Monthly Stats – May 2011

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Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $274, Richard G.
  • $190, Jon G.
  • $100 (4th donation), Frans Van O.
  • $100 (3rd donation), Terry H.
  • $100, Glenn H.
  • $100, Ivo A.
  • $100, Jose G.
  • $82.2 (8th donation), Orlando M. M.
  • $68.5, Matthias M.
  • $50 (9th donation), Jonathan B. Horen aka “JBHoren”
  • $50 (4th donation), Trevor H.
  • $50 (3rd donation), Carl G.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Gregor M.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Bruce R.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Andreas S.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Michel S.
  • $50, George M.
  • $50, Sheldon J. R.
  • $50, Ronald W.
  • $50, William W.
  • $50, Matthew J.
  • $50, Greg B
  • $42, Robert K.
  • $41.1, B J. R.
  • $40, Andre L.
  • $40, Bryan S.
  • $35 (2nd donation), Jeff M.
  • $35, Andrew R.
  • $34.25, Keith S.
  • $34.25, Craig H.
  • $34.25, W J.
  • $32.13, Martin F. Schumann aka “mfs”
  • $30 (11th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
  • $30 (2nd donation), Jose M.
  • $30 (2nd donation), Richard B Thompson
  • $30, Adam V.
  • $30, break-step productions ltd
  • $30, David G.
  • $30, Gavin B.
  • $28 (20th donation), Manuel F.
  • $28, Fabius T.
  • $28, Carolyn R.
  • $27.4 (15th donation), Olli K.
  • $27.4, Jiřík M.
  • $27.4, Niels G.
  • $27.4, Ruediger H.
  • $27.4, Thomas Wissel aka “fragmentom“
  • $27.4, Anonymous
  • $25 (18th donation), Pete Molina aka “pmolina”
  • $25 (8th donation), Kenny Hendrick aka “NprComputers“
  • $25 (5th donation), Michael L. aka “ddavid123“
  • $25 (4th donation), Anthony F H.
  • $25 (4th donation), James M. aka “jaspmatt”
  • $25 (3rd donation), Joseph V.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Henry Dubb aka “Henry“
  • $25 (2nd donation), stewy
  • $25, Alan B.
  • $25, Hawk Computer
  • $25, Sachin P.
  • $25, Michael H.
  • $25, My Linux Rig
  • $21, Nathan F.
  • $21, Manolo R.
  • $20.55, Ennio M.
  • $20 (14th donation), Matthew M.
  • $20 (4th donation), George R. aka “Az4x4”
  • $20 (3rd donation), Graham C. aka “gee7”
  • $20 (3rd donation), Ian M.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Vladimir O. aka “Vlad The Impatient“
  • $20 (2nd donation), Goran A.
  • $20, Les B.
  • $20, Donald V.
  • $20, Fred P.
  • $20, Mark S.
  • $20, Donald F.
  • $20, Neil Z.
  • $20, Raul L.
  • $20, Andrew S.
  • $20, John S.
  • $16.8, Dominik K.
  • $15 (6th donation), Jun Q.
  • $15, Michael I.
  • $15, Sybrand S.
  • $15, Brad O.
  • $15, David S.
  • $15, Kory D.
  • $14, Jarkko K.
  • $14, Lorand S.
  • $13.7 (13th donation), Paco C.C. aka “kannabix”
  • $13.7 (4th donation), Paul Evans aka “paul”
  • $13.7 (2nd donation), Ivan Bulychev aka “vanyok”
  • $13.7, Perrod C.
  • $13.7, Bastian E.
  • $13.7, Pierdomenico F.
  • $13.7, Pierre D.
  • $13.7, Sven A.
  • $13.7, Jose V. C. Z.
  • $10 (5th donation), P. S. B. aka “fixpcpaul“
  • $10 (5th donation), Kiril Sotirov
  • $10 (4th donation), Ralf H.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Paul V.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Rob Brown aka “Brownie“
  • $10 (3rd donation), Kim H. aka “grhdtj“
  • $10 (3rd donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (2nd donation), Adauto Castro
  • $10, Carlos J. R.
  • $10, Fabio R.
  • $10, Glaucio R.
  • $10, Sami F.
  • $10, David Ondrejkovič
  • $10, Zach A.
  • $10, Xavier G.
  • $10, Daniel C. aka “Tox“
  • $10, Sergey M.
  • $10, Darrell W.
  • $10, Marc T.
  • $10, John D. G.
  • $10, Tom C.
  • $10, Astap A.
  • $6.85 (2nd donation), Jose A Roman S. aka “Jubeix”
  • $6.85 (2nd donation), Hector Richart P.
  • $6.85, Ramon C. aka “2Stoned“
  • $6.85, Samuel C.
  • $6.85, David S.
  • $6.85, Rick W.
  • $6.31, Liam W.
  • $5 (8th donation), Ulf S. aka “MonteDrago”
  • $5 (4th donation), Kelley J. aka “Kelley Green”
  • $5 (2nd donation), Victor Skovorodnikov aka “victorsk“
  • $5 (2nd donation), Michael F.
  • $5, Sushubh M.
  • $5, Michael H.
  • $5, Reinis K.
  • $5, Jes S.
  • $5, James K.
  • $5, Keith C.
  • $4.2, Radu B.
  • $3.4, Steliyan
  • $3 (2nd donation), Vadim B.
  • $2.8 (2nd donation), Matteo D. L.
  • $2.8, Andreas M.
  • $2.74, Francesco B.
  • $2.74, Sebastian N.
  • $2.74, Benjamin H.
  • $2 (3rd donation), Sam Ganzha aka “Sammy”
  • $2 (2nd donation), Rashed aka “linuxT“
  • $2, Meine K.
  • $2, Gianmatteo S.
  • $1.13 (3rd donation), Rusli P. Tandiabang
  • $1.05 (11th donation), Inga Muste aka “TokRa“
  • $1 (2nd donation), Chaushun Y.
  • $1, Kito Brandt
  • $0.5, Hristo J.

Sponsors:

Money raised in May:

* Donations: $3891.24 (153 donors)
* Sponsors: $1177.53 (120 sponsors)

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

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

  • Linux Mint 10 Julia: 35.12%
  • Linux Mint 11 Katya: 26.91%
  • Linux Mint 9 Isadora LTS: 17.60%
  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 6.53%
  • LMDE: 6.03%
  • Linux Mint 8 Helena: 4.33%
  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 1.91%
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 1%
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 0.57%

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 3,184,198
  • Unique views: 4,104,583
  • Pageviews: 5,213,098
  • Page impressions: 3,425,494
  • Search queries: 8,567,003
  • Forum users: 49,231
  • Forum posts: 411,680

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 2118 (2nd)
  • Distrowatch (traffic share): 2.4% (2nd) (made irrelevant by Firefox 4’s decision to hard-code user agents and most distributions not setting it up anymore)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 11,968th

Events:

Summary:

  • May 2011; All the focus was on Linux Mint 11 and it lead to a very nice release. Katya got a formidable echo throughout the community and the decision to stick to Gnome 2.32 didn’t go unnoticed. Our website attracted 14% more people than usual and our user base grew by 10%. This includes people who traditionally switch back to Linux Mint after the stable release, as well as newcomers switching from Mac and Windows, but this time also a lot of unhappy users from other distributions featuring Unity and to a lesser extent Gnome 3. Though it’s nice to see it happen and I hope they get a nice welcome, the main purpose of this decision wasn’t tactical, but rather technical. Mint 11, despite significant regressions (particularly with Compiz), gave us yet another great Gnome desktop and another 6 months to see how things go with the Gnome 3 and GTK3 projects.
  • In June, the focus will shift towards LMDE which will receive the Mint 11 features, and for which we’re also planning specific improvements (particularly on the installer and the update manager), as well as the KDE and LXDE editions. After this, we’ll be testing different scenarios and considering our options for the future, whether we want to switch to Gnome 3, how ready it is and what can be achieved with it. Many options are there for us, including forking Gnome 2 or even Gnome 3 and it’s too early to say what will happen next. But we have 6 months to decide and as always, we’re quite determined to come with something that’s better than before. We like our desktop the way it is, and comes Linux Mint 12, we’ll be looking to bring you something either as good or better than what we already have. It’s a hard promise to make considering the drastic changes occurring upstream, but this is what we’re aiming for and so we’ll be looking into the most efficient ways to implement our desktop and to reach our goals.
  • Although the donations weren’t as high as last month, we actually received money from more people this time around. I’d like to thank all the people who donated to Linux Mint, many thanks for supporting us! Our sponsors are high, and advertising generated more than usual due to the increases in traffic and user base. Overall we’re up 0.7% compared to April.

31 comments

  1. Glad to hear that the focus in June will be on LMDE; as wonderful as LM11 is, the upstream bugs brought me back and with all of the updates there are some broken packages that took quite a bit of troubleshooting.

    Also, I didn’t realize sponsorships could be for such reasonable amounts! I’m pretty broke (college student), but I think I can afford a sponsorship of a couple of bucks a month to support the best distro team out there.

    Keep rocking guys, you do incredible work.

    Reply

  2. In my opinion the focus should be promoting the LM KDE edition which is getting better and better every time and at the moment is as good as the main edition at least, if not better. It needs some work but it is going into the right direction.

    For Gnome, well, there is not doubt will be some pains in the future. Would be nice if LM develops it’s own desktop environment away from the Unity and Genome Shell 3, some thing that is easy and useful and nice to the eyes. Could the Mint Menu be adapted in to a dock for example? I’m sure there can be good ideas that can be adapted and compete with Unity and Gnome 3 shell on its own merits which in my opinion are not very user friendly.

    Keep the good work guys I really love Linux Mint

    Reply

  4. Just occurred to me to install “ubuntu-netbook” on LM Gnome9. Guys give it a look how beautiful a desktop mintified similar to that could be. Canonical just dropped the ball with Unity when they already had that wonderful desktop. Open Linux Mint software manager and download the package “ubuntu-netbook” log in using that destop and see for yourself what I’m talking about. If it could be mintified with LM menu it could be a BIG WINNER. Your comments about it.

    Thanks

    Linux Mint Really Rocks!

    Reply

  5. Clem said, “…our user base grew by 10%.”

    Hey, that’s great! How many in the LM user base? Is it Linux Mint users (persons) or installed systems? And how do you arrive at these numbers?

    Looking forward to LMDE improvements…All the best to Clem & Team.

    Reply

    1. Jesse5567: Distributions do not and cannot know the size of their user base. They use multiple indicators and figures to track it but don’t know their relevance. For instance, we know how many search queries are performed on our custom google search. And we can assess with exactitude that it grew by 10%. What we don’t know, is the proportion of Mint users not using that search feature, or the amount of search queries performed by user, though these ratios are believed to be stable and do not vary significantly over time. Fedora tracks the number of unique IPs requesting updates from their repository… they don’t know the ratio of users not connected to the Internet, or using multiple IPs, or changing IP with every connection, etc… but assuming these do not vary significantly over time, they’re in a position to know precisely when and by how much percentage their user base grows or shrinks. In brief, it’s not possible to know how many people run a particular distribution but it’s very easy to get a precise picture of the relative evolution of the user base.

  6. I’m a first time Linux user having been a Microsoft user since the days of DOS (pre Windows)! I first migrated to Ubuntu then quickly switched to Mint 11. Fantastic release and thanks to all on the Mint forums for the great newbie support.

    Reply

  7. Thanks for the wonderful work done by the team 🙂 I’m one among the 10% increase in user base 🙂 Rather than go the way of Mint-Ubuntu, I chose LMDE and I can’t have it any other way. My work laptop’s running LMDE-Stable and another personal laptop’s getting LMDE-Testing installed right now.

    LMDE Rocks!

    Reply

  8. Clem: Bravo, excellent distribution.
    Your decision to use GNOME 2.32 has been great for us.

    The desktop is perfect for those coming from Windows world.
    Linux Mint is being accepted by businesses because the desktop is similar to windows.
    Gnome 2.32 is great for more people in offices and households to switch to Linux Mint.
    Please do not switch to Unity or Gnome 3, in the medium term at least..
    We prefer a fork Gnome anyway.

    Clem, thanks to you and your team again.

    Greetings from Chile, South America.
    (excuse my Google translat. English:)

    Reply

  9. Clem,

    Along the specific June’s developing can we expecting
    to have some screenshots of LMDE Gnome’s / XFCE’s , to
    appreciate how things are going on. (on the blog), I meam

    Thanks in advance

    Jake Alex

    Reply

  10. Linux Mint 11 fixes the problems I was having with jitter in Twinkle on Linux Mint 10. That was my only complaint with 10. Great work – Thank you!!!

    Reply

  11. maybe mint4win is still necessary for those who doesn’t familiar with the operation of partition ,I hope to see it in 11.10.I once used Mint 11 Katya,but I find Mint10 still the best.By the way ,may give a chance for Chinese to take part in the donation ,the bank card above may not used in China.

    Reply

  12. Glad to hear work is going to start in earnest on LMDE updates. I tried the new LM 11, but had to go back to LMDE or LM 10 to avoid nasty bugs in Gnucash which I use for my business. Am using LMDE now, recent updates have improved Gnucash somewhat with more needed. Hope LMDE never gets the new scrollbars and other Ubuntu “improvements?” It is a shame that changes in a few applications can make an otherwise great new release unusable. It would be nice if there was some easy way to roll back to an older version of the application until they fix the bugs.

    Reply

  13. Congratulations to the Linux Mint team – the Mint 11 release is an excellent one. Looking forward to many more.

    Reply

  14. I agree, LMDE rocks! I run it form USB on my moms notebook when visit her:-) I have LM 11 on by desktop computer at home.

    It would be great if you cought some big companies willing to pay for your distribution. Ubuntu goes the wrong way not having all the codecs installed right a way and its “Mac” look with strange minimize, maximize style detracts many users.

    Keep doing the good job!!

    Adam

    Reply

  15. Clem,
    Please do not remove the Linux Mint Debian (201012/201101) release iso. I request this because with 201012/201101 release its very easy to plug in the stable squeezy repositories and have a stable Debian system up in no time. You’ve no idea how much effort it saves. When you come up with Mint 11 LMDE there would be no way to move to squeeze, hence my humble request to let this edition be online.
    I would like to thank you once more for LMDE, and specifically for 201012/201101 release. My clients are people with slow connections and with Debian squeeze the updates are rare and small so you help make a few people in a few poor countries very happy.. keep up the good work..

    Reply

  16. Hi, Clem&Team&Community!
    Thanks for Katya, it’s really nice)
    In my opinion, choice is a great thing. Let people choose whether using unity or gnome shell. Making a fork is such a huge work to do, just make unity- and shell versions and it would be a win.
    All the best, waiting LMDE changes.

    Reply

  18. Will LM be making the move to wayland should Ubuntu actually pull it off and will it (possibly) make it into LMDE. Wayland is an exciting avenue to look at considering the age of xorg.

    Reply

  19. I am a long time Ubuntu devotee and a key member of a team managing about 300 computers. We have been scratching our heads trying to decide what to do now, we all dislike Unity.

    So we tried mint.

    Perfect.

    This is EXACTLY what we need, a sane path forward. I would like to thank everybody responsible. Next stop …. to see if my employer will send some money in your direction.

    Reply

  20. Mint 11 Review – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGqYsevDd84

    Linux Mint 11 hits the streets, does their bold choice to go retro pay off? Or does it end up feeling old and busted? We review and you’ll find out!

    THEN – Is Windows 8 just a cheap knock off of Gnome 3? We discuss!

    PLUS so much more!

    All this week on, The Linux Action Show!

    Reply

  24. Way to go, Steve! 300 computers? And they all have Linux Mint now? Cool.

    I just talked with the CFO of a local business. I asked him what his cost of ownership of his Windows OS machines and s/w was. He said he was in the process of figuring that out. I told him that Mint is a free OS with 30,000+ free s/w applications behind it, including a business suite which can outshine MS s/w. I’ll talk with him again later… 🙂 Every bit helps; get the word out.

    Reply

  25. Hi,I am still using linux Mint 9 Fluxbox will there be a new version of this wonderful windows manager with LMDE? LMDE+FLUXBOX=Greatnesss

    Reply

  26. Hello Linux Mint Team!

    I’ve been a Ubuntu user for not that much time but tried it. Then I saw a video demo of Linux Mint 10 and immidiatly fell in love. Further more, I saw you provided a Debian Edition and I just couldn’t resist…

    Now I’m not only a Linux Mint fan but a LMDE junkie!

    I’m seriously considering sponsorship or even support the community by joining the dev team 🙂

    Thanks for not only the vision and good taste you have, but for sharing these awesome pieces of software that really enhance our machines!

    Reply

  27. I can hardly wait to see LMDE upgraded. 🙂 But Isadora also needs some updates. I hope they will come reasonably soon because it’s a LTS, Firefox will soon move to v5 and other key apps should get refreshed.

    Other than that, I’m glad things are going well for Linux Mint and I hope they keep getting better. 🙂 Thank you guys! Great job! 🙂

    Reply

  28. Clem, please update mint-flashplugin to the latest version. My chromium needs this 😉 Current flash is too old.

    Reply

  30. “many options are there for us, including forking Gnome 2 or even Gnome 3 and it’s too early to say what will happen next.”
    I think a fork would be extremely difficult to maintain, Gnome2 has lost upstream support, and Gnome3’s fallback mode (especially with the gnome panel) has quite a bit of functionality removed, I was wondering if you could fuse the current “main” edition, with XFCE, as in, replicate the UI as best as possible with XFCE, possibly doing a real port of the Mint Menu (as opposed to the current one which still relies on Gnome components.)

    Reply

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