Hello everybody,

First things first, a big thank you to all our sponsors and donors. Many thanks to you and to all the people who support our project. I know we say it every month, but it’s important.

Fastly powered repositories

Earlier this month we announced a BETA test for our new Fastly repositories. This is a long test. The more people join it, the better.

BETA Test: Fastly repositories

We’re working with Fastly on a partnership to power the next generation of Linux Mint repositories. Their CDN (Content Delivery Network) and its caching mechanism are extremely impressive. Unlike our repository servers which are located in one place and have a maximum bandwidth capacity, the Fastly network replicates and caches data to make it available anywhere in the World, consistently at fast speed, without downtime or slow-downs.

To give you an idea, a single Linux Mint server currently serves data from Chicago at 1Gbps. The further away you are from Chicago the slower it might be for you. When the load is high (during a release or during a peak of important security updates affecting large packages), the server serves more people at the same time and so its 1Gbps bandwidth gets shared/divided between all the people who try to get data from it. When there are too many people trying to update, we get really slow speeds or even errors.

When Linux Mint started in 2006 our bandwidth needs were relatively modest. As the project grew year after year, the servers were upgraded to have more and more resources and allow for higher bandwidth. We also set up multiple servers and balanced the load between them. This allowed us to increase our capacity and face higher and higher loads. But the problem remains, it just depends on the load.

The Fastly network allows us to address the issue in a much better way. First, Fastly has servers in many different places in the World, so it no longer matters if you’re close or far from our servers. The data is cached by the Fastly network and serves efficiently anywhere. Second, because the data is cached, Fastly is able to provide it even when/if our servers become unreachable.

We’re hoping this test will be a success and lead to a great partnership with Fastly. Don’t hesitate to join the test and give us your feedback.

New partnership with Datadog

We are thrilled to announce a new partnership with Datadog.

Datadog specializes in… data. It’s not just monitoring and log analysis, they provide an incredibly customizable set of tools which lets you define your own parsers, metrics, dimensions and basically get the information you want, analyzed and monitored in real time.

The stats we shared last month, which showed the popularity of each Linux Mint edition, were powered by Datadog.

Datadog could make us understand our own services better. What are the most downloaded packages in our repositories? Which versions? How big is i386? Where is most of the bandwidth going? When during the week? etc.

Note: This data comes from the traffic on the download pages of our website. We do not collect any telemetry inside the OS.

Joining the Matrix

Following the discontinuation of Hexchat we announced efforts to make IRC easier with the development of a new custom chat room application called Jargonaut.

Jargonaut works. It works well and does exactly what we want. Its implementation was relatively easy and I’d say it’s now 75% complete.

When we announced it though, we heard some of your feedback about Matrix. We tested that as well and started using it.

Today we’re announcing we’ll be moving to Matrix and integrating Element into Mint 22 instead of Jargonaut.

While being as open as IRC, Matrix provides a user experience which is similar to Slack or Discord to some extent. It’s modern, it’s persistent, and simply by being modern and persistent it’s actually less confusing to newcomers than an extremely simple application like Jargonaut which connects you to a room without even having to log in.

Matrix also feels future-proof. It has everything it needs to be backed by the FOSS community at large. Its specifications continue to evolve. Its many clients provide a variety of choices today on different platforms and if we ever needed to make a custom client in the future it would be possible as well.

With a bit of integration, Matrix can be simple too. Mint 22 will feature a preinstalled Web App called Matrix.

That Web App will show you some information to help you get started:

And then it will connect you to the Linux Mint space on Matrix using a Web client called Element:

The Web App will be present in the WebApp Manager. If you want to use a different Matrix client, you’ll be able to modify it or delete it.

Of course, you don’t need to wait for Mint 22 to connect to the Linux Mint space on Matrix. You can simply head over to https://app.element.io/#/room/#linuxmint-space:matrix.org.

XApp should be independent

Linux Mint is the largest consumer of XApp applications, but the reason XApp was created, as a project, was to make these applications work everywhere and for everybody. Whenever a new XApp application was started, the goal was specifically to NOT make it Linux Mint and/or Cinnamon specific.

At a time where GNOME applications are less and less designed to work anywhere else than in GNOME, a project like XApp is extremely important.

Was it a success outside of Linux Mint though? Yes and no. Many Xapps are available in other distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc..) but very few distributions actually make use of them.

Take Xubuntu for instance. It used to ship with file-roller, gnome-calculator, evince. These applications moved to libAdwaita (more on that in the next paragraph) and now look completely out of place in Xfce so Xubuntu replaced them with engrampa, mate-calc, atril..

For GNOME-Scan, it couldn’t find alternatives though.

This is GNOME-Scan and Atril side by side in Xubuntu 24.04:

This isn’t ideal for Xubuntu. These applications are installed by default, this is how it looks out of the box.

Before I go on with this, I want to say this isn’t criticism directed at Xubuntu. As an official Ubuntu derivative they cannot ship with a previous version of GNOME Scan, and I think it’s partly our fault they got in this situation.

So on the right you have Atril which looks like all the other apps in Xubuntu 24.04, and on the left you’ve got an app which has nothing to do here and which is designed to integrate specifically with GNOME Shell.

To add to the issue, although MATE apps such as mate-calc work everywhere, they were designed for MATE, so if you open up the application menu you don’t see “Calculator” in your Xubuntu desktop, but “MATE Calculator”.

Now, why is it partly our fault? Because we never knocked on Xfce’s door and/or worked with them.

They have the same problems as us, as MATE, as Budgie, as many other desktops.. we made Xapps because we needed them in Mint, in Cinnamon. We didn’t want to make Cinnamon apps, so we made “Linux” apps which worked “everywhere”, we wrote it somewhere and we left it that.

It was enough for us, but it wasn’t enough for Xubuntu or other desktops. From their point of view they saw Linux Mint making something in their own little corner and putting it on github.com/linuxmint, or even worse they saw nothing at all.

What should have happened ideally would have been more communication and an independent XApp project, not hosted or maintained by Linux Mint, but by people from various desktop and/or distributions.

XApp should be its own organization, with its own github repositories, chat room, website, etc. It should be a space which facilitates collaboration, compatibility and the development of application which works everywhere, not just apps which are needed or maintained by us.

If we want other developers and other projects to work together on compatible software and common solutions, we need a space like XApp. But this space needs to be independent of any DE and any distribution for everyone to feel equal and to feel welcome. Not just on paper, but in general, in discussions, empowerment and decision-making.

Xapp is on Matrix at https://matrix.to/#/#xapp:matrix.org. Everyone is welcome.

libAdwaita is for GNOME only

No matter what happens upstream, we will always do our best to make each Linux Mint release a better experience than the one you already have. Applications will be native and look native. They will integrate well. If we let you choose a desktop theme, ALL installed applications will support it.

If an application doesn’t support Cinnamon we can’t ship with it in our Cinnamon edition. The same goes for MATE and Xfce.

It would be completely unacceptable for us to ship with an application which used its own window controls and didn’t follow the system theme. Looking at it long-term, we also do not want our apps to be designed by people who have no consideration for what is important to us, and whose decisions are motivated by a desktop we don’t even use.

This is File Roller 3.42. This application has always been labeled as “for GNOME”, but it integrated well in any GTK desktop. With File Roller 44 this is no longer the case. It looks just like GNOME Scan in the previous screenshot. It’s not made for MATE, Cinnamon or Xfce and it really shows.

By moving to GTK4/libAdwaita this app really became a GNOME app, an app which looks specifically designed for GNOME and nothing else.

So what do we do in Linux Mint 22?

We could do like Ubuntu 24.04. They provide a finished product with a high level of integration. The way they do that is by modifying libAdwaita to support their theme: Yaru. We could do the same with Mint-Y. It would make all GNOME applications look nice in Linux Mint, but we’d have to remove theme selection, since it would only work with Mint-Y. In the long term it wouldn’t solve the main issue either: These applications are designed for a desktop which is more and more different to ours by the day. It’s not just a question of themes or look. Today these apps are losing menubars, themes, tomorrow they might come with no minimize button or anything GNOME doesn’t use.

We didn’t want to fork a whole suite of apps right now. Not with the upcoming major release and not before we try to make XApp more independent and boost collaboration with other projects.

In Mint 22 GNOME Font Viewer was removed and the following applications were downgraded back to GTK3 versions:

  • Celluloid
  • GNOME Calculator
  • Simple Scan
  • Baobab
  • System Monitor
  • GNOME Calendar
  • File Roller
  • Zenity

These applications are very likely to be forked in the near future, except for Zenity which we’ll probably stop using altogether.

libAdwaita is for GNOME and GNOME only. We can’t blame GNOME for this, they’ve been very clear about it from the start. It was made specifically for GNOME to have more freedom and build its own ecosystem without impacting GTK.

We want to send a strong signal upstream and towards other projects. We cannot and will not support applications which do not support our users and environments.

We can’t promote applications to our users which don’t support our users. The software manager will be vigilant towards that going forward and list compatible software by default.

I want to reach out to upstream developers here. If your application is only for GNOME, then by all means, ignore this and use libAdwaita, it’s made for that.

If you intend to support all environments then don’t use this library. At the very least please get in touch with us so we’re aware of your intention and keep you listed as a supported app. You can reach us at https://matrix.to/#/#linuxmint-dev:matrix.org.

Adwaita no longer works outside of GNOME

Adwaita (the theme) will be removed from the list of available themes in Cinnamon 6.2.

Here is the Adwaita icon theme in Ubuntu 24.04:

As you can see the theme provides icons for some categories (Internet, Accessories..etc) but not others. Many icons are missing, the desktop looks completely broken and it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. The direction Adwaita is taking is to only support GNOME and nothing else.

It would be OK if we could remove Adwaita or not ship with it, but we can’t. GTK depends on it.

Budgie didn’t wait for it to break and blacklisted Adwaita 2 years ago. We’re doing it now in Cinnamon. MATE and Xfce should probably do it since it looks just as bad on any non-GNOME desktop.

Flatpak verification is extremely important

In Linux Mint, is it safe to open up the Software Manager and install Google Chrome? Yes? No? Well.. it depends, and it has nothing to do with how much you trust Linux Mint, or Google.

You need to trust refi64 because it isn’t Mint or Google who update the Flatpak for Chrome, it’s someone who goes by the name of “refi64” on the Internet.

Now as it happens, refi64 is very nice developer. The problem isn’t refi64. The problem is that amongst the 6 million people who installed his Flatpak, very few people know who refi64 is.

In Flathub, a verified app is an app that is published by its original developer or a third party approved by the developer. Chrome is published by refi64 and is therefore “unverified”.

Right now, 42% of Flatpaks have been verified by Flathub. The store is actively trying to verify apps, especially now after the XZ story and the multiple times malware was injected in the Snap Store.

This is Chrome in the Linux Mint Software Manager:

There isn’t a single mention of refi64 here.

The situation online on the Flathub website is a little bit better:

The app is shown as “Unverified” but you still have to dig to find who’s maintaining it.

We’ve been lucky so far. We really need to take action:

  • We’ll update the Software Manager to not show unverified Flatpaks by default. This will be an opt-in.
  • When shown, unverified apps will have a score of 0. The score can help a user build trust towards the application, but the issue here isn’t the application, it’s the fact that the maintainers aren’t who people think they are.
  • When shown, unverified apps will be clearly marked as unverified.

We’re fully aware this goes against convenience and will hurt Linux Mint a little bit. It might not be a popular decision but we think it’s a very important one.

By the time malware hits Flathub, we hope these measures and the measures taken by Flathub will have minimized the number of exposed users and raised awareness around the risks which are being taken.

In the case of XZ, the maintainer would have been “verified”. What worked for us was the vigilance of upstream developers and the time it took for new code to make its way into Linux Mint. The malware in XZ affected Debian Sid but it never made its way into Debian Stable, or Ubuntu LTS or Linux Mint.

Unlike the Debian base which takes months or even years to stabilize and reach you here, a Flatpak updated by its maintainer can reach millions of users almost instantaneously. We recommend automated updates, also for security reasons. When it comes to Flatpak the risk isn’t just taken at installation time, it’s taken with every update, at a time when you might not even think about Flatpaks. This is more risky than Windows users downloading software from random websites. It’s supported by the update manager.

You REALLY need to trust where you get your software from and in our own Software Manager we don’t show you the info you need to make informed decisions.

We’ll address this ASAP. Thank you for your attention on this important topic.

Edit: Refi64 wasn’t aware his identity was publicly available and asked for his real name not to be published. This article was edited to remove it.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors:
Linux VPS Hosting
Silver Sponsors:
Datadog
Sucuri
ThinkPenguin: For Everything Freedom
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
hSo
Agile.Coach
BGASoft Inc
C0MPLÉX1 SEO
DeepTide, LLC
HamoniKR
VANT

Donations in March:

A total of $9,626 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 302 donors:

$1200 (8th donation), Abigail M.
$216, Luca P.
$200, John R.
$162, Karsten K.
$162, Thomas Metzinger
$150 (5th donation), Scott G.
$128, Christopher B.
$120 (4th donation), George C.
$120, Christopher L.
$108 (4th donation), Michael F.
$108 (3rd donation), Franky W.
$108, Endris
$108, Jean-pierre V.
$108, Michael K.
$100 (6th donation), Robin S.
$100 (5th donation), Brittany Taylor F.
$100 (3rd donation), Charlotte B.
$100, Douglas P.
$100, John R.
$100, Larry M.
$100, Rich B.
$100, Vaughn A.
$95, Jérôme G.
$80, Brendan Gilet Graphic Design
$59, Julie M.
$54 (18th donation), David M.
$54 (9th donation), Volker P.
$54 (4th donation), Reg O.
$54 (4th donation), Robert H. M.
$54 (3rd donation), Hubert F.
$54 (3rd donation), Jan Sepp
$54 (3rd donation), Kees K.
$54 (3rd donation), Philippe Robert aka “phsrobert”
$54 (2nd donation), Christian S.
$54 (2nd donation), Sergio B.
$54 (2nd donation), Siegfried S.
$54, Brian T.
$54, Christina R.
$54, Jürgen N.
$54, Konrad T.
$54, Laurent B.
$54, Leo P.
$54, Philippe A.
$54, Ryan M.
$54, Urs K.
$54, Yvo D.
$52 (7th donation), John Mc
$50 (82th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (10th donation), Wade T.
$50 (8th donation), Terrence P.
$50 (6th donation), W G. M.
$50 (5th donation), Linden R.
$50 (4th donation), Brandon O.
$50 (4th donation), Peter B.
$50 (3rd donation), Charles H.
$50 (3rd donation), Clifford N.
$50 (2nd donation), Che H.
$50 (2nd donation), Neil M.
$50 (2nd donation), Willard M.
$50, Anders J.
$50, David B.
$50, Denis B.
$50, Erik M.
$50, Glenna D.
$50, Jeff M.
$40, Thomas L. aka “Calvicii”
$39 (2nd donation), Online Biz Builders SEO
$35, Willie E.
$32 (10th donation), Mark A.
$32 (5th donation), Andrew C.
$32 (4th donation), 974_RUN
$32 (3rd donation), jjb
$32 (2nd donation), Peter K.
$32, Antonio M.
$32, Bruno L.
$32, Harry F.
$30 (4th donation), Kevin H.
$30 (3rd donation), Carl T.
$30 (2nd donation), Ron N. aka “TechNick”
$27 (10th donation), Alexander M.
$27 (4th donation), Cezary Z.
$27, Rafael M.
$25 (37th donation), Linux Mint Sverige
$25 (14th donation), Charles W.
$25 (4th donation), William B.
$25 (2nd donation), John S.
$25 (2nd donation), Tim S.
$25, Anthony C.
$25, ATV Brakes N More
$25, Derek S.
$25, Kelvin W.
$25, Ross B.
$23 (2nd donation), Paul F.
$22 (46th donation), Peter E.
$22 (11th donation), Francois B. aka “Makoto
$22 (9th donation), Marek S. [LMDE SUPPORTER]
$22 (8th donation), Benjamin W.
$22 (5th donation), Arno W.
$22 (5th donation), Mircea V.
$22 (4th donation), Ingo P.
$22 (4th donation), Neil S.
$22 (3rd donation), Frank S.
$22 (3rd donation), Jean, Jacques G.
$22 (3rd donation), Mario N.
$22 (3rd donation), Michael M.
$22 (3rd donation), P V.
$22 (2nd donation), Anthony O.
$22 (2nd donation), Daniel J.
$22 (2nd donation), Eero V.
$22 (2nd donation), Marc LASTHAUS
$22 (2nd donation), Reinhold S.
$22 (2nd donation), Robert B.
$22, André M.
$22, Charles A.
$22, Charles F.
$22, Charles V.
$22, Christopher R.
$22, David E.
$22, Elder D.
$22, Eric H.
$22, Franco H.
$22, Gerhard K.
$22, Jan Z.
$22, Jean-françois H.
$22, Jean-marie M.
$22, Jens K.
$22, Jeroen B.
$22, Jose Luis D.
$22, Leena N.
$22, Philip R.
$22, Rainer V.
$22, Sandro G.
$22, Stephane L.
$22, Xabier A.
$20 (46th donation), Stefan M. H.
$20 (28th donation), vagrantcow
$20 (22nd donation), Aimee W.
$20 (11th donation), Uncle Geek
$20 (10th donation), Robert D. aka “MacDhai
$20 (9th donation), Daniel V. M.
$20 (7th donation), Andreas G.
$20 (3rd donation), Charles B.
$20 (3rd donation), Christian M. aka “manygave”
$20 (3rd donation), Illya Konnoff K.
$20 (3rd donation), M G U.
$20 (2nd donation), Melvin M.
$20 (2nd donation), Ted C.
$20, Alex R.
$20, David B.
$20, Edward R K.
$20, Eric M.
$20, Financial Advisor Diddel & Diddel
$20, Harry B.
$20, Howard B.
$20, Jason M.
$20, Jesse G.
$20, Karen L.
$20, Kimberly L.
$20, Marion P.
$20, Mark D.
$20, Paul C.
$20, Peter M.
$20, Ross B.
$16 (74th donation), Andreas S.
$16 (3rd donation), Helmuth P.
$16 (2nd donation), Martin B.
$15 (3rd donation), Terry P.
$15, Ewan T. aka “Blinks7588”
$11 (93th donation), Johann J.
$11 (47th donation), Daniel S.
$11 (24th donation), Tugaleres.com
$11 (21st donation), Denys G.
$11 (16th donation), Adis H.
$11 (15th donation), Peter R.
$11 (13th donation), Christian B.
$11 (11th donation), Robert W.
$11 (11th donation), Stefan W.
$11 (10th donation), François L.
$11 (10th donation), Karlheinz R.
$11 (9th donation), Darius O.
$11 (8th donation), Thomas R.
$11 (7th donation), Ivo H.
$11 (5th donation), Kjerkreit Ytre, Anders Kiær
$11 (5th donation), Joel E.
$11 (5th donation), Joerg B.
$11 (5th donation), Johnny H.
$11 (5th donation), Keith W.
$11 (4th donation), Aghiles C.
$11 (4th donation), Carlo R.
$11 (4th donation), Jan Z.
$11 (4th donation), Massimo F.
$11 (3rd donation), Karl-heinz P.
$11 (3rd donation), Rimas V.
$11 (2nd donation), Giovanni T.
$11 (2nd donation), Graham T.
$11 (2nd donation), K. M.
$11 (2nd donation), Neil E.
$11 (2nd donation), Pablo M.
$11 (2nd donation), Sami S.
$11 (2nd donation), Vinay B.
$11, Andrzej H.
$11, Armando M.
$11, Carolina S.
$11, Daniel C.
$11, Georg G.
$11, Innocenzo M.
$11, J.
$11, Joan P.
$11, John F.
$11, Klaus B.
$11, Knut L.
$11, Konstantinos A.
$11, Lorenzo P.
$11, Maurizio D.
$11, Mirjam S.
$11, Oana U.
$11, Pedro S.
$11, Robert A.
$11, Tim M.
$11, Tobias R.
$10 (96th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (90th donation), Frank K.
$10 (43th donation), Philip Woodward
$10 (15th donation), Troy T.
$10 (12th donation), Dave S.
$10 (12th donation), Fábio Ranquetat aka “Ranquetat
$10 (10th donation), Thevirtua
$10 (8th donation), Michael B.
$10 (6th donation), Mihai-Vlad N.
$10 (5th donation), Carl T.
$10 (4th donation), Conrad M.
$10 (3rd donation), Geoffrey P.
$10 (3rd donation), George D.
$10 (3rd donation), Lubos K.
$10 (2nd donation), Jeffrey S.
$10 (2nd donation), Landscaping Fresno CA
$10 (2nd donation), Loren D.
$10 (2nd donation), Marcelo A. Maito
$10 (2nd donation), Michele D.
$10 (2nd donation), Oleksandra K.
$10 (2nd donation), Rick Edwards aka ” ”
$10 (2nd donation), Szymon G.
$10 (2nd donation), Tomasz K.
$10, B R S.
$10, Barbara W.
$10, Barry M.
$10, Computronix
$10, Computronix Managed IT Support & Cyber Security
$10, David N.
$10, Edward G.
$10, George R.
$10, H2Z45Y2K
$10, Luke P.
$10, Oleksandr O.
$10, Paul B.
$10, Paul C.
$10, Psychedelic Medicine Centers Of America
$10, REI Capital Growth Real Estate Investment Fund
$10, Steven R.
$10, Tarcísio F.
$10, Todd D. aka “Newfoundlander”
$10, Vlad N.
$8 (2nd donation), Ivan D.
$7 (35th donation), Sami Mannila
$147 from 38 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

Patrons:

Linux Mint is proudly supported by 1,086 patrons, for a sum of $3,304 per month.

To become a Linux Mint patron, please visit https://www.patreon.com/linux_mint

We are looking for BETA testers.

We’ve got new ultra fast repositories, powered by Fastly.

We need many users to switch over to be able to test this properly.

If you are interested visit https://github.com/linuxmint/linuxmint/issues/658 for information on how to participate.

Thank you.

Hi everyone,

We’ve got a lot to talk about this month, but first and foremost I’d like to thank our donors, our sponsors and all the people who support us.

Many thanks to you all.

Localization

Improvements were made for Linux Mint 22 installations to be better localized and to use less disk space than before.

Preinstalled packages for languages other than English and the one you select will be removed at the end of the installation. This was not optimized in previous Linux Mint releases. The removal of these packages in Linux Mint 22 will save a significant amount of disk space post-installation.

If you’re connected to the Internet during the installation, language packs for your selected language will be downloaded.

In addition, the following languages won’t require an Internet connections since their language packs will be present on the ISO image: English, German, Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, Dutch and Italian.

Deb822 support

The Software Sources tool will feature support for the new Deb822 format.

Pipewire

The default sound server in Linux Mint 22 will be Pipewire.

JXL support in Pix

The next version of Pix will support JXL images.

Kernels Series

To prioritize stability our 21.x releases shipped with Ubuntu LTS kernels (5.15). EDGE ISOs were made available, with HWE kernels, to bring support for new hardware.

Ubuntu 22.04.x releases used HWE kernels, and version 24.04 is set to use kernel 6.8.

During the last two years we didn’t observe significant differences in terms of stability between LTS and HWE series. Both were pretty stable. A growing number of users with new laptops/chipsets relied on EDGE images to be able to install Linux Mint though.

Linux Mint 22 will follow Ubuntu going forward and ship with new kernel series release after release.

XAPP Thumbnailer Gimp

A new thumbnailer for Gimp files was implemented.

It will be available in xapp-thumbnailers 1.2.4.

Online Accounts

GNOME Online Accounts, aka “GOA”, is a project which allows users to connect to their data in the cloud. This project was only designed for GNOME though so it doesn’t provide any front-end. It only provides libraries (namely libgoa and libgoa-backend).

Other than GNOME, many desktop environments integrated a front-end to these libraries in their control center: Cinnamon, Budgie, Unity, etc.

This project is important because it doesn’t just connect a desktop to the cloud, it’s used by many applications and libraries. Among other things you might use it to connect the Calendar application, the Thunderbird email program or the file browser to your online data.

With GNOME 46, libgoa/libgoa-backend 3.50 moved to GTK4. It can no longer be used by GTK3 applications.

To solve this problem a new XApp called GNOME Online Account GTK was created. As any XApp its goal is to work for everybody, in any desktop environment and in any Linux distribution.

This app makes it possible for Cinnamon/Budgie/Unity users to continue to use this functionality. It also provides it to any desktop that didn’t have access to it before (for instance: MATE and Xfce editions in Linux Mint).

It features two versions: One in GTK4 to support distributions which ship the new libgoa 3.50, and one in GTK3 for distributions which ship older versions of libgoa.

Thunderbird

In Ubuntu 24.04, Thunderbird was moved to a Snap.

Since we don’t want to ship with Snaps we had to choose between removing Thunderbird from the default software selection or packaging it. We decided to package it.

Thunderbird will continue to be available in Linux Mint 22 as a native .deb package.

Jargonaut

Work continues on the Chat Room application.

It received a new layout, a tray icon, image thumbnails, channel events, nickserv authentication, text formatting, /me commands, scrolling/catch-up support, auto-completion, spell-check…etc.

Package repositories

Our package repositories were tuned last month to accept a larger number of concurrent connections. Although this helped address some of the issues we had, they’re still really slow when the traffic is high.

We’re currently working on a new partnership with Fastly.

Fastly provides a global CDN with load balancing, TLS encryption and a powerful programmable cache engine called Varnish.

Their solution has the potential to significantly and consistently increase the speed of our repositories.

It also opens the door to better fault tolerance, better monitoring and logging.

We’re hoping to have more news on this soon. We’re really excited about it, the testing so far has been very promising.

Editions Stats

We also started experimenting with observability and monitoring solutions.

We don’t have news on this yet, but as part of our experiments we measured the popularity of the Linux Mint editions.

Note: This chart is based on the traffic on our website.

Cinnamon (also represented by EDGE and LMDE 6) represents 2/3 of our audience. Xfce is a solid second with a 1/5 share. MATE sits in third at 13%.

Advertising

Advertisement on our websites was drastically reduced.

No more popups, no more overlays.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors:
Linux VPS Hosting
Silver Sponsors:
Sucuri
ThinkPenguin: For Everything Freedom
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
hSo
Agile.Coach
BGASoft Inc
C0MPLÉX1 SEO
DeepTide, LLC
HamoniKR
VANT

Donations in February:

$270, Oliver H.
$250 (15th donation), Tomasz E.
$213 (6th donation), Andreas S.
$200 (3rd donation), Timothy R.
$119 (5th donation), Oliver G.
$115 (4th donation), Philip W.
$108 (9th donation), Mimi
$108 (2nd donation), Daniel M.
$108 (2nd donation), Jessica R.
$108 (2nd donation), Ueli H.
$108, Anna S.
$100 (20th donation), Philip W.
$100 (4th donation), Neil F.
$100 (2nd donation), Dan
$100 (2nd donation), Soren K.
$100, Carl J.
$100, Craig D.
$100, Harlan K.
$100, HO-HUM ENTERPRISES
$100, Michael T.
$100, Randolph L.
$100, Stephen H.
$80 (2nd donation), Timothy R.
$70 (4th donation), Vincent F.
$69, Jeffrey C.
$65 (2nd donation), Klaus S.
$55 (6th donation), John Mc
$55 (4th donation), Olivia C.
$54 (21st donation), Naoise G. aka “Gaff”
$54 (20th donation), Bjarne K.
$54 (12th donation), Adam H.
$54 (4th donation), Ivan Y.
$54 (4th donation), Nicolas S.
$54 (4th donation), Rainer Werner B.
$54 (4th donation), Richard H.
$54 (4th donation), Stephan Tietz
$54 (3rd donation), Guillaume
$54 (3rd donation), Jyrki A.
$54 (3rd donation), Rolf H.
$54 (2nd donation), Boris G.
$54 (2nd donation), Chris B.
$54 (2nd donation), Goran N.
$54, António Salsinha – Graphic Designer
$54, Armin S.
$54, Christopher A.
$54, Dominic H.
$54, Dym S.
$54, Georg P.
$54, Gioele V.
$54, Holger H.
$54, Johan R.
$54, Johannes A.
$54, Miquel Lluís B.
$54, Uwe S.
$54, Willibald S.
$51, Joan F.
$50 (81th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (60th donation), Michael R.
$50 (9th donation), Greg C.
$50 (6th donation), Ray W.
$50 (4th donation), Alan R.
$50 (4th donation), Benoit F.
$50 (4th donation), Jason B.
$50 (3rd donation), Douglas B.
$50 (3rd donation), German Genaro R.
$50 (3rd donation), Jerry R.
$50 (3rd donation), Mike H.
$50 (2nd donation), Daniel L.
$50 (2nd donation), Derek B.
$50 (2nd donation), Illya Konnoff K.
$50 (2nd donation), John D.
$50 (2nd donation), Patrick S.
$50 (2nd donation), Richard M. R.
$50, Andreas S.
$50, Charles D L.
$50, Emma H.
$50, Eugene W.
$50, Jacob A.
$50, James M.
$50, James N.
$50, Jeremy E.
$50, John R.
$50, John W.
$50, Matthew G.
$50, Michael F.
$50, Peter I.
$50, Richard G.
$50, Ryan R.
$50, William B.
$43 (4th donation), Wielant B.
$42 (7th donation), Martin K.
$40 (9th donation), John B.
$40 (5th donation), Clark R.
$40, Ethan H.
$35 (15th donation), B. H. .
$33, Cesar G.
$32 (9th donation), Alexander M.
$32 (5th donation), Henry T.
$32 (2nd donation), Lukas P.
$32, Enrico D.
$32, Fernando M.
$32, Jaroslaw C.
$32, Joerg B. aka “minerson”
$32, Steve E.
$30 (3rd donation), Birger M.
$30 (3rd donation), Kevin H.
$29 (2nd donation), Timothy L.
$27 (7th donation), Jonathan. H
$27 (6th donation), Niklas
$27 (2nd donation), René W.
$27, Dries
$27, Franz R.
$27, Sebastian L.
$27, Stéphane B.
$25 (36th donation), Linux Mint Sverige
$25 (15th donation), Richard N.
$25 (5th donation), Robert L. T.
$25, Douglas D.
$25, Mark W.
$25, Rick A.
$24, Khalid A.
$22 (45th donation), Peter E.
$22 (8th donation), Jorge R. R.
$22 (8th donation), Marek S. [LMDE SUPPORTER]
$22 (7th donation), Benjamin W.
$22 (7th donation), Danilo S.
$22 (6th donation), Chistoph B.
$22 (5th donation), Riccardo C.
$22 (4th donation), Andreas M. aka “AnMe2k22”
$22 (4th donation), Erkki J.
$22 (3rd donation), James P.
$22 (3rd donation), Jörg K. aka “Jku”
$22 (3rd donation), Neil S.
$22 (2nd donation), Alessandro P.
$22 (2nd donation), Juan B. S.
$22 (2nd donation), Lennart J.
$22 (2nd donation), Odie P.
$22 (2nd donation), Rafael V.
$22, Alexander S.
$22, Bastian S.
$22, Benjami L.
$22, Bernhard S.
$22, Carmen A.
$22, Christian B.
$22, David H.
$22, Denovan F.
$22, Francesco I.
$22, Georg W.
$22, Han M.
$22, Jean-pierre B.
$22, Jens G.
$22, Joerg M.
$22, John G.
$22, Karl Felix K.
$22, Klaus H.
$22, Leo
$22, Marcus B.
$22, Norbert J.
$22, Perrin M.
$22, Rafaz W.
$22, Roland R.
$22, Volker B.
$22, Werner M.
$20 (40th donation), John D.
$20 (21st donation), Aimee W.
$20 (21st donation), Pawel M.
$20 (17th donation), Kwan L. aka “DigitalHermit
$20 (9th donation), Thevirtua
$20 (6th donation), Joel C.
$20 (6th donation), Ralph G.
$20 (5th donation), Curtis S.
$20 (5th donation), Joe V.
$20 (4th donation), David H.
$20 (4th donation), Miles S. P.
$20 (4th donation), Robin V.
$20 (3rd donation), Alex S.
$20 (3rd donation), Harald M.
$20 (3rd donation), Paul S.
$20 (2nd donation), A D R.
$20 (2nd donation), Brian U.
$20 (2nd donation), Carlos L.
$20 (2nd donation), Charles B.
$20 (2nd donation), Douglas K.
$20 (2nd donation), James P.
$20 (2nd donation), Michael S.
$20 (2nd donation), Michal E.
$20 (2nd donation), Samuel F.
$20 (2nd donation), Stephen S.
$20 (2nd donation), TONY aka “STRUZZIN ELECTRONICS
$20 (2nd donation), William B.
$20, Benjamin L.
$20, Dale C.
$20, Dean L.
$20, Don M.
$20, Gary S.
$20, George M.
$20, Greg C.
$20, Helen H.
$20, Ivan N.
$20, James B.
$20, Jason W.
$20, John B M.
$20, John M.
$20, Kelly B.
$20, Larry G.
$20, Liam P.
$20, Logan H.
$20, Marie
$20, Marius V.
$20, Martin A.
$20, Nicholas M.
$20, Quickh.com
$20, Rebecca L.
$20, Rick Edwards aka ” ”
$20, Roger G.
$20, Serge S.
$20, Theodore H.
$18 (7th donation), ineuw
$16 (92th donation), Johann J.
$16 (73th donation), Andreas S.
$16 (3rd donation), Richard K.
$16 (2nd donation), Benito H.
$15 (4th donation), Laszlo F.
$15 (2nd donation), Terry P.
$13 (8th donation), Andrei Sinkevich
$12 (4th donation), John W.
$11 (46th donation), Daniel S.
$11 (23rd donation), Tugaleres.com
$11 (20th donation), Denys G.
$11 (8th donation), Axel R.
$11 (8th donation), Bengt Falke aka “Falke”
$11 (7th donation), Ronald S.
$11 (6th donation), Ivo H.
$11 (6th donation), RJ
$11 (5th donation), J. S. .
$11 (4th donation), Cor D.
$11 (4th donation), Harald H.
$11 (4th donation), Joel E.
$11 (3rd donation), Anthony S.
$11 (3rd donation), Björn H.
$11 (3rd donation), Ferruccio R.
$11 (3rd donation), Henry L. aka “Henry”
$11 (3rd donation), Jouko Tiilikainen aka “JT65”
$11 (2nd donation), Åke J.
$11 (2nd donation), Francisca M.
$11 (2nd donation), Gerard B.
$11 (2nd donation), Giorgio F. L.
$11 (2nd donation), Jan.c J.
$11 (2nd donation), jjb
$11 (2nd donation), John K.
$11 (2nd donation), Jose Maria
$11 (2nd donation), Martin Tobias S.
$11 (2nd donation), Rafel H.
$11 (2nd donation), Sebastian B.
$11 (2nd donation), Stefan E.
$11, Aleksei V.
$11, Andreas S.
$11, Anthony G.
$11, Athanasios F.
$11, Chelmerland
$11, Csaba G.
$11, Dafnis R.
$11, Dominik K.
$11, Fabio C.
$11, Frederic W.
$11, Giorgio D.
$11, Idris H.
$11, John van den Bosch aka “Jovadebo
$11, Jorge C.
$11, Jose Antonio V.
$11, Jose Arturo T.
$11, Linus A.
$11, Luca Bellinazzi aka “ilfolle”
$11, Marco L.
$11, Matthias K.
$11, Michael M.
$11, Michele S.
$11, Morgan P.
$11, Nadine B.
$11, Neville M.
$11, Oséias K.
$11, Ralf L.
$11, Roberto T.
$11, Ruben de V.
$11, Sami S.
$11, Simon W.
$11, Sven-oliver K.
$11, Thibaut P.
$11, Walter S.
$11, Yan R.
$10 (95th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (89th donation), Frank K.
$10 (42th donation), Philip Woodward
$10 (34th donation), Sami Mannila
$10 (33rd donation), Carpet Cleaning Winnipeg
$10 (11th donation), Dave S.
$10 (9th donation), Gustavo A. B.
$10 (9th donation), platypus products
$10 (8th donation), Bogdan P.
$10 (6th donation), Jürgen
$10 (5th donation), Attila K.
$10 (5th donation), Peter Vangsgaard aka “pvangsgaard
$10 (4th donation), Gary R.
$10 (3rd donation), Patrick P.
$10 (3rd donation), Robert E.
$10 (3rd donation), Robert M.
$10 (2nd donation), Ameen J.
$10 (2nd donation), Attila T.
$10 (2nd donation), Daniel T.
$10 (2nd donation), Gary I.
$10 (2nd donation), Glenn P.
$10 (2nd donation), Maciej D.
$10 (2nd donation), Tom V.
$10, Alben H.
$10, Csrl Richard S.
$10, Dan M.
$10, Editions Artisan Devereaux LLC
$10, Eduardo P.
$10, Georgette D.
$10, Gerardo A.
$10, Jack K.
$10, James W.
$10, Jeffrey K.
$10, Nickalou B.
$10, Randal C.
$10, Ronald Fernando F.
$10, Ryan Z.
$10, Steven S.
$10, True Altitude LLC aka “True Altitude LLC
$10, Wojciech J.
$10, Won K.
$8 (4th donation), Matthew Gracie aka “Nethound”
$8 (3rd donation), John H.
$132 from 46 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

Patrons:

Linux Mint is proudly supported by 1,045 patrons, for a sum of $3,503 per month.

To become a Linux Mint patron, please visit https://www.patreon.com/linux_mint