by ·17 Comments

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $300, Kernel.net (Switzerland) – http://kernel.net
  • $148, Christian Dierickx aka “zorbeck” (Luxembourg)
  • $120, Garrelt van H. (Netherlands)
  • $100 (2nd donation), John K. (USA)
  • $100, Krishna Mahadev B. (United Arab Emirates)
  • $74, Newman Vehicle Services (Australia)
  • $60, Bob M. aka “gnome_refugee” (Australia)
  • $60, Jean Jacques Gutter (Belgium)
  • $50 (2nd donation), V. Mark Lehky aka “SiKing” (Ireland) – http://siking.wordpress.com/
  • $50, Robert F. H. (Denmark)
  • $50, Chase C. (USA)
  • $50, Joseph A. Buckley (USA)
  • $50, stewy (Australia)
  • $50, Kristian Scheibe aka “kris” (Germany)
  • $50, Paul S. (USA)
  • $40, Richard ten D. (Netherlands)
  • $30, Robert R. (Australia)
  • $30, Derek L. (United Kingdom)
  • $30, Andrea A. (Italy)
  • $30, David S. (United Kingdom)
  • $30, Johann S. (Germany)
  • $25 (4th donation), Olli K. (Finland)
  • $25 (3rd donation), David R. (USA)
  • $25 (3rd donation), DB. aka “Dick” (Netherlands)
  • $25 (3rd donation), Michael Nordmark (Sweden)
  • $25 (3rd donation), John M. (USA)
  • $25 (2nd donation), Anthony F H. (USA)
  • $25 (2nd donation), Kenny H. (USA)
  • $25, William R. Jr (USA)
  • $25, Greg White (USA)
  • $25, Tore Andre D. (Norway)
  • $25, Richard A. (USA)
  • $25, Nicholas Riley aka “matrose” (United Kingdom)
  • $25, Randy Chaulk (Canada)
  • $25, Petr Kolar (Czech Republic)
  • $25, Deconn Technical Services (USA) – http://www.deconn.com
  • $24 (11th donation), Manuel F. (Portugal)
  • $24 (9th donation), Marco R. (Italy)
  • $24 (2nd donation), Agathe R. (France)
  • $20 (12th donation), Slavoljub M. (Norway)
  • $20 (4th donation), Ludovic G. aka “Lewdsquirrel” (Canada)
  • $20 (3rd donation), Matthew M. (USA)
  • $20 (2nd donation), Barry W. (USA)
  • $20 (2nd donation), Daniel F. aka “danielpiupiu” (Brazil)
  • $20 (2nd donation), Jens B. (USA)
  • $20, Michael P. (USA)
  • $20, David K. (United Kingdom)
  • $20, Al H. (Australia)
  • $20, Daniel A. (USA)
  • $20, Alex Dolhescu aka “alex894” (Canada)
  • $20, Finn S. (Norway)
  • $20, AltGro.com (Canada)
  • $20, Louis F. (USA)
  • $20, Marco C. (USA)
  • $20, Evgeny D. (Russia)
  • $20, Sout P. (USA)
  • $20, Frederick W. (USA)
  • $20, Thomas K. (Philippines)
  • $18.5, Roberto Trevisi aka “klamath” (Italy)
  • $18, Thorhall O. (Germany)
  • $18, Bruno V. (France)
  • $15 (3rd donation), Matthew G. (USA)
  • $15 (2nd donation), Brian G. (United Kingdom)
  • $15, Gilbert F. (Canada)
  • $15, Chuck Litchfield (USA)
  • $15, Julian C. (United Kingdom)
  • $12 (9th donation), Francisco C. C. (Spain)
  • $12 (8th donation), Emil Pavlov aka “emil_pavlov” (Bulgaria)
  • $12 (2nd donation), Paul Evans aka “paul” (United Kingdom)
  • $12 (2nd donation), Jindrich R. aka “amino” (Czech Republic)
  • $12, Guido K. (Germany)
  • $12, Peter H. (Austria)
  • $12, Charles McM. (USA)
  • $12, Haiqiang X. X. (Spain)
  • $12, CaIn Computer Solutions (Germany)
  • $12, Antti P. (Finland)
  • $12, Nuwantha Wanasinghe (France) – http://linuxmint.wanasinghe.com
  • $11 (5th donation), Robert D B. (USA)
  • $10 (3rd donation), Andrew A. (USA)
  • $10 (2nd donation), Danie van der Merwe aka “Danie” (South Africa) – http://dvdmerwe.googlepages.com/
  • $10 (2nd donation), Amber H. (USA)
  • $10 (2nd donation), David S. (USA)
  • $10 (2nd donation), J Anil K. (India)
  • $10 (2nd donation), Michael Meehan aka “uirusu.ningen” (New Zealand)
  • $10, Martin Nash (United Kingdom)
  • $10, Michael Austin aka “oldfart52” (USA)
  • $10, Ruben C. de L. (Spain)
  • $10, Gary P. (Canada)
  • $10, Christopher M. (United Kingdom)
  • $10, Ambica J. (Australia)
  • $10, Lie J. (Indonesia)
  • $10, Ken B. (USA)
  • $10, Marion F. (United Kingdom)
  • $10, Kalyankumar R. aka “kalyan” (India) – http://kkthegeek.wordpress.com
  • $10, Mark M. aka “BubbaBlues” (USA)
  • $10, Jose Rivera (USA)
  • $10, Henry Dubb aka “henrydubb” (USA) – http://henry.freeshell.org
  • $10, Egor A. (Russia)
  • $10, Bucks for Bytes (Canada)
  • $10, Simon S. (Bahamas)
  • $10, Alex Ullrich aka “AlexCuse” (USA) – http://lessthandot.com/
  • $10, Philip J. (Sweden)
  • $10, Simon P. (Canada)
  • $8 (2nd donation), Sylwia Bialczak (Finland)
  • $8, Zhiwei L. (China)
  • $6 (3rd donation), Salvatore D. (Italy)
  • $6, Volker R. (Germany)
  • $6, Patrick K. (Germany)
  • $6, Boris S. (Germany)
  • $6, Gianluca B. (Italy)
  • $5 (7th donation), Savant B.D. (USA) – http://www.allyourprices.com
  • $5, Chelsea W. (USA)
  • $5, Promotional Gifts (USA) – http://www.prodpromo.com
  • $5, David I. (United Kingdom)
  • $5, Josef E. (USA)
  • $5, Ke C. (Germany)
  • $4 (2nd donation), Daniel F. aka “danielpiupiu” (Brazil)
  • $4 (2nd donation), Alex W. (Germany)
  • $4, Joe U. (Germany)
  • $4, Tom K. (USA)
  • $3.5, orchid_ink (United Kingdom)
  • $3.32, Sudharshan R. C. (India)
  • $3, Roman R. (Slovakia)
  • $2, Kumar B. S. (India)
  • $2, Hendrawan (Indonesia) – http://dot.choosen.net
  • $2, Peter H. (United Kingdom)
  • $1 (3rd donation), Ryan C. (Philippines) – http://azcoding.com
  • $1 (2nd donation), Islam C.I. (Turkey)
  • $1, Romeo Cristian D. (Romania)
  • $1, Colby B. (Canada)

Sponsors:

Money raised in June:

* Donations: $3025.32 (131 donors)
* Sponsors: $1013.5 (77 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: 39% (-0%)
  • Linux Mint 8 Helena: 34% (-1%)
  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 19% (+1%)
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 3% (-0%)
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 2% (-0%)
  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 2% (-0%)

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 2,658,271 (-9.60%)
  • Unique views: 3,395,007 (-15.88%)
  • Pageviews: 4,377,764 (-16%)
  • Page impressions: 1,811,644
  • Search queries: 6,049,978
  • Forum users: 33,485
  • Forum posts: 281,280

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1501 (3rd)
  • Distrowatch (traffic share): 4.7% (2nd)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 17,308

Events:

Summary:

  • June was an interesting month. Although only one ISO was released, a lot of things were achieved to improve the project, and the tools available to the team and to the community. Iso-localize, for instance, is a great addition to our distribution and will have a significant impact on the adoption of Linux Mint in non-English speaking countries. The ISO testing module is another important addition. We now have a testing team, dynamic test cases and the whole process is transparent so anyone can monitor our progress. An important project also started in the background: the Debian edition.
  • We received less donations than in May. That’s not necessarily a bad thing considering how surprisingly high the figures were in May. 131 people supported us this month, for a total of $3,025.
  • Sponsorships are at an all-time high and now represent a significant share of our income. In June, our distribution was backed by 77 sponsors.
  • July 2010 should see the stable releases of the KDE and LXDE editions. The Fluxbox Edition is extremely close to an RC release and it’s possible its stable release could also happen in July.

by ·279 Comments

The idea of a Linux Mint desktop based on top of Debian Testing is quite seducing. It’s much faster than Ubuntu and the current Linux Mint desktops, it uses less resources, and it opens the door for a rolling distribution, with a continuous flow of updates and no jumps from one release to another. It’s something we’ve always been tempted to do. Needless to say, whether it’s been because of our lack of communication on that topic or not, this has been a source of numerous rumors within the community.

A while ago, we released an ALPHA non-installable liveCD based on Debian. Then, last August I announced I was working on a new installer, and recently, I was joined by Ikey Doherty to work on the Debian base again.This time we’re producing our own liveCD, straight from the Debian Testing repositories, and it also comes with its own installer. What we’re aiming at, this time, is a fully working and fully installable liveCD which behaves in every way as similarly as the main Linux Mint edition.

Before I explain a little more about this project, I just need to stress a few important points:

  • Until we release it as stable and we can assess the feedback of the community and the percentage of our users using it, the priority of this project is secondary.
  • We’ve never considered our goal to be linked to Ubuntu in anyway. We consider Ubuntu one of the upstream components that we use on some of the systems we distribute. The same way we distribute Gnome on most systems and other desktops on some others, it’s possible for us to distribute a system with a different package base such as Debian. We’ve also considered experimenting with an RPM Fedora base, a Slackware/APT base  and even making our own from scratch. Of course, changing the base represents more work than changing the desktop, which itself is harder obviously than changing a user application, but we’re a distribution and this is what we do: We distribute a system made of the best upstream components available to us, including our own alternatives.
  • We’re not “switching base”, we’ll continue to use Ubuntu on most of our systems. This Debian-based project will produce an additional system (to start with), it’s something we want to try, and if it proves successful, it’s something we’ll continue to maintain.

At the moment, we’ve got an installable liveCD which comes with a rough Linux Mint desktop. All tools are present, the look and feel is almost identical to the Main edition, but there are a few rough edges. The installer itself is working fine, it supports locales and most features, but it’s still missing a partitioner. That’s what we’re working on at the moment.

Here’s a screenshot of the installer:

And here’s what the installed system looks like (this particular installation is in Korean, as we were testing the new locale support in the installer):

We’re starting with Gnome and i386. We’re not sure whether it will be a CD or DVD yet, and we really can’t say much in terms of ETA. You can follow our progress on the installer on github:

http://github.com/linuxmint/live-installer/commits/master

And once the installer is ready, we’ll start testing ISO images on the Community Website:

http://community.linuxmint.com/iso

I’d like everyone to be patient with this project. A lot of things are happening indeed, but as I said before, the other editions take priority over this and until it gets the release and success it certainly deserves, we’re still considering it an R&D project. Whether you’ll be able to try this out in a few weeks, in a few months or even next year is really hard to say at this stage. Be confident that it will happen, that the team is extremely interested in it and that Ikey and I are working really hard on it. I planned to work on this during the last release cycle, but the development of the new mintInstall and the new Linux Mint 9 features took priority. We’ve got some time at the moment and we’ll make as much progress as we can. No matter what happens, we won’t release it publicly until we’re 100% happy with it.

To those who’ve waited a long time already and to everyone in advance, thank you for your patience.

by ·20 Comments

Linux Mint 9 KDE RC tester may have noticed that KDE 4.4.5 has hit the ppa repository and is available via mint update. The final release of Mint 9 KDE will have KDE 4.4.5 installed by default, unless a newer version is out. Happy KDEing.