by ·24 Comments

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $100 (5th donation), Jordan S.
  • $100 (3rd donation), Bob Donnelly aka “rdonnelly”
  • $100, Serge G.
  • $75, Joseph C.
  • $72, Ramsey E.
  • $70, Vincent V.
  • $50 (7th donation), Michael L. aka “ddavid123“
  • $50 (4th donation), Andreas S.
  • $50 (3rd donation), James Marsh
  • $50 (3rd donation), Dale R. aka “MintyCAP“
  • $50 (2nd donation), Glenn R.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Ronald W.
  • $50, White Wind Zen Community
  • $40, Rebecca F.
  • $40, Graham Sivill aka “Siv“
  • $40, T L. L.
  • $35.5 (5th donation), Jerry Jackson aka “900i“
  • $35.5, Martin W.
  • $35 (19th donation), Pete Molina aka “pmolina”
  • $35, Philippe S.
  • $30, Gordon T.
  • $28.4 (17th donation), Olli K.
  • $28.4 (8th donation), Michael Krusch aka “MAD”
  • $28.4 (5th donation), Miguel Duarte
  • $28.4, Gerhard B.
  • $28 (22nd donation), Manuel F.
  • $28 (2nd donation), Pinna A.
  • $28 (2nd donation), Aurelien P. aka “nabnut”
  • $28, Anna K & Martin R aka “martin on #linuxmint-debian”
  • $27, Charles S.
  • $25 (9th donation), Kenny Hendrick aka “NprComputers“
  • $25 (8th donation), John M.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Bruce D. aka “travtek”
  • $25 (2nd donation), Eric M.
  • $25, Srikanth M.
  • $25, Øyvind S.
  • $25, CK
  • $25, Sridhar A.
  • $21.3, Davide M. Onofrio aka “qvantvm”
  • $21, Alexandre L.
  • $20 (22nd donation), Славољуб aka “slw”
  • $20 (16th donation), Matthew M.
  • $20 (13th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
  • $20 (4th donation), Vance R. aka “helmsdeeper”
  • $20 (4th donation), Ian M.
  • $20 (3rd donation), edinblack aka “edinblack”
  • $20 (2nd donation), Trevor H.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Robert T.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Daniel A.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Eduardo O.
  • $20, Leonardo Frazao
  • $20, Major D.
  • $20, David G.
  • $20, Erwin V.
  • $20, GeekTech Solutions
  • $20, Robert C.
  • $20, Allan S.
  • $20, Paul Y.
  • $20, Benjamin Rochefort aka “oysterboy”
  • $20, E Tech Electronics LTD
  • $20, Kim H. aka “grhdtj”
  • $20, Joshua B.
  • $20, Colin de Klerk
  • $15 (7th donation), P. S. B. aka “fixpcpaul“
  • $15 (2nd donation), Herbs and Helpers
  • $15, Mats E.
  • $15, Security-camera-warehouse.com
  • $14.2 (14th donation), Paco C.C. aka “kannabix”
  • $14.2 (2nd donation), Slavko B.
  • $14.2 (2nd donation), Bruno V.
  • $14.2, Antonio P.
  • $14.2, Xavier P.
  • $14.2, Michael K.
  • $14, Sakis Koltsidas aka “sakisk“
  • $12, Svein K.
  • $11.36, Mikko Y.
  • $10 (7th donation), Kiril Sotirov
  • $10 (5th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (3rd donation), Sprueche & Gedichte
  • $10 (3rd donation), Haydn P.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Astap A.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Costas Krallis aka “sv1xv“
  • $10 (2nd donation), Sprueche & Gedichte
  • $10 (2nd donation), Bill R.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Richard G. aka “Trollboy”
  • $10, Thomas S.
  • $10, John S. aka “replicantx”
  • $10, Pat D. aka “pjd3”
  • $10, Johnnie D.
  • $10, Paweł H.
  • $10, Сергей Ф.
  • $10, Jay P.
  • $10, Alberto Rivera M. aka “armx”
  • $10, Richard G. aka “Trollboy”
  • $10, Mike M.
  • $9.94, Bastiaan M. D.
  • $9.8 (8th donation), Sylwia Bialczak
  • $7.1 (9th donation), Ulf S. aka “MonteDrago”
  • $7.1, Andrea D. N.
  • $7.1, James C.
  • $7.1, Martin B.
  • $7, Dalton R. J.
  • $7, Jurek W.
  • $5 (6th donation), Miljenko D.
  • $5 (6th donation), Michael K.
  • $5, Yuriy R. aka “Jhoop“
  • $5, Redsandro
  • $5, James H.
  • $5, Uwe R.
  • $5, Sara A. C.
  • $5, Phillip C.
  • $5, James R.
  • $4.26, Rodriguez C. M.
  • $3, Wade V.
  • $2.84 (2nd donation), Ke C.
  • $2.84, Philipp R.
  • $2.84, Kari K. aka “Kartsa”
  • $2.5 (2nd donation), Immunolytics, Inc aka “Immunolytics, Inc“
  • $2 (2nd donation), Johnny R. aka “Jraz”
  • $2, Ivan P.
  • $2, Guido S.
  • $2, Ethoseo Internet Marketing Washington
  • $2, Anil Kumar P. K
  • $1.42, Maximilian W. aka “frumble“
  • $1 (14th donation), free backlinks
  • $1, Vagas de Empregos
  • $1, Snoring Solutions
  • $1, Ernesto R. J.
  • $0.73, Aaaron N.
  • $0.5, Tanner M. aka “Tannn3r”

Sponsors:

Money raised in July:

* Donations: $2627.53 (130 donors)
* Sponsors: $1451.03 (126 sponsors)

http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php
http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

  • Linux Mint 11 Katya: 39.63%
  • Linux Mint 10 Julia: 28.65%
  • Linux Mint 9 Isadora LTS: 15.91%
  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 5.46%
  • Linux Mint 8 Helena: 3.69%
  • LMDE: 3.10%
  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 2.24%
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 0.79%
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 0.50%

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 3,364,668
  • Unique views: 4,156,997
  • Pageviews: 5,264,751
  • Page impressions: 2,814,658
  • Search queries: 9,681,254
  • Forum users: 52,851
  • Forum posts: 438,506

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 2177 (2nd)
  • Distrowatch (traffic share): 1.8% (2nd) (made irrelevant by Firefox 4′s decision to hard-code user agents and most distributions not setting it up anymore)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 11,637th

Events:

Summary:

  • Linux Mint Gnome and Linux Mint Xfce (both based on Debian testing) are currently being tested.
  • The Update Packs and the new Update Manager were a success and allowed us to warn the community about upstream breakages (Gnome 3 regressions, MESA incompatibilities..etc) and to adapt our technology before updates were made available to the public. The next step is already in progress and it consists in developing a network of mirrors for the new Debian repositories.
  • A quick interview was given to “My Linux Rig“
  • The decision was taken to migrate our KDE and Fluxbox editions to LMDE. Going forward our project will support 2 desktops with a frozen Ubuntu base (Gnome and LXDE) and 4 desktops on top of a rolling Debian base (Gnome, KDE, Xfce and Fluxbox).
  • Our daily income went down 9% in July due to a smaller number of donations and the average price paid per clicks/impressions in advertising. July and August are traditionally quiet so these results are not alarming. In fact the slight increases observed in the number of impressions and search queries are extremely positive for us, especially in the middle of the summer holidays.

by ·83 Comments

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 11 LXDE RC2.


Linux Mint 11 LXDE

New features at a glance:

  • The Software Manager
    • UI improvements
    • New splash screen
    • Fonts category
    • More accurate package information
    • More application icons by default
    • More accurate search by default
  • The Update Manager
    • Performance boosts
    • Improved dependencies handling
    • Better changelog retrieval
    • UI improvements
  • The Desktop Settings tool
    • “Desktop-agnostic”, detection and upcoming compatibility with other desktops
    • New setting for the fortunes in the terminal
  • Artwork improvements
    • Overlay scrollbars, plymouth, Mint-X, search add-on.
  • System improvements
    • new “apt download” command
    • Adobe flash plugins

For a complete overview and to see screenshots of the new features, visit: “What’s new in Linux Mint 11 LXDE“.

Changes since RC1:

GDM replaces LXDM as the default login manager (this addresses the sporadic issue of X not loading from the live session)

Release notes:

To get more information about these problems and their solution, read the “Release notes”.

System requirements:

  • x86 processor
  • 256 MB RAM
  • 3 GB of disk space
  • Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution
  • CD/DVD drive or USB port

Bug reports:

Please report any bug you may find in Launchpad.

Download:

Md5 sum: f1c310e709c3236a84a7afa4a44f696d

Torrent: http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-11-lxde-32bit-rc2.iso.torrent

HTTP Mirrors:

Enjoy!

We look forward to receiving your feedback. Thank you for using Linux Mint and have a lot of fun testing the release candidate!

by ·138 Comments

A lot of things are happening at the moment. Here are some news to keep you up to date.

LXDE

I would like to thank all the people who commented and sent us their feedback on Linux Mint 11 LXDE RC. Althought we were and we’re still really happy with the quality of this release, the fact that it sporadically failed to load X from the live session for many people was identified as a serious problem and a release breaker. We switched LXDM to GDM as the default login manager and we believe this addresses the problem. However, due to the fact that this bug wasn’t always reproducible, we need your feedback again and so we decided to release another RC before going stable.

Linux Mint 11 LXDE RC2 should be out early this week.

KDE

Linux Mint 11 KDE has been in testing for a couple of weeks and during its testing a couple of design decisions were made, including important changes in the software selection and the look and feel. The lack of performance and the amount of resources needed by the Kubuntu base were identified as an issue, along with a regression in the installer affecting the detection of other operating systems. Although we’re close to a release in terms of quality, a discussion is ongoing about the possibility of switching the KDE edition to LMDE. This would give it the performance it needs and make KDE a viable alternative on mid-spec computers.

Depending on this discussion, we could see a Linux Mint KDE 11 RC release this month, or an LMDE-based rolling Linux Mint KDE RC some time in August.

LMDE

We were planning the following for LMDE:

  • Improving the way people roll and update their system
  • Improving the installer
  • Improving the way people install proprietary drivers
  • Re-spinning the ISOs

We made really good progress on the Update Manager, the update packs and the new repositories and we’re now focused on improving the installer.

The installer now detects your language automatically and lets you choose keyboard variants as well as layouts and models. We’re just started with the installer and more improvements should follow.

Because of breakages in Debian Testing between MESA and proprietary drivers we won’t work on improving the way people install them this time around. This is something we’re planning to do in the future, and whether it’s by porting Jockey from Ubuntu to Debian or by making a better alternative ourselves, we will tackle this at some stage. But for now, after the installer is ready we’ll work on respinning new LMDE ISOs for Gnome and Xfce before focusing on Linux Mint 12.

Some decisions are hard to make and I appreciate the fact that people are waiting and that nobody likes to see a release delayed or a design decision changing something people like. This is for the best though, and with the quality of our desktops in mind. A restrospective look at a release, the fun people have with it and the pride we have in having delivered it.. it’s all to do with quality. This is the reason we do not announce release dates and the reason even though these two editions have been in testing for respectively 3 and 4 weeks, we’re not releasing them yet. I hope you understand and I would like to thank everybody for their patience.

Our testing is public and you can follow it at http://community.linuxmint.com/iso

If you’re interested, you can also follow our progress on the installer at https://github.com/linuxmint/live-installer/commits/master