We’ve been very busy working on the upcoming Linux Mint 8 lately and I haven’t taken much time to communicate with the community, so here are some news of what is going on at the moment:
– The development of the LXDE edition never really started and so this edition is cancelled.
– Shane, the maintainer of the Fluxbox edition, had to focus on personal matters and is likely to be unavailable in the future. The maintenance of this edition might be delegated to another member of the team, to myself or to a new person in the near future, but in the meantime there will not be a Fluxbox edition of Linux Mint 7.
– A lot of new features and improvements were made for mintUpdate and mintInstall. Both tools are ready to be included in Linux Mint 8. Among other things, mintUpdate now comes with better error handling and the ability for the user to block particular updates based on the name of the package. The graphical interface was also enhanced.
– Linux Mint 8 will come with support for OEM installs.
– Drastic changes were planned for mintBackup and mintUpload and were partly implemented. Both tools are however far from being stable at the moment and so we might reduce the scope of these developments or include the old versions of these tools in the upcoming Linux Mint 8. For mintBackup, the ambition was to rely on rsync, for mintUpload it was to implement a brand new concept called an “Upload Manager”.
– I resigned and left the company I used to work for. To compliment the income generated by Linux Mint I also take part in contracting work based on the distribution itself. So in other words, I’m now working full time on Linux Mint and on projects based or related to it.
– The members of the team were asked to provide commercial support to customers buying it from Linux Mint, and are given the money generated through this activity. Although this isn’t enough for them to work full time on Linux Mint, it generates an income which helps them invest more time working on our project. So far, emorrp1 and husse joined in on that scheme. As we go along and as the overal income gets bigger, more money will be spent on the team and directed towards the people who are devoting their time to make Linux Mint better.
Now, with all I’ve said, you probably have even more questions than before 🙂 I would like to apologize for being so silent and for not giving more frequent news. A lot is happening under the curtains at the moment… we’re all running as fast as we can and sometimes in different directions, when Linux Mint 8 comes out, I hope the work we’ve put in it will be worth it and that you’ll enjoy it a lot. As always we’re planning to release in the end of November. In the meantime I’ll try to give you more news update and I’d like to thank everyone for their patience.
