Monthly Stats – September 2012

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

 

Platinum Sponsors:

Blue Systems - Netrunner

Gold Sponsors:

Opera

Dedicated Hosting Server *

Silver Sponsors:

R1Soft

Milton Security Group

Bronze Sponsors:

ThinkPenguin.com

Vault Networks *

AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting

7L Networks Toronto Colocation *

Brucey99

 

Community Sponsors:

To become a sponsor or see the full list of Linux Mint sponsors, please visit: http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

Donations:

$3659 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 184 donors: http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

  • $304, Central Contracts
  • $124.52, Martin L.
  • $100 (9th donation), Jordan S.
  • $100, Pejman G.
  • $100, Antony B.
  • $87.17 (8th donation), Wolfgang P.
  • $62.26 (3rd donation), Ralph H.
  • $62.21 (4th donation), Lyudmyla H.
  • $50 (30th donation), Matthew M.
  • $50 (29th donation), Matthew M.
  • $50 (8th donation), Ralph Siegler aka “ziggy
  • $50 (4th donation), Carl G.
  • $50, Gene D.
  • $50, Samuel W.
  • $50, binareoptionen.org
  • $50, Tim B aka “stripedtomato”
  • $50, Carl T.
  • $50, Carol T.
  • $40 (36th donation), Slavoljub aka “slw”
  • $40, Jan K. aka “fotonix”
  • $37.36 (31st donation), Olli K.
  • $37.36, Ferdinand U.
  • $37.36, Deborah H.
  • $37.36, Philippe D.
  • $35, Craig S.
  • $31.13 (2nd donation), John H.
  • $31.13, Nadim K.
  • $31.13, Robert P.
  • $31.13, Jim aka “Jimbo”
  • $30, Lowpriced-laptops.com
  • $30, Øystein R.
  • $30, Richard W.
  • $30, Samuel P.
  • $25 (12th donation), Ronald W.
  • $25 (4th donation), Vallin E.
  • $25 (3rd donation), John S.
  • $25 (2nd donation), Donald F.
  • $25, George J.
  • $25, Tom S.
  • $25, Clifford S.
  • $25, Robert Y.
  • $24.9 (11th donation), Orlando M. M.
  • $24.9 (5th donation), Hartmann Maier aka “hkmle”
  • $24.9 (3rd donation), Joachim M.
  • $24.9, Tobias R.
  • $24.9, Andrea S.
  • $24.9, Stefan S.
  • $24.9, Roman H.
  • $24.9, Linux Mint Test – Erfahrungen.com
  • $24.9, Peter P.
  • $24.9, Paul G.
  • $23.95 (2nd donation), Hans-joachim U. K.
  • $23.95, Max P.
  • $21, Carl C.
  • $20 (19th donation), Tsuguo S.
  • $20 (4th donation), Benoit Frigon
  • $20 (2nd donation), mr m r b.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Sean H.
  • $20, John H.
  • $20, David K.
  • $20, Online V. G. L.
  • $20, Bruce H.
  • $20, Candelario E.
  • $20, Renars C.
  • $20, Luke C.
  • $20, Patrick S.
  • $20, Gerald J.
  • $20, Loïc R.
  • $20, Todd M.
  • $20, Robert M.
  • $20, J. R.
  • $17.96 (12th donation), Jarkko K.
  • $15 (19th donation), John A.
  • $15 (4th donation), Greg Dawes
  • $15 (3rd donation), Dean F.
  • $15 (2nd donation), Jonathan D.
  • $15, Igor V.
  • $15, Mark S.
  • $12.45 (5th donation), Jens-uwe R.
  • $12.45 (3rd donation), Werner G.
  • $12.45 (2nd donation), Mathieu P. aka “Pyros65”
  • $12.45, Juergen M.
  • $12.45, Philippe C. -. P.
  • $12.45, Vesa K.
  • $12.45, Geoffrey R.
  • $12.45, Milan S.
  • $12.45, Evgeni Kunev
  • $12.45, Holger B.
  • $12.45, Enrique
  • $12.45, Stefan G.
  • $12.45, James C.
  • $12.45, Giovanni T. aka “giova86
  • $12.45, Marco D. B.
  • $11.97 (2nd donation), Chris W.
  • $11.97 (2nd donation), Siegfried H.
  • $11.97, Goldynet
  • $11.97, Antonio Troina aka “thoeni
  • $11.97, Alex C. B.
  • $11.97, Richard C.
  • $10 (19th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (12th donation), Ronald Trip
  • $10 (7th donation), CW P.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Salinas A. Alcides
  • $10 (3rd donation), Keith H.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Christopher R.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Elwood R. Hoffman aka “TrsSHO”
  • $10, Murray C.
  • $10, Andrew K.
  • $10, Essam G.
  • $10, Daniel B.
  • $10, Ana M. L.
  • $10, Jonathan M.
  • $10, Justen P.
  • $10, Dmytro P.
  • $10, Brandon S.
  • $10, Ashish Nabira
  • $10, Prashant Shah
  • $10, Pawan K.
  • $10, Geoffroy M.
  • $10, Danil S. aka “sgtpep”
  • $10, Ömer B.
  • $8.71 (2nd donation), Teemu V.
  • $8, Corbin A.
  • $7.18 (7th donation), lupinehorror
  • $6.23 (3rd donation), Marcin Skiba aka “marcinski”
  • $6.23 (2nd donation), Jose J. A. M.
  • $6.23 (2nd donation), Florian Bermuth aka “Vaothien”
  • $6.23, Vasilis aka “billm”
  • $6.23, Xavier Barbot aka “Reyvax
  • $6.23, Satkit.com aka “Reballing Solder Stations
  • $6.23, Satkit.fr aka “Arduino hacks
  • $6.23, Alberto D. V. M.
  • $6.23, Patrick E.
  • $6.23, Leonid R.
  • $6.22 (7th donation), Marco aka “Dictionary-Maker
  • $6.14 (3rd donation), Shane K aka “BeyondCr”
  • $5.99 (3rd donation), Stef A.
  • $5.99, Yuriria H.
  • $5.99, Wolfgang Friedrich aka “wof”
  • $5.99, Toni C.
  • $5.99, Mark W.
  • $5 (14th donation), Antonina K. aka “Tonya”
  • $5 (9th donation), Paul B. aka “Dude”
  • $5 (4th donation), David E. aka “DubiousAlliance”
  • $5 (2nd donation), Xavier Barbot aka “Reyvax
  • $5 (2nd donation), Paul S.
  • $5 (2nd donation), CouponCodeSwap.com
  • $5, Robert F.
  • $5, Heiko O.
  • $5, Eva aka “www.voyance-partel.com
  • $5, Elwood R. Hoffman aka “TrsSHO”
  • $5, Steven M.
  • $5, Sergio Ramirez G. aka “SeRGio”
  • $5, Justin O.
  • $5, L M.
  • $5, Brandon Kessler
  • $5, Kevin K.
  • $5, Damian K.
  • $5, som99
  • $5, Alan G.
  • $5, Gadget Shop Online aka “Andrew Luecke
  • $4.01, Luis F. S. G.
  • $4 (3rd donation), Fastest Hosting
  • $4, Dani D.
  • $3 (4th donation), Web Design Company
  • $3, Sergiy G. aka “emutant”
  • $2.49, Kristian S.
  • $17.3 from 17 smaller donations

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 3414 (1st)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 7,433rd

Events:

Developer of the month:

Each month we feature one developer and explain his contributions to the community. Development is a lot of fun and it doesn’t take much to get started. If you’re tempted to join the team, don’t hesitate to follow our development on http://github.com/linuxmint and come and chat with the developers at #linuxmint-dev (irc.spotchat.org).

This month’s “developer of the month” is: Gwendal Le Bihan (glebihan)!

Gwendal is famous within the development team for his work on many aspects of Linux Mint and for his key role in the Cinnamon and Nemo projects. This month, he stepped away from Cinnamon and focused on another project: the Software Manager (mintinstall).

He implemented two extremely important improvements: Debconf support and replacing aptd with aptclient.

  • AptClient is mintInstall’s new very own interaction layer with APT. The Software Manager no longer crashes when aptd’s dbus interface goes down. Installation and removal of software is smoother and without lag and the application is now able to run as root, which means you no longer need to input your password every time you click the install button.
  • Debconf is a Debian technology which allows packages to ask users questions during their installation. For instance, if you try to install the Microsoft Fonts you’ll be asked to agree to the licencing terms and this all happens via Debconf. In a terminal, Debconf would use an ncurse interface, in the Update Manager it uses a GTK frontend, and in the Software Manager… well… it didn’t work at all until now. This made it impossible for packages which used debconf to be installed via the Software Manager and users had to use Synaptic or the command line instead.

Gwendal is now looking at a long list of mintInstall ideas gathered by Vincent Vermeulen (Mint Moderator) from the Community Website.

The improved Software Manager will be featured in Linux Mint 14 and backported to Linux Mint 13 and LMDE.

News and summary:

  • I’d like to thank our sponsors, partners and donors. Linux Mint wouldn’t be what it is without their support. Many thanks for your contributions and for allowing us to focus on our work without worrying about the financial aspects!
  • I’ll be very brief in this section because I’m eager to get back to work and get Linux Mint 14 closer to its final state. The Linux Mint 14 repositories are ready, we’re half-way through the production of the ISOs internally and we’re feeding the release with development and upstream improvements. We’re a bit ahead of schedule and things are looking extremely bright for the upcoming release. Technologies such as MDM, MATE and Cinnamon have matured in the last 6 months and we’re really excited about some of the new features we’ll unveil in Linux Mint 14. There are currently regressions in Ubiquity (partitions detection), which introduces full disk encryption and LVM support,  and G[NOME|TK] 3.6 (theme engine and screensaver) because these are still very new but they’ll be fixed in time for the RC release.
  • As an LTS release, Linux Mint 13 will receive backports and follow most of the changes coming in Linux Mint 14.
  • LMDE will receive these backports as well, and an Update Pack 6 with ISO images later on this year.

35 comments

  1. Awesome work. Really glad that many of the improvements in Mint will make their way to Mint 13 (which I have been enjoying greatly over the last few months). Keep up the good work. 🙂

  2. Has the Mint team decided on a strategy regarding the UEFI Secure Boot problem? Will it use Linux Foundation’s pre-bootloader?

  3. Please forgive my ignorance but will Mint 13 users have to do anything to receive the improvements you mention? I’m not sure if anything needs done to receive a backport. I am particularly interested in using MATE but there were some reports that it used the CPU resources much more than Gnome did so I held off in 13. I would very much like to use MATE if these issues were resolved and made available in 13. Unless of course Mint 14 is much better and I decide to forgo the LTS.

  4. I’m also really excited about Mint 14 – it will add a lot with Cinnamon 1.6, MATE 1.4, the new Mint-X icons, and the improved software manager. I’m very glad that the recover-from-Gnome-3/Shell saga is over – Mint 12 and 13 were mostly about getting the desktop back to a working state. Now the releases can focus on the software at least as much as the desktop.

  5. Thanks folks.. Great job!
    I am using linuxmint on USB driver (several friends too), could u think bout that when developing? I mean disk utilization to be minimal, disk write to be to the essential, etc..
    In addition, could u add the CPU frequency power adjustment by default (laptop)? .. And of course conky…
    Thanks again.

  6. I’ve been looking around for a future replacement of my loving Isadora. Tried a bunch of distros. Yet my favorite ? Mint 13 XFCE ! (wasn’t so excited with Mate or Cinnamon. The XFCE edition caught me back to Mint). Added a slight touch of compiz (couple things I just can’t get rid of), an AWN tool bar and, man, looks gorgious and runs like hurricane. Might settle down on 13 for a while since is 5 year LTS, another cool thing you don’t find eleswhere (cause xbuntu bases distros usually inherit 3 year support, not 5). Congrats to the Mint XFCE team.

  7. Hello,

    Very glad to see all the good news !

    I was wondering about a change : donation amount is still made public, but previous and recent donations of sponsors are not made public anymore. I was wondering if there was a particular reason about it ?
    Not a big deal anyway but it is great to share your success (or support you in harder days).

    Best.

  8. Thanks Gwendal, for the Software Manager improvements.
    I’m glad things are going well with ‘Nadia’, but as an LMDE user, I’m happy to hear we’ll get these improvements backported. I’m very eagerly awaiting the new ISO and I think it’s a very good idea to include UP6.
    I would much rather wait a few extra weeks and have a high quality product than have an unfinished product that comes out on hard deadlines.
    Thanks Clem and Team for all your hard work!

  9. The only REAL updates we users can get from Mint website/blog is “Monthly Stats”. Whats the point of having blog and website?
    Mint’s popularity is declining.
    Alexa?
    Distrowatch?
    ….

  10. Congratulations to Gwendal it is deserved. I recently “tortured” Cinnamon 1.6 and discover that the elusive yet nasty freeze is gone…. bravo.

    But Cinnamon i discovered is still consuming to much on compositing ressources.
    The ideal set up for me is sebastien’s : Xfce + compiz with une pincée de Conky.

    Thank you for backporting most of Mint14’s features as Mint13 will stay on my desktop until the PPA’s are not updated any more…

  11. Great work Gwendal. Thanks!

    I am curious about the Software Manager (mintinstall). I was looking at the code a few days ago, and it looked like it was (directly) calling synaptic and aptitude. Now the blog states that it _also_ uses APT and Debconf. Am I understanding this correctly? Are there other interfaces that SM uses (directly)? dpkg? I am interested in the .deb, dpkg, APT, … chain usage.

  12. I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask this but could you guys include delta updates in the software manager?

  13. Installed Linux for the first time. Chose this distro by chance. IT IS GREAT!!! Everything works perfectly and my old notebook is now a new powerful pc! Thanks Linuxmint!!!

  14. I am grateful for the “check marks” finally appearing in September (and working properly) in Maya-Mate Dropbox.

  15. i agree with zorro’s comment[#10]; bring on the LMDE spins with UD6 when ready! with that potential i’m once again encouraged to donate to thy excellent software project..

  16. Hello

    I’m revisiting an old friend Linux! and I am very impressed with all the fine work the developers and VERY CREATIVE people have done in the Linux community over the past few years!

    Linux Mint is AWESOME and I have converted over most of my family to running Mint over the virus ridden platform they had been using! We are all enjoying Mint! … so a big thanks to you all of you !!!

    Keep up the OUTSTANDING Work!!!

    PS …. New Linux box being installed at my sister in-laws Sunday! add one more to the Linux community!

  17. Pretty much off-topic, but this was so impressive that I think it deserves more publicity.

    Mint s.onsor ThinkPenguin has some nice hardware for sale (tiny computers, included!). They also provide links to Linux software, and in my humble opinion, this seem to be the best collection that I know about:

    I had a look at the pages for several names new to me, and they looked quite good. They were probably selected with significant care.

    Best regards to all,
    [nb]

  18. I am running Mint live from an USB stick and I am impressed by the version, it is running very well and everything works.

    KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK THANKS.

    BR

    Ruud

  19. I was quite disappointed with the Maya-Release, but I can’t really point out why.
    However, last month was the first time I donated some money, because I believe in the Mint-Team; and now I’m really looking forward to LM14 😉

  20. @ Clem:
    I’m using Cinnamon 1.6, and it’s fantastic as per my other posting in the Cinnamon 1.6 Release blog (posting #67). Just one Idea you might like to consider. It would be very useful if you could somehow make the music applet stay open whilst playing music, as you continue to work on something else. Very often, I want to skip a particular music track and I have to click on the applet to open it and then click forward to the next track. Then when I resume whatever I’m doing, I have to click twice; once to close the applet, and another for the window I’m using to capture the mouse. Would love to see the ability to have the music applet pinned open constantly implemented at some point. Other than that Cinnamon rocks BIG time! Thanks for your attention, and keep up the excellent work. 🙂

    Edit by Clem: I guess that will come in the form of desklets. We’re hoping to add support for them in Cinnamon 1.8.

  21. Now that the LTS is 5 years, I have incentive to stick with LTS, especially with news that improvements will be backported.

    However, I am using Mate, not Cinnamon. Will Mate users receive the same love? I am hoping that Mate 1.4 be backported to Mint 13. Mate has finally reached maturity in 1.4 and deserves to be in the LTS more than the unstable 1.2.

  22. @ Clem or any of the Dev Team:
    What will be the difference(s) between an updated install of Mint 13 and Mint 14, or is it too early to say? I’m using the Cinnamon edition. Reason for asking, is that I was wondering, whether to stick with Mint 13 LTS or Install Mint 14 when it’s released.

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