The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 8 “Helena” LXDE Community Edition RC1.
Quick steps:
- Download the ISO or the torrent.
- While it’s downloading look at the overview of the new features in Linux Mint 8 LXDE, read the User Guide and make sure to quickly go through the known issues.
- After the ISO is downloaded verify the MD5 (as described in the user guide).
- Burn the ISO at low speed and enjoy testing Linux Mint 8 LXDE RC1.
- Report bugs on the dedicated forum thread.
Introduction to Linux Mint 8 LXDE:
Based on Linux Mint 8 Main Edition, Linux 2.6.31, Openbox 3.4.7.2, PCManFM 0.5.2, and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 8 LXDE Edition features a complete and familiar desktop experience while being low on resource usage and is suitable for a good variety of older hardware.
For a detailed overview of the new features and improvements included in Linux Mint 8 LXDE, please read “What’s new in Helena LXDE?“.
Benchmark:
Here’s a quick benchmark comparing this edition to the Fluxbox and Xfce editions of Linux Mint. All 3 editions were tested on the same hardware (a computer with 384MB RAM).
RAM usage at idle:
- Fluxbox: 131MB
- LXDE: 141MB
- Xfce: 154MB
Maximum RAM usage during the installation:
- Fluxbox: 235MB
- LXDE: 246MB
- Xfce: 262MB
Boot time from Grub to the login manager:
- Fluxbox: 31.16 seconds
- LXDE: 26.79 seconds
- Xfce: 26.46 seconds
Boot time from the login manager to the desktop:
- Fluxbox: 3.32 seconds
- LXDE: 3.77 seconds
- Xfce: 9.63 seconds
System requirements:
- x86 processor
- 256 MB of system memory (RAM)
- 3 GB of disk space for installation
- Graphics card capable of 800×600 resolution
- CD-ROM drive or USB port
Important information and known issues:
As an RC (Release Candidate) this release is targeted at developers and beta-testers who want to help Linux Mint find and correct bugs before the stable release. Please do not use this release as your main desktop. For a complete list of known issues read the Release Notes.
Feedback and bug reports:
Please report any bug you may find via the Linux Mint 8 LXDE RC1 Bug Thread and give us your feedback on this release by posting a comment right here on the blog.
Download Linux Mint 8 LXDE RC1:
You can download Linux Mint 8 LXDE RC1 via torrent or via HTTP:
Size: 669MB LiveCD
MD5Sum: b66991424a718eeccc972c5509a20a5c
Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.com/torrent/LinuxMint-8-LXDE-RC1.iso.torrent
HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=51
Africa:
- ftp://ftp.is.co.za/mirror/linuxmint.com/testing/ (South Africa)
Asia:
- http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/Linux/LinuxMint-ISO/testing/ (Japan)
- http://ftp.riken.jp/pub/Linux/linuxmint/testing/ (Japan)
- http://ftp.oss.tw/pub/Mint/LinuxMint-ISO/testing/ (Taiwan)
Europe:
- http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linux/mint/isos/testing/ (Austria)
- http://ftp.mgts.by/pub/linuxmint/isos/testing/ (Belarus)
- http://mint.nano-box.net/iso/testing/ (Bulgaria)
- http://mirrors.cytanet.com.cy/linux/mint/testing/ (Cyprus)
- ftp://ftp.linuxmint-fr.org/pub/linuxmint.com/testing/ (France)
- http://linuxmint.copahost.com/testing/ (Germany)
- http://linuxmint.cybermirror.org/testing/ (Germany)
- http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/debian/mint/testing/ (Germany)
- http://mirror.netcologne.de/mint/testing/ (Germany)
- http://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/linux/linuxmint/testing/ (Greece)
- http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/testing/ (Ireland)
- http://ftp.akl.lt/Linux/Mint/testing/ (Lithuania)
- ftp://ftp.tpnet.pl/pub/linux/linuxmint/isos/testing/ (Poland)
- http://cesium.di.uminho.pt/pub/linuxmint/testing/ (Portugal)
- http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/linuxmint/testing/ (Sweden)
- http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/linuxmint/testing/ (Switzerland)
- http://mirror.sov.uk.goscomb.net/linuxmint.com/testing/ (UK)
Northern America:
- http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/linuxmint/testing/ (Canada)
- http://mirror.amarillolinux.com/linuxmint/testing/ (USA)
- http://mint.ez.by/linuxmint.com/testing/ (USA)
- http://linuxmint.secsup.org/testing/ (USA)
- ftp://mirrors.secution.com/linuxmint.com/testing/ (USA)
- http://mira.sunsite.utk.edu/linuxmint/testing/ (USA)
- http://mirror.yellowfiber.net/linuxmint/testing/ (USA)
Oceania:
- http://mirror.optus.net/linuxmint/isos/testing/ (Australia)
- http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/linuxmint/testing/ (Australia)
- http://mirror.waia.asn.au/pub/linux/linuxmint/linuxmint-isos/linuxmint.com/testing/ (Australia)
Enjoy!
Have a lot of fun testing this release candidate and let’s all hope it will help us make a great stable release.
Wowow!
Thanks alot guys!
I was waiting for Mint 7 LXDE for a while and then they closed it down, but
im excited for this one!
Cant wait for the stable release!
Awesome dl-ing atm and seeding until stable is out
i heard e17 uses 16 mb and can look better then gnome just a fyi i love you guys
E17 is nice and looks pretty, but has its own issues. I’m liking what I’m seeing on this thus far.
Cheers, interestingly at the weekend I installed lubuntu lucid alpha 3 on my old PC (PII 450 1gb ram) and it was really slow, much worse than mint 8 fluxbox, so I’m looking forward to trying Mint 8 lxde, as normally I find lxde pretty good.
nice to have some good news
Yea E17 uses 16 megs .. when its powered DOWN.
Thank you. I was waiting for this edition since Gloria. I wish Mats would’ve been around so he can try the final version on the LXDE edition on his old PIII. He would’ve enjoeyd it a lot.
How come the icon on the desktop leading to your Home directory is called “My Documents”? Since there’s already a documents folder in your home directory, this feels a bit weird. I also sort of feel that the digital clock applet in the bottom right should just display the time rather than the date, since on a netbook having both takes up valuable panel space. I know that’s something that many can easily change, but for some the process must seem arcane.
Anyway, those are just minor suggestions. So far it looks real good!
pentium 3 192 ram will it work
anyone know how to quickly, or easily, put this on a usb for a netbook install? thanks for your help and thank you for Mint LXDE!!
Twodogs, try the program Unetbootin. It’s available for Linux and Windows, and maybe more. You just select an iso, a flash drive, and hit a button. Then you have a bootable flash disk.
Thanks guys, thanks Kendall (if I’m not wrong, he’s the maintainer).
I’m sorry but I’ve been using it for a week now (I made some deep digging in Mint servers xD), so far I’ve not been able to find any bug.
Waiting for final.
Mint LXDE is goin’ to kick some serious botang…lightwieght mint for my lappy, can’t wait for the stable release. 😀
So, fluxbox is lighter then openbox?
Imhoteps: Openbox is lighter than Fluxbox when strictly comparing window managers, but LXDE is a combination of Openbox, PCManFM (which runs as a daemon), LXPanel, etc, and there are a number of other things going on in the background of any well featured release.
At the login manager, hit F1 and you’ll be able to start a pure Openbox session if you care to play around with it.
Just got a copy of Mint 8 in LinuxUser mag. I’m guessing it’s the LXDE release. Anyway, excellent, excellent stuff! The last release I had was 6 and I’ve been running Debian 5 in the meantime as well as Ubuntu 8.10. I noticed that you fixed the issue with an open terminal being lost after hibernate. The system is very polished, seems solid and DVD works pretty well – not perfect… Great job!
thanks Schalken for tip. I forgot about unetbootin. I installed ‘usb creator gtk’ in Synaptic and worked good. LXDE is fast and Mint looks so sexy – I hope I can say that lol!
How do I upgrade form my already existing Linux Mint 8
Can I get it through the terminal? Please Help Me
Regards,
Bob
works good on p4 m 1500 512 ram and is beautiful i think this is faster on some machines you just have to try them all find your computers niche
Helena, wow! The best
Only problem(?) i came across is the sr=creen res. on startup would be only 800×600 instead of 1440×900 with the GeForce 9400m. I have todo shutdown (reboot wont work on my system). When the system come back up, the proper res is active.
There is a heavy problem with mint’s light derivatives – yes these boys are way too chubby, basically – clinical obesity.
While Mint main Gnome is decent, balanced and friendly – and all this in 700mb pack, its siblings miss the point of lightness big time.
LXDE with 140 at idle?? while Mint Gnome on my miachine was 160mb – yes default GNOME Mint – there is something wrong.
Fluxbox 130mb?? idle?? – blasphemy!!!
My Slack (I bet you new this was comming :D) – with Lxde -> 60 idle -with en17 -> 40 -same i get with fluxbox
Guys, you should grab a copy of Zenwalk and you’ll see that robust doesn’t mean bloated, it can go hand in hand with lightness.
You need a robust, nice distro for modern machnie -grab Mint, honestly – but if you need something light for older eqipment Mint with its offshots doesn’t cut the mustard – you simply, no matter what, think Big. 😀
Yeah!!! Finally! I was waiting for the lxde edition. Thanks a lot 🙂
Thanks so much for making this!
Yeap, nice try but too bloated..
I won’t say anything else cause I like Mint, but make it lighter.
@spc
Yeah sure… I was using zenwalk for some time. Yes, it is really very fast and lightweight. But it lacks functionallity. Many applications can’t be installed in the simple way. There’s no such a thing as ease of use in zenwalk. Mint is much more stable and powerfull. So zenwalk is just a little toy and not a professional operating system. But seriously, a machine with less then 128MB of Ram is also a toy and not a computer, so zenwalk is good for this kind of hardware.
Mint is very nice as I said,I like it.
When you count the idle memory usage you do it for benchmark purpose, not because you have a pc with less than 128MB Ram.
@Woockash
I was always thinking that Lxde,openbox,xfce,fluxbox,pekwm etc are targeted at older, weaker gear.Even on lxde website, they boast running DE on OLPC (weak hardware) Though, there are people with modern uberhardware who use lxde or windowmaker 😀 on 4 core monstrum with 8 gb of ram, maybe it’s simply about taste – but why not go for KDE 4.4 if one have resources.
Besides, like i said, difference in memory consumption is minuscule between lxde and gnome editions, apps are pretty much the same, and truckload of gnome libs is included in lxde edition. So why bother, why?? IMHO it’s better to go with full gnome.
Your attack on Zenwalk boggles my mind, IMO its quite… childish, more fanboism than argumentation. well i don’t like its package manager, but it is rock solid IMHO -stable that is.
Belive me that 10 years from now someone will tell you that computer with 4gb of ram was a toy… hehe.
@Woockash and @spc:
Having a large iso size has more to do with offering lots of preinstalled apps rather than anything else. I could strip most of the apps and give you an iso that’s half the size, but that wouldn’t be very Mint-ish of me. Also note that RAM usage on one particular combination of hardware doesn’t mean it’s going to be that way on every combination of hardware (for instance on the system that was tested, Mint Gnome uses over 200 MB at idle). The point is that it’s not worth bickering about as all machines are going to handle it a little bit differently, and here at Mint we’re going to make use of the fact that a CD can hold 700 MB.
Either way, have fun with it. It was certainly fun to put together.
Dear Mint developers,
I guess that I put this request in the wrong place, but I hope it gets your attention the most.
One feature in the panel that I would like to see in Mint: Auto rearrange icon position after adding or removing new icons. When I add or remove icons from panel, the space left is still there. I have to “move” it to save the empty space. I like it automatically rearranges icon position to make a tidy panel. If you look at PC/OS, they achieve it very well (even in Windows XP). So, if my 2 cents is on your way of making a perfect desktop, I would be very happy.
@spc
Zenwalk is stable, but so is the system on my cellphone. But it is not possible to use it to serius tasks. The same is with zenwalk. What gives me stability without functionallity? Nothing. And talking that this kind of software is awesome is a fanboism. So it is what you just did. Let’s use it beacause it’s stable! Why should we care about the availability of real software for our system….
I suppose in ten years I shuld have a computer with few hundreds GB of RAM, so this is not an argument.
Lightweigt software is important, beacause not anybody has the modern software. But we can’t forget about some reasonable limits. If reducing the memory usage reduces the functionality – it is not worth of this.
@Kendall Weaver
I’m not suggesting striping down anything, nor extreme austerity -balanced lightness is my goal. What’s more, 700mb one CD setup is for me optimal.
When it comes to ram usage i say what Htop says.
One more thing – about lxde 140mb idle isn’t that around default ubuntu install memory inprint ??
Lean thinking 😀
@Woockash
The “L” in LXDE stands for lighweight. Gnu/linux’s pitch is based on this feature. On one hand you got obese,unresponsive bloated body of windows and on the other lean and powerfull marathon runner – gnu/linux. Thus one can have modern desktop environment without obligatory upgrade of hardware – people can save money, bussines people can save money… As they say every little helps.
Would you care to elaborate upon serious tasks ( one hint here : watching your favorite porn,facebook gaming notwithstanding :D:D:D )
Whatever ppl say, good or not, I bow ma head, mint-guys! Ya`rock! Whateva you do – result is superb!
O’k! Write under this linix now! The best! Rapid!!! To be wery well!
zenwalk sucks cant connect to internet well although it is good for some people
also not to much faster i got fluxbox on a 600 pentium 3 192 ram 2.5 mb vga laptop working
Out of curiosity… will there also be a minimalistic version for NETBOOKs?
For example, without openoffice and all the other software that normally is bundles on a CD?
Sometimes when you start removing components and sub-components, other things stop working.
So it would be nice to get a really minimum install, with extensive WiFi support, and let the users add everything themselves through synaptic and mintinstall. For example, this user may prefer GooglDocs through Firefox, and another may prefer a minimalistic word processor and spreadsheet.
I’m very happy to see a LXDE version of Mint!
Opportunity to try out LinuxMint presented itself up when Ubuntu
upgrade failed. And I am pleasantly surprised so far with Mint8.
Mostly everything worked out of the box. SSHD needed to be installed
but no big deal.Why not make it available by default? (Security
issues?) Other than that I don’t have anything bad to say 8-).
Seriously, Mint8 “Helena” is a great product. I plan to stick around
for a long time to come.
Cheers.
Harry
I received the news with joy, hope this version than the previous one in all senses, I congratulate the developers of this system and thanks for your work, you have 6 months I started to use linuxmint 7 and for me is great, I feel it is noble operating system, and discovering new characteristics of this system, and much happiness
I do not know why the stable release of Linux Mint Lxde
not yet been released.
There are only a few bugs to be fixed.
I presume Clem is planning to release the two editions
Lxde and Xfce on the same day.
Little bit too heavy…141mb? Why not stick with gnome?
@ Roberto:
We try to leave ample time to gather community feedback between the RC and the stable release. Sometimes the changes aren’t strictly limited to bugs, but can include design and default configuration changes as well.
@Kendall
Ok, i see
Thanks
Would it be possible to change the “My Documents” icon on the desktop to something more appropriate, like “home” or “username” etc.? It seems weird to have a “My Documents” folder on the desktop pointing to /home/, then having to go into a further “Documents” folder inside that if I want to get to /Documents. Not to mention it may well confuse old WinXP users.
Other than that, I get some weird flickering in the top corner of the screen when I connect to a wireless network; I’m guessing this is where some kind of notification box would appear, as it stops after a few seconds. Probably a graphics hardware issue, but I can’t tell as I don’t have another test setup (integrated graphics on my aging laptop).
Good work though guys!