritized the releases and the infrastructure problems, and I’d like to apologize for this. December 2010 represented a financial growth of over 3% and the 2nd “best month since the start of the project in 2006” in a row.
  • With the success of Linux Mint 10 and LMDE, our user base continues to grow. I touched on some of the challenges this caused for our project. A successful distribution is much more than just a good desktop, it’s a community, a project, a team and all that comes with it to give people a pleasant experience and efficient ways of communicating among themselves. Some of this has been below-standard lately and in clear contrast with the expectations we gave to people when it came to quality. In January 2011, we’re hoping to bring an RC and a stable release of Linux Mint 10 KDE, but first and foremost to scale our project and to implement long-lasting solutions to our infrastructure problems.
  • In 2010 most of our focus was on the desktop itself. In 2011 we’re scaling our project to meet the demand of a much larger audience, we’re looking at possible system changes in APT, upcoming changes in Gnome and  important upstream challenges. We’re not quite sure what’s going to happen, but we’ve a very precise vision of where we’d like to be. We had a great year, and 2011 promises to be equally as fun and exciting! Thanks to everyone involved, from the team members, to donors, people who help others, spread the word or even simply to people who appreciate and like what we’re doing. There’s nothing better than giving and making people happy, and with support from so many people and companies. It’s a real honour to be able to do this. There’s a lot of passion for technology and a deep admiration for what Open Source and (without getting political) Free Software represent, but the level of support and the close relationship we have with you, as a community, it’s simply fantastic! If anything, that’s what makes it so easy. Here’s to another great year, to you all, to users, to the team, to all the contributors, translators and people involved in the project. Happy New Year everyone!

by ·0 Comments

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $283.8, Norbert C.
  • $200, George D.
  • $158.2 (5th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
  • $155 (3rd donation), Ian M. aka “bcc4foss“
  • $134, Hugues-Antoine S.
  • $100 (5th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
  • $100 (3rd donation), Eric H.
  • $100 (3rd donation), Anonymous
  • $100 (2nd donation), Connie E.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Terry H.
  • $100, Drazen P.
  • $100, Arne A.
  • $100, Robert E. K.
  • $100, James D.
  • $89, Axel B.
  • $66 (5th donation), Eric H.
  • $66 (3rd donation), Richard C
  • $66, Frank J.
  • $65, Dmitriy S.
  • $50.75 (2nd donation), Christian aka “nert”
  • $50 (8th donation), Jonathan B. Horen aka “JBHoren”
  • $50 (2nd donation), Michael L. aka “ddavid123”
  • $50 (2nd donation), Steven Heidel aka “stevenheidel“
  • $50, Chris T.
  • $50, Gordon Hilliard aka “ghilly”
  • $50, Jimmy Breck-McKye
  • $43.5, Chema Cortes aka “ch3m4”
  • $43.5, Aurelien P. aka “nabnut”
  • $40.5, François G.
  • $40 (2nd donation), Richaed Meade aka “Dick”
  • $40, Theodor J.
  • $39.6 (3rd donation), Orlando M. M.
  • $38.7, Ole H.
  • $36.25 (2nd donation), Lyudmyla H.
  • $35 (13th donation), Pete Molina aka “pmolina”
  • $35, Jack H.
  • $33, Geir H.
  • $32.5 (8th donation), Jerry Jackson aka “900i“
  • $32.25, Anders K.
  • $30, Luis V.
  • $30, Bernard O.
  • $29 (10th donation), Olli K.
  • $29 (2nd donation), Jacques aka “germanix”
  • $26.8 (2nd donation), Eoghan C
  • $26.8, Gernot R.
  • $26.4, Pasi K.
  • $26 (15th donation), Manuel F.
  • $25.8, Anno K.
  • $25 (6th donation), John M.
  • $25 (6th donation), Jay Stewart aka “jag1182”
  • $25 (3rd donation), Donald D’A.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Tim B.
  • $25 (3rd donation), James M. aka “jaspmatt”
  • $25, Grant W.
  • $25, Eliezer S.
  • $25, Dennis L.
  • $25, Mark W.
  • $25, Thomas L.
  • $25, Flowering Design LLC
  • $25, Christopher B.
  • $25, Elmer H.
  • $25, Kelley J.
  • $25, Gene C.
  • $25, Afshin E.
  • $25, Elliott H.
  • $24.5, Dave K. aka “fspilot”
  • $20 (18th donation), slw
  • $20 (9th donation), Matthew M.
  • $20 (6th donation), John M.
  • $20 (5th donation), Phillip H.
  • $20 (3rd donation), David M.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Al H.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Jared S. aka “jspice9000”
  • $20, Arve Seljebu
  • $20, Steve K.
  • $20, Roger F.
  • $20, Anonymous
  • $20, Eric B.
  • $20, Benjamin M.
  • $20, Mariela M.
  • $20, Andrew B.
  • $20, Bret M.
  • $19.8, Julio A. H.
  • $15 (4th donation), Michael C.
  • $15 (3rd donation), Greg Dawes aka “Greg-NZ”
  • $15, Bryan P.
  • $15, Andrew Y.
  • $15, Daniel E. D.
  • $14.5 (14th donation), Emil Pavlov aka “emil_pavlov”
  • $14.5 (2nd donation), Jörn G.
  • $14.5, Amadeu F. aka “zerozero”
  • $14.5, Jens-uwe R.
  • $14.5, Yann S.
  • $13.4 (2nd donation), Crefelean Nicolae aka “kneekoo“
  • $13.4 (2nd donation), E. J. aka “ej64”
  • $13.4, Ingmar K.
  • $13.4, Dušan P.
  • $13.2 (3rd donation), Paul Evans aka “paul”
  • $13.2 (2nd donation), Andreas G.
  • $13.2, Christophe D.
  • $13.2, Graham D.
  • $13.2, Fabio L.
  • $10 (4th donation), Anders B.
  • $10 (4th donation), Paul B. aka “Dude”
  • $10 (3rd donation), Debra R.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Nobutoshi K. aka “founcid”
  • $10 (3rd donation), Daniel F. aka “danielpiupiu”
  • $10 (3rd donation), Security Camera
  • $10 (3rd donation), Jun Q.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Salim Farah aka “Verix”
  • $10 (2nd donation), Trey H. aka “Ubuntaur”
  • $10 (2nd donation), Gabe
  • $10, Emad B.
  • $10, Kevin C.
  • $10, Rashed aka “linuxT“
  • $10, Vavai
  • $10, Bradley T.
  • $10, dS]x[2b
  • $10, Avery W.
  • $10, Saeed F.
  • $10, Chip M.
  • $10, James W.
  • $10, Richard F. aka “rick1959”
  • $10, Marie E.
  • $10, Roger C.
  • $10, Alan Vallis aka “mistywindow “
  • $10, Nils N.
  • $10, Greg aka “Gregology“
  • $10, Erin K.
  • $10, Robert T.
  • $10, Rodrigo B. V.
  • $10, Christian S.
  • $10, E Ticaret ve Bilisim Teknoljileri Ltd. Sti. aka “eticaret“
  • $8.7, Guy B.
  • $8 (2nd donation), Vagn B. J.
  • $8, Travis C.
  • $7.77 (2nd donation), Jamie F.
  • $7.74 (3rd donation), Ronald T.
  • $7.25, Binbin X.
  • $7.25, Maurice P.
  • $6.7, Stefaan D.
  • $6.6, Sebastian S.
  • $6.6, Artur R.
  • $6.6, Daniel Stender
  • $6.5, Daniel A.
  • $6.45 (2nd donation), Giulio G.
  • $5 (3rd donation), Miljenko D.
  • $5 (2nd donation), P. S. B. aka “fixpcpaul“
  • $5 (2nd donation), Szymon C.
  • $5, Glen H.
  • $5, David R.
  • $5, Tasos P.
  • $5, Tony M.
  • $5, Abid H.
  • $5, Mauricio Camara aka “mauriciocamara”
  • $5, Allen S.
  • $5, Михаил Я.
  • $4.94 (6th donation), Sylwia Bialczak
  • $4, Kenneth P.
  • $4, Igor D. from Macedonia aka “Dzikso”
  • $3.96, Brian M.
  • $3 (2nd donation), András N.
  • $3, Adam W.
  • $3, Varun V. aka “kvv”
  • $3, Alexandr B.
  • $3, Petr V.
  • $2.58 (3rd donation), Ulf S. aka “MonteDrago”
  • $2.58, Simone D. O.
  • $2 (3rd donation), Craig Stock aka “craig10x”
  • $2, FreeBSD News
  • $2, Elena A.
  • $2, Piotr Łęgosz aka “PML“
  • $2, Saugata Roy
  • $2, Pranav Tiwari aka “Pranav”
  • $1.32, Marco T.
  • $1 (8th donation), Kay Pee Jewelers
  • $1 (3rd donation), Romeo C. D. aka “Yupy“
  • $1 (2nd donation), Nitin K.S aka “Ish”
  • $1 (2nd donation), Nitin K.S aka “Ish”
  • $1, Семён Г.
  • $1, Leo Ghost
  • $1, Jakov K.
  • $1, Chaushun Y.

Sponsors:

Money raised in November:

* Donations: $4847.29 (183 donors)
* Sponsors: $994 (96 sponsors)

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

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

  • Linux Mint 9 Isadora LTS: 40.6%
  • Linux Mint 10 Julia: 29.54%
  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 11.31%
  • Linux Mint 8 Helena: 10.16%
  • LMDE: 3.16%
  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 2.23%
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 1.95%
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 1.05%

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 2,642,005
  • Unique views: 3,460,340
  • Pageviews: 4,425,437
  • Page impressions: 2,404,807
  • Search queries: 6,939,011

Events:

Summary:

  • November 2010 saw the release of Linux Mint 10 Julia.
  • Work started on a new Linux Mint Debian release and its upcoming support for 64-bit.
  • Donations, sponsorships and advertising incomes were high. Financially, and with an increase of over 3%, November 2010 was the best month for the distribution since its beginning in 2006.
    $283.8, Norbert C.
    $200, George D.
    $158.2 (5th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
    $155 (3rd donation), Ian M. aka “bcc4foss”
    $134, Hugues-Antoine S.
    $100 (5th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
    $100 (3rd donation), Anonymous
    $100 (3rd donation), Eric H.
    $100 (2nd donation), Connie E.
    $100 (2nd donation), Terry H.
    $100, Drazen P.
    $100, Arne A.
    $100, Robert E. K.
    $100, James D.
    $89, Axel B.
    $66 (5th donation), Eric H.
    $66 (3rd donation), Richard C
    $66, Frank J.
    $65, Dmitriy S.
    $50.75 (2nd donation), Christian aka “nert”
    $50 (8th donation), Jonathan B. Horen aka “JBHoren”
    $50 (2nd donation), Michael L. aka “ddavid123”
    $50 (2nd donation), Steven Heidel aka “stevenheidel”
    $50, Chris T.
    $50, Gordon Hilliard aka “ghilly”
    $50, Jimmy Breck-McKye
    $43.5, Aurelien P. aka “nabnut”
    $43.5, Chema Cortes aka “ch3m4”
    $40.5, François G.
    $40 (2nd donation), Richaed Meade aka “Dick”
    $40, Theodor J.
    $39.6 (3rd donation), Orlando M. M.
    $38.7, Ole H.
    $36.25 (2nd donation), Lyudmyla H.
    $35 (13th donation), Pete Molina aka “pmolina”
    $35, Jack H.
    $33, Geir H.
    $32.5 (8th donation), Jerry Jackson aka “900i”
    $32.25, Anders K.
    $30, Luis V.
    $30, Bernard O.
    $29 (10th donation), Olli K.
    $29 (2nd donation), Jacques aka “germanix”
    $26.8 (2nd donation), Eoghan C
    $26.8, Gernot R.
    $26.4, Pasi K.
    $26 (15th donation), Manuel F.
    $25.8, Anno K.
    $25 (6th donation), John M.
    $25 (6th donation), Jay Stewart aka “jag1182”
    $25 (3rd donation), Tim B.
    $25 (3rd donation), James M. aka “jaspmatt”
    $25 (3rd donation), Donald D’A.
    $25, Dennis L.
    $25, Mark W.
    $25, Thomas L.
    $25, Flowering Design LLC
    $25, Christopher B.
    $25, Elmer H.
    $25, Kelley J.
    $25, Gene C.
    $25, Afshin E.
    $25, Elliott H.
    $25, Grant W.
    $25, Eliezer S.
    $24.5, Dave K. aka “fspilot”
    $20 (18th donation), slw
    $20 (9th donation), Matthew M.
    $20 (6th donation), John M.
    $20 (5th donation), Phillip H.
    $20 (3rd donation), David M.
    $20 (2nd donation), Al H.
    $20 (2nd donation), Jared S. aka “jspice9000”
    $20, Arve Seljebu
    $20, Steve K.
    $20, Roger F.
    $20, Anonymous
    $20, Eric B.
    $20, Benjamin M.
    $20, Mariela M.
    $20, Andrew B.
    $20, Bret M.
    $19.8, Julio A. H.
    $15 (4th donation), Michael C.
    $15 (3rd donation), Greg Dawes aka “Greg-NZ”
    $15, Andrew Y.
    $15, Daniel E. D.
    $15, Bryan P.
    $14.5 (14th donation), Emil Pavlov aka “emil_pavlov”
    $14.5 (2nd donation), Jörn G.
    $14.5, Amadeu F. aka “zerozero”
    $14.5, Jens-uwe R.
    $14.5, Yann S.
    $13.4 (2nd donation), Crefelean Nicolae aka “kneekoo”
    $13.4 (2nd donation), E. J. aka “ej64”
    $13.4, Ingmar K.
    $13.4, Dušan P.
    $13.2 (3rd donation), Paul Evans aka “paul”
    $13.2 (2nd donation), Andreas G.
    $13.2, Christophe D.
    $13.2, Graham D.
    $13.2, Fabio L.
    $10 (4th donation), Anders B.
    $10 (4th donation), Paul B. aka “Dude”
    $10 (3rd donation), Nobutoshi K. aka “founcid”
    $10 (3rd donation), Daniel F. aka “danielpiupiu”
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    by ·17 Comments

    Forums and community website:

    The forums were moved to the USA to a new Cloud Server hosted by Rackspace, running Debian Lenny in 64-bit with 4GB RAM.

    The community website remains in Toronto, Canada, where it’s now running on its own.

    This configuration is more costly than before but this is not a problem considering the level of financial support we’re receiving from the community and the income generated through traffic in the distribution and the websites. During our tests, we found the forums would run smoothly with 8GB RAM and occasionally hang with 2GB RAM. It costs twice as much each time the amount of RAM is doubled on the server. Since we migrated the forums to their 4GB configuration 4 days ago, we only observed one period of downtime which lasted approximately 15 minutes. The rest of the time, the forums were faster and more responsive than before.

    As I’m writing this post, there are 127 people connected to the forums, the server is showing a load average of 0.48, 0.42, 0.37 and using 2.6GB of its 4GB RAM.

    The database in Toronto hasn’t gone down since the migration and the community website has had no downtime.

    Development/test/archive servers:

    We recently lost of test server in London which was also acting as our main public archive rsync server.

    The public archive was moved to a second new Cloud Server hosted by Rackspace, running Debian Lenny in 64-bit with 2GB RAM.

    The test server wasn’t replaced yet. We’re currently talking to Vault Networks (who already provides us with our Blog server in Miami) and Netrino (who is mirroring Linux Mint from the UK) to acquire a new server through sponsorship. If this fails, we’ll just purchase a new one.

    We also started to experiment with remote development and remote release-related activities. The build and smoke-test of the LMDE 201101 32-bit ISO for instance was performed remotely in Miami. This allows us to test and modify ISO images remotely without suffering the delays associated with transferring the images back and forth between the server and our personal locations. I mentioned this briefly, but when the local area only provides a 128kbps uplink and uploading 1GB of data can take more than 2 days, this is a huge advantage for us. Most of our maintainers thankfully benefit from a decent broadband connection but this also represents a plus when we find minor bugs holding an RC release. We can then quickly and remotely modify the ISO, fix the minor bugs, and perform regression testing on it without going through another cycle with the maintainer. At the moment we’re only able to do this in 32-bit. The 64-bit server we’ll use as our test server will also be used for this kind of activities.

    Our current status:

    Our website is hosted in Stasbourg, France, by Nutime for a ridiculously low price. Michael Kaufmann (a.k.a “d00p”), who is also the owner of the Spotchat IRC network, supported us very early and worked in close collaboration with the team. Kuja and Michael regularly look after our hosting and perform administration tasks and monitoring for us and their involvement with Linux Mint goes far beyond hosting. Linux Mint couldn’t have taken off without their help at the time and though we moved most of our infrastructure to other dedicated locations around the World, we’re still in close relationship with them. Our IRC channels are operated for free on the Spotchat network, and we’re paying for a second dedicated server in Strasbourg which is hosting our repositories.

    Vault Networks is our biggest sponsor and they’re providing us with a free dedicated server located in Miami. The server is used to host this blog, but also to seed torrents at high-speed during releases and recently to perform remote development and testing in 32-bit.

    Our third biggest sponsor, SevenL, also provides us with a free dedicated server located in Toronto. The server helped us a lot when the traffic became more important and the growth of the project meant services had to be split and taken out of Germany. The forums were successfully hosted there for a long time. The server is now dedicated to hosting the community website.

    An account with Rackspace was opened to allow us to quickly create cloud servers and allocate resources to them. Though this technology isn’t suited for remote development or testing, it’s extremely versatile and handy for web hosting and quick migrations. We currently pay for 2 cloud servers, one hosting our forums and the other one hosting our public archive. Due to the high cost of this service, it’s hard to say whether these servers will continue to host the public archive and forums in the future or whether we’ll be migrating these to proper dedicated servers in the future, but one thing is for sure, Rackspace is giving us a lot of flexibility here.

    I would like to thank Vault Networks, SevenL and Nutime for the dedicated servers they provide to us. We rarely acknowledge their contribution outside the sponsors page on the website and their help is extremely valuable to us. Linux Mint is growing and many people have observed what is now a real infrastructure problem. We’re scaling and our servers are having a hard time dealing with the popularity of our desktop. Of course, this is extremely positive, though it does represent a real challenge. By communicating differently (hosting torrents both in Strasbourg and Miami, and linking to our HTTP mirrors directly from the blog) we managed to successfully release the latest LMDE without experiencing downtime on our website. With the recent allocation of a cloud server, we now enjoy stable forums and community website. It’s a matter of days before we address the situation with the test server and resume our activity for the upcoming KDE edition. And we’ll soon be able to remotely develop and test in 64-bit. It takes time, it’s not our area of expertise, but as you can see we’re tackling the problem slowly but surely and we’re receiving a lot of help and support from these three companies.

    Update (2010-01-04): Our server in London is back and should be operational again as our test server within 48 hours.