Charles Olsen and the mintCast team published another episode of their podcast. Happy listening everyone!

In Episode 6:

  • The News (64bit plugins in x64 edition, screencast and community repository projects, DRM in Gears of War and in Microsoft’s music store)
  • Main Story: Asus eeePC netbook
  • Rothgar’s segment: Linux Mint on a Sony Vaio VGN-TT190
  • Tip: Printing graphics to PDF
  • Website of the Week: http://www.userfriendly.org/

To subscribe to this podcast use the following address: http://mintcast.org/podcasts-only/rss2.aspx

For more information about this podcast please visit http://mintcast.org/

If you want to contribute to the podcast or join their mailing list, please visit https://launchpad.net/~linuxmint-podcast-project

Direct link to the podcast: http://media.podcastingmanager.com/9/2/2/8/4/157612-148229/Media/mintCast006.mp3

Shownotes: http://mintcast.org/2009/02/02/mintcast-episode-6.aspx

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $139, AvanceIT (UK) – http://avanceit.co.uk
  • $100, Upinderjit S. (USA)
  • $100, Geoffrey U. (USA)
  • $66, Andre B. (Germany) 
  • $66 (4th donation), Theodore T. (UK)
  • $66, Peter K. (Switzerland)
  • $60, Richard G. (USA) 
  • $50, Steven W. (USA) 
  • $50 (2nd donation), Harvey Elliott (UK)
  • $50, Stephen C. (USA) 
  • $25, Sohier C. (Canada)
  • $25, Kevin S. (USA) 
  • $25, James S. (USA) 
  • $20, Matthew S. (USA) 
  • $20, Brian H. (USA) 
  • $20, Richard C. (USA) 
  • $20, David V. (USA) 
  • $20, Brian B. (USA) 
  • $15, Sooren B. (UK) 
  • $13 (5th donation), Frank Bechstein (Germany) – http://www.gamer-site.de
  • $13, Ken W. (UK) 
  • $13, Desmond R. (Australia)
  • $10, Eero T V. (Finland)
  • $10, Andrew B. (USA) 
  • $10, Sevan S. (USA) 
  • $10, Alejandro C. C. (Spain)
  • $7, Tomasz K. (Poland)
  • $5, John N. (USA) 
  • $4, Sebastien K. (Portugal)
  • $1, Mark B. (USA) 

Sponsors:

Money raised in January:

* Donations: $1033
* Sponsors: $294.5

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

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 11.30%
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 34.71%
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 53.98%

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 1,052,738
  • Pageviews: 2,052,209
  • Page impressions: 902,532
  • Search queries: 2,111,860
  • Forum users: 12264
  • Forum posts: 118744
Rankings:
  • Distrowatch: 1518 (3rd)
  • Alexa: 40,959th

Events: 

Summary:
  • The user base seems to grow. The income doesn’t. This is probably linked to the global financial crisis which affects donors, sponsors and advertisers. A donation campaign could be organized. 
  • 2 new dedicated servers, one in Canada and one in England might soon add to the two servers we already have in Germany.
  • The number of people still running Daryna is surprisingly high. The number of people running Elyssa is surprisingly low. Two releases are actively maintained, the latest release (currently Linux Mint 6 Felicia) and the latest LTS release (currently Linux Mint 5). Users are encouraged to either follow the latest release and to upgrade twice a year, or to stick to the latest LTS release and to upgrade every 3 years. 

* News about Mint

x64 Edition – News Update Very few bugs were found in Linux Mint 6 x64 RC1 and RC1 users will not have to download the stable release

Join the team – 2 new projects coming up

The Linux Mint Screencast Project

The Linux Mint Community Repository Project

mintCast – Episode 5

* News about Linux

Linux and the Inauguration

Active Directory comes to Linux with Samba 4

Mono’s New Code Generation Engine

Intel releases Linux-based Moblin 2 Alpha for Netbooks

The Ubuntu pocket guide

A simple Linux video converter

The latest news about the kernel is always found here

* News about Open Source

Mozilla contributes $100,000 to fund Ogg development

Adobe to publish streaming specification

* News about IT

Obama Inauguration Drives Record Web Usage

Obama cybersecurity plan a golden opportunity for tech industry, Forrester says

Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

Internet users worldwide surpass 1 billion

Cybercrime costs $1 trillion  (Ouch!)

Test Your Internet Connection  with Measurement Lab powered by Google

Wikipedia edits may become more restricted

Microsoft Slashes up to 5 000 Jobs as Sales Fall

New OS X research warns of stealthier Mac attacks In-memory code injection covers tracks

Short-lived stealthy attacks are the new web threats

Monster.com suffers database breach deja vu Millions (more) at risk

GPU-Accelerated Wi-Fi password cracking goes mainstream

Bot software peers at victims’ screens

The largest credit card data breach ever?

1 in 3 Windows PCs vulnerable to worm attack

Yahoo uses supercomputer to fight spam

BOFH-loving botmaster wants life as security consult Feds want him in prison

Dutch government study: net effect of P2P use is positive

Music industry scrambles for cash

The Pirate Bay once again blocked in Denmark

* Hardware news

nividia back on the performance throne (The Bjorn3d.com is a good site for tests on graphics cards)

Seagate has promised to issue a fix for the latest Barracuda bricking fault within 24 hours. (this was on January 21)

Cheap paint could protect against super-fast wireless

Huawei seeks most 2008 international patents

* Other news

* Comic of the week

Credit goes to xkcd – http://xkcd.com/

* More about Linux Mint

How to donate

Home page

Blog The planet Wiki Forum

* Editors comment

As always – if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me – you can post a comment.

Enjoy life

Husse