Monthly Stats – April 2012

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $259.44, Christian D.
  • $259.44, Richard G.
  • $200, Thomas O.
  • $100 (8th donation), Jordan S.
  • $100 (5th donation), Richard H.
  • $100 (4th donation), Ralph Siegler aka “ziggy
  • $100 (3rd donation), Mohammed A.
  • $100, Hans S.
  • $100, William W.
  • $100, Stephen B.
  • $100, Robert B.
  • $80 (4th donation), Alan Hall
  • $77.83 (3rd donation), Muharem Hrnjadovic aka “al-maisan
  • $77.83, Remy F.
  • $64.86 (5th donation), Kimmo K.
  • $64.86 (3rd donation), Goran A.
  • $64.86, Duc de la rochefoucauld aka “Gorgus”
  • $64.86, Christoph N.
  • $50 (31st donation), Slavoljub aka “slw”
  • $50 (25th donation), Matthew M.
  • $50 (14th donation), Tsuguo S.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Tyrone P.
  • $50, Roger W.
  • $50, Chris Coughlin
  • $50, Christopher F.
  • $50, Tim A.
  • $50, Rudolph C.
  • $50, William W.
  • $50, Juan B. G. M.
  • $50, Rod S.
  • $40 (3rd donation), Jose M.
  • $38.91 (26th donation), Olli K.
  • $38.91 (2nd donation), Chema Cortes aka “ch3m4”
  • $32.43 (2nd donation), Joachim M.
  • $32.43, Alexander R.
  • $32.43, Dirk H.
  • $32.43, Stefan W.
  • $32.43, Juergen F.
  • $30, Mihai C.G. aka “Snowfall”
  • $30, Garry H.
  • $30, Charles R.
  • $25.94, Corrado N.
  • $25.94, Steven P. aka “Sarge”
  • $25.94, Manuel M. P.
  • $25.94, Michiel W. aka “Zonnevuur”
  • $25 (9th donation), Adam D.
  • $25 (7th donation), Ronald W.
  • $25 (7th donation), Vance R. aka “helmsdeeper”
  • $25 (6th donation), Ronald W.
  • $25 (4th donation), bdantas
  • $25 (3rd donation), stewy
  • $25 (2nd donation), Jim Duffield aka “sapperk9”
  • $25 (2nd donation), John S.
  • $25, David C.
  • $25, Jody D.
  • $25, Will Hsiung
  • $25, Alistair G.
  • $25, Nathaniel aka “Pointedstick
  • $25, Ronald F.
  • $25, Bob Plester aka “mistamule”
  • $25, Jamie D.
  • $25, Edmund B.
  • $22 (11th donation), John A.
  • $20 (7th donation), Brian G.
  • $20 (5th donation), James R.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Thomas M.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Srikanth M.
  • $20, Tobias H.
  • $20, Hugh N.
  • $20, Craig
  • $20, Gary L.
  • $20, Amanda S.
  • $20, Richard M.
  • $20, Curt A.
  • $20, Paul S.
  • $20, Luke J.
  • $16.86 (5th donation), Zoe Q.
  • $16, Richard F.
  • $15.57, Grany’s H.
  • $15 (3rd donation), Hannes G.
  • $15, Abdul B.
  • $15, Peter H.
  • $15, William D.
  • $15, Jonas B.
  • $15, Nikolaos K.
  • $13, Carlos S.
  • $12.97 (4th donation), Jens-uwe R.
  • $12.97 (3rd donation), zerozero
  • $12.97, Pedro R.
  • $12.97, Hannes K.
  • $12.97, Roelof R.
  • $12.97, José J. A. A.
  • $12.97, Christoph R.
  • $12.97, Davide B. aka “aptgethappy”
  • $12.66, hempforest.net aka “rufong
  • $12, Jose J. A. M.
  • $12, William B.
  • $10.37, Konstantinos T.
  • $10 (14th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (12th donation), John A.
  • $10 (6th donation), Frank Martin aka “”kitanis””
  • $10 (5th donation), Juergen G.
  • $10 (4th donation), Peter Larson
  • $10 (4th donation), Hartmann Maier aka “hkmle”
  • $10 (3rd donation), CW P.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Peter Meloncelli aka “driekus”
  • $10 (2nd donation), Jens P.
  • $10 (2nd donation), John D. G.
  • $10, Jesse G. III
  • $10, Eduardo R.
  • $10, Zachary R.
  • $10, Harald S.
  • $10, Andy W.
  • $10, Mel C.
  • $10, Laszlo C.
  • $10, Nancy M.
  • $10, Ashwani S. aka “Bobby”
  • $10, Jann S.
  • $10, Samuel C.
  • $10, Victor F.
  • $10, Ondrej H.
  • $10, Andrew D.
  • $10, Atul D.
  • $9.73 (10th donation), Ronald Trip
  • $9.45 (3rd donation), Dominik K. aka “doke
  • $9.08, Mario P.
  • $6.49 (7th donation), SM
  • $6.49 (5th donation), Piermario R.
  • $6.49, Cristiano A. aka “Tuxlandia
  • $6.49, Marco aka “Dictionary-Maker
  • $6.49, Johannes S.
  • $6.49, Benjamin B.
  • $6.49, Marco F.
  • $6, Ihor P.
  • $5.5, Keith K.
  • $5.19, Philippe P.
  • $5 (9th donation), Antonina K. aka “Tonya”
  • $5 (7th donation), Y.K. aka “Market Analysis
  • $5 (4th donation), StuzzHosting.com
  • $5, SourDee.com aka “SourDee
  • $5, Dave G.
  • $5, Sexy B.
  • $5, Joao P.
  • $5, Ryan T.
  • $5, Paul V.
  • $5, Joseph Moschini aka “forthnutter”
  • $4.44 (5th donation), free domain names
  • $4.22, Alexander aka “Uns
  • $4.22, Alexander aka “Uns
  • $2.59 (6th donation), Jose A.H.
  • $2.59 (5th donation), Jurek W.
  • $2.59 (3rd donation), Yannick G. aka “Uggy”
  • $2.37, Derek B.
  • $2 (3rd donation), Vadim B.
  • $2 (2nd donation), Clayton S.
  • $2, Shankar S.
  • $1.3, Emam Naghi Fans aka “Imam Naghi Fans
  • $1.3, Walter P.
  • $1 (6th donation), Vitamini
  • $1 (5th donation), futon covers
  • $1 (5th donation), Pharmacie en ligne
  • $1 (4th donation), Pharmacie en ligne
  • $1 (3rd donation), Juhani K.
  • $1 (2nd donation), Ethoseo Internet Marketing Washington aka “Bellingham SEO
  • $1, J.M. H. aka “BostonPeng
  • $1, Kevin C.
  • $0.5 (5th donation), Javier Bassi

Sponsors:

Money raised in April:

* Donations: $4527.43 (167 donors)
* Sponsors: $8855 (160 sponsors)

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

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 4399 (1st)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 7,022nd

Events:

News and summary:

  • I would like to apologize to all the people who donate to and sponsor Linux Mint for the time it took us to publish these stats. We’re extremely grateful for the empowerment you give us. No matter how hard things get, how little time we have and how ambitious our projects are, we know we’ve got your support and so we don’t need to worry about commercial aspects and we can fully focus on one thing and one thing only: making Linux Mint better. I would like to thank those who make this possible, our primary sponsor Blue Systems, but also companies which actively back us such as DuckDuckGo, Opera, Yahoo, CompuLab, R1Soft, Milton Security Group, ThinkPenguin… and so many others. I’d like to thank also, all the donors and sponsors whose contributions add up to what is a fantastic financial support for our project. We’re aware of the fact that there are very few projects on the Internet which benefit from such a generous and supporting community, and we feel extremely privileged by this. Thank you all for helping us!
  • LMDE was released and it was the first release to feature a stable version of MATE and of course the brand new Cinnamon. We’re extremely proud of this release and for Linux Mint 13 we want to do even better. With both MATE and Cinnamon getting their own dedicated editions, we’ll be able to integrate each of these desktops even further within the operating system. We’ve also heard your opinion, via the poll, and we acknowledge the fact that the most popular environments within our community are Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce and KDE. Going forward, we’ll focus primarily on these desktops.

74 comments

  1. Does this now mean that we will have a dedicated kde version of lmde?

    Edit by Clem: No. As the poll suggests Xfce is more popular, so if beside MATE and Cinnamon another DE was to be supported on both package base, it would be Xfce. We’re looking into this at the moment. We want to focus our efforts on what matters most to most people and try to do less and do it better, so we might discontinue Fluxbox and LXDE and give Xfce better support.

  2. It never crossed my mind to donate to Linux Mint, even though I’ve donated to many other projects and read about why Google isn’t part of the browser search engines by default… brb 🙂

  3. Well that’s done, $50 for a great distro.
    I’m curious though, what is worked on that other distros can benefit from? The most obvious to me would be Cinnamon and probably package testing. Perhaps my real question is, what do the Mint staff work on in general, since most anything worked on here should be beneficial to others.

    Edit by Clem: Cinnamon, MDM and the debian live installer are three of our most important projects and they’re developped with other distributions in mind. The mint tools are also available for other distros to use and although they wear the “mint” name, they don’t show it to the user and come with no branding, for instance mintupload isn’t “mintUpload” but the “Upload Manager”. We don’t do any marketing or advertising for them though… if distros want to use them, patch them or fork them they’re free to do so. A few minor distributions did it, so far larger ones didn’t. When it comes to Ubuntu and Gnome, which like us, are actively trying to improve the Linux desktop, we notice we have an influence in their design. Ubuntu did the Software Center after we did the Software Manager and included most of the features we put in it. Gnome developed a filtering menu system similar to mintMenu (although it’s not a good implementation in my opinion) etc etc… They don’t use our code though. When it comes to relying on technology it’s extremely important not to carry technical debt, and so it’s understandable for them to rewrite things from scratch and not depend on us for part of their desktop. Overall, like any other OS which is successful, it catches people’s attention and the innovations it features have an indirect impact on the technological landscape. When you run Mint you get something that throughout its history took inspiration from Ubuntu, Mac, Windows, Mandrake, PCBSD, and many others. Nowadays, what we do has an impact on others. The fact that we use MATE gives MATE the momentum it needs and pushes other distros to do it as well, the fact that Mint and Ubuntu don’t use Gnome Shell prevent developers from thinking of Shell as the new standard for Linux desktops and in a way prevents them from breaking compatibility with KDE, Xfce and other desktops (the notorious example of Rhythmbox losing its status-icon comes to mind here).

  4. buena suerte…..lmde no tiene yahoo.

    Edit: Yahoo is available for LMDE users in the following countries: USA, Canada (English-speaking), UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain.. and in a few French and German speaking parts of Europe. We’re working with Yahoo to extend the availability of the engine to other parts of the World but so far these are the ones they agreed on.

  5. Clem, almost 50% of the revenue came from Blue Systems, they are sponsoring several KDE projects including Kubuntu recently. I have not been able to find who Blue Systems really is and what they do but I thank them for supporting LM-KDE an other KDE projects.

    As a converted KDE user I would like to know if there is any project involving LM, Blue Systems and Kubuntu to work in closer partnership?

    I upgraded from Kubuntu 11.10 to 12.04 on my desktop without a glitch , bought a brand new notebook and installed it and it did flawlessly recognising all the hardware devices installing the drivers without a single problem. I’m really impressed with Kubuntu and I really would like having the same with Mint because I know that with Mint will be even better.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Manny. Behind Blue Systems there’s another Clem (Clemens) 🙂 We’ve been in contact for a few years now and we worked together on Netrunner. Today, Clemens decided to support Kubuntu and so I have no doubt our team will meet with the Kubuntu devs and we’ll work together on making all three distributions better. It will be up to Clemens to define his expectations and how he wants this to happen. Our relationship with Blue Systems has been fantastic from the very beginning, and we’re excited to meet the Kubuntu guys.

    I’m reserving partitions on both machines in case LM releases LM-KDE13 in an acceptable frame of time. In my opinion, KDE is the most polished, stable and configurable environment today. What are your plans for the future involving KDE, will you take the chance and promote it as it deserves?

    Thanks in advance

  6. Do you plan to create a way for donations / sponsoring without paypal? I will not use paypal, even not as guest.

    Edit by Clem: Why not?

  7. Regarding the editions the project will focus on going forward, the following is summarized from the poll:

    “… the most popular environments within our community are Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce and KDE. Going forward, we’ll focus primarily on these desktops.”

    I have to question this finding. First of all, Gnome Shell is just a hair (5 votes) behind KDE, and not that far behind Xfce and Mate. If Unity is counted together with Gnome Shell they are in a clear second spot – this means that a lot of people are interested in a forward looking Gnome-based solution for their desktop.

    Now, have a look at the poll that was closed down after just one day:
    http://www.twiigs.com/poll/Technology/Computers/93216
    Gnome Shell is in a clear third spot here, and including Unity it is close to the leaders.
    That poll was closed because of manipulation it is stated, but having a poll confined to forum members is certainly also a form of “manipulation” that probably better achieves the “wished for” results….
    A lot of potential users reading the blog will not have their voice heard because of the “sign up” threshold to the forum vote. I haven’t even voted myself, yet I do this write up.

    I’m actually surprised that as many people have voted for Gnome Shell / Unity in the forum poll despite of the member requirement, yet it’s a fact that this is the category that is logically weakened with this type of voting. Established users/members, familiar with the ongoing desktop efforts in LM, are being heard, while potential new users who have been testing and getting used to the new Gnome solutions in other distros are probably not being heard to the degree they ought to in this poll. And then there are former users having left LM and now using other distros that are focusing on making a good Gnome 3 experience, these users are likely not even noticing this poll. Just saying.

    My take? Cinnamon and Mate are trying in two ways to achieve the same goal. Choose only one of them, even if both are popular among existing users. Then do a proper KDE version, the polls are clear on this. And please don’t ignore the forward looking, and surely still evolving, Gnome 3 options that the rest of the distro-world is using. So choose Gnome Shell (or Unity) as a third desktop to focus on. And if resources allow, by all means also include an Xfce edition. This is IMO the recipe that will best allow the project to continue growing and win new users. Peace!

    Edit by Clem: Thanks. You’re right and you’re making a good point. This was considered of course and I perfectly agree with what you’re saying about the polls. We don’t just answer the needs of our community, by doing so in a certain way we also choose our target audience.

  8. Always appreciate the judgement and hard work of the team.

    I am hoping Gnome Shell will remain an alternate selection on at least one of the new Mint 13 editions. Even among registered Mint users the popularity of Shell 12%, KDE 12% and XFCE 13% were clustered on the poll. The difference among them is unlikely to be statistically significant. The open poll also showed considerable interest in Shell 22%, with XFCE 16%, and KDE unfortunately manipulated in an obvious manner.

  9. Thanks, Clem. I’m loving MATE & LMDE on my netbook and I’m looking forward to LM13. All due respect to the team at Ubuntu but I’d rather wait for the next Linux Mint with all the wrinkles ironed out.

  10. manny@4

    i think Clem mentioned some time back that Mint had partnered with Blue Systems, and I think they provide some server technology to Mint. Netrunner(another Kubuntu based KDE distro) is also sponsored by Blue Systems, and it’s not a bad distro at all. i think Clem said he had intentions of joining forces with the Netrunner team as far as KDE is concerned. he mentioned that the Netrunner team has a solid background in KDE, and that Mint could benefit from a partnership with them.

    i too would really like to see something emerge from this partnership. it could really be something.

    by the way, it looks like lots of people are having trouble with nvidia drivers and the latest linux kernels. so, i’m also anxious to see this addressed in later kernel releases. in other words, it’s not KDE necessarily that i’m having trouble with.

    Edit by Clem: We’ve been working with them for a while and recently they accepted to sponsor us as well. We’re involved in the maintenance of Netrunner and helping the Netrunner project and Blue Systems is helping us a lot financially. In regards to servers there isn’t anything there though, both projects have their own servers.

  11. @PB, I’m aware about all you said. It seems Blue Systems is very serious in projects based on KDE. This is what I’m excited about.

    I have an nvidia card in my PC and the only problems I had with it was with LMDE where I had to install the drivers manually; this was not the case with Kubuntu which detected the card and installed the drivers automatically and when 12.04 was released it notified me if I wanted to do a distro upgrade from 11.10. No ISO download, no burning DVD, just installed on line and done. Impressive!

    Just bought a brand new Samsung notebook and I was much impress with Kubuntu 12.04, it detected all the devices, blue tooth, mouse pad, video card, wifi and camera; it installed the drivers without a hitch, being a modern machine full of bells and whistles; I really expected some problems but fortunately there was none.

    Hope LM releases the LM-KDE soon after the main edition to install it, I have a partition ready. Hope you solve your nvidia issues too. Have you tried to upgrade the kernel to 3.2 yet?

    Cheers!

  12. @Jim D
    I agree. Gnome Shell and Cinnamon share a lot in common. They are based on the same libraries. I hope the Mint team will consider a Cinnamon/Shell release where people can choose which one to login to.

    I believe though that the Main Edition should be Mate because it provides true continuation from Julia/Katya. It includes the mintmenu and all the things I love in Mint that make it natural to use.

    Edit by Clem: Cinnamon is likely to come with Gnome-Fallback. Users will be able to add Shell by simply installing “gnome-shell”, and by doing so they’ll have all three desktops available on the login screen.

  13. I would love to support Linux Mint financially because I really appreciate the effort you put into it. However, I would like to do it without using paypal through a simple bank transfer or similar means.

  14. Clem and team, Please do not dump support for Gnome shell/3. Some of us have managed to configure it quite simply into a very similar gui/ desktop experience to our beloved Gnome 2 (actually the desktop looks even sweeter). I’ve tried to like both KDE and Xfce but they just seem unpolished and awkward. Sure its not as configurable as KDE but its a dammed sight cleaner interface and very easy to navigate around several running apps/windows.

    So please continue to support this new desktop experience.

  15. @Steve
    From Clem’s answer to me in #14, yes they will support Gnome Shell. It is in the repos. All you need to do is run:
    sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

  16. Wow! Seems a lot is going on within the dev-team and community! I am ‘playing’ now with Ubuntu 12.04 and it is tremendously stable already. I am sure it will be a perfect base for the upcoming Linux Mint-releases. One question though…would it be possible to release point-releases from the LTS-releases every now and then?

  17. @Clem
    I wasn’t asking about a KDE edition of LMDE for my own sake as I am fairly happy with Gnome Shell(as you can see from #16). Plus I am confident that we will see many improvements in Cinnamon given time. The enquiry was made in respect of all those who just happen to like KDE.

    Keep up the good work.

    PS: You wouldn’t happen to know why every time I start to type in the Gnome shell “type to search” box my whole system crashes?

  18. @Midas

    I’ve got 12.04 with Cinnamon and it’s anything but stable on my Dell 740 test box. Three crashes in an hour and all I’m doing is adding applets. I get freezes and the “Sorry but Ubuntu has crashed” message. For example, after a fresh install of 12.04 and Cinnamon, I enabled the Zoom function (mysteriously missing somehow from the Accessibility applet but can be re-enabled via the panel Accessibility applet) and mapped Zoom In and Zoom Out to Alt-NumPad-Minus and Alt-NumPad-Plus respectively. Then I added the Windowlist with grouping applet. I went into panel edit mode and moved some of the applets around. All good. Clicked on the menu – system froze. It came back and announced Ubuntu had crashed. Rebooted. Tried to add the classic menu applet. System froze (yes I used the command line provided). System came back and announced it had crashed again. Rebooted. Turned off the HotSpot on the desktop (I have no use for it). System froze. In the first two cases I looked at where the errors were in the system crashed dialog and they pointed to the Cinnamon directory.

    This ain’t stable by a longshot.

    Edit by Clem: Cinnamon wasn’t released for 12.04 yet. If you built it yourself, make sure you’re using Muffin 1.0.3 (or latest) with Cinnamon 1.4. If you included any Cinnamon changes from git past the 1.4 label it won’t be stable. If you’re in a hurry you can grab the cinnamon-1.4-maya2 debs currently in the Maya repository.

  19. Sorry to hear Roj, but I am using Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity-2D. As stable as a rock I would say. And I hope the upcoming Mint 13 will be as stable too…

  20. Did I give twice in April? (I’m a sponsor.)

    Edit by Clem: It looks like you did. I can check Paypal to be sure. If this was a mistake, please let me know at root @ linuxmint . com so I can perform a refund.

  21. Hi Clem and team. I have been really impressed with all your progress over the last few months. I have one question? when is LM13 likely to be released? I know that is a how long is a piece of string question, and that you usually relase when its ready- but it owuld be useful to know when approximately it’s likely to be. This month? I ask as im considering putting something newer on my pc and would like it to be lm. I could put the latest lmde on it but would find the main edition easier.

    Thanks keep up the good work.

    P

    Edit by Clem: Hello. It usually comes out in the end of May. We’re happy to delay if we find issues though.

  22. Im also a little confused. Is there any point in using the LM KDE- if there is not definately going to be new versions of it- or have i got that wrong. I note the bluesystems partnership- so does that imply there will be supported kde versions – after the present one- for some time to come orr is the curent one the last for some time?. I ask this in relation to my previosu post- as i may consider converting to kde- especially if the lm main eddition is some away- and if kde will be continued to be supported for some time to come…

    Ta

    ps i curently use katya on my main pc and lmde xfce on my netbook so am thinking of changing both…

  23. What about LXDE? Is support for LXDE still being planned. I use this distribution tremendously to bring older computers back to life for use in charity projects. I would be greatly disappointed if support for LXDE desktop were to discontinue.

    Edit by Clem: Nobody likes to hear bad news and if we could we’d support all the DEs out there. I myself really enjoy working on LXDE, it’s light, it’s simple, it works… but there’s little demand for it, we’re only partly supporting it (only in 32bit) and we’re just too streched. Going forward we want to do less and do it better.. and so it’s likely we’ll drop support for Fluxbox and LXDE. We can organize support for a community project though and pass our knowledge, work and expertise, how to remaster ISOs etc…

  24. @ 19 Steve:

    What graphics card/driver?

    I reverted to nouveau due to a bug with the Nvidia driver when the recent documents list becomes large. Other users have deleted ~/.local/recently-used.xbel (or the contents of) to relieve the situation (but then you can’t search recent docs). There’s a thread on it somewhere in the LMDE section of the forum.

  25. ok after playing around with lm kde- i like it but i like the mate/cinamon lmde better. The only problem is the latter does not have wine and it seems that it will be a headache to install (wine that is). So my quetion is (probably a stupid one too) if i install lm12 main and download all the updates will it then have the more mature versions of mate and cinnamon like in the new lmde version or will i have to wait for lm13 for them?

  26. Hi.. after upgrade to Firefox 12, my DuckDuckGo plugin is gone. So i manually add DuckDuckGo plugin from addons.mozilla.org

    But now the search result is plain DuckDuckGo url like this : http://duckduckgo.com/?q=linuxmint ,
    IIRC before i upgrade my Firefox, search result is something with “lm” code like this : http://duckduckgo.com/?c=lm&q=linuxmint

    So is this means my DuckDuckGo not financially support linuxmint? How to make sure if my search result support linuxmint?
    Thanks.

    Edit by Clem: Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I updated mint-artwork-common to 1.3.4-lisa2. You might need a reboot and resetting your search plugins (as your version of DDG will overwrite the LM one) after getting that update. You’ll then get the Mint plugins back, including the new Yahoo plugin which funds us as well.

  27. btw did you know cinnamon was missing from the lm12 repository- or have i missed something?

    Edit by Clem: No, it’s there. Update your APT cache, it’s under the name “cinnamon”.

  28. Clem, is there any progress in the bug I posted in the previous blog entry regarding how Mate does not display themes properly? In particular, with the Mint-X family of themes.

    My guess is that the “include filename.rc” commands in the Mint-X theme is ignored by Mate. As a result, only the colors and Metacity themes are loaded, but the gtk theme is not loaded properly. It could be looking for the include files in the wrong folder.

    I hope you get this fixed. The Mint-X theme is one of the things I love about Mint.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Bamm. Both themes are now part of a package called mint-themes and they look significantly better than before. In particular their GTK3 styles are now working fine with Gnome 3.4 and multiple fixes were applied to their GTK2 styles (expander size for Mint X, color shade for Mint-Z, panel fixes for both).

  29. I realize that this blog is not the right place to post bug reports. However, your blog entry then specifically asked us to share any bugs that we found, hence my post. I do not know if my report has been forwarded to the proper people. Otherwise, where it the best place to post bugs to Mate?

    Edit by Clem: github.com/mate-desktop (issues sections)

  30. Regarding the plans to possibly discontinue the lxde & fluxbox versions…

    – Would it be to much to ask for just one more release of them, so that they at least could “go down” as LTE versions giving the users a bit more time with fresh, updated systems?

    I know – LXDE has a quite recent version with Mint 12, but Fluxbox seem to be regarded as “dead” already… but it would be nice to see one final release of them both (if they are to get discontinued).

    Edit by Clem: We need to look into it. Whatever decisions will be made, it won’t be made now, but after the Mint 13 MATE and Cinnamon releases. Personally I’d like to document how to remaster our ISOs and share our build notes so that people in the community can roll their own Fluxbox and LXDE ISOs based on Mint 13.

  31. Correcting a typo…

    LTE should of course read LTS – sorry about that.
    (think I’ve been reading too many articles about android phones and LTE in one day)

  32. I agree with gosa. People would love to have LTS versions of whatever they use, and wouldn’t mind changes made after LTS.

  33. I also agree with gosa, especially since it’s a five year LTS. The fluxbox edition I can live without, but the LXDE edition is pretty important.

  34. I might as well say why the LXDE edition is important (I was kind of vague in my last comment). The LXDE edition is important because it really helps low end hardware. LMDE Xfce would be great except it still has fully featured apps (which I personally love) that aren’t great with old computers. I don’t know about a possible Ubuntu Xfce edition, but it would still be pretty heavy relative to LXDE or an LMDE LXDE because LXDE is a lighter DE and (in the latter) Debian is a lighter base. So LXDE serves an important purpose for people with older hardware. Could it be an LTS only edition possibly?

  35. LXDE is an extremely important distribution for me. I use Linux Mint LXDE to provide new life for older computers which are used for charity and educational projects. If LXDE is not as popular, I would suggest as cwwgateway does above that LXDE could be released as LTS every 18 months or so. While I use Cinnamon personally, LXDE allows me to save costs and keep older computers working well.

  36. Currently we have Ubuntu-based Mint with LXDE and Debian-based Mint with XFCE. How about swapping it? The Ubuntu-based Mint should have XFCE and the Debian-based Mint should have LXDE. This is because:
    * Debian is lighter, and LXDE is lighter, so if we combine them, we get the best combination for low end computers.
    * Since Xubuntu exists, it would be good for Mint’s Ubuntu-based edition to have XFCE too.

  37. @Bamm, personally, I MUCH prefer Xfce on a debian base because I find Xfce so much more feature rich than LXDE, and, on top of that, it’s almost as fast (with debian) as LXDE based on Ubuntu. It’s sort of the best of both worlds. I’m all for an LMDE LXDE, though, and I’d love an Ubuntu based Xfce edition (as long as they kept the LMDE one). Also, how do you discontinue a rolling release? It’d be kind of a let down because it was supposedly supported for forever and, on top of that, it’s rolling so I don’t understand how they’d not support it. Wouldn’t people just install the older ISO and update? All of the mint tools are still needed for other editions so I’m kinda confused.

  38. I much prefer LXDE instead of XFCE that uses more memory then normal, XFCE 4.10 is using huge memory and is no longer mine favourite.
    LXDE is not only for low end computers or hardware, computers with an basic processor like an an celeron are better off with an LXDE desktop.
    Combining the best of LXDE and XFCE is an good option to test.
    LXDE must also have an new look it is to basic and not so sexy as Mint 12 with a lot of good themes.

  39. @Marc

    Each step up in order of “sexiness” is going to cost more system resources, period. In other words, we can’t expect to have the sexy look of Gnome in a DE as light as LXDE. It’s that sexy look and window behavior, compositing, etc., that takes the resources. So it boils down to what is most important to each of us. Gnome 2.x had a wonderful balance of simplicity and sexiness, but was fully functional and could git ‘er done with 512MB of memory in a pinch. KDE has always been the heaviest, but most configurable. By default, KDE compositing and other desktop effects are down right nasty good–IMO. Especially with the Minty backdrop. But again, up you go with system resources.

    Of course, I’m not saying anything new. Most of us know that. But looking forward, I’m most interested in regaining the time where each edition of Mint was several steps up in quality than the one before–aside from minor regressions every few releases–things simply out of their hands.

    I’m still leaning on my old LM9 box, and at the end of the day, I haven’t a thing to complain about.

  40. To me, there seem to be three main groups which need a DE available to them:
    1) The consumer who wants the latest greatest graphics, effects, whatever… and has a new computer to put it on
    2) The techie who wants performance, functionality, configurability, etc.
    3) The necro who likes bringing dead computers out of the attic & reviving them with a super-light distro

    I think groups 1 and 2 need to be satisfied at the bare minimum. (Group 3 if possible, but really, there are lighter distros available for this.)

    I’m more of a “#2” I think. Gnome 3 made me angry, KDE never felt like a good fit… but man, LMDE Xfce rocked my world… awesome performance, light-weight, very configurable, it’s even easy to use, and with all of that, it still looks pretty cool if you set it up right. I’ve never been happier with an OS.

    I hope LMDE Xfce continues to get focus & that more people give it a try. Honestly, I think Gnome & KDE have just had so much attention historically that a lot of folks have never had a reason to try Xfce. If they had equal time, I wonder how that would change the polls. (In fact, when polling, it might be worthwhile to ask folks which DE’s they’ve actually worked with recently!)

  41. HOLEY MOLEY!!!

    Money raised in April:
    Donations: $4527.43 (167 donors)
    Sponsors: $8855 (160 sponsors)
    13.3k a month for Linux Mint’s earnings…

    The question now is… Why not hire 1 or 2 full time developers to add code to Mint ???

  42. Since everyone is still talking about DE variations and now community projects, how about a Community Edition of LMDE KDE? LMDE-KDE-CE.

    I know, it’s spelled lmdekdece, but it’s pronounced “throat-wrangler mangrove.” 🙂

    Or just call it Nutmeg. 🙂

    Seriously, “documenting how to remaster ISOs and sharing build notes” would be a great first step in any CE/ISO project.

  43. @kaddy The extra money from Blue Systems let Linux Mint hire an additional developer for this year, so right now there are 2 full time devs (Clem and Fred). Despite this, Mint still needs to downsize and focus on a few editions – the Ubuntu Cinnamon edition, the Ubuntu MATE edition, the Ubuntu KDE edition, possibly the Ubuntu Xfce edition, the LMDE Cinnamon edition, the LMDE MATE edition, and the LMDE Xfce edition (which is 6 editions with the possibility of a seventh). My guess is that this list might even downsize, but I don’t know. However, my guess is if Clem documents how to make ISOs and allows for community editions, there will be community editions of LXDE, fluxbox, etc. Some community editions are a very good idea IMO because the Mint team doesn’t have to work on them, meaning they have time to do other things. Also, anybody can make a community edition, so there can be a fluxbox editions, an openbox edition, an E17 edition, etc, and this can all be done with very little work from the Mint team – they only have to possibly help find bugs with the ISO (find, not fix). Finally, community editions always were very good quality.

  44. @Jesse5567
    I agree with you completely – many, many editions can get created without work from the mint team.

  45. clem, just a thought. If you’re going to go with a second version of XFCE, you may want to consider Debian Stable, instead of a Xubuntu base.

    That would seem to be a neat new disto for Mint. It would 2 or 3 birds with 1 stone.

    I, personally, love Testing. But a XFCE Debian Stable would fill a nice niche for Mint.

  46. clem, just to clarify my last post, I would consider Wheezy as a Debian “Stable” base for a 2nd XFCE. Wheezy gets code frozen next month, and a Wheezy base will carry you through 2 and 1/2 years.

  47. I second Chris M’s request. I would like a LMDSE (Linux Mint Debian Stable Edition). XFCE would be fine, and I would also appreciate Cinnamon and Mate.

  48. If Mint is going to downsize, I’d rather an Ubuntu based Xfce rather than a Debian stable base, but I’d like a LMDSE too if Mint would consider a new project.

  49. I had noticed that there is mintconstructor in the archive, but I have not seen any documents on its use either. Could that be used to create such community spins?

    Personally I like the idea of a LMDSE also. Indeed, I would especially like the idea of Mint eventually migrating to a pure Debian base exclusively, where having Debian stable based releases could meet the need that LTS tries to fill, while the half-rolling LMDE fits the use case for those who want to have the latest things, but with some quality control, and in all cases without the Debian incompatibilities and other unwanted things the Ubuntu based Mints inherit.

    Focusing on a few core distros, and in particular, Cinnamon, would I think be good for Mint, especially if it is easy to enable community produced spins. I personally favor Xfce though.

  50. Please don’t kill fluxbox ,if you want new edition LMDE, Debian
    Wheezy will be a good base,but not ,xfce please consider open box and fluxbox.
    Mint 9 fluxbox has been my all time favorite.

  51. I noticed a cinnamon (and also mate) maya rc iso appeared today, so I took a quick peek at it…

    Wow…I am rather impressed actually! I like this a lot! I will have to try cinnamon on the debian edition…

    It also was lighter on memory than I thought it would be, too!

  52. Here are some *base* memory usage numbers for Linux Mint. After reboot and login, a terminal is started and “free -m” is run. The numbers are “Mem used” minus “Mem cached.” (For Gnome Shell, Gnome Classic, and Gnome Classic (No Effects), there was no reboot, just a re-login.) These numbers should be used for comparison purposes only. These are base numbers only (clean reboot with only terminal running), in Megs. The first four installs are on a very old machine; the last seven are on a modern system. YMMV.

    98 – LM 9 LXDE 32-bit
    126 – LM 12 LXDE 32-bit
    150 – LMDE Gnome, pointed to Debian Stable, 32-bit
    222 – LMDE UP4 MATE 32-bit
    312 – LM 12 MATE 64-bit
    326 – LM 9 Gnome 32-bit
    329 – LM 12 Gnome Classic (No Effects) 64-bit
    335 – LM 12 Gnome Classic 64-bit
    431 – LM 12 Cinnamon 64-bit
    449 – LM 12 Gnome Shell 64-bit
    620 – LM 12 KDE 64-bit

    Edit by Clem: Nice. Note that 64-bit OS usually take a bit more memory… also Cinnamon and Shell will take more or less memory depending on both your GPU and the drivers you’re using (I’ve personally seen Cinnamon run in 50MB RAM with nouveau and 120MB with nvidia drivers, on the same machine).

  53. Memory usage certainly doesn’t tell a full story, but it can sometimes offer some useful insights. What most impressed me is that memory usage did not go up after running cinnamon for awhile and doing things with it. It actually went down slightly! You have to use drop_cache to get a more accurate number out of free -m though.

    64 bit KDE with low fat settings and disabling aconandi/stringi stuff tends to come out about the same ~430-440 range, incidentally. In this respect, cinnamon, gnome shell, and even “optimized” kde, all cluster around somewhat similar memory requirements. I suspect “unoptimized” KDE and unity both cluster in the 600+m range.

    For me, xfce4 (4.8) on a debian stable is typically around 120m, a little smaller than gnome 2 on debian stable, a little bigger than lxde. Hence these also tend to cluster around somewhat similar memory usage. I personally prefer xfce4 to the other two. Other things can also be lighter still, like openbox with tint2 that crunchbang uses, for one example.

    Edit by Clem: Ok be careful with this statement. We know for a fact Cinnamon 1.4 still has memory leaks. We don’t know yet what triggers them, apparently it’s not a feature or a use case you’re using, but we’ve observed memory leaks on some systems and some users tell us they have to restart cinnamon after a while. Of course we’re trying really hard to find the cause for these and to fix them, but as Cinnamon 1.4 UP1 there still are memory leaks. The memory usage itself is pretty good and the desktop is responsive, but leaks still are an issue we’re trying to solve.

  54. @bobby: Thanks for the link! I just downloaded the Mate version and I am currently downloading the Cinnamon version.

    @Clem: The Mate edition of Mint 13 Maya RC still has the theming bugs I reported in LMDE Mate. I am anxious because this is an LTS and I hope to use it for 5 years so please get it fixed. I don’t mint waiting. Alternatively, since both Mate and Cinnamon aren’t really ready for primetime, can I respectfully request that new versions of Mate and Cinnamon be “backported” into Maya? I’d really like to stay in an LTS and I would appreciate receiving Mate and Cinnamon fixes after the release without me being forced to upgrade to Mint 14 later on.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Bamm, I thought we had that fixed. Can you drop me an email at root @ linuxmint . com and explain the problem again?

  55. @Clem : Just a question. If I understand correctly in Mint 13 Maya the Mate version is 1.2. Now being an LTS release, will we be getting updates for MATE from version 1.2 to higher version as and when they might be available. Is there any MATE PPA just like Gnome/PPA, if someone wants to try current versions of MATE.

  56. @Clem:

    It’s not clear what are Mint goals for this next release, can you elaborate more on that?

    Another thing is: could you possibly tell us if you are planning to move the upstream to Debian, instead of Ubuntu and what desktops are you going to deploy by default?

    I vote for MATE.

  57. @The_Lord_Of_Knowledge

    If I understand your question correctly, then I think we should assume that Clem has at least thought about building the Main Edition on Debian, and dumping Ubuntu. That may be part of his plan, but it seems obvious that it will be sometime before that happens. I, for one, hope he doesn’t completely dump the Ubuntu path anytime soon, as LMDE has a ways to go for my purposes before I can truly call it a done deal. Again, that is for my own experience. Other users have had great luck with LMDE, which makes me hopeful that it will one day serve my needs also. It is getting better and better, but still needs work.

  58. @PB: Last time you said that you are going to try XFCE. Did you try? How was your experience with XFCE. I tried some time back, but having become habitual to Mint Menu, I could not feel comfort in XFCE menu. If I am correct, I think earlier it was easy to port Mint Gnome Menu to XFCE. But it seems that after XFCE 4.8 and above, it is not possible. Perhaps XFCE users can tell something about it.

    Installed Mint-13 Maya MATE RC in VB. Working fine. First thing I did after install is, I installed screensavers and found that Lattice is not working in my VB. Well did I miss something or it actually does not work in VB. Seems so.

  59. I am having an issue with LM 13 and Gnome Session.

    I installed LM 13 Maya 64bit Cinnamon on a Dell Optiplex 745 (2GB RAM). The install went smoothly. I installed Gnome Session from Software Manager. I logged out then selected Gnome Classic from the Sessions and attempted to log back in again. It asks me if I want to Make Gnome Classic the default which I approve, then it trys to log in with Gnome Classic. An error message pops up:

    “Xsession: unsupported number of arguments (2); falling back to default session.”

    It then finishes logging me in under Cinnamon.

    Edit by Clem: Thanks Joel. It’s probably a specificity of gnome-session which we need to add compatibility for in MDM. We’ll get this fixed asap.

  60. Isn’t Maya a mesoamerican culture instead of a girl’s name?

    Edit by Clem: उसका नाम माया है 😉

  61. @bobby

    if you have compiz enabled, go to command and type “killall compiz” and then see if lattice will work. if so, then it would seem that there is a problem with system resources involving graphics. not sure though. it almost would seem that compiz is hogging it all. i had this happen even in a physical machine at work with ati driver installed.

    also, tried xfce. not all bad, but i am with you. i like what i like. unfortunately, i haven’t been able to spend as much time fiddling with things, but would like to see how 13 does. will give you an update.

  62. To all the people who are pushing to get Mint based entirely on Debian and urging Clem to drop the Ubuntu-based versions, why? As long as you have the Debian versions to use, that’s all you need. You don’t need to force everyone to use your choices. The Debian versions have their benefits (specifically the rolling releases) and are fine for people who know how to make the best use of them, but they’re certainly not for everyone, and those rolling releases aren’t always beneficial (look at the chaos with the latest LMDE releases when significant changes were introduced.) Sometimes it’s better to do a fresh install.

    In defense of the Ubuntu-based editions, there is a lot of value added by Ubuntu to Debian when Ubuntu builds their releases. Not all of it may be wanted or needed by Mint, but a lot of it is useful and most Mint users wouldn’t want to lose that.

  63. @mikemmm

    amen to that! i would love for mint to be able to pull away from Ubuntu, but only, and only if it gives us the absolute best of both worlds. i spent hours installing/configuring LMDE the other day, and haven’t even touched nvidia drives yet. everything was fine until this morning. the login screen came up fine, but i ended up logging in to a black screen–totally locked. had to hit the reset button, and the same thing all over–black screen with no way out.

    some people seem to miss the whole point. clem is maintaining choices for us because clearly, the user base has different needs and success rates for LMDE, and the current main edition. yes, it would be nice for clem to be able to ditch an entire project and refocus his resources to make the perfect edition even better. but the perfect edition doesn’t exist yet, and realistically never will. lmde might be “perfect” for some, but it ain’t for everybody, at least not right now. hence, the choices.

    some of these same people get all up in arms when the entire linux community is faced with drastic DE changes like Gnome3, and then start barking at clem that he’s “forcing” certain changes down their throat. then they try to convince clem to drop an entire project? really? it just doesn’t make sense.

    why don’t you try SolusOS? it’s not all bad, and it’s actually based on Gnome 2.3. it’s far far far from perfect, but in any case, quit trying to alienate a huge chunk of the community because of your narrow minded approach. and if you don’t like clem’s main edition, do it yourself.

  64. “Personally I’d like to document how to remaster our ISOs and share our build notes so that people in the community can roll their own Fluxbox and LXDE ISOs based on Mint 13.”

    How would this be better than using either Remastersys or Relinux?

  65. Clem, do you plan to create a way for donations in other currencies? Exchange rates and taxes make donations from here unworthy.

    Edit by Clem: It’s possible in Euro and Dollars. We could add more currencies, but they would be converted in Paypal on our end anyway, so it wouldn’t make much difference to the end result.

  66. Read the comment to my question about giving LXDE & fluxbox versions one “last” release, and sure – makes sense in a way to help people understand how to spin their own iso’s.

    Sadly – if this: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/918 is the “follow-up” on that I sure hope that there are people out there a lot more skilled than me that also have an interest for a LTS LXDE release as I feel like I’m light-years away from even understanding the guide as I’m just a simple user who want something light for my netbook…

    Meanwhile (while hoping for a miracle) I’ll just try to install LXDE on top of one of the new Maya releases (The Cinnamon one I suppose) and try to figure out what can be removed and what can not…

    Thanks,
    /gosa

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