The Linux Mint Blog

This is just a brief news update about what is going on at the moment:

• Release date: The latest ISO is passing all my tests and I’m approving it for an RC release. It still needs to go through Exploder’s testing and it requires his approval before it can go out publicly.
• Windows installer: Mint4Win is back and it’s fully functional. The version that comes with the CD installs what’s on the CD. We’re also considering to maintain a standalone version which would be able to download and install editions of Linux Mint as we release them.
• Translations: The RC release will come without full localization. In particular, the installation slides are only in English and for some of the new tools (the new software and backup managers for instance) most of what is on the screen will appear in English. We’ll ask the community to give us a hand on this and we’ll wait until all major languages are fully supported to release the stable version of Linux Mint 9, but we decided not to hold the release of the RC in the meantime.
• Java: The decision was made to remove Java. This allows us to keep large applications such as Gimp and Pidgin on the CD. Java was taking 122MB of data (compared to 48MB for Gimp, 28MB for Pidgin, 31MB for Mono/Giver/Moonlight/Tomboy) and was only used by the OpenOffice database application (openoffice.org-base) and the applet plugin (sun-java6-plugin). The decision was based on the fact that few people needed the database application and that most online gaming websites use Flash nowadays. Edit: The RC will come as a liveCD without Java. The stable release will provide both a CD and a DVD image. The DVD image will include Java, OpenOffice.org-base and a few extra (Thanks to all the people who provided feedback on this).
• Moonlight: The moonlight plugin was removed because of a bug that made Firefox unstable. The browser would crash, sometimes immediately after being launched.
• New software: Gwibber, Startup Manager and p7zip were added to the default selection. A new local repository was also set up, containing the same packages as found on the Ubuntu CD as well as GnomePPP.
• Community Editions: No more references will be made to “CE”s. These editions will now become official and efforts will be made for them to be released as early in the release cycle as possible.
• x64 edition: Linux Mint used to have a Main and an x64 edition. We’re trying to remove the gap between the two and to brand them identically.. a single edition, available in both architectures. Our goal this time around is also to release their stable versions at the same time.
• OEM disks: A dedicated OEM CD will be made available with the stable release. We’ve encountered a lot of people who were wondering why their username was “oem” after they installed Linux Mint. OEM installations are for a very particular audience and can confuse a lot of users.
• Universal edition: Two things were missing with the universal edition; it was only available as a DVD and only in 32bits. This was a significant problem for magazines and distributors in the USA as they could not distribute Linux Mint in 64bit. We’re going back to CDs and we’ll do it for both architectures. Further down the release cycle, we’ll also provide a remastering tool which will allow you to transform a Linux Mint ISO into a fully localized Linux Mint ISO booting in the language of your choice and including the necessary language packs.

Feel free to give us your comments, questions and reactions on this. In the days to come we’ll see the public release of the RC. We’ll work closely with the community to eradicate any bugs you may find and to make sure everything is fully localized. If we have time we’ll also talk about the new features and see how you feel about them, or maybe this will happen through discussions after we get our first reviews. For now, I just wanted to let you know about these things so I can start collecting your thoughts on it and so you can have a better idea of when to expect the public release of Linux Mint 9 RC.

Thank you for your patience.

Note about the picture:  The Talento design background was selected as default. Tomboy is still installed in Linux Mint but it isn’t featured in the panel by default. Update Manager uses a new set of icons and the sound applet was replaced by the new Ubuntu Indicator applet.

I’m posting about the artwork again to follow-up on the contest and the desktop backgrounds for Linux Mint 9.

Wallpapers included by default:

The following wallpapers will be included by default in Linux Mint 9 (click on the pictures to see them in full size).

From “29A”:

From “Talento Design”:

From “At your service”:

From “96works”:

From the Linux Mint community, (from left to right: “Emotion” from distro hopper, “AirMint” from dkreations and “LM9” from Zwopper):

Note: “LM9” from Zwopper will come without the label shown on the above picture.

Note: If space doesn’t allow it, some backgrounds could be removed. The pictures which are sure to be included by default  are marked with a thick border.

The default background:

At the moment, the default background is the one from “Talento Design” (first one below). Alternative choices include a design from “96works” and “AirMint” from dlkreations. See below:

Poll: I can’t promise I’ll follow the majority vote, as always I’ll do what I think is best but I’m interested to know your thoughts on this.

[poll:12]

Other backgrounds:

A number of packages will appear in Linux Mint 9:

• “mint-wallpapers-extra” will contain many wallpapers made for Linux Mint 9 which weren’t installed by default, unbranded versions of 96works’ artwork, variations from Talento Design and At your service, and a few others.
• “mint-wallpapers-previous-releases” will contain the wallpapers used by past releases, such as the very popular “Dew” used in Linux Mint 7 Gloria, and the black wallpapers used in Linux Mint 3, 4, 5, 6..
• “mint-wallpapers-source” will contain the .PSD, .XCF, .SVG sources of the wallpapers and also the Linux Mint logos. We bought the copyrights on the artwork from 29A, At your service, Talento Design and 96works and we’re freeing it all for everyone to use. This package will give artists in our community great resources to start from, to modify and to reuse for their own creations.
• We’ll also probably include a community package which will grow bigger as the community adds to it, but this is likely to happen after the release of Linux Mint 9.

Blue, green, black:

Many of the backgrounds shown above are also available in blue and will be featured in the KDE edition of Linux Mint 9.

The plan to design a metal-looking theme was postponed to Linux Mint 10. Black backgrounds are likely to come back into fashion at that stage. At the moment, we’re using a black panel and so we’re happy to stick to green for the background (as you can see there’s a lot of green in the pictures shown above).

Focus and efforts:

We’re working really hard on the upcoming release. We’ve looked at a lot of things, we’ve made many improvements and there’s been a huge amount of coding done for Linux Mint 9. I’ve no doubt people will be pleased with the release as we’ve significantly made things better. I know some people are upset when we talk about artwork, either they don’t see the importance of it when it comes to users’ first impression, or they think that the time we put into this is time taken away from more important things. This is the icing on the cake, something that comes very late in the release cycle… something which priority was low but which is extremely important to us as we’re getting ready to release. Attention to details is something we can’t oversee. When it comes to look & feel, things are so subjective and trends change so fast that it’s easy for us to make a mistake, but we’ll spend a few days at the end of each release cycle, like we’re doing right now, and whether we get it right or not, we’ll try our best to relax and to put efforts in making Linux Mint look the best we can.

Themes:

The decision was taken not to change the theme or the icons in Linux Mint 9 Isadora, making it look similar to the previously released Linux Mint 7 Gloria and Linux Mint 8 Helena.

We looked into the making of a metallic looking theme, it was even mentioned publicly and I’m sorry to disappoint. Widgets had to use background pictures to achieve that effect and although it looked really nice on the desktop it was significantly impacting the performance of the system. We’ll still look into this and into ways of achieving this effect without making the system slower in the future, but it will not happen for Linux Mint 9.

Buttons layout:

The window buttons in the title bar will remain on the right. The “Desktop settings” tool (mintdesktop) was rewritten and, among other new features, now allows you to set the layout of these buttons. I’m personally curious as to why people would place their buttons that close to the window menu, but who knows, maybe Ubuntu’s bold move in that direction can actually seduce people and start a new trend? So if it does convince you and you feel like placing your buttons on the left side, whether it’s Mac or Ubuntu style, the tool will help you do that.

Desktop background:

The default background for Linux Mint 9 wasn’t chosen yet.

The following 4 backgrounds came from the community and look like good candidates:

– Zwopper’s: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=44898
– Black leather: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=36185
– Emotion: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=40198
– AirMint: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=27439

The Black leather background uses licensed artwork, so if it is chosen we’ll have to acquire the rights from its author (who doesn’t seem to be reachable at the moment).

To give ourselves more choice we also outsourced the task of creating a background for Linux Mint 9. A contest was started on 99designs.com and a few backgrounds were submitted already:

http://99designs.com/other-design-tasks/contests/desktop-background-linux-mint-42399

I also started a debate on the forums to make sure this contest wasn’t interpreted the wrong way by the artists in our community and to talk about the relations between outsourcing and community in general, if you’re interested in this debate, please visit the following link:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=46243