The work has started on Linux Mint 5 Elyssa and if you’ve been reading the forums you probably noticed three things already:

1. Apart for MintUpdate we’re focusing on improving existing tools rather than on developing new ones. New versions of mintDesktop, mintUpdate and mintMenu were already released in Romeo and we’re planning improvements on mintInstall, mintAssistant and mintUpload too. You can participate in testing these tools by adding the Romeo repository to your sources.list and by giving us feedback on the forums.

2. We’re trying to encourage people to translate our tools. All new Mint tools are internationalized and with each of their releases we also provide a translation thread on the forums which makes it easy for anyone to translate the tool into their own language. Whether you’re experienced with Linux Mint or not, if you happen to speak another language than English, don’t hesitate to participate in the translation effort. When Mint 5 is out it could very well be localized in your language.. depending on whether people speaking your language translated the tools or not, so don’t depend on them, translating is easy and doesn’t take much time.

3. Documentation has been lacking in Linux Mint, especially compared to other distributions. To address this and to decribe the specific tools and how they work we’ve produced a user guide. Make sure to read it and don’t hesitate to report feedback and tell us what you think. Also, if you have the time to translate it into another language don’t hesitate to do so.

The focus on Linux Mint 5 will be put into strenghening the distribution, improving documentation, processes, tools, translations… so the work we’re doing at the moment is extremely important. We’ll keep our mad and innovative ideas for Linux Mint 6 and focus on stability and consistency to produce a very robust and long-lasting LTS release.

Links:

User Guide 4.1 release:
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=0&t=9053

MintUpdate 2.0 release:
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=0&t=8937

MintBackup 1.1 release:
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=0&t=8698

MintDesktop 2.0 release:
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=0&t=8675

MintMenu 3.1 release:
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=0&t=8674