Monthly Stats – November 2012

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

 

Platinum Sponsors:

Blue Systems - Netrunner

Gold Sponsors:

Opera

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Silver Sponsors:

R1Soft

Bronze Sponsors:

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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:

$4959 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 242 donors: http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

  • $124.52 (2nd donation), Christian M.
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  • $85, Zonic System General Trading – F.Z.E
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  • $50 (6th donation), Alex V. aka “Karashata
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  • $20 (21st donation), Tsuguo S.
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  • $19.99, Rama Polefka
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  • $15 (20th donation), John A.
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  • $14.94 (14th donation), Jarkko K.
  • $12.45 (13th donation), Ronald Trip
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  • $12.45 (3rd donation), Siegfried H.
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  • $12.45, Kevin S.
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  • $12.45, Sergio M.
  • $12.45, Daniel C.
  • $12.45, Jakob K. B.
  • $12.45, Christian L.
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  • $12.45, David H.
  • $12.45, Jesús O. M.
  • $12.45, Severin F.
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  • $12 (21st donation), John A.
  • $10 (21st donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (7th donation), Charlie Robinson
  • $10 (6th donation), Jose P.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Tony W.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Volker K.
  • $10 (2nd donation), T. Lennon
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  • $10 (2nd donation), Tim MacD.
  • $10, Johan D. K.
  • $10, Quintin H.
  • $10, Wayne L.
  • $10, Actiecode.nl
  • $10, Dan E.
  • $10, Литвинов Д.
  • $10, Jan P.
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  • $10, Martin M.
  • $10, Rene Y.
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  • $10, Patrick R.
  • $10, Bryan W.
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  • $10, Paulus/laudaka
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  • $10, Jonathan Vasquez aka “FearedBliss
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  • $10, Aimen RAISSI
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  • $10, Michail Schwab
  • $10, Michael P.
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  • $9.96, Jon Bjarkan
  • $9 (22nd donation), John A.
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  • $8, Marcus F.
  • $7.1 (3rd donation), Librestickers.com
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  • $6.23, Nico E.
  • $6.23, Jarkko Y.
  • $6.23, Piotr G.
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  • $5 (4th donation), Michelle and Daniel Grady aka “Pug Masters”
  • $5 (2nd donation), Michal N.
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  • $5, Slim Rijeka aka “Slim
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  • $5, Dexviajiboy aka “dexviajiboy”
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  • $5, Marko V.
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  • $5, Grant Gordon aka “Puffy”
  • $5, Brent W.
  • $5, Alan K.
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  • $4.15 (10th donation), Sylwia Bialczak
  • $4, Luiz Enciso
  • $3 (7th donation), Web Design Company
  • $3, Klaus T.
  • $2.49, Tomas V.
  • $17.49 from 14 smaller donations

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 3377 (1st)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 6,789th

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…. well, we’ve got 2!

  • Will Rouesnel (wrouesnel) for his attention to detail
  • Michael Webster (mtwebster ), again, for working so hard on Nemo

Will joined us this month and immediately started helping us by looking at the various projects we had to see if he could contribute improvements. He authored a couple of commits on Muffin, Cinnamon and Nemo and if you’re running Linux Mint 14, you probably noticed the improvements he made to the Mint-X theme.

Theme legibility improvement by Will Rouesnel

 

As for Michael, it’s the second time he gets the title of “developer of the month”, and it’s still for the same reason: His outstanding work on Nemo.

Both Cinnamon and Nemo entered the next release cycle in terms of development (i.e. they’re getting a lot of new features in preparation for Mint 15 and are now considered “unstable”). Michael recently added space indicators into the sidebar which allow you to quickly assess the amount of free space left on all your mounted devices.

Free space indicators in Nemo’s sidebar by Michael Webster

He’s also working on adding features which are available in Caja and missing in Nemo (sidebar selection combo, zoom buttons, dedicated path bar).

News and summary:

  • Many thanks to our sponsors, partners and donors. As always we received a fantastic amount of support from you!
  • We’re back in a situation where we control our environment and we’re able to improve incrementally. Linux Mint 13 was an excellent release and its LTS support lasts until 2017. Linux Mint 14 brought 6 months of development and numerous improvements. The feedback was really good, and whether people’s hardware work better with one or the other, we now rely on two really strong releases both featuring the latest MATE and Cinnamon environments.
  • Development started ahead of schedule on Mint 15. Cinnamon and Nemo in particular already received a lot of improvements.
  • We’re also ahead of schedule on Linux Mint 14 KDE Edition and Linux Mint 14 Xfce Edition. They both passed QA and were approved for an RC release. They should be announced in the coming days.
  • In LMDE, Update Pack 6 is almost ready to enter the “incoming” repository. The packaging for Firefox and Thunderbird was automated so LMDE users should receive updates for these two applications more often than before.
  • Going forward, LMDE ISOs will be released in two versions: MATE and Cinnamon. The decision was taken not to maintain a KDE version of LMDE and to stop maintaining the Xfce version. This was a painful decision to make considering the quality of LMDE Xfce and unofficial LMDE KDE, but one that made sense for Linux Mint since LMDE Xfce represented only 4% of the Linux Mint audience. This is also consistent with our strategy to focus on what we do best, to do less and do it better and to invest less time in maintaining editions and more time in developing the core technology that they use. It was a tough call at the time when Linux Mint lost its Fluxbox and LXDE editions. They were great but they only appealed to a minority of our users and we can see the benefits of this decision now, we can release all our editions and switch to focusing entirely on the development of the next iteration much faster in our release cycle. Whether it’s Cinnamon, MDM, the Software Manager, the Mint tools, the LMDE live-installer or even new projects such as a Driver Manager or R&D plans related to the installation and/or base underneath Linux Mint, development is extremely important to us.

41 comments

  1. The announcements regarding not picking up LMDE KDE as an official spin and the discontinuance of LMDE Xfce are disappointing, but understandable. There are only so many people available to handle an already large number of Mint editions, and an ever-increasing workload could only result in an overall decrease in quality.

  2. Dropping LMDE/XFCE is a mistake. XFCE is easily the most stable DE for Linux, and one of the lightest. Linux has more than enough desktop environments now, without the need for developing even more. Since the discontinuation of an old favorite Gnome 2.3, there are several attempts to replace that experience with new ones, namely Cinnamon and Mate in Mint. I find them redundant. XFCE does most anything either of them can do and its stable as can be, and lighter. If you don’t need ‘lightness’, then adding Compiz adds all the ‘flash’ anyone could want.
    Its understandable that you would be inclined to using DE’s that are developed here at Mint, but I feel your resources would be best used in making existing DE more efficient.
    Best Wishes.

    Edit by Clem: Hi GeneC. The resources need to go where people need them. The demand is clearly on MATE and Cinnamon. Back in the days GNOME 2 was, by far, the most popular DE. Nothing is changed. MATE and Cinnamon today each represent 33% of our audience, Xfce 9%. Within LMDE which totals roughly 13% it’s hard to justify the maintenance of all these separate desktops. I can appreciate how great Xfce is, I maintain the Xfce edition myself which RC will be out very shortly, but with only 4% I have to be pragmatic and wonder who exactly is all this work done for when other areas of Linux Mint are lacking attention. Another issue we have with Xfce on top of LMDE is that Debian isn’t committed to it. Xfce 4.10, released in April 2012, isn’t even in Sid yet. As you may know its configuration isn’t compatible with Xfce 4.8. For us to maintain two separate editions of Xfce with different versions and deviations from one base to another is feasible, but it’s a challenge that is hard to justify considering the adoption stats. You have a point about Xfce itself, it truly is a great environment, and maybe you can convince some MATE and Cinnamon users that Xfce is better for them, but on our side this decision makes sense, simply because there’s very little demand in this particular edition.

  3. While we’re on the issue of legibility in Nemo, there is one thing that still needs fixing: in dual-pane mode, a selected item’s in the non-focus pane is extremely hard to read since it’s white text on a light-grey background.

    Edit by Clem: Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

  4. Dropping LMDE/Xfce seems reasonable IMHO. Given that Xfce, Cinnamon, and MATE are all traditional DEs, they are similar enough that it seems redundant to release three separate LMDE ISOs. To do fewer things better sounds good to me.

    Keep up the excellent work, guys. Linux Mint is the only distro for me and all the computers in my family (which I maintain). I used LMDE for a while and it was very good, but LM13/MATE is simply without par.

  5. I’m wondering… does the decision to drop LMDE XFCE edition also impact any separate XFCE-specific packages? For example, the famous xfce4-xfapplet-plugin 🙂

    Edit by Clem: Hi Monsta. We still support an Xfce edition (on top of Ubuntu) where there’s a demand for xfce4-xfapplet-plugin. The problem here is that MATE is moving to DBUS, which means xfce4-xfapplet-plugin will need to be ported to new technologies to work well with MATE 1.6 eventually. We’re working with MATE on that. Once this is done, it will need to be compiled against the right version of Xfce (4.10 in Mint, 4.8 in LMDE). That’s certainly something we can do.

  6. I definitely agree that you have to invest your time into where there is demand. Cinnamon and Mate distros are fantastic and very fast and zippy. I have been chomping at the bit for XFCE and can’t wait install it, so I am very happy to hear the RC will be hitting the presses shortly.

    My current feeling is that Cinnamon will be the distro of the future especially with the direction KDE and Gnome have been going. Cinnamon is clean, fast and extremely functional.

  7. Another note wrt Nemo’s appearance: I always liked the Elementary themed version of Nautilus, and now I. Doherty’s Athena file manager, because the so-called “bread crumbs” buttons are arrow shaped. This is visually cool, makes it easier to understand the direction in current path navigation (using rectangular buttons you only have an indirect hint) and finally it makes the navigation buttons something visually distinct when compared to all the other controls available on the toolbar. So, to sum it up, visually pleasing and UI functional at the same time.

    Any chance you’re going to implement those in Nemo?

    Rehdon

    Edit by Clem: I see that as an improvement as well. I’ll have to check whether that’s something we want to do in Mint-X, Nemo, or both though and what is the impact on other themes if any.

  8. Is there a place to send feature suggestions for Cinnamon? I see that Cinnamon 1.6 allows you to override the theme’s panel size. I would love it if the theme’s font and font size could be overriden in Cinnamon Settings as well. There are a lot of great themes out there, but often I need to edit the respective cinnamon.css file to change the font and size to something that I like better.

    Edit by Clem: We recommend you clone the theme and make your own in that case. In general though, the best place for suggestions is at https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues

  9. “When everything in life seems just as it should be
    At last success seems just around the door
    Don’t forget boy
    Look over your shoulder
    ‘Cause things don’t stay the same forever more ”

    song “Look over your shoulder”
    by Alan Price for Stanley Kubrick’s “Lucky man”

    There is no demand for xfce lmde.
    And if there is no demand for lmde?
    It will only be UBUNTU

    Thanks Clem, it was a nice trip
    Best wishes

  10. I’m deeply saddened by the news about LMDE Xfce edition. =(
    I always wondered where the stats came from.. do you look at the number of downloads? the DE poll (that I wasn’t able to participate in) and which happened before people got a good chance to try out and see how good Xfce really is?, or number of mentions in these comments?
    LMDE Xfce is by far my favorite edition, but I do understand your reasoning.
    Please do one more Poll on Desktop Environment and Version/Edition usage. And in the future, when Debian Testing finally gets Xfce 4.10, please reconsider. (Maybe just a simple update respin once in a while so fresh installs won’t need to download GBs of updates.)
    Thank you for all your hard work thus far. I’m really looking forward to the (hopefully not) final LMDE Xfce spin. =)

    Edit by Clem: Hi Zorro. The stats are arguable and we know the figures aren’t very precise. These aren’t based on the poll though. What the poll told us, at the time, was that MATE and Cinnamon were going to be very popular and that Xfce was more popular than LXDE. We looked at the start page stats, the torrents activity for particular releases and a couple of other indicators.

  11. Makes perfect sense to me. Looking forward to the results of a more focused approach to really great projects.

    One question in regard to Cinnamon: Has anyone been able to make window borders work for certain themes? For example, I’m using Dark-Glass-1.6. Mint Menu looks fantastics as do all the applet windows, etc. However, I still only have the same old somewhat boring window borders to choose from in Cinnamon theme settings. I installed gconf-editor, and browsed to Cinnamon Desktop windows thinking that maybe I could force the Dark-Glass-1.6 window borders, but to no avail.

    Can anybody confirm how to do this, or is it a lost cause for now, or what? Sorry if this has been addressed.

  12. Talking about numbers, percentages etc

    I have a great respect for minorities

    Linux was a minority (still is)
    xfce, openbox, lxde are minorities

    slakware is a minority
    gentoo is a minority

    But there are people-devs that like what they do, they believe there doing the wright thing

    Mate and cinammon are minorities to the linux DE echosystem, but you believe its the right way to go

    Linux Mint 4,5,6… were minorities, until canonical took the WRONG decision

    Anyway, it’s your decision
    Thank’s again for the trip

    Bonne chance

    Edit by Clem: Dimitri, we have great respect for minorities as well (I love Slack by the way). If we were after the mainstream market we’d probably be coding pseudo-games for Android/iOS right now. We look at our audience and our goals though and the best way for us to achieve them. Diversifying is a luxury we cannot afford if we want to be good at what we do. I look at Linux Mint 14 and I see something great which I’m really proud of, but I also see many many areas which can be better and which weren’t looked at because there simply isn’t enough time for us to do everything. We can try and do too much and under-perform, or we can focus our efforts on what matters the most for most people and really deliver. We support Xfce (it’s roughly 9% of our user base), but supporting it under LMDE as well for an extra 4% (and the fact that it’s a different version of Xfce is problematic as well) is too much. LMDE itself represents 13% of our user base, it’s comparable with the KDE or Xfce editions (9% each) but it represents 3 DEs and 2 architectures. I’m not saying LMDE Xfce wasn’t worth it. I think it was great, but it didn’t gather enough following. At some stage if we spend a lot of time on something and only a few people use it, we need to assess whether it’s right for us to continue spending time on it.

  13. When I read “Michael recently added space indicators into the sidebar which allow you to quickly assess the amount of free space left on all your mounted devices.” I Though, “Dude, that’s so awesome”. Nice Job as always :)!

  14. Hi Clem!

    I’m using LMDE Cinnamon but I think it’s a mistake to stop the XFCE version. Most of the users helping in the forum or in IRC use XFCE…

    For me the problem is MATE but that’s you choice anyway.

    Bon courage !

  15. Oyabunbaba. Don’t speak when you don’t know…. The community has never said to stop XFCE. I’m using Cinnamon but I am totally on favor of a LMDE XFCE version because there is users using it.

    And I know that I could use it in the future when my computer will be older.

    Maybe the real problem is not XFCE or KDE. It’s more than probably the base : Ubuntu or Debian. One is enough.
    Some users want stability over everything else. Linux Mint main LTS or LMDE pointing to stable.

    All the others using LMDE. The team could then maintain 3 (4) desktop : Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE (Mate). We could have UP every month and a LTS version based on Ubuntu every 3 years.
    LMDE is becoming user friendly and it’s as easy as the main edition to install and use…

  16. Don’t take my words literally. Community never said that, but 9% using XFCE mean it somehow.

    Your computer my get old but it won’t get slower, if can handle cinnamon now, then it probably will in future.

    The less versions to maintain the more time for Mint Team to polish their own flavors Cinnamon and MATE. If we give them more time to concentrate on only those 2 or 3 flavors, the more chance we / you have that they will work faster and better than XFCE.

  17. Hi,
    i read how the Linux Team calculate different DE and this could not be working with me for example. I download all different DE/Versions to test them on virtualbox to know what DE is the best for me. So i count 1 for all versions, BUT what is my everyday DE and version of Mint for working ? LMDE Xfce. And it’s not for light of Xfce, i am 3D artist and my workstation is very strong. It’s just because it is very useful, fast and customizable like you need.

    So the idea of Zorro to make a new DE poll will be a very very good idea.

    BTW, great job, Félicitations à toute la Team.

  18. Emmanuel@19

    I agree with Oyabunbaba. The community voted on what they like best. No, the community as a whole never said to stop XFCE, but you just might see a change in attitude for MATE and Cinnamon users if Clem could reassure those users that he could make way more progress by stopping other projects with minimal users. For example, I have nothing against XFCE or it’s users. They like it for very good reasons. It is unfortunate. But for me, I like where Clem is going with this. Selfish? Maybe. But Clem is actually putting a little pressure on himself in another area, because users like myself, who like MATE and Cinnamon both, will be watching ever more intently to see how his theory plays out.

    If I read between the lines correctly, Clem would love to make everybody happy, and fully develop every DE there is, and at the end of the day, have a fantastic product in each and every choice. But since that’s not possible, decisions have to be made in favor of what just makes the most sense. It’s nothing personal at all.

  19. I am an LMDE Xfce user, but after reading the replies that Clem has given, I understand.

    What I would like to know, however, is what happens to people who currently have Xfce installed? Since LMDE is rolling (moreso if you track testing like I do), it can conceivably roll until the end of time.

    Also, I believe Schoelje is continuing the unofficial LMDE KDE and starting an unofficial LMDE Xfce, for anyone who still wants to use Xfce.

    Edit by Clem: Hi cwwgateway. It should continue to roll and if you find bugs or if there are little things we can do to accommodate Xfce users on LMDE we will.

  20. I have installed LMDE Xfce on my brother’s computer since january or so, and also on my brother-in-law’s computer. Even now and then i look at their computers and check for updates, add some programs, etc. They are very happy with mint 🙂

    Is there any plans on setting up a popularity contest spin for linux mint? This way you can get some other statistics about usage.

    Thanks!

  21. I have always wondered if having so many versions is a viable option for such a small development team, especially considering the fact that there are so many other choices available for users of any particular DE. I am feeling very happy that Clem has taken this pragmatic decision and I love his line of reasoning.

    But I hope LMDE is not discontinued as a whole sometime in future as I myself use LMDE with Gnome Shell. 🙂

  22. you are doing anyway too much! i can’t see the reason to do a lot of systems every 6 month! only lts edition and lmde are enough. so you have time to take care of everything. now there is only a single system which is working very good: mint maya 13 kde. all the others are with enough mistakes. if somebody have a problem there is no answer and with the time the users will be gone.

  23. Careful, Clem: You don’t want to cut off your fingers as you clip your nails. In this month’s summary, you say, “Development started ahead of schedule on Mint 15.” In last month’s summary, you say, “We’re ahead of schedule, we achieved all our goals” (unheard of in the software industry). And now you say you need to trim back more versions? This makes no sense whatsoever.

    Don’t confuse low percentages with low usage. We all know Linux Mint is very popular and becoming more so all the time. This means that even a low percentage usage (4%, 9%, 13%) can easily represent hundreds of thousands of users. I’d love to see a detailed analysis based on many sources of how many LM users there are. I’m guessing 4-5 million. Perhaps I’m wrong. It could be double that; it could be half that. I know there is no exact way to know. But even at half that, 9% is hundreds of thousands of *people*. (And 13% is better than 1 in 8, a significant number within any population.)

    I’m glad you are considering multiple indicators when looking at various percentages. Also consider the multiple conditions from which those percentages could be generated. For example, I’m still using LM 9 Main (Gnome 2) but plan on moving to LMDE KDE, away from both Gnome and Ubuntu (for obvious reasons). The start page stats will show me load your blog mostly with LM 9 and less frequently with other versions. Also I just changed my community website settings to LMDE KDE away from Isadora Main. How many people are up to date on those settings? And does one have to avoid helping to test new releases so stats don’t reflect a version that is not used regularly? I hope it doesn’t come to that!

    Where is the light-weight LM versions now for older computers? I thought that was focused on LMDE, particularly Xfce. I know it used to be LXDE not long ago, which I used and was sad to see go.

    And after the April 2012 poll results settled down, I did some statistical analysis. Except for the highest (Cinnamon) and lowest (Other) percentages, all the results were statistically the same (within one standard deviation). Feel free to check my math; it’s been a while…

    Will you at least make the unofficial LMDE KDE an Official Community Edition and acknowledge the *outstanding* work of Schoelje and those who helped him test his multiple versions?

    (FYI, recently I’ve seen posts and articles elsewhere which call the main KDE and Xfce versions Community Editions. I’m not sure why–probably because they come out a month after the MATE and Cinnamon versions. I know your blog has never called them CEs.)

    I will try to end this comment with some positive, constructive questions: What will it take for the LMDE KDE version to become an Official Community Edition? What will it take for any version–KDE, Xfce, LXDE (either Ubuntu or Debian based)–to come back into the fold as officially released LM versions? I think these are important questions, especially when focused on what a community wants and can possibly do in the future. In other words, what can the community do to help out in achieving some of the conditions in the answers to these questions?

    Thanks for listening. Whatever the future brings, I wish you and my fellow Linux Mint community members all the best.

    Edit by Clem: Hi Jesse. You raise a lot of valid points. First, the definition of a CE: A “community” edition matches the same quality standards and is released and tested in the same manner as an “official” edition. The main difference here is commitment and delays. We can indeed work with Schoelje and consider LMDE Xfce and LMDE KDE “community” releases. Regarding the stats, you’re right, 4% is indeed a LOT of people, but it’s also ONLY 4%. Regarding my statements, they make perfect sense. I know we’re ahead of schedule. But we’re there because we’re making a push to develop more than before. If you followed our activity on github you must have seen Autarkper work really hard on Cinnamon and Mtwebster work really hard on Nemo at the very same time we were missing sleep trying to get Mint 14 released. Another thing is that we’re getting more and more efficient at what we do, so editions get implemented, designed, tested and released faster than before. What you don’t see though, are all the projects we have which we didn’t even start. I talked about net-discovery in the past.. and it’s still vaporware. I talked about R&D on the package base and all we’ve done so far is port our technology from Ubuntu to Debian. I look at software-properties, jockey, ubiquity and I want us to do better. I look at our communication, website, community and everywhere I see signs of resources being stretched. I work 7 days a week and I don’t want to burn, I don’t want to continue to see aspects of Mint being neglected and important projects not started simply because we diversified into a myriad of niche editions. We learnt that very early in the project when it came to partners: we need to focus on what we’re good at. Sure, we could make a netbook edition, of course we could try our luck at a server ISO but these would be better done by other projects and they’re not where our expertise is. When an edition only represents 4% and so many aspects of the distribution require more attention, it’s our duty to prioritize and focus on what is in the best interest of Linux Mint. I don’t want the Mint release cycle to be 6 months of re-spinning ISOs, testing, QA, and releasing. You like Mint because it’s more than that. And it’s more than that thanks to development and taking the time to think of how to improve things. Any distribution can spin ISOs with all the latest DEs, add codecs on top and fill their release cycle doing just that. That’s not good enough for us, there were hints of it when we developed on top of GNOME 2 and it was made clear when GNOME 3 didn’t match our expectations. I want to please as many people as we can, and we will do so if we find the time, but I don’t want that to take our focus away from our main mission. When something doesn’t fit or if we think Mint would be better by developing a new project then we need to be able to be in a position where we just do it, where when something is identified as being in the best interest of Linux Mint we’re empowered to just make it happen. And for this, development has to be a priority, and time within that release cycle has to be kept free. If we’re always stretched, we neglect the little things, we don’t do our R&D, we don’t plan ahead and when it’s time to make a difference we’re not always ready to do so.

  24. @jesse5567: There are so many good lightweight distros available for people with older computers. Same for KDE users. I think it will be cruel on our part if we want to burden clem with those additional responsibilities. Why not just let him just do that much with which he is comfortable with?

  25. @jesse5567
    Too many flavors killing the Linux. This is what windows users are laughing at us. All big guys from Linux industry are splitted. Imagine how amazing distro we could have if Ubuntu join Debian, Mint, Fedora Suse, Redhat etc. That will create something that might really compete the Windows. But that will never happen, so lets just unite Linux Mint at last, making it best alternative for Ubuntu and new linux users. Let’s not waste time for confusing newbies with too many flavors. Remember, if something is for everything then it’s for nothing. I believe that Cinnamon will be the king in near future.

  26. @Biswarup Ray, do you actually think my post was meant to be cruel in some way?

    I am trying to ask the right questions, to find the best way to support Linux Mint, and to find out some ways the community can help achieve a positive future.

    See the threads Schoelje listed. I hope to contribute there soon.

  27. jesse5567@31

    I wish people would pay attention to the posts better as well. Sometimes things just get taken way out of context no matter how clear you make it.

    I am personally not an XFCE user, and I disagree with your implication that Clem is making a mistake in dropping the project, or that he’s somehow sending us mixed signals about his intentions. Clem has made no promises to anyone, and if he sees a need to change direction a little, well that’s his decision. As I posted before, hopefully I, as a Cinnamon and Mate user, will see the fruits of Clem’s more concentrated labor.

    But I certainly don’t take your willingness to try to help him maintain these smaller projects as some sort of verbal cruelty. If I was in your shoes, I would be doing the same thing, I’m sure.

  28. @jesse5567: Sorry, If I had posted inappropriately.
    Perhaps, right now, it is a milestone or tipping point in the history of linux mint that the community has grown so much, radical changes are needed in the management of the project that allows much more involvement of the community.

  29. Hi.. Am I right posting my inquiry here?

    I’ve been fascinated with the release of Linux Mint 11 and became a Linux fan since then. After installing and running the different flavors of succeeding Linux Mint versions, I found Linux Mint 14 (MATE & Cinnamon) the best Linux desktop available today. It’s fun, stable and excitingly fast on my two-year old ASUS K40AE notebook with AMD Sempron M120 cpu. It could play 1080p mp4 movies very smoothly with 70% cpu utilization only.

    My question is: Is it possible to alternatly use MATE and Cinnamon with every reboot of my notebook? Does it make sense and how? Thanks Clev and my fellow Linux Mint users!!!

  30. I got an issue with Mint 14 Cinnamon 64bit
    While booting from live USB i got this nice mint splashscreen with green white dots. But after installing system while booting i got whole bunch of text saying all details about loading files drivers etc, white and after a while yellow text’s, till MDM appear, system works fine, but what might be the cause? My laptop use southbridge with intel card.

  31. Hey, Clem, I don’t want to see you get burned out either!
    Been there. Done that. Many times. Not fun.
    Thank you for taking the time to give a detailed reply.
    And a little free advice: Don’t work more than 6 days a week. I say this in earnest and with genuine concern. And question how much of that day 6 you really need to work. 🙂

  32. @Oyabunbaba, from what I know, if you get just the green with white dots without the LM logo, that means the resolution isn’t set right for the Plymouth splash screen. If you are just getting text, then the splash screen isn’t coming up at all. In /etc/default/grub I have this line:
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash video=uvesafb:mode_option=1600×1200-24,mtrr=3,scroll=ywrap”
    YMMV due to different resolution (1600×1200) and bit depth (24) of your monitor. A search for “Plymouth splash screen” will give much better and more detailed info than I can give.

    The release notes for Linux Mint 13 (not 14 from what I can see) also had a paragraph on the splash screen.

  33. I have been using Cinnamon and I have to say, it is the best. I have tried Mate, XFCE, KDE and E17. None of them come close to sleek appearance and ease of use. LMDE is the best distro. I have had zero problems. I had used Lisa and Maya but switched to LMDE. Clem is doing an outstanding job. By narrowing his focus towards Cinnamon we can expect great things.
    Again, I couldn’t be happier. Just wish on my fixed income (SocSec) I could contribute dollar-wise. I just hope that Linux Mint gains more and more popularity even to the point where Cinnamon becomes the defacto DE for the major players in Linux, e.g. RedHat, Suse and perhaps even Ubuntu once they realize how great Cinnamon is.
    Fantastic job Clem.
    Oh yeah, jesse5567 is right, no more than 6 days. I have been there and you will eventually burn out. Spend time with family. Family comes first.

  34. Depends on how many hours in the 7days is worked as well.
    Sometimes it’s good to pay minimal attention to things, than not at all.

    jesse5567 does bring some good points up, but I’m with Clem’s decision on focusing on the higher priority tasks to reach the goal the project has been set out to do.
    Maybe Xfce and other DEs will come back ask tasks and side-projects are not vaporware anymore, where development (and maintenance) is not a heavy burden.

  35. Even though LMDE XFCE is going to be discontinued, will it at least be getting non-XFCE-related updates (security, newer versions of non-Mint applications, etc)?

    I moved to LMDE XFCE from Ubuntu 11.04 because of Unity, and it has served me very well indeed; my goal was to have a distro that didn’t need to be periodically reinstalled/upgraded, and even if LMDE isn’t quite the ‘rolling release’ that was originally intended, it has been a very easy to use system. If I have to remove it and move to the main line edition to get something that will be kept more or less current with background patches and such, I will probably do it, but while I understand that the Mint team’s time is finite it does seem that they are consciously abandoning the users of lower end/older hardware.

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