Many thanks for your support and your donations and many thanks to our sponsors, partners and all the people who help us.

Chromium

The Chromium browser is now available in the official repositories for both Linux Mint and LMDE. If you’ve been waiting for this I’d like to thank you for your patience.

To guarantee reactivity and timely updates we had to automate the process of detecting, packaging and compiling new versions of Chromium. This is an application which can require more than 6 hours per build on a fast computer. We allocated a new build server with high specifications (Ryzen 9 3900, 128GB RAM, NMVe) and reduced the time it took to build Chromium to a little more than an hour.

Although Chromium was present in Debian we noticed it was rarely up to date so the decision was taken to also build for LMDE. We had to adapt a few things and there were hurdles along the way but it’s finally here.

The package name is the same in Linux Mint and LMDE: “chromium”.

IPTV

Last month I mentioned we could develop an IPTV player and I received very positive feedback. Many of you showed an interest and curiosity towards it but I also noticed that the concept was often misinterpreted or not fully understood.

It’s still too soon to say whether this will be part of Linux Mint and how much we can focus on its development, but we got enough enthusiasm here to get the project started and build a prototype called Hypnotix.

You can download Hypnotix at:

http://linuxmint.com/tmp/blog/3978/hypnotix_1.0.0_all.deb

This is an early ALPHA, with no translations and a very minimal user interface and set of features.

It comes configured with a free content provider (FreeIPTV) which provides streams for a variety of TV stations. This was done so that anyone could use it and see how it works. The scope of the project is however limited to the development of a player application and does not include the maintenance or the provision of streams or multimedia content. This is done by the content provider.

Hypnotix doesn’t have preferences in its user interface, but you can configure it from the command line. If you have an IPTV content provider, you can specify its name and your M3U address this way:

gsettings set org.x.hypnotix providers "['Provider_Name:::https://m3u_url.m3u']"

You can follow Hypnotix’s development on Github at https://github.com/linuxmint/hypnotix.

Favorites

Do you often work on the same files? Do you rely on bookmarks and “recents” to find them? We are working on something which will help you access your favorite files faster than before.

Simply right-click a file and choose “Add to Favorites”. Similar to pinned files it becomes easier to spot by showing up at the top of your folder.

You can also get to it directly, no matter where you are, by using the “Favorites” section of your file manager:

Or the file selection dialog:

Or from the application you want to open it with:

Or in Cinnamon from a new section in the application menu or the newly dedicated “favorites” applet.

We’ve had bookmarks for years to quickly access some of our directories, it was about time we did the same for files.

Cinnamon

CJS 4.8 will use the newer Mozjs78. This was requested by other distributions and it makes Cinnamon easier to maintain outside of Linux Mint. In all distributions, including our own, this also results in slightly better performance, in particular during the startup phase.

Changes were made to the way Cinnamon interprets compatibility with spices. In the past, an applet or desklet which specified the versions of Cinnamon it was compatible with had to be updated to specify the newly released version of Cinnamon. Failing that it didn’t work properly. Starting with Cinnamon 4.8 this will no longer be necessary. Forward compatibility will be assumed and expected unless specifically refused by the applet/desklet. Multi-version (the ability for the spice to provide different source code for different versions of Cinnamon) will also become implicit. This will improve compatibility between spices and Cinnamon and reduce maintenance.

Improvements were made also to the way Cinnamon interacts with the spices server. Some data was cached by our global proxy and this sometimes introduced issues when updating spices. Future versions of Cinnamon will force the proxy to bypass the cache and always retrieve up to date spices.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors:
Linux VPS Hosting
Silver Sponsors:
Sucuri
ThinkPenguin: For Everything Freedom
Tibor Kaputa
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
hSo
Avery Tarasov / Chr0meiCe2 / @Abdomination1
BGASoft Inc
David Salvo
Feathercoin
HamoniKR
Look To The Right SEO
Michael Hathaway
Synapse Search
Uwe Schneider GmbH
Community Sponsors:

 

Donations in September:

A total of $10,727 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 483 donors:

$108, Andrew M.
$108, Birgit N.
$100 (29th donation), Ray
$100 (6th donation), Matthew P.
$100 (2nd donation), Neil F.
$100, Douglas M.
$100, Claude M.
$100, Alexander A.
$90 (3rd donation), Neal K.
$80, dcm-thanks
$60 (2nd donation), David B.
$57, Holger T.
$54 (5th donation), Gerald H.
$54 (4th donation), Stuart H.
$54 (3rd donation), Roland H.
$54 (3rd donation), Jean C. A.
$54 (3rd donation), Stefan K.
$54 (2nd donation), Janez G.
$54 (2nd donation), Ulrich H.
$54, Jürgen J.
$54, Francois-noel F.
$54, Andrea C.
$54, Daniele B.
$54, Krzysztof D.
$54, Hannes D.
$54, Stefan L.
$54, Marc C.
$54, Peter P. aka “pp
$54, Eric P.
$54, Cyril I.
$54, Armin K.
$54, Mario P.
$51 (3rd donation), Suyog B.
$50 (43th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (11th donation), Alfred H. aka “Varmint Al
$50 (9th donation), Ian L.
$50 (8th donation), Cody W. H.
$50 (7th donation), Arrowhead Computer Consulting, LLC aka “Jim (JR)
$50 (5th donation), Peter F.
$50 (4th donation), Brian M.
$50 (4th donation), Stephen T.
$50 (4th donation), Colin B.
$50 (4th donation), Roy V. K.
$50 (2nd donation), John F.
$50 (2nd donation), Terry P.
$50, Zach G.
$50, Stephen S.
$50, Sorin S.
$50, Daniel Z.
$50, Phong T.
$50, Steven C.
$50, Brendan F.
$50, Brandon P.
$50, John S.
$50, Bobby W.
$50, Scott P.
$50, Roy N.
$50, Priyesh P.
$50, Daniel L.
$50, Richard D.
$50, Jeffrey G.
$50, Simon B.
$50, Joe R.
$50, Elizabeth L.
$50, Aloysius R.
$50, Steven S.
$50, Ron S.
$50, Richard S.
$50, Randal B.
$50, Stephen N.
$50, Lance H.
$43 (2nd donation), Mathias P.
$43, Gianni O.
$43, Philippe A.
$43, Manuel López
$42 (5th donation), Martin K.
$40 (127th donation), Olli K.
$40, Eric D.
$40, Ian L.
$35 (8th donation), Ted S.
$35, Brian H.
$32 (11th donation), Stephen M.
$32 (8th donation), Steve Glyn.
$32 (4th donation), Thomas K.
$32 (2nd donation), David W.
$32, Mario S.
$30 (5th donation), Jonathan L.
$30, Jan Theake D.
$30, Steven L.
$30, Far West Computer Consulting
$30, Rob Z.
$27 (11th donation), Roger aka “Linux Workgroup Monitor Niel Belgium
$27 (2nd donation),
$27, Jewe S.
$27, Jan B.
$25 (8th donation), Scott O.
$25 (6th donation), John C.
$25 (5th donation), Marc B.
$25 (5th donation), Edmond I.
$25 (4th donation), Timothy L.
$25 (4th donation), Alex O.
$25 (3rd donation), Donald K.
$25 (2nd donation), Mark G.
$25, Walter R.
$25, Frederick C P.
$22 (22nd donation), Doriano G. M.
$22 (21st donation), Michael R.
$22 (9th donation), Anonymous User
$22 (8th donation), Ben E.
$22 (6th donation), Peter E.
$22 (6th donation), Alonso C.
$22 (4th donation), Christian K.
$22 (3rd donation), Thomas K.
$22 (3rd donation), Stefan Becker aka “Appeltaler”
$22 (2nd donation), Detlef N.
$22 (2nd donation), Angelos N.
$22, Marjan V.
$22, Herman M.
$22, Lars S.
$22, PZL Games
$22, Otto N.
$22, Antonio S.
$22, Werner W.
$22, Mr Md N.
$22, Wilm-gert E.
$22, Miguel S.
$22, Matthias B.
$22, Stefan M.
$22, Hans B.
$22, Johnny Riber L.
$22, Sean M.
$22, Lothar P.
$22, Etienne L.
$22, Pablo G.
$22, Marcel V.
$22, Steiner A.
$22, Emma Clotilde T.
$22, Jaume T.
$22, Jordi R.
$22, Dirk D.
$22, Wolfgang N.
$22, Roger H.
$22, Hussain F.
$22, Erkki Ruohtula
$22, Louis A.
$22, Stefan E.
$22, Thorsten D.
$22, Millon M.
$22, Achille A.
$22, Hans-peter W.
$22, Enzo C.
$22, Alastair S.
$22, Luis Javier G.
$21 (7th donation), Robert M.
$20 (76th donation), Tree Service Kansas City
$20 (48th donation), Fence Baton Rouge
$20 (26th donation), Bryan F.
$20 (23rd donation), Mike W aka “bajan52”
$20 (5th donation), Nathan H.
$20 (5th donation), Robert L.
$20 (4th donation), Ken R. S.
$20 (4th donation), Christopher V.
$20 (3rd donation), Hans G. H.
$20 (2nd donation), Brent P.
$20 (2nd donation), Charles T.
$20 (2nd donation), Daniel T.
$20 (2nd donation), Miles S. P.
$20 (2nd donation), Steven S.
$20 (2nd donation), Tony N.
$20 (2nd donation), H. P. .
$20 (2nd donation), Carlos R.
$20 (2nd donation), Jon D.
$20 (2nd donation), George P.
$20 (2nd donation), Andrew L.
$20 (2nd donation), Bryan A. P.
$20 (2nd donation), opalInteractive
$20 (2nd donation), Peter L.
$20 (2nd donation), J. S. .
$20, Terry H.
$20, Esteban F.
$20, Tony K.
$20, Larry M.
$20, Tom K.
$20, Thomas L.
$20, Rory B.
$20, Ryans Products LLC
$20, Alexander B.
$20, Mehdi
$20, Robert E.
$20, Brandon V.
$20, Ranald C.
$20, Vincent P.
$20, Adrian B.
$20, Steven G.
$20, Brian H.
$20, Brandon B.
$20, Tom C.
$20, Travis S.
$20, Scott V.
$20, William D.
$20, The Lawn Ranger Ltd. Co.
$20, Michael G.
$20, Steven W.
$16 (44th donation), Andreas S.
$16 (2nd donation), Thomas K.
$16 (2nd donation), Felix N.
$16, Ronald H.
$16, Romain P.
$15 (26th donation), ajgringo619
$15 (3rd donation), Vladimir Litvinenko
$15 (2nd donation), Harry T.
$15, Michael W.
$13 (3rd donation), Ivan S.
$12 (13th donation), Lance A.
$12 (9th donation), Tsatsorin E. aka “Eugene713
$12 (4th donation), Peter S.
$12 (2nd donation), Towing Service Las Vegas
$11 (14th donation), Nachtstuck Records
$11 (14th donation), Piotr L aka “xpil
$11 (11th donation), Slobodan Vrkacevic
$11 (9th donation), Antonio aka “pengu73”
$11 (8th donation), José G.
$11 (8th donation), Francois B. aka “Makoto
$11 (7th donation), Štefan V. aka “Thinker8”
$11 (7th donation), ThomaZ
$11 (7th donation), Wolfgang G.
$11 (7th donation), Daniel S.
$11 (6th donation), Soutarson P.
$11 (4th donation), Roberto R. D. T.
$11 (4th donation), Julien R.
$11 (3rd donation), Andrew L.
$11 (3rd donation), Juergen M B.
$11 (3rd donation), Lukas W. aka “Luk”
$11 (3rd donation), Adam B.
$11 (3rd donation), Dylan B.
$11 (3rd donation), Ravi S.
$11 (3rd donation), Nicolas R.
$11 (2nd donation), Vjeran B.
$11 (2nd donation), Viktor Jozsef H.
$11 (2nd donation), Giorgio S.
$11 (2nd donation), Philip W.
$11 (2nd donation), Peter S.
$11 (2nd donation), Paul O.
$11 (2nd donation), Dennis J.
$11 (2nd donation), Jaroslav K.
$11 (2nd donation), Petr K.
$11 (2nd donation), H. B. .
$11, Gabriele R.
$11, zzzzzzz .
$11, Jerome B.
$11, Sebastian S.
$11, José María G.
$11, jjb
$11, José H.
$11, Leonie H.
$11, Daniel S.
$11, Enrique S.
$11, Raphael S.
$11, Michael J.
$11, Johann F.
$11, Hansjörg G.
$11, Franz D.
$11, Stefan P.
$11, Daniel L.
$11, Wilhelm S.
$11, Dmitry P. aka “message”
$11, Christian W.
$11, David F.
$11, Karl-friedrich D.
$11, Daniel W.
$11, Giovanni F.
$11, Arend A.
$11, Laura G.
$11, Dennis V.
$11, Reiner H.
$11, Gorazd B.
$11, Christian G.
$11, F. Meneu
$11, Laura
$11, Bernhard H.
$11, Nabil R.
$11, Olivier R.
$11, Gian Franco G.
$11, Joerg P.
$11, Richard Z.
$11, Philip T.
$11, Jos K.
$11, Kurt Moraw
$11, Fafadji G.
$10 (71th donation), Tree Removal Raleigh NC
$10 (55th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (50th donation), Frank K.
$10 (34th donation), Rick R.
$10 (27th donation), LJNL aka “lauranl”
$10 (17th donation), Christopher R.
$10 (16th donation), Francois-R L.
$10 (14th donation), Sami Mannila
$10 (14th donation), Serhii B. aka “sinpavla
$10 (13th donation), Mike M. aka “GrouchyM”
$10 (12th donation), Screw Piles Edmonton
$10 (9th donation), Free Spins
$10 (8th donation), Edward A.
$10 (8th donation), Interactiv Médias aka “ITActiv
$10 (7th donation), Terry B.
$10 (6th donation), Dog Training Cheyenne
$10 (6th donation), Roy D.
$10 (6th donation), Locksmith Indio
$10 (6th donation), Kari H.
$10 (5th donation), Dmitry aka “Corpsee
$10 (5th donation), Ian C.
$10 (5th donation), Mark W.
$10 (5th donation), Robert W.
$10 (5th donation), anonymous aka “victorsk”
$10 (5th donation), Marriage Counselling Edmonton
$10 (4th donation), blueredgreen
$10 (4th donation), Cezary F.
$10 (4th donation), Flamingo Merch
$10 (4th donation), Sebastian B.
$10 (3rd donation), Victor W.
$10 (3rd donation), cemento portland
$10 (3rd donation), Timeless Leaves
$10 (3rd donation), www.bmoremovingcompany.com
$10 (3rd donation), Jennifer A T.
$10 (3rd donation), Stephen S.
$10 (3rd donation), Frank H.
$10 (2nd donation), ezday computers
$10 (2nd donation), Piotr S.
$10 (2nd donation), Oleg Y. aka “oyerko
$10 (2nd donation), Concrete Contractors Raleigh
$10 (2nd donation), Jorge R.
$10 (2nd donation), Aimee W.
$10 (2nd donation), Fence Company Raleigh
$10 (2nd donation), Wilfrid W.
$10 (2nd donation), Jose D. C.
$10 (2nd donation), aka “jl”
$10 (2nd donation), Glenn S.
$10, George D.
$10, Minzhe T.
$10, John S.
$10, John S.
$10, Dean L.
$10, Thomas D.
$10, Mauricio R.
$10, InAppDesigns
$10, ipmhigg
$10, Harold J.
$10, Kunal Gurnani
$10, Jose Luiz R.
$10, Magnus L.
$10, Rafaz P.
$10, Daniel G.
$10, Keep Mint running
$10, Leslie B.
$10, Wilfred Ivan C.
$10, Evan G.
$10, Carpet Cleaning Hertfordshire aka “OziClean
$10, Michael R.
$10, Todd A.
$10, David A.
$10, Terry D.
$10, Kenneth W.
$10, Marvin H.
$10, Fresh Lawns Mowing
$10, Durwood A.
$10, zzzzzzzzz .
$10, William C.
$10, José Clóvis A.
$10, Eric R.
$10, Brian D.
$10, Ngian Xin Terry L.
$10, Photo Booth Rental
$9, Kamil D.
$8 (4th donation), Helmut S.
$8, Alex C.
$7, Bernardus L.
$7, Тюмень
$7, Jose Dimas S.
$7, Hobbyist
$6 (4th donation), Recipe Library
$6 (3rd donation),
$6, Del Santo F.
$5 (53th donation), Eugene T.
$5 (44th donation), Bhavinder Jassar
$5 (32nd donation), Dmitry P.
$5 (23rd donation), William Menezes
$5 (22nd donation), GaryD
$5 (18th donation), Hristo Gatsinski
$5 (18th donation), Jan Miszura
$5 (14th donation), Tutos-Informatique aka “tutos-info”
$5 (11th donation), Thomas R.
$5 (9th donation), Painter And Decorator Gloucester
$5 (7th donation), dgtworx.com
$5 (6th donation), Javier V. B.
$5 (5th donation), Timo K.
$5 (4th donation), Alex P.
$5 (2nd donation), Drone Photography Melbourne
$5 (2nd donation), Sandro B. aka “SBonafin”
$5 (2nd donation), Pedro Paulo S.Silva
$5, Kyle Newsome
$5, zzzzzz .
$5, Keila M.
$5, Dolores Q.
$5, Willem L.
$5, Wendy L.
$5, Andre A.
$5, Kyle K.
$5, Nikola Y.
$5, Marcin C.
$5, Alberto P. aka “IW1PRT”
$5, Daniele P.
$5, Alejandro B.
$5, William G.
$5, Benjamin G.
$5, Jhonatan P.
$5, John M.
$5, Ekaterina B.
$5, Philip H.
$5, Nyikero Gordon aka “Nyik”
$5, Manuel B.
$5, Luis F.
$5, Ulrich B.
$5, Manfred H.
$4 (5th donation), Artur F.
$4, Landscaping Sacramento
$4, Dominik E.
$3 (46th donation), Йошкар-Ола Восточный
$3 (12th donation), Oleksandr P.
$3 (4th donation), Csaba V.
$3 (2nd donation), Landscaping Midland TX
$3 (2nd donation), Andrew C.
$3 (2nd donation), Szilard S.
$3 (2nd donation), Alex_Sander aka “Auberge”
$3, Godfrey K.
$56 from 48 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 499 patrons, for a sum of $2,333 per month.

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

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As usual and before we get on with the news I’d like to thank all the people who support our project. Many thanks to our sponsors, partners and to many of you for your donations.

Critical regression in Linux Mint 19

We’ll start with the bad news. A critical issue was found in the base-file 19.0.2 update which was sent towards Linux Mint 19 this week. Not only did this update break the boot sequence but Timeshift could also not fix it.

We always learn a lot when we face a critical scenario. This one was really unique. Considering the nature of the change we couldn’t have anticipated its impact but it’s teaching us a lesson when it comes to detecting build failures and it showed us a limitation in Timeshift, which despite being able to fix almost any kind of problems, including non-booting operating systems or even systems where critical files are gone missing, could not detect nor fix the issue in this particular case.

The update was pulled a day after it was sent and a solution was made available on the forums to fix the issue: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=143&t=331605.

I’d like to apologize to users who were impacted by this and thank people who alarmed us and provided help while we got the solution ready.

Chromium

We’re happy to confirm we will be packaging Chromium going forward and providing updates through the official repositories.

We noticed significant delays between official releases and the versions available in almost all Linux distributions. For this reason we set up our own packaging and we’re building directly from upstream.

Some of the patches from Debian and Ubuntu were also imported. If you want to test our build and provide feedback you can download Chromium from the links below:

Remove any version of Chromium or ungoogled-chromium you might have prior to installing this one.

Sticky Notes

We’re also looking for feedback on “Sticky Notes”, a side-project developed by Stephen Collins.

Sticky Notes lets you create Post-It notes and organize them into groups. The notes are visible on your desktop and can be quickly shown or hidden using the provided tray icon.

This application is still in Alpha stage. Feedback and bug reports are welcome on https://github.com/collinss/sticky.

IPTV

While we’re talking about side-projects, we’d like to get your opinion on IPTV and in M3U in particular. Do you use M3U IPTV on your phone, tablet or smart TV? Would you be interested in watching and possibly recording IPTV in Linux?

We noticed the lack of good IPTV solutions on the Linux desktop but we’re not sure how many people actually do use it. We could develop something very slowly as a side project if the audience is small, or we could make this a Linux Mint project if there’s enough demand for it.

Let us know what you think.

WebApp Manager

Last month we introduced the WebApp Manager. You sent us many bug reports and ideas and you helped us improve this tool significantly.

Here is version 1.0.5 with UI improvements, bug fixes and better translations: webapp-manager_1.0.5_all.deb.

Linux Mint 20.1

The codename for Linux Mint 20.1 will be “Ulyssa”. The release is planned to arrive just before Christmas.

Hardware Video Acceleration

In Linux Mint 20.1, the Celluloid video player will ship with hardware video acceleration enabled by default.

Hardware video acceleration, or hardware acceleration video decoding, consists in using the graphics card to decode the video file. This usually results in smoother playback, better performance and reduced CPU usage.

If you want to test this on your computer you can play a video with Celluloid and press the “I” key to show information about the decoding. Check the first line of the “Video” section which appears on overlay:

In the screenshot above “(hwdec: vaapi)” indicates that hardware video acceleration is enabled and implemented via VAAPI. On NVIDIA hardware NVDEC could be used instead of VAAPI. If hardware video acceleration is not enabled, no information related to “hwdec” will appear.

To enable hardware video acceleration, press the burger menu, go in “Preferences” -> “Miscellaneous”, and add the following line in “Extra MPV Options”:

hwdec=auto-safe 

Let us know how this affects video playback on your computer and don’t forget to mention which GPU and driver you are using.

Driver Manager

Following the release of the NVIDIA 450 drivers we noticed issues in the Driver Manager. The dependencies became more complex and their resolution started to fail on some computers running Linux Mint 19.3.

In Linux Mint 19.3 and earlier releases APT  is configured to only install dependency packages when installing a new package. As they should be, recommended packages are recommended but they are not installed automatically.

In Linux Mint 20 however the APT configuration changed to include recommended packages. Installing a new package both recommends and automatically installs these recommended packages. This change was made to align with Debian and Ubuntu, where APT is configured like this, not because it was better this way (although that’s arguable and there are pros and cons at play), but because it meant incorrect packaging would affect us less than it did before.

There are a growing number of packages which are badly packaged and  which incorrectly list some of the components they strictly require not as a dependency but as recommended packages. In the past we worked around this by patching some of them, or making our tools explicitly install these recommended packages when needed.

The situation in regards to NVIDIA 450 and the Driver Manager got to the point where listing these recommended packages made the APT resolution fail and something had to be done to simplify how this worked.

The solution we opted for was to do the following:

  • We decided to backport the very latest version of mintsystem and mintdrivers to all Linux Mint 19.x releases to have them all work the same way.
  • The APT configuration in 19.x will change to enable APT recommends. This will change once and only once when you receive these updates. You will be able to change it back then after, although this is not recommended (pun intended) and if you so wish.

While implementing this solution we noticed that, unless we specifically ask it to, aptdaemon (which the Driver Manager uses) does not actually install recommended packages, no matter how APT is configured. This had no impact on Linux Mint since the recommended packages were disabled anyway, and the Driver Manager explicitly added them, but it might have had an impact on Ubuntu 18.04 and derivatives.

It’s hard to explain in details because it’s quite technical and I get the feeling I’m already talking about this quite a lot here, but this resulted in the decision to migrate the Driver Manager from aptdaemon to packagekit.

To summarize:

  • We’ll soon backport new versions of mintsystem and mintdrivers to all 19.x releases and to Linux Mint 20.
  • APT recommends will become enabled in Linux Mint 19.x (they already are in Mint 20)
  • The Driver Manager will switch to packagekit.

Beside the bug fixes and functional benefits, this will also bring the following changes:

  • The Driver Manager will run in user mode. You won’t need to enter a password until you actually install or remove a driver.
  • Its user interface will be improved.

USB Printer Support

We noticed a regression in Ubuntu 20.04 and Linux Mint 20. Some of the USB printers and scanners which worked perfectly fine in Linux Mint 19.3 no longer work in Linux Mint 20. They’re also automatically added in the Printer configuration tool and removing them is not possible (they keep coming back).

If you are affected by this issue remove the “ippusbxd” package.

Ippusbxd is an implementation of the IPP-over-USB standard. The idea is to interact with the printer via a common protocol, without drivers, and as if  it was a network printer. This is very promising because it could allow automatic printer discovery, standardized functionality and we wouldn’t have to rely on specific drivers (which some manufacturers aren’t great at providing). The problem with ippusbxd though is that it just doesn’t work well so we’ll very likely have it removed in Linux Mint 20.1.

We’re also looking at ipp-usb. This is a second implementation of IPP-over-USB and this time it might work much better. If you’re interested in this topic, head over to the following links for more information and interesting discussions:

We’re trying to get as much feedback as possible on ipp-usb to decide whether to jump on-board and switch to it in Linux Mint 20.1 or simply switch back to how things worked before (i.e. using drivers and no IPP) for a few releases while IPP gets more and more mature.

If you test ipp-usb do let us know how it works for you. Does it work better? Which drivers were you using before? The more we know the better.

Other News

Bugs related to tray icons in Cinnamon with particular apps (fcitx, KDE connect, Redshift, etc.) were fixed.

A small improvement was made in the Mint-Y theme. The titlebar buttons are still the same size but their clickable region will be enlarged in Linux Mint 20.1.

We had a bit of downtime early in September on the Cinnamon spices website. This website was migrated to a new server and a new framework. Everything is expected to work fine and we hope even better than before. Let us know if you encounter any issues.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

 

Gold Sponsors:
Linux VPS Hosting
Silver Sponsors:
Sucuri
ThinkPenguin: For Everything Freedom
Tibor Kaputa
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
hSo
Avery Tarasov / Chr0meiCe2 / @Abdomination1
BGASoft Inc
David Salvo
Feathercoin
HamoniKR
Look To The Right SEO
Michael Hathaway
Synapse Search
Uwe Schneider GmbH
Community Sponsors:

Donations in August:

A total of $11,304 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 780 donors:

$350 (25th donation), Ralph Siegler aka “ziggy
$250, anonymous
$200 (9th donation), Ronald S.
$200, Stephen I.
$200, Dmytro K.
$108 (4th donation), Glen P.
$108 (2nd donation), Gert W.
$108, Rasmus A.
$108, Pascal H.
$108, Peik S.
$100 (28th donation), Human Inhabitant
$100 (5th donation), Trevor H.
$100 (3rd donation), Joe K.
$100, James S.
$100, Andrew W.
$71, Gerald Leeb
$60 (5th donation), James L.
$54 (2nd donation), Stéphane A. L.
$54 (2nd donation), Volker P.
$54 (2nd donation), Heinz K.
$54 (2nd donation), Christian H.
$54 (2nd donation), Ernst G. aka “Guldi”
$54, Stefan K.
$54, Christophe G.
$54, Franz S.
$54, Kari H.
$54, Norman C.
$54, Prema Systems – Cloudworks
$54, Jens B.
$54, Alan H.
$54, Daniel B.
$54, Gerald P.
$54, Jan O.
$54, Theodorus Peter R.
$54, Andreas O.
$54, Jarkko T.
$54, Cezary Z.
$54, Pieter N.
$54, Dominique M.
$54, Michal K.
$54, Bernd E.
$54, August F.
$54, Erich B.
$54, Karsten W.
$50 (42th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (23rd donation), Thomas T. aka “FullTimer1489”
$50 (11th donation), Michael C.
$50 (7th donation), Philip G. aka “-PGG-“
$50 (3rd donation), Philip C.
$50 (3rd donation), Jeffrey W.
$50 (3rd donation), Andrew Gouw
$50 (3rd donation), Jeff M.
$50 (2nd donation), Ariel Juodziukynas
$50 (2nd donation), Gregory F.
$50 (2nd donation), Craig B.
$50 (2nd donation), Richard M.
$50 (2nd donation), Robert S.
$50, Scott M.
$50, Mark L.
$50, Vincent J.
$50, Michael T.
$50, Byron D.
$50, Exequiel B.
$50, Nancy A.
$50, David M.
$50, Laura M.
$50, Philip B.
$50, Kyle S.
$50, Glenn M.
$50, Stuart K.
$50, William N.
$50, Francois B.
$50, Alastair S.
$50, Dan E.
$50, Peter M.
$50, Bill G.
$50, Timothy R.
$50, Jose H.
$50, Bill C W.
$43, Timo U.
$40, Andreas E.
$35 (7th donation), Ted S.
$35 (3rd donation), Gabriel D.
$35, Javorka T.
$35, William H.
$33, Szilard S.
$32 (126th donation), Olli K.
$32 (7th donation), Lars-gunnar S.
$32 (5th donation), Harald M.
$32 (5th donation), Alexander M.
$32 (2nd donation), Václav K.
$32, Thomas G.
$32, Simon D.
$32, Stephan D.
$30 (8th donation), B. H. .
$30 (3rd donation), Graeme M. J.
$30, William A.
$30, ANDRIY aka “WARKETOLOG”
$30, John B.
$30, Finn I.
$30, John K.
$30, Willie J.
$27 (7th donation), Frank V.
$25 (4th donation), William C.
$25 (3rd donation), Michael H.
$25 (3rd donation), Matt H.
$25, Timothy H.
$25, Edward S.
$25, Michael G.
$25, Charles S.
$22 (16th donation), Joachim M.
$22 (11th donation), Pentti T.
$22 (10th donation), Nicklas L.
$22 (9th donation), Henrik H.
$22 (7th donation), Florent G.
$22 (6th donation), Tom B.
$22 (6th donation), Robert M.
$22 (3rd donation), Michael K.
$22 (3rd donation), Ulf-Andreas S.
$22 (3rd donation), Johannes O.
$22 (3rd donation), Sebastiano C.
$22 (2nd donation), Francesca P.
$22 (2nd donation), Geoffrey R.
$22 (2nd donation), Clive W.
$22 (2nd donation), Pascal N. aka “Clockwork”
$22 (2nd donation), Vladimir Litvinenko
$22 (2nd donation), Didier P.
$22 (2nd donation), Juan F. J. L.
$22, Jean-noel S.
$22, Amazias O.
$22, Jean-jacques A.
$22, David M.
$22, Jonathan P.
$22, Jens R.
$22, Mark M.
$22, Ulrich I.
$22, Michele C.
$22, Herve M.
$22, Max H.
$22, Christoph M.
$22, Marco W.
$22, Tom R.
$22, Marc T.
$22, Harry N.
$22, Raul S.
$22, Dylan B.
$22, Wielant B.
$22, Anita K.
$22, Theo B.
$20 (29th donation), Stefan M. H.
$20 (25th donation), Bryan F.
$20 (22nd donation), Mike W aka “bajan52”
$20 (19th donation), John D.
$20 (12th donation), George R. aka “Az4x4”
$20 (11th donation), Douglas T.
$20 (11th donation), Nigel B.
$20 (8th donation), Peter R.
$20 (7th donation), Daniel V. M.
$20 (5th donation), Chris B.
$20 (5th donation), Devon B.
$20 (4th donation), Antony L.
$20 (4th donation), Douglas W.
$20 (4th donation), Stephen M.
$20 (4th donation), Raymond L.
$20 (3rd donation), Tamer A.
$20 (3rd donation), Ralph G.
$20 (3rd donation), Michael C.
$20 (2nd donation), Merle S.
$20 (2nd donation), Raghav K.
$20 (2nd donation), Andriy K.
$20 (2nd donation), Jan C.
$20, Paul S.
$20, Rohit
$20, Alexandr C.
$20, Jason S.
$20, Rafael L.
$20, John N.
$20, Christiaan V.
$20, Craig F.
$20, Brent P.
$20, Nicolas L.
$20, Wolfgang R.
$20, Luis Enrique S.
$20, Wylie E.
$20, Kenwood S.
$20, Dewey M.
$20, Nathan W.
$20, Harry W.
$20, Matthew C.
$20, Carsten M F.
$20, Michael J.
$20, Bradley F.
$20, Jeffery F.
$20, James C.
$20, Karen B.
$20, Adam B.
$20, Bryan A. P.
$20, Sidney T.
$20, Steve S.
$20, Mark C.
$19 (49th donation), Johann J.
$17, Daniel T.
$17, Derrick K.
$16 (43th donation), Andreas S.
$16 (8th donation), Antonio aka “pengu73”
$16 (2nd donation), Tino M.
$16, Matthieu G.
$16, Frank S.
$15 (25th donation), ajgringo619
$15 (2nd donation), Fence Company Raleigh
$15, Mark B.
$15, Jan R.
$15, Bertrand S.
$13 (4th donation), Nathan H.
$13 (2nd donation), Enric Pastor
$12 (114th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
$12 (12th donation), Lance A.
$12 (4th donation), David K.
$12 (2nd donation), Frederick F.
$11 (20th donation), Michael R.
$11 (17th donation), Eskild T
$11 (15th donation), Denis D.
$11 (7th donation), Celtis Ltd
$11 (6th donation), Daniel S.
$11 (6th donation), Appliance Repair Regina
$11 (6th donation), Štefan V. aka “Thinker8”
$11 (5th donation), Adis H.
$11 (3rd donation), Iker P. M.
$11 (3rd donation), Rudi K.
$11 (3rd donation), Cedric B.
$11 (3rd donation), jacobsen.biz
$11 (3rd donation), Emiliano M.
$11 (2nd donation), Francisco F.
$11 (2nd donation), Jean-Michel V.
$11 (2nd donation), Francisco G.
$11 (2nd donation), Juergen M B.
$11 (2nd donation), Michalis L.
$11 (2nd donation), Ernest T.
$11 (2nd donation), Szabi
$11, Alan L.
$11, Jean-B. N.
$11, Aaron Zammit aka “aazamm”
$11, Peter F.
$11, Daniel J.
$11, Paul O.
$11, Allan S.
$11, Stefan W.
$11, Ugo M.
$11, Plamen P.
$11, Dirk F.
$11, Flo.
$11, Artur M.
$11, Ian J.
$11, Hendrik D.
$11, Lorenzo Jesús P.
$11, Stijn V.
$11, Mikele Shtembari
$11, Jose B.
$11, Thi B.
$11, Elias R.
$11, Alexander A.
$11, Robin D.
$11, Johannes L.
$11, Simon L.
$11, Time Will Tell
$11, Milan V.
$11, Luis Alberto G.
$11, Silvano G.
$11, Ornella B.
$11, Stefano G.
$11, Nicolas H.
$11, William M.
$11, Václav P.
$11, Aleksander R.
$11, Juan Manuel C.
$11, Werner M.
$11, Ingo S.
$11, Michel O.
$11, Roman D.
$11, Boris P.
$11, Laurence B.
$10 (74th donation), Tree Service Kansas City
$10 (70th donation), Tree Removal Raleigh NC
$10 (54th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (49th donation), Frank K.
$10 (46th donation), Fence Baton Rouge
$10 (33rd donation), Rick R.
$10 (26th donation), LJNL aka “lauranl”
$10 (15th donation), Francois-R L.
$10 (13th donation), Serhii B. aka “sinpavla
$10 (11th donation), Tree Service Eau Claire
$10 (11th donation), Mike M. aka “GrouchyM”
$10 (10th donation), tree removal calgary
$10 (9th donation), Tree Service Windsor Ontario
$10 (9th donation), Scaffolding Kent
$10 (9th donation), Pawel M.
$10 (8th donation), Appliance Repair Calgary
$10 (8th donation), Hot Tubs Calgary
$10 (7th donation), Interactiv Médias aka “ITActiv
$10 (7th donation), Carpet Cleaning Winnipeg
$10 (6th donation), Preciocpa.es
$10 (5th donation), Dog Training Cheyenne
$10 (4th donation), Robert F.
$10 (4th donation), Jan V.
$10 (4th donation), Scaffolding Manchester
$10 (4th donation), Actuz.net
$10 (4th donation), Larry F.
$10 (3rd donation), Flamingo Merch
$10 (3rd donation), Mr S. J. S.
$10 (2nd donation), Jennifer A T.
$10 (2nd donation), Solar Panels Saskatoon
$10 (2nd donation), Daniel P.
$10 (2nd donation), Steve B.
$10 (2nd donation), Shane N.
$10 (2nd donation), Carpet Cleaning Essex
$10 (2nd donation), Real Estate Photography San Francisco
$10 (2nd donation), rafel aka “rhioli”
$10 (2nd donation), local arborists
$10 (2nd donation), Roofing Chula Vista
$10 (2nd donation), Product Manager Resume Writer
$10, Richard S.
$10, Madison insulation contractors
$10, Chandy J.
$10, rooter rooter
$10, Oscar M.
$10, House cleaning Service Schaumburg, Il
$10, Tony P. aka “teepee”
$10, Fitz B.
$10, Patrick R.
$10, Green Bay Fence Builders
$10, tree removal service
$10, commercial cleaning service green bay
$10, Nicholas F.
$10, Spencer R.
$10, Don M.
$10, LDJessup, Systems Consultant
$10, Wayne T.
$10, J A S G.
$10, Scott M.
$10, Meridian tree company
$10, Appleton portable toilet rentals
$10, Henry B.
$10, Troy B.
$10, Santiago C.
$10, rent portable toilets madison
$10, Mukund B.
$10, spray foam service
$10, Olivier L.
$10, Niklas F.
$10, Émondage Terrebonne
$10, Björn Olof Natanael M.
$10, Concrete Contractors Raleigh
$10, Wilmington Septic Services
$10, deck installation service
$10, Ryan K.
$10, Richard S.
$10, Paul H.
$10, Carpet cleaning services
$10, Pedro R.
$10, brick fireplace repair Madison
$10, Fence Company Raleigh
$10, fence repair company
$10,
$10, fence builder Madison
$10, Nicholas J.
$10, David W.
$10, Matt W.
$10, William S.
$10, Concrete Contractors Raleigh
$10, Jorge R.
$10, Evan D.
$10, Vinícius P.
$9, Viktor Jozsef H.
$8 (20th donation), Tomasz K.
$8 (3rd donation), Martynas K.
$8 (2nd donation), Michael S.
$8, Henk D.
$7, Edijs R.
$7, Gary T.
$5 (52th donation), Eugene T.
$5 (43th donation), Bhavinder Jassar
$5 (22nd donation), William Menezes
$5 (21st donation), M. P. V.
$5 (19th donation), Olaf B.
$5 (17th donation), Hristo Gatsinski
$5 (13th donation), Sami Mannila
$5 (11th donation), Fábio Ranquetat aka “Ranquetat”
$5 (10th donation), Thomas R.
$5 (9th donation), Steven L.
$5 (9th donation), Kirill G.
$5 (8th donation), Jonas C.
$5 (8th donation), Luiz H. aka “Luiz574”
$5 (6th donation), Joshua O.
$5 (4th donation), Justin H. aka “DoubleActionJ”
$5 (4th donation), Heinz H.
$5 (4th donation), Jarmo J.
$5 (3rd donation), Klaviertransport Berlin
$5 (3rd donation), Florian L.
$5 (3rd donation), Jeffery G.
$5 (2nd donation), Anderson M.
$5 (2nd donation), Arianit K.
$5 (2nd donation), Tree Surgeons
$5, Dennis H.
$5, Phong N.
$5, Roger D.
$5, Adrien M.
$5, Rujbin N.
$5, Guilherme Augusto C.
$5, Tomasz C.
$5, Antonio B.
$5, Mohammad O.
$5, Pedro Paulo S.Silva
$5, SQ8F
$5, teachertube
$5, Dwane S.
$5, Rafael C.
$5, Denver Cockell
$5, zenzjtech
$4 (4th donation), Andrew D.
$4, Timothy D.
$3 (45th donation), Йошкар-Ола
$3 (11th donation), Oleksandr P.
$3 (5th donation), Ian B.
$3 (4th donation), Ashraf H.
$3 (3rd donation), Sebastian C.
$3 (2nd donation), Chiu C.
$3, Aaron D.
$3, Marcos C.
$3, ketemulagi
$3, Josphat K.
$3, Ion M.
$3, Michael B.
$2 (2nd donation), Randall S.
$2 (2nd donation), Daniel V.
$2, Björn H.
$2, John M.
$2, zzzzzz .
$2, Paul W.
$72 from 72 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 487 patrons, for a sum of $2,663 per month.

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

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