3 new modules were made available for the Community website at http://community.linuxmint.com

Messaging

If you’re logged in, you can now send a message to other people. They will receive a notification by email. They can reply to you, in which case you’ll get a notification as well. There’s a new “inbox” for your messages and an indication of how many unread messages you have on the left hand side of the website, just beside your avatar.

From your inbox you can also click on “View Outbox” to see the status of the messages you sent. Now, don’t think of this as your usual “sent mail”. This is not an email system. After you send a message, it becomes visible to your recipient in his/her inbox, and to you in your outbox. The title appears in bold characters until your recipient reads the message, and it disappears both from the recipient’s inbox and your outbox once deleted by the recipient.

The reason this behaves like this is to minimise the resources used by the module and to give you the ability to check if your message was read by the person you sent it to.

Notifications

You’ll receive notifications when something requires your attention or when something might be of interest to you. Notifications are not urgent and they do not require an answer from you, so they don’t appear in your “inbox” and you don’t get emails about them.

At the moment, only one module uses notifications: the Idea module. If you find an idea interesting and you’d like to follow its development, you can click on the “Subscribe” button on the top-right corner of the page. You’ll then receive notifications when this idea is edited by its author, when a user comments the idea or when an administrator changes its status.

A visual indicator on the left side of the page, beside your inbox and your avatar shows you if you’ve got unread notifications. Clicking on it brings you to your notifications box where you can see all your notifications. Note that notifications relate to a particular item (for instance, a particular idea) and that accessing that item, whether it is from a notification or by other means, automatically deletes all notifications you have about this item.

Friends

You can add people to your friends list by clicking the “Add as friend” button on their profile. And you can remove them from it either from their profile or directly from your friends list (click on My Places -> My Friends to access your friends list).

Note that people get notified by email when you add them as a friend.

At the moment, being friends on the Community site doesn’t mean much. It just gives you quick access to them when you want to compose a message. Friends list will become more important as we introduce new modules in the future, especially in regards to social networking, groups and rankings.

Other changes

The website is now accessible to visitors in read-only mode. This means you can point to ideas, hardware, software, users profiles… to people who aren’t registered on the website.

The layout of the profile page was changed so you can now look at someone’s profile and see his ideas, his hardware, his favourite software, his friends… all on the same page.

What’s coming next?

I personally would like to code the blog module next. This module’s purpose is to let you have your own blog on the website, to let people subscribe to it, comment and vote your articles and for them to have dynamic feeds of their subscribed blogs. I’m also planning on adding tutorial and FAQ modules and hopefully to come up with a way for users to easily share their knowledge and to publish howtos.

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 8 “Helena” LXDE Community Edition RC1.

Quick steps:

Introduction to Linux Mint 8 LXDE:

Based on Linux Mint 8 Main Edition, Linux 2.6.31, Openbox 3.4.7.2, PCManFM 0.5.2, and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 8 LXDE Edition features a complete and familiar desktop experience while being low on resource usage and is suitable for a good variety of older hardware.

For a detailed overview of the new features and improvements included in Linux Mint 8 LXDE, please read “What’s new in Helena LXDE?“.

Benchmark:

Here’s a quick benchmark comparing this edition to the Fluxbox and Xfce editions of Linux Mint. All 3 editions were tested on the same hardware (a computer with 384MB RAM).

RAM usage at idle:

  • Fluxbox: 131MB
  • LXDE: 141MB
  • Xfce: 154MB

Maximum RAM usage during the installation:

  • Fluxbox: 235MB
  • LXDE: 246MB
  • Xfce: 262MB

Boot time from Grub to the login manager:

  • Fluxbox: 31.16 seconds
  • LXDE: 26.79 seconds
  • Xfce: 26.46 seconds

Boot time from the login manager to the desktop:

  • Fluxbox: 3.32 seconds
  • LXDE: 3.77 seconds
  • Xfce: 9.63 seconds

System requirements:

  • x86 processor
  • 256 MB of system memory (RAM)
  • 3 GB of disk space for installation
  • Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution
  • CD-ROM drive or USB port

Important information and known issues:

As an RC (Release Candidate) this release is targeted at developers and beta-testers who want to help Linux Mint find and correct bugs before the stable release. Please do not use this release as your main desktop. For a complete list of known issues read the Release Notes.

Feedback and bug reports:

Please report any bug you may find via the Linux Mint 8 LXDE RC1 Bug Thread and give us your feedback on this release by posting a comment right here on the blog.

Download Linux Mint 8 LXDE RC1:

You can download Linux Mint 8 LXDE RC1 via torrent or via HTTP:

Size: 669MB LiveCD
MD5Sum: b66991424a718eeccc972c5509a20a5c

Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.com/torrent/LinuxMint-8-LXDE-RC1.iso.torrent
HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=51

Africa:

Asia:

Europe:

Northern America:

Oceania:

Enjoy!

Have a lot of fun testing this release candidate and let’s all hope it will help us make a great stable release.

This was written by Shane on behalf of the team:

“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton

This famous quote pretty much sums up the beauty of the open source tech world. Beginning with the first lines of code that were freely given to the whole world to use and share, to learn from and to teach. Around this code grew a community from all walks of life, from countless backgrounds and beliefs; all with one thing in common – the sharing of knowledge. The community breathes life into the code, propelling itself to reach ever greater heights standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before them.

We here at Linux Mint, in our own little corner of the Internet, have grown into our own community; helping and sharing, teaching and learning. But among us, Mats stood head and shoulders above the rest – keeping us together, diffusing disputes, listening to grievances, teaching the newcomers, looking after the stranded and cheering on the team. His dedication was selfless and complete as he nurtured an entire community which grew to be the 2nd most popular Linux distribution.

He is a true giant. The ever gentle, calm and encouraging giant who carried our community to reach for the sky. He embodies the spirit of the philosophy of sharing. We at Linux Mint will forever be indebted for his contribution. In our loss we can only be grateful to have known him in however small a way. We can only hope to carry this heavy torch he has passed on to us.

To the Geier family, we cannot imagine your grief. Our surety in the genuine goodness of Mats’ heart is unwavering. Our heartfelt condolences go out to you. Thank you for letting Mats be part of our community. We mourn your loss.

To the rest of us, let Mats be an example of what we should be to the community. Let us help those in trouble, teach those who want to learn, nurture healthy conversation and commend the good. Even to the end, his last post, Mats is the perfect example.

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=42901&p=249639#p249639

Mats Geier aka Husse, we will miss you dearly. But more importantly, we celebrate your being one of us; for being the giant we stand on.

Rest in peace Mats.