The Mint Newsletter – issue 96

* News about Mint

Preparations for the next version of Mint, Helena, is going on and as our Twitter indicates we are testing the first internal betas of Mint 8 Helena

Mint 8 – Boot sequence will be different

Monthly stats – October 2009

* News about Linux

Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala, was released.

Mandriva Linux 2010 was released

GNOME 3.0 May Not Come Until September 2010

IBM and Ubuntu roll Linux for U.S desktops vs Windows 7

Is Kubuntu Caught in a Downward Spiral?

An open source version of Linux client is being developed for Skype

Security Hole in Kernel Allows Privilege Extensions – if you run ” cat /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr ” and get a vaule higher than zero you are OK. This is an old bug coming to life again

USB stick security flaw puts data at risk – the cracked operating system in this case is Linux kernel 2.6.26

The latest news about the kernel is always found here

* News about Open Source

Drupal Moves Into the White House

ApacheCon US 2009 was sponsored by Microsoft and thawte

Richard Stallman wants the European Commission to block the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle with its proposed acquisition of Sun.

Red Hat invests in the MySQL open source database competitor EnterpriseDB – this could have an impact on the Oracle – MySQL “problem”

* News about IT

A compromise was reached on the EU Telecom package and the amendment suggestion 138.

(Link to a Swedish page, but the compromise text is found in English – I have not been able to find any other good link)

CIA Buys Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets

Mark Shuttleworth praises “excellent” Windows 7

Cnet review of Windows 7

640,000 sites and approximately 5.8 million pages were infected in Q3’09

Facebook Wins $711 Million In Case Against ‘Spam King’

The Windows exploit Gumblar is Reloaded

Internet phone systems become the fraudster’s tool

Facebook users hit by botnet attack (When I googled this I saw that most hits were in Slavic languages)

* Hardware news

New material would allow a fingernail-sized chip store a terabyte

Tilera To Release 100-Core Processor

* Other news

Nokia “Only” Wants $200 Million From Apple In iPhone Patent Suit

Linus Torvalds gives Windows 7 thumbs up 🙂

* Comic of the week


Credit goes to xkcd

* More about Linux Mint

How to donate

Home page

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* Editors comment

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

It’s been  while since that last newsletter, unfortunately I have too much to do to publish more often.

Enjoy life

Husse

10 comments

  1. The thing with Kubuntu and the whole Ubuntu release cycle is that it’s too short to really create any release with polish. Their policy about releases is basicly and by them admittedly: “Anything that installs goes out the door.”

    There are both good and bad parts with this thinking and Kubuntu is obviously a bad side to it. The one great side of it is that it drives development to go faster.

  2. Any word on an expected release date for Mint 8? Right now, wireless isn’t working on my laptop (and neither does my drawing pad). I’m on the brink of going back to Mandriva.

    And are you considering something similar to Ubuntu One? A neutral (non-Gnome, non-KDE) client would make it worthwhile, especially if annual subscriptions could be paid by Paypal or Google Checkout. I’m not into giving my card information to a lot of different parties. The goal, in my mind, is to find ways to help with financial support for the distros and software that I use.

  3. @ebaut Linux Mint doesn’t offer a public beta because they believe in releasing only the best to their community. It works alongside their “release when ready” mantra to make it a lot more likable from day one.

  4. I wish Ubuntu would release a beta instead of their final release, and keep it beta for 6 months. Meanwhile, while that is beta work silently on the next release, so this way each release would get 18 months of work on it. Nice and long and stable. Good thing Mint is here to iron out the bugs.

  5. What people moaning about Ubuntu don’t seem to realise is they already offer stable releases. What do you think their LTS releases are for? If you feel 6 months is way too short then start using the LTS releases and ignore the 6 month ones in between.

    Or if having a old version of Linux seems unbearable, how about not upgrading to the new 6 month release the same week it comes out? I own a Mac and there’s no way I would upgrade to the newest version of OS X in the first month. If a commercial OS that comes out every 2 years should be left alone for a couple of months to iron out the bugs why do you think Ubuntu coming out every 6 months should warrant a day 1 upgrade each time?

  6. I have just installed Ubuntu 9.10 to see what changes there are from the previous version. I found that the Grub2 was an obsolute NIGHTMARE with very slow boot times to the point where I will no longer use it. After checking the forum I made a number of changes which made no difference. It would appear this is a widespread problem for a lot of users of Ubuntu 9.10. I hope Mint 8 is not heading down the same path and if it is I will be remaining with Mint 7 which works perfectly for me. If it aint broke why replace it with something that is……………or maybe Mint 8 can do a better job than Ubuntu 9.10.

  7. The thing that really irked me was the instant lack of internet connectivity upon booting the system for the first time. It worked fine in LiveCD mode but didn’t after the install. Basic internet connectivity is essential in any OS. Wired or wireless.

    I am of course talking about Ubuntu’s 9.10 release. Bugs I can understand somewhat. However, lack of basic internet connectivity after the LiveCD did work is an epic #fail in my book.

  8. Yep, I wasted about 700mb of my data usage upgrading xubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 to discover no wireless functionality. I’m a linux newbie and I wont risk this again.
    I’ll read the blogs and forums 1st like I should’ve. I mistrusted early releases of MS-OS in the past. Any new release of an OS is no exception. I’m in the process of weaning myself off windows due to it’s expense and vulnerabilitys. Annoyed a bit but very glad to get into an alternative to MS.

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