by ·45 Comments

Description of the problem:

Linux Mint Debian (LMDE) was approved for a stable release yesterday and an ISO made its way towards our download mirrors. As we were ready to make the announcements, a bug was spotted and a decision is now being made to re-spin a new ISO for this release.

We’re in the process of re-spinning a new ISO file. The ISO that is currently available in some of our download mirrors isn’t the correct one.

Information about the bug:

It’s still unclear what causes this bug, and why it wasn’t detected by the three testers (including myself) who worked on this ISO. The last step of the installation cleans APT by performing a call to “dpkg –configure -a”. This step hangs the installer and consequently the user needs to force-kill the installer and is faced with a dialog asking him/her to run “dpkg –configure -a” the first time he/she launches mintUpdate or Synaptic. Once this is done, the system acts normally. The installation itself, apart from not cleaning APT, isn’t impacted.

Information about the (wrong) ISO: 

linuxmint-debian-201009-gnome-cd-i386.iso
md5sum: b1c7b0e2fb97dece42ee4db9016aff65

What to do if you downloaded this ISO:

If you successfully installed LMDE, you can start using it. Please throw the ISO and the DVD away though, and don’t re-distribute them to anybody.

What to do if you haven’t downloaded this ISO:

Wait for a few days and we’ll have everything ready for you. Our apologies for the delay and, though I still don’t understand how it did, for letting this bug go undetected.

Updates:

  • Apparently this bugs only affects installations using the en_US locale (this explains why it wasn’t detected by our 3 testers.. using en_IE, fr_FR, sv_SV and en_GB).
  • Another bug was found which affects hard drives on which there is no valid partition table.
  • Both bugs were fixed in preparation for the new ISO.

by ·24 Comments

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $121, Security Camera (USA) – http://www.security-camera-warehouse.com/
  • $100, Michael D. (USA)
  • $100, Thomas P. (USA)
  • $100, William D. aka “eagleshadow” (USA)
  • $75, Joseph B. (USA)
  • $60 (2nd donation), Laurent P. (Luxembourg)
  • $60, Alexander T. (France)
  • $60, Giuliano L. (Italy)
  • $60, Jari K. (Finland)
  • $50, Richard F. (USA)
  • $50, DataMan (USA) – http://www.boomerclan.info
  • $36, Lars K. (Germany)
  • $35 (9th donation), Pete Molina aka “pmolina” (USA)
  • $35, Gnana K. aka “Jakkal” (United Kingdom)
  • $30 (2nd donation), Bill E. (USA)
  • $30, Pinna A. (Italy)
  • $30, Kevin Dermott (United Kingdom)
  • $25 (4th donation), Harvey Elliott (United Kingdom)
  • $25, Larry’s Technology Services (USA)
  • $25, Randy T. (USA)
  • $25, Peter James C. (United Kingdom)
  • $25, Jack D. (USA)
  • $24 (6th donation), Olli K. (Finland)
  • $24, Tom S. (Germany)
  • $24, Erkka J. (Finland)
  • $24, Joseph R. (France)
  • $24, Ivan M. (Italy)
  • $24, Ulrik W. (Germany)
  • $24, Yuhuan X. aka “jeditech” (China)
  • $24, Tobias A. (Germany)
  • $21 (3rd donation), Frederic S. (France)
  • $20 (5th donation), Matthew M. (USA)
  • $20 (3rd donation), Barry W. (USA)
  • $20 (2nd donation), Seth S. (USA)
  • $20 (2nd donation), Edward H. (USA)
  • $20, Anonymous (USA)
  • $20, Anonymous (USA)
  • $20, Brian B. aka “ubii” (USA)
  • $20, Don R. (USA)
  • $20, Brinley T. (Australia)
  • $20, Chan C. Y. C. (Hong Kong)
  • $18 (9th donation), Frank Bechstein (Germany) – http://www.gamer-site.de/
  • $18, Anonymous (Netherlands)
  • $17, Dennis V. H. (Denmark)
  • $16, John-Egil U. L. (Norway)
  • $15 (14th donation), Slavoljub M. (Norway)
  • $15 (2nd donation), Vance R. aka “helmsdeeper” (USA)
  • $14, Rizwan Javaid (United Kingdom)
  • $13, Kimmo B. (Sweden)
  • $12 (11th donation), Emil Pavlov aka “emil_pavlov” (Bulgaria)
  • $12 (11th donation), Emil Pavlov aka “emil_pavlov” (Bulgaria)
  • $12 (2nd donation), Eniko V. (Italy)
  • $12, Marco K. (Germany)
  • $11 (6th donation), Robert D B. (USA)
  • $11, Jaarin P. (Czech Republic)
  • $10 (3rd donation), Anthony S. (USA)
  • $10 (2nd donation), Ashley Peach (United Kingdom) – http://www.dog-toy.co.uk
  • $10 (2nd donation), Barron R. (USA)
  • $10 (2nd donation), David O. (United Kingdom)
  • $10 (2nd donation), Raimond L. (Lithuania)
  • $10, Jonathan O. (USA)
  • $10, Giulio G. (Italy)
  • $10, Hector Richart P. (Spain)
  • $10, Jeff W. (Canada)
  • $10, Gareth D. (United Kingdom)
  • $10, Bartlomiej H. (United Kingdom)
  • $10, Demostene M. (Italy)
  • $10, Stephanie O’G. G. (United Kingdom)
  • $10, Sarah A. (USA)
  • $10, David R. (USA)
  • $10, Anonymous (Hungary)
  • $10, Rodion B. (Ukraine)
  • $10, George M. (USA)
  • $9, Zachary Brian Hill (USA) – http://www.hillz.me
  • $9, Markus D. (Germany)
  • $7.5, Mr R H. (United Kingdom)
  • $7, Flemming B. (Sweden)
  • $6 (4th donation), Sylwia Bialczak (Finland)
  • $6 (2nd donation), Nathan B. (United Kingdom)
  • $5.5, frager3rd (USA)
  • $5 (3rd donation), Michael G. (Germany)
  • $5, Daniel T. (United Kingdom)
  • $5, Jason M. (USA)
  • $5, Aaron C. (USA)
  • $5, Ian Carson aka “xtreem0” (Canada) – http://www.2sidereviews.com
  • $5, Gary Armstrong aka “GaryArmstrong” (Canada)
  • $5, Darin B. (Canada)
  • $5, Nate S. (USA)
  • $5, Srinath V Srinath (Singapore)
  • $5, Mark D. (USA)
  • $5, Paul V-W. (United Kingdom)
  • $5, Don Brubaker (USA)
  • $5, Janelle B. (Canada)
  • $5, Arthur H. (USA)
  • $5, Александр Борисов (Russia) – http://metric-ghost.livejournal.com
  • $4 (9th donation), Savant B.D. (USA) – http://www.allyourprices.com
  • $3, Stef A. (Netherlands)
  • $2 (6th donation), Jennifer McBride (Canada) – http://www.only-green.ca
  • $2 (4th donation), Ryan G. (Philippines) – http://azcoding.com
  • $2 (2nd donation), Nils K. (Germany)
  • $2, Angel M. B. (Dominican Republic)
  • $2, Sinan B. (Canada)
  • $1 (5th donation), Inga Muste (Latvia) – http://inga.lv
  • $1 (4th donation), Ken Weill P. Lumacad aka “kenweill” (Philippines) – http://tinyurl.com/kenweillref
  • $1 (4th donation), Ken Weill P. Lumacad aka “kenweill” (Philippines) – http://tinyurl.com/kenweillref
  • $1 (2nd donation), Sylvestre Burgos aka “sylvestre” (France) – http://burgos.sourceforge.net
  • $1 (2nd donation), Gonzalo C. (Argentina) – http://www.vagobit.com.ar
  • $1, Javier C. (USA)
  • $1, Anonymous (India)
  • $1, Daniel F. (Austria)
  • $1, Michael B. (Germany)
  • $1, Thomas G. (USA)
  • $0.5, Eric Cooper (Canada)
  • $0, Rashed Al R. (Saudi Arabia)

Sponsors:

Money raised in August:

* Donations: $2098.5 (114 donors)
* Sponsors: $860.5 (68 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: 59% (+6%)
  • Linux Mint 8 Helena: 18% (-4%)
  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 16% (-2%)
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 3% (-0%)
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 2% (-0%)
  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 2% (-0%)

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 2,548,494 (-2.98%)
  • Unique views: 3,192,820 (-3.75%)
  • Pageviews: 4,147,616 (-3.62%)
  • Page impressions: 1,755,402
  • Search queries: 6,342,252
  • Forum users: 35,875
  • Forum posts: 298,723

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1374 (3rd)
  • Distrowatch (traffic share): 4.7% (2nd)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 19,065

Events:

Summary:

  • In August, LMDE (Linux Mint Debian) was finalized. The rolling distribution based on Debian is now being tested by our QA team and a public release should be out early this month.
  • The Fluxbox edition is also in testing and waiting to be approved for a stable release.
  • August was by far the most quiet month we ever got to see. The activity on the blog, on the forums, the amount of emails received, the donations, and even the sponsorships were extremely low compared to previous months. In terms of income, we’re not doing too bad. We’re down 2.7% but we’re hoping for a more dynamic month in September.
  • Early September will see the release of the new anticipated Debian-based distribution: LMDE. And we’re also really excited to start the work on the new Linux Mint 10 which will be released in November.
  • If like many you were away in August, we’d like to welcome you back and we look forward to an exciting month. The Summer was relaxing, but Autumn is going to be fun!

by ·11 Comments

There are 16 local Linux Mint communities across the World:

  • 3 in Asia
  • 12 in Europe
  • 1 in South America

Local Communities promote our distribution in their locale, in their country and among people who do not speak English or who prefer to use their own language. They can organize the translation and the distribution of localized versions of the Linux Mint User Guide, and of the ISO images that we release. They can also translate our announcements and provide local support and communication media to Linux Mint users.

Some of these communities are very active. In France, LinuxMint-fr partnered with OXY Press to publish two magazine issues dedicated to the releases of Linux Mint 7 and 8. In Bangladesh, the Ubuntu Loco Team and Linux Mint Bangladesh joined forces and co-organized one of the biggest Linux event in the country. These initiatives need to be acknowledge and it’s important for our project to keep a close relationship with the Local Communities.

A new listing was published on the website to show the Linux Mint Local Communities: http://www.linuxmint.com/communities.php

A team will be formed with the community leaders of each local community so that we can talk about their needs and how Linux Mint and the Local Communities can help each others.