Monthly News – May 2014

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors:
VMware Cloud Hosting
Silver Sponsors:
ThinkPenguin.com
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
7L Networks Toronto Colocation *
compute.ch gmbh
David Salvo
Gutscheindrache.de Coupons
MBCEStore Mexico
Sysnova Information Systems
Community Sponsors:

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

Donations:

A total of $11110 was raised thanks to the generous contributions of 418 donors:

  • $1000, Clive M.
  • $300 (2nd donation), Jennifer P.
  • $200, Dennis T.
  • $132.85, Henk B.
  • $100 (4th donation), Robert K. aka “usmc_bob”
  • $100 (4th donation), Samson S. aka “Samtastic”
  • $100 (2nd donation), Hugh N.
  • $100, Andrew W.
  • $100, Phil H. aka “smef
  • $100, Pear D.
  • $100, David M.
  • $100, Venkat S.
  • $100, Christopher B.
  • $79.71, Miguel M.
  • $70 (3rd donation), Doug L.
  • $66.43 (2nd donation), Geoff S.
  • $66.43 (2nd donation), Hannu H.
  • $66.43, Thomas P. H.
  • $66.43, Heiko S.
  • $66.43, Jan-albert V.
  • $66.43, Michael G.
  • $66.43, Björn P.
  • $66.43, Giovanni M. M.
  • $66.43, Alfred M.
  • $66.43, Christian D.
  • $66.43, Erich T.
  • $66.43, F.G. Massa aka “BioMassa
  • $66.43, Kresimir L.
  • $64.32, Liran N.
  • $60, Claudius E.
  • $53.14, Anton V. B.
  • $53.14, Marc M.
  • $50 (50th donation), Matthew M.
  • $50 (4th donation), Sri Gadis Ranti Junus aka “ranti
  • $50 (4th donation), Roy B.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Matthew J.
  • $50, Ram Sambamurthy
  • $50, Jaroslaw G.
  • $50, Shawn P.
  • $50, William S.
  • $50, Glenn C.
  • $50, George N.
  • $50, Campos D. S. D.
  • $50, Chris A.
  • $50, Amanda H.
  • $50, Ronald S. J.
  • $50, François P.
  • $50, Far W. C. C.
  • $50, Doug G. aka “Kenosis”
  • $50, Leslie Y.
  • $50, Daniel L.
  • $50, William L.
  • $50, Morten T.
  • $50, Bryan H.
  • $50, Adam D.
  • $50, Sam T.
  • $50, Bruce P.
  • $50, Stanislav B. .
  • $50, Phillip M.
  • $50, Paul Moffat aka “Dablin
  • $50, Kenneth W.
  • $45, Christian C.
  • $42, Goetz K.
  • $40 (2nd donation), Keith K.
  • $40, Joshua R.
  • $40, Filipe S.
  • $39.86 (51th donation), Olli K.
  • $39.86, Norman B.
  • $39.86, Matthias E.
  • $39.86, Ian G.
  • $35, Erick J.
  • $33.21 (3rd donation), Ole P.
  • $33.21 (2nd donation), Stoyan N.
  • $33.21, Carlo O.
  • $33.21, Lau
  • $33.21, Joannes G.
  • $33.21, Michael L.
  • $33.21, Samuel H.
  • $33.21, Victor V. D.
  • $33.21, Matthias W.
  • $31.88, Klaus U.
  • $30.56, Joe T.
  • $30 (3rd donation), Touko N.
  • $30 (2nd donation), Real F.
  • $30, Emeka B. E.
  • $30, Tom E. A.
  • $30, Dennis S. F.
  • $30, Donna B.
  • $30, Anne L.
  • $30, George W.
  • $30, Gary S.
  • $30, FJCM van Hak
  • $30, Michael D.
  • $30, Michael E.
  • $30, Henry N. aka “Ruler of his Domain”
  • $26.57 (12th donation), Orlando M. M.
  • $26.57 (6th donation), Hartmann Maier aka “hkmle”
  • $26.57 (5th donation), Niklas M.
  • $26.57 (2nd donation), Iiro K.
  • $26.57 (2nd donation), Wolfgang K.
  • $26.57, TOM
  • $26.57, Mischa L.
  • $26.57, Nalle R.
  • $26.57, Matthias S.
  • $26.57, Brian G.
  • $26.57, Bjarte O.
  • $26.57, Guido V.
  • $26.57, Michael B.
  • $26.57, Matthias B.
  • $26.57, Rochus P.
  • $26.57, Hans B.
  • $26.57, Christoph H.
  • $26.57, Dennis D.
  • $26.57, Maikel G.
  • $26.57, Max N.
  • $26.57, Uvarov F.
  • $26.57, Peter V.
  • $26.57, Robert B.
  • $26.57, Per J.
  • $26.57, Frederik M.
  • $26.57, Peter B.
  • $25.24 (9th donation), Raymond E.
  • $25 (32nd donation), Ronald W.
  • $25 (7th donation), Robert H.
  • $25 (4th donation), Andy N.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Robin H.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Kirill C.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Nicole H. in honor of jaspmatt
  • $25 (2nd donation), Robin H.
  • $25, Ross D.
  • $25, Dan P.
  • $25, Scott L.
  • $25, Murray C.
  • $25, Christopher D.
  • $25, John C.
  • $25, Michael S.
  • $25, Ewa K.
  • $25, Fred W.
  • $25, Patrick B.
  • $25, Mr J. H. T. J.
  • $25, James C.
  • $25, Vincent C.
  • $25, Moshe S.
  • $25, Brandon L.
  • $25, Bill R.
  • $25, Ivan I. aka “BAYIVAN”
  • $25, Tim V.
  • $25, Mark N.
  • $25, Greig S.
  • $25, Jordon B.
  • $25, Frank K.
  • $25, Donald H.
  • $25, Scott H.
  • $25, Daniel S.
  • $25, Rick W.
  • $25, Shander L.
  • $25, Tony D.
  • $25, Pierre S.
  • $24, Kathleen B.
  • $21.26, Ion B.
  • $20 (12th donation), Utah B.
  • $20 (5th donation), Mark R.
  • $20 (3rd donation), Kevin S.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Kulistov V. aka “Q_List”
  • $20 (2nd donation), Vasanth S.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Nicklas L.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Scott W.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Alistair G.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Mario Chamorro aka “MoChaMan
  • $20 (2nd donation), Mauzz
  • $20 (2nd donation), Steve L.
  • $20, Kevin L.
  • $20, Erwin B.
  • $20, Jeff B.
  • $20, Murray P.
  • $20, Roy R.
  • $20, David H.
  • $20, Ian L.
  • $20, Jesse V.
  • $20, Ross M.
  • $20, Takashi I.
  • $20, Ivan R.
  • $20, Dayton L.
  • $20, Charles B.
  • $20, Camillo P.
  • $20, Alexander D.
  • $20, Marek L.
  • $20, Catherine D.
  • $20, Peter J. H.
  • $20, Renee M.
  • $20, Guillermo J.
  • $20, Frances K.
  • $20, François B.
  • $20, Lutz L.
  • $20, Howard S.
  • $20, Keshav P.
  • $20, Benjamin E.
  • $20, Ian R.
  • $20, Daniel A.
  • $20, John M.
  • $20, Petri L.
  • $20, Ed K.
  • $20, Tony W.
  • $20, Simon W.
  • $20, Dragan P.
  • $20, Antone H.
  • $20, Neal D.
  • $20, Steven S.
  • $19.93 (5th donation), Rüssel
  • $19.93 (3rd donation), Gerard C.
  • $19.93 (3rd donation), Jesús O. M.
  • $19.93 (2nd donation), Jasper S.
  • $19.93, Nathanaël J. aka “DraWall
  • $19.93, Anthony M.
  • $19.93, Dea Engineering s.r.l. aka “Andrea Tozzato
  • $19.93, Dirk S.
  • $19.93, Kevin W.
  • $17 (2nd donation), Istvan Sz.
  • $17, François P.
  • $15.94, Jevgeni M.
  • $15.94, Erwin O.
  • $15.94, Miguel G. G.
  • $15 (3rd donation), Kjell K. aka “Gemini89”
  • $15 (2nd donation), Alex D.
  • $15, Douglas H.
  • $15, Colin M.
  • $15, media services
  • $15, Lowell T.
  • $15, Ivanov D.
  • $15, Donald R.
  • $15, Mohamed S. T.
  • $13.37 (2nd donation), Bolko S. aka “Lokalpatriot”
  • $13.29 (6th donation), Nicholas S.
  • $13.29 (6th donation), Rene Schwietzke aka “Rene S.
  • $13.29 (5th donation), Dr. R. M.
  • $13.29 (5th donation), Hannes G.
  • $13.29 (4th donation), anonymous
  • $13.29 (3rd donation), Dirk G. aka “Dirken”
  • $13.29 (3rd donation), Dani Kupak
  • $13.29 (2nd donation), Bernard Sluzalek
  • $13.29 (2nd donation), Catalin Toader aka “catatoa”
  • $13.29 (2nd donation), Michael B.
  • $13.29 (2nd donation), Nandu K.
  • $13.29 (2nd donation), Hans P.
  • $13.29 (2nd donation), Christian B.
  • $13.29, Hanno F.
  • $13.29, Esko T.
  • $13.29, Mario Herrmann
  • $13.29, Johannes
  • $13.29, Dimitris F.
  • $13.29, Manfred J.
  • $13.29, Veikko K.
  • $13.29, Luca V.
  • $13.29, Roland H.
  • $13.29, Marcel S.
  • $13.29, Stefan H.
  • $13.29, Lucia A.
  • $13.29, José A. C. L. aka “Mata Fary”
  • $13.29, Roberto C. R.
  • $13.29, Massimo F.
  • $13.29, Stefan M.
  • $13.29, Wolfgang S.
  • $13.29, Alfred H.
  • $13.29, Oliver und Anja R.
  • $13.29, Panagiotis T.
  • $13.29, Stefan H.
  • $13.29, Henrik H.
  • $13.29, José L. P. R.
  • $13.29, Arthur O.
  • $13.29, Til B.
  • $13.29, Klaas S.
  • $13.29, Markus J.
  • $13.29, Kerstin W.
  • $13.29, Federico C.
  • $13.29, François L.
  • $13.29, Coomans B.
  • $13.29, Ignacio O. G.
  • $13.29, Calle R.
  • $13.29, Mark Quinn
  • $13.29, Thorsten S.
  • $10 (38th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (9th donation), Pronto Admin
  • $10 (4th donation), James D. aka “Spearmint2”
  • $10 (4th donation), Ke C.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Serguei S.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Richard G.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Иван Ф.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Rockford C.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Mark C.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Trey H. aka “Ubuntaur”
  • $10 (3rd donation), Darlan P. C.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Hostandreg.co.uk .
  • $10 (3rd donation), Vavai
  • $10 (2nd donation), Mike C.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Paweł S.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Tihomir S.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Charles McM.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Carl B.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Christopher D.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Kenneth D.
  • $10, Gabrielyan A.
  • $10, Simon B.
  • $10, Xerxes L.
  • $10, Anders F. K.
  • $10, Anthony A.
  • $10, Lisikhin A.
  • $10, Robert A.
  • $10, Thomas M.
  • $10, Rodney M. B.
  • $10, Amer K.
  • $10, Thomas L.
  • $10, George N.
  • $10, Christian A.
  • $10, Matthew P.
  • $10, Pete E.
  • $10, 许 翅.
  • $10, Ole V. N.
  • $10, Shustov M.
  • $10, Hugo G. aka “hugonz
  • $10, Neil W.
  • $10, Ruud de Bruin
  • $10, Marc L.
  • $10, Kim T.
  • $10, Wm Brian MacLean
  • $10, Dmitry P.
  • $10, Advance TMS
  • $10, Dennis S.
  • $10, Mark P.
  • $10, Francisco G.
  • $10, Costel Z.
  • $10, Donald C.
  • $10, John M.
  • $10, Stuart M.
  • $10, Florent G.
  • $10, Nabeel A.
  • $10, Alexandre de Siqueira aka “alex_jaguar
  • $10, John M.
  • $10, Niklas R
  • $10, Nick G.
  • $10, Dominik D.
  • $10, Oldrich B.
  • $10, Gladkiy P.
  • $10, Paulo M. P. P.
  • $10, Thomas M.
  • $10, Basri U. aka “Tigerider”
  • $10, David W.
  • $10, Tek PC Services
  • $10, Kevin W.
  • $10, Gregory M.
  • $10, Dylan Hart aka “Xerucide
  • $10, Valery aka “brego
  • $10, Mert I.
  • $10, Mark C.
  • $10, Don W.
  • $8 (5th donation), Nicolás Costa de la Colina aka “NCosta”
  • $8, Jimmy M.
  • $8, Mauricio M.
  • $8, Anton R.
  • $7.77, Aizuddin aka “ak47suk1
  • $7, Dennis H.
  • $6.64 (10th donation), Javier Guijarro aka “chejofan
  • $6.64 (2nd donation), Michaël B. N. P.
  • $6.64 (2nd donation), Markus H.
  • $6.64 (2nd donation), Christian L.
  • $6.64, Sandy W.
  • $6.64, Alex S.
  • $6.64, Abdulbaki Y.
  • $6.64, Daniel G.
  • $6.64, Mirko K.
  • $6.64, Nereo S. S.
  • $6.64, Jose M. M. G.
  • $6.64, Jean P. I.
  • $6.64, Bastian N.
  • $6.64, Moritz K.
  • $6.64, Carlo D. M.
  • $6.64, Nick W.
  • $5.01, John M.
  • $5 (4th donation), Radim aka “myself42”
  • $5 (3rd donation), Randy R.
  • $5 (3rd donation), Thomas F.
  • $5 (2nd donation), Kevin P.
  • $5 (2nd donation), Jimmy R. W.
  • $5, Colin P.
  • $5, Philip Tibom
  • $5, M. M.
  • $5, Tami K.
  • $5, Kieran E.
  • $5, Ernesto N.
  • $5, Ernesto D.
  • $5, Daniel Z.
  • $5, Thomas F.
  • $5, John J.
  • $5, Petr V.
  • $5, Emilio P.
  • $5, Elena D.
  • $5, Peter J.
  • $5, Karl B.
  • $5, Eric D.
  • $5, Jimmy R. W.
  • $5, R. ISLAM
  • $5, Gabriel B.
  • $5, @darkfur93
  • $5, Kay O. B.
  • $4, Christian Bock
  • $3.99, Tomasz K.
  • $3.99, Martin E.
  • $3.14, Malachi W.
  • $3, Nguyễn M.
  • $3, Hamad A.
  • $2.76, Vasil Toshkov aka “Cloxy
  • $2.66, Pedro Gonzalez
  • $7.23 from 7 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 3622 (1st)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 4974th

Events:

News and summary:

  • Linux Mint is booming. The traffic doubled (apologies if you noticed some of the downtime while we adapted to it), Linux Mint 17 was released, donations are at an all-time high and we got brilliant feedback during the RC and stable releases. There’s a great sense of achievement here and I feel very grateful for the feedback and support we’re receiving from the community. I noticed many people recently joined us and it’s a pleasure to welcome them. I hope they enjoy the community as much as the OS itself.
  • I’d like to send a big thank you to all the people who reported bugs during the RC process. VPN support, WPA Enterprise, Eduroam connectivity, NVIDIA prime compatibility… so much was fixed, and it’s all thanks to you.
  • Many thanks also to our sponsors and to all the people who sent us donations. Since 2006, we’ve never seen so many donations in a single month. This support and the feedback we got from you is extremely motivating. Last month we introduced a new budget to fund benevolent developers. It turned out to be a real success within the development team, empowering members without altering relationships or having any noticeable negative impact. It’s also very motivating for developers to receive from the community. Of course development is fun already and it’s fuelled by the huge amount of ideas and feedback you’re sending to us, not to mention the gratification they get when interacting directly with users, but for them to receive funds and participate in the growth of the project, that adds to that as well and it’s a real pleasure for me to be able to include them in that. Again, just like you’ve always made my job very easy, you’ve made the creation of that budget easy as well. I feel very privileged and grateful and it’s real pleasure to extend that to the team.
  • Bug fixes for Chromium, VLC, Synaptic, cinnamon-screensaver, Wacom tablets, mintlocale, mintupdate, window borders in MATE were sent towards the repositories since the release of Linux Mint 17. If you’re experiencing issues don’t hesitate to check for level 1 updates in your Update Manager.
  • The OEM installation images and the “no-codecs” ISOs were released today.
  • Today also, Linux Mint 17 KDE Edition passed QA and was approved for an RC release (which should come out the day after after tomorrow).
  • The Xfce edition entered QA but did not pass it yet.
  • The new strategy regarding LTS was very well received and although it was expected to benefit the next set of releases in many ways, we were surprised to see it already benefited the release of Linux Mint 17 greatly. We have a greater sense of ownership when it comes to the package base and we’re engaging in deviating from upstream and fixing it much more than before.

29 comments

  1. Nice work mint team! Looking forward to what a “LTS base” can do for you over the next few dev cycles.

    Along those lines, looking forward to hopefully having ibus keyboards integrated in the keyboard applet, that is a big one for us. I think Gnome-Shell and Unity are doing it decently now for reference, but Cinnamon it is for our users!

  2. Thank you for all your work. It’s great to have such a well done OS. Personally, I’m waiting for KDE version, but linux mint 15, which I currently use, made me switch to linux without need to dual-boot Windows and without any issues I got in other distributions, therefore I can honestly state that it is the best OS up to date.

  3. Nice one, keep it up, but it will be more better for the cinammon version if the developers adds an option of suspend when the battery gets critical in addition of the hibernate and power off options.

  4. Getting better all the time guys.Stoked! Ripper! Beaudy!
    no issues for me. Evwrything works out of the box. Really looking forward to not up dating every few months. Interesting to see how this ‘sudo’ rolling updates go.Congrats.

  5. Many MANY thanks to all those who have contributed $$$, both small and large amounts. Many thanks also to all the sponsors. Every bit of support that Mint gets gives a bit more encouragement to the developers, which little by little guarantees us all a better OS, which in turn helps improve our lives. Thanks, Clem and team! As far as many of us are concerned, you are the BEST in Linux. Thanks for bringing us what is definitely the classiest and most useful distro in the world!

  6. Dear Clem: I appreciate your work and effort. I also understand those fixes perhaps had priority, however I need your help in fixing this “bluetooth” issue on Lenovo G700. Rest assured it is a popular laptop here at amazon.de. so any any help is appreciated. Unfortunately I cant fix it myself 🙁 … tried latest kernel, all no avail/change.

    Thank you!

    PS: I just noticed the Details slider on “USB Image Writer” is not working well (cant slide up and down).

  7. Great winXP substitution.
    Unhopefully MATE edition have a very heavy “mintmenu” that use a lot of memory for old PCs…
    can you fix this?
    Thanks! 😉

  8. @ me

    For a much lighter and faster alternative to MATE, you may try LM 17 XFCE (though currently under development).

  9. Now we just need a good skype replacement. We put mint EVERYWHERE out here on the Oregon coast. It’s a dream. Still haven’t got ardour3 to work due to permissions issues. Other than that though, mint 17 is the daily driver already on all my machines. Thanks mint team!!

  10. Really looking forward to KDE edition. I had heard that OpenSuse had the most polished KDE spin but the awful fonts had put me off KDE itself. and the default window decorations were not to my taste.
    After a long time decided to give a try to KDE again with LM16 and it has been a great experience. Good font rendering, and default settings are quite sane. Looking forward to a long association with LM17 KDE. Great work Clem & co!!

  11. Looking forward to 17 xfce! I’ve loved 15 xfce as an XP replacement for my older laptop. Except for iTunes, there hasn’t been anything I could run or do in XP that I can’t do as well or better in Mint. Will definitely donate again when I get the new version.

  12. Quite an achievement, Clem and team. Am loving Mint Qiana – Cinnamon edition. Really heartening to see the funds pour in. Clearly reflects the faith reposed in Mint team. Am sure we will see lot more improvements in future releases with active contribution from developers. It simply proves that if you care about users, they reciprocate it. 🙂

    On KDE – one quick query…Which version of KDE will feature in Mint 17? I believe there were quite some issues in 4.13 when Baloo replaced Nepomuk as semantic search engine…

  13. @linux Mint, I seem to remember that you need to install “blueman” not real sure of the spelling to get your bluetooth to work.

    @Me…I also suggest the XFCE desktop…I hear it is kinda like KDE lite and really fast on a modern machine because it is not resource hungry, although I have not tried it yet myself.

    Clem, not sure how to report this but but Intel HD3000 graphics will not load with the LM17 KDE 64 in the Live session. Had to start in compatibility mode during this live session. I am trying to decide to install, or wait for the final. great work in creating a slick OS

  14. @kalyk: I do, because I am curious and some other distros are doing very well too. But the truth is as soon as I’m talking about choosing my everyday use distro, Mint comes first. That’s kind of sad though: there’s dozen of good distros out there and I’m just to lazy to leave ! Shame on me. Hope that future xfce will not be that good so I would have an opportunity to free myself up ! Otherwise I will surely sign up for another 5 years.

  15. Thanks to Clem and developers for good job. I use Mate edition — all in all system works flawlessly. But one serious issue: ~/.cache/thumbnails folder (in Caja) periodically cleared, and all the thumbnails generated early regenerate again. It happens randomly: more often after reboot, but not nesessary. Please help, how can I overcome this problem? Thanks

  16. Very nice work, tried KDE RC in VM virtual box and it works nice, one little issue, I have 2 monitors (2xfullHD) available to the install via VM box settings but after a few reboots it just kept mirroring the left and right screen and Settings only shows 1 monitor. the mouse pointer was not in duplicate though. VLC didn’t start displaying a video from a root-mounted point (may be logical behaviour, just mentioning)

  17. Thanks to Clem and the team for all the work getting Mint 17 and particularly Mint 17 KDE to us.

    With the exception of MintBackup failing to work in Mint16 KDE when I wanted to make a backup list of programs to install in Mint 17 KDE (every time I chose a folder to save the backup to, Mintbackup just exited), and some weird error messages in KDE telling me Ksomething or other isn’t working when I try to open a document in Kate, then going ahead and opening anyway, it is working nicely so far.

    I solved the first problem by just installing everything manually, because even Synaptic would not create a list of installed packages, so I guessed it was not just a MintBackup problem. The second problem is still annoying me, but it is like the problem in Mint 16 KDE where I kept getting messages saying my printer could not be found – but it still printed.

    The only other thing weird about Mint is that I can install Ubuntu and it finds all my printers and multifunction printers and installs and sets them up ready to use.
    But, these are minor annoyances in what is overall a fantastic operating system. I donated again when I saw 17 was coming out. My details have changed, but I have donated before, and will again.

  18. Thanks to all the LMDE team for the excellent work.

    I do love LMDE with its Cinnamon desktop and it worked as expected right after a simple install.

    This distribution now is definitely my distro of choice, even if I also use ArchLinux, CentOS 6.5, Debian 7, Fedora 20, LinuxMint Qiara, Manjaro, Unbuntu Precise and Trusty (to test my different scripts).

    LMDE is the robustness of the Debian base with the sweet ease of use of Mint Cinnamon desktop.

    Just one word: BRAVO.

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