Monthly News – November 2014

News:

  • The release of the Cinnamon and MATE editions of Linux Mint 17.1 “Rebecca” were very well received. We were excited to unveil what we had worked on since the previous release and continuing to work on the same package base was a breeze. It was fun also to see people upgrade to 17.1 with ease, that went really well as well. We’re getting close to the end of the year though so I hope we’ll get the opportunity to talk about 17.1 and design topics again, but for now I’d like to touch a few words on the Xfce and KDE editions. We’re expecting their release candidates to be available next week. Only minor bugs remain and we’re confident they’ll pass QA very easily. KDE was upgraded to 4.14 and MDM received support for KDE Wallet (the wallet is now created and opened in the background, so no user interaction is necessary). Xfce was given out-of-the-box support for Compiz (just like in the MATE edition), Xfburn received Blu-ray support, the Whisker menu was upgraded and the default configuration was refined. The stable release for these two editions was estimated for the end of December but the RCs are a few days late, Christmas and the New Year will certainly eat a few days and there are items in the roadmap which were postponed but might come back into 17.1 as the dev. team is still looking into them (in particular we’re not happy with the look and feel of xscreensaver and with the fact that unlocking the session doesn’t unlock the screensaver in KDE and Xfce). It’s too hard to say just yet whether the stable ISOs will be out this year or the next.
  • The decision was made to use GTK 3.14 in LMDE 2 “Betsy” (the same version as in Debian Jessie). Themes and parts of Cinnamon will be adapted to work properly with it. The decision to switch to systemd or to continue to use sysvinit was not taken yet.
  • A few bugs were fixed and will be pushed towards the repositories. In particular two of them prevent the Cinnamon “System Settings” from opening (the first one when a theme thumbnail is unreadable, the second when gir1.2-notify-0.7 is not installed). Expect a package update in the coming days.
  • 351 people donated to us in November. Add to that all the feedback we got, the help we received and your many words, emails, comments of encouragement. It’s a real pleasure to be working for you. Not only does your support make everything easy for us, along with your feedback and just after a release like this one, it feels really good to do what we do. In memory of Husse and the people who shaped this community from the early days into what it is now, it’s a real privilege to be part of this, to make you happy and to feel your support on a daily basis. Many thanks to everybody in our community.
  • We’ll announce the RCs for Xfce and KDE before the holidays but release announcements are pretty formal… so I’ll take this opportunity and wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors:
Linux VPS Hosting
Silver Sponsors:
ThinkPenguin.com
Bronze Sponsors:
Vault Networks *
AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting
7L Networks Toronto Colocation *
BayLibre
compute.ch gmbh
David Salvo
Michael Sartain
Milton Security Group
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 $9335 was raised thanks to the generous contributions of 351 donors:

  • $260.24, Birgit N.
  • $200 (2nd donation), Kenneth P.
  • $200 (2nd donation), Marie I.
  • $200, Jonathan McDowell
  • $195.18 (3rd donation), RJGR aka “nzc3
  • $195.18, Thomas R.
  • $150 (6th donation), Jon Espenschied aka “xeno”
  • $130.12 (3rd donation), Frederic L. aka “”nofrog””
  • $130.12, Dirk L.
  • $128.82, Bernhard S.
  • $109.3, Mimi
  • $104.09, Rémi C.
  • $100 (15th donation), Ralph Siegler aka “ziggy
  • $100 (15th donation), Wolfgang P.
  • $100, Clayton H.
  • $100, Michael D.
  • $100, Ross W. aka “Roscoe_Oz”
  • $100, David S.
  • $100, Roy L.
  • $78.07 (2nd donation), André L.
  • $75, David S.
  • $70 (4th donation), Doug L.
  • $70, Alan H.
  • $65.06 (2nd donation), Bertrand PLE
  • $65.06 (2nd donation), Antonio A. T.
  • $65.06 (2nd donation), Andreas B.
  • $65.06, Javier G. Valdivia aka “@JavierGValdivia
  • $65.06, Rhydwen V.
  • $65.06, Vincent L. aka “vincentsteven
  • $65.06, Fritz E.
  • $65.06, Patrick B.
  • $52.05, Jorge P.
  • $52.05, Peter C.
  • $50 (56th donation), Matthew M.
  • $50 (3rd donation), Richard L.
  • $50 (3rd donation), Magne L.
  • $50 (2nd donation), D Joseph Frazier aka “Joe
  • $50 (2nd donation), Kenny Schiff
  • $50 (2nd donation), Michael Dowden
  • $50 (2nd donation), Kwan L.
  • $50, Marco S.
  • $50, Rod Hassler
  • $50, Tommy W.
  • $50, Marco S.
  • $50, Louis L.
  • $50, comwerkstatt.net
  • $50, Rune E.
  • $50, Stuart C.
  • $50, Tomas Sobek
  • $50, Tony V.
  • $50, Matthew F.
  • $50, Ananchai S.
  • $45.54, Frédéric B.
  • $45.54, Frédéric B.
  • $40, Fry B.
  • $39.04 (57th donation), Olli K.
  • $39.04, Antony P.
  • $39.04, Csaba S.
  • $39.04, Andrzej C.
  • $39.04, Mats L.
  • $39.04, German S.
  • $39.03, Alex K. aka “BS86”
  • $39.03, Ulrich H.
  • $35, Porter M.
  • $32.53, Stefan E.
  • $32.53, Jha V. D. H.
  • $32.53, Dawid M.
  • $32.53, Ludger S.
  • $32.53, Neil M.
  • $32.53, Ben H. aka “hozza
  • $32.53, Steve Brown
  • $30.21, Lasse K.
  • $30 (4th donation), Brooke Dukes aka “BandonRandon
  • $30 (3rd donation), Anthony C.
  • $30 (2nd donation), BestPokerRooms.com
  • $30, Joe K.
  • $30, Mihai C. G. aka “Snowfall”
  • $30, David C.
  • $30, Rs C.
  • $28.63, Bernard L.
  • $28, Bernhard J.
  • $26.02 (2nd donation), Uwe S.
  • $26.02 (2nd donation), Michael S.
  • $26.02 (2nd donation), James Eldridge aka “turtlesedge
  • $26.02 (2nd donation), Han-kwang N.
  • $26.02 (2nd donation), S D
  • $26.02, Fabrice P.
  • $26.02, CySoTec
  • $26.02, Martin P.
  • $26.02, Christian S.
  • $26.02, Mika J. aka “Kode”
  • $26.02, Antti P.
  • $26.02, Jean-philippe P.
  • $26.02, Georg G.
  • $26.02, Thorsten M.
  • $26.02, Oleksiy Sagirov
  • $26.02, John M.
  • $26.02, Thomas R.
  • $26.02, Dr. H. L.
  • $26.02, Stefan B.
  • $26.02, Nomko N. aka “nomko
  • $26.02, Kyösti V.
  • $26.02, Montpellier journal
  • $26.02, Alan R.
  • $26.02, Diederik K.
  • $26.02, Fehér K.
  • $26.02, Ludwig W.
  • $25 (38th donation), Ronald W.
  • $25 (7th donation), Anthony F H.
  • $25 (4th donation), Larry Jones aka “LarryJ2
  • $25 (3rd donation), Robert S.
  • $25 (2nd donation), John M.
  • $25 (2nd donation), Michael S.
  • $25 (2nd donation), Michael M.
  • $25, Bill B.
  • $25, Scott C.
  • $25, Fabrizio R.
  • $25, Chris L.
  • $25, August L.
  • $25, Mark P.
  • $25, Stuart T.
  • $25, Craig S.
  • $25, Infonomics Ltd
  • $25, Michael N. aka “Nuke”
  • $25, John R.
  • $25, Robert S.
  • $25, Simon H.
  • $25, Daniel G.
  • $25, Edmund S.
  • $25, Felippe H D de Castro
  • $22, Walter P.
  • $20.82 (6th donation), Rüssel
  • $20 (41th donation), Tsuguo S.
  • $20 (4th donation), Bruce D. aka “travtek”
  • $20 (3rd donation), Arrowhead Computer Consulting, LLC aka “Jim (JR)
  • $20 (3rd donation), David E.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Daniel H.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Don R.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Ian M.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Robert E.
  • $20 (2nd donation), James F. aka “jtflynnz”
  • $20, Placidus S.
  • $20, Roy V. J.
  • $20, Edward G.
  • $20, M. J. Stewart aka “Mason”
  • $20, William S.
  • $20, Stratis G.
  • $20, Scott M.
  • $20, Christophe A.
  • $20, John S.
  • $20, Ilya K.
  • $20, Daniel B.
  • $20, Wolfgang H.
  • $20, James D.
  • $20, Norm S.
  • $20, Chris aka “Pao”
  • $20, Paul L.
  • $20, Paul W.
  • $20, Reve B.
  • $20, James K.
  • $20, Jim D.
  • $20, Larry H.
  • $20, Terje D.
  • $20, Jinseok J. aka “JeonLab
  • $20, Galina S.
  • $20, Tim M.
  • $20, Daniel V. M.
  • $20, Paul J.
  • $19.52 (6th donation), Robert P.
  • $19.52 (2nd donation), Dea Engineering s.r.l. aka “Andrea Tozzato
  • $19.52 (2nd donation), Simon B.
  • $19.52, Giorgio O.
  • $19.52, Christiaan P.
  • $19.52, Esko K.
  • $19.52, Alberto G.
  • $19.52, Bernardeau A.
  • $19.52, Apostol B.
  • $19.52, Michael K.
  • $19.51, Ronnie W.
  • $18 (3rd donation), Roger A.
  • $15.61, Gautier M.
  • $15 (4th donation), Better2morroW
  • $15, Frederico P.
  • $15, James F.
  • $15, Emily G.
  • $15, Charles C.
  • $15, Brian M.
  • $15, Grant C.
  • $14.46, Eike C. L.
  • $13.01 (15th donation), Raymond E.
  • $13.01 (8th donation), Joachim M.
  • $13.01 (4th donation), Alrik S.
  • $13.01 (4th donation), Nicolae Crefelean aka “kneekoo
  • $13.01 (4th donation), Veeti
  • $13.01 (4th donation), Isidro P. A.
  • $13.01 (4th donation), Richard
  • $13.01 (3rd donation), Nandu K.
  • $13.01 (3rd donation), Stoyan
  • $13.01 (3rd donation), Christian B.
  • $13.01 (2nd donation), Uros S.
  • $13.01 (2nd donation), Matúš L.
  • $13.01 (2nd donation), Samir D.
  • $13.01 (2nd donation), Thomas S.
  • $13.01, Jörg J.
  • $13.01, Friedemann M.
  • $13.01, Rainer L.
  • $13.01, Mikhail L.
  • $13.01, Jean F. D.
  • $13.01, Diana H.
  • $13.01, Simon K.
  • $13.01, An H.
  • $13.01, Launay D.
  • $13.01, Alain S.
  • $13.01, Martin D.
  • $13.01, 苟 青.
  • $13.01, Helge Z.
  • $13.01, Gary W.
  • $13.01, Lazar R.
  • $13.01, Nicolas R.
  • $13.01, Joseph C.
  • $13.01, Matteo O.
  • $13.01, Philippe D.
  • $13.01, Karimov Danil aka “Danatela
  • $13.01, Michael B.
  • $13.01, John R.
  • $13.01, Rinke Bok
  • $13.01, Alan T.
  • $13.01, Torsten A.
  • $13.01, Juergen F.
  • $13.01, Sebastiano L.
  • $13.01, Paolo C.
  • $13.01, Nicolas G.
  • $13.01, Jens E.
  • $13.01, Ricardo G. C.
  • $13.01, Pekka H.
  • $13.01, Nicolas D. R.
  • $12.99, Wilfried E.
  • $12.34, Joozt B.
  • $12, Nono W.
  • $11, Ромашев Д.
  • $10.41, Jeremie G.
  • $10 (44th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (10th donation), Dan Jackson
  • $10 (9th donation), Christopher R.
  • $10 (5th donation), Trey H. aka “Ubuntaur”
  • $10 (3rd donation), Michael E. aka “West”
  • $10 (3rd donation), Mike C.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Hemant P.
  • $10 (2nd donation), David T.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Eitan R.
  • $10 (2nd donation), David S.
  • $10, SEO Genetics
  • $10, Daniel B.
  • $10, Jerome M.
  • $10, Scott M.
  • $10, Chris T.
  • $10, Trevor D. V.
  • $10, Alexandre O.
  • $10, Michal S. aka “Mikk
  • $10, James H.
  • $10, Jonathan W.
  • $10, Edson P.
  • $10, CB Photography
  • $10, Tudor P.
  • $10, George K.
  • $10, Robert G.
  • $10, Michael P.
  • $10, E M. G.
  • $10, Lyle S.
  • $10, John N.
  • $10, Colm G.
  • $10, A W. A.
  • $10, Carl B.
  • $10, Hostoople
  • $10, Jamie J.
  • $10, Dennis T.
  • $10, Paul G.
  • $10, Michael M.
  • $10, Just Classic Cars Parts PL aka “Greg
  • $10, Ермаков А.
  • $10, Richard P.
  • $10, Pavel P.
  • $6.51 (15th donation), Mark W.
  • $6.51 (3rd donation), Stijn D.
  • $6.51 (2nd donation), Rafael B. M.
  • $6.51 (2nd donation), Martin F.
  • $6.51 (2nd donation), Jörg U.
  • $6.51, Nicholas J.
  • $6.51, Florent V.
  • $6.51, Aroua Y.
  • $6.51, Corentin B.
  • $6.51, Marc S.
  • $6.51, Timo L.
  • $6.51, Scott D.
  • $6.51, Dariusz D.
  • $6.51, Dirk K.
  • $6.51, Kevin W.
  • $5.2 (2nd donation), Christoph C.
  • $5.2, Dancuta A. Mihai
  • $5 (13th donation), Carlos W.
  • $5 (6th donation), Stuart K.
  • $5 (4th donation), John aka “Pbone”
  • $5 (3rd donation), Graham A.
  • $5 (3rd donation), frisky
  • $5 (3rd donation), Guy B.
  • $5 (2nd donation), Best RC Helicopter/Quadcopter aka “PilotMart
  • $5 (2nd donation), 李 宽.
  • $5 (2nd donation), Ib O. J.
  • $5 (2nd donation), Richard C.
  • $5, Brian O.
  • $5, Jee hyun
  • $5, Jan G.
  • $5, Alex S.
  • $5, Best RC Helicopter/Quadcopter aka “PilotMart
  • $5, Eduardo D. T.
  • $5, Maximiliano O.
  • $5, Randy P.
  • $5, Will S.
  • $5, John Amaretto
  • $5, Tim Apple aka “parzzix
  • $5, Feng J.
  • $5, Ryabov V.
  • $5, Kouznetsov A.
  • $5, Andrew T.
  • $5, Dhaveedhu R. M.
  • $5, Visualtroop
  • $5, Osman V.
  • $5, Chris K.
  • $4.93, M.Hanny Sabbagh
  • $4 (2nd donation), David D.
  • $4, Guillaume V.
  • $3 (2nd donation), Karl B.
  • $30.46 from 19 smaller donations

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

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 2366 (1st)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 6904th

26 comments

  1. What about KDE5? Do you plan to fork KDE4? Please, fork it. I love KDE (plasma 4).

    Edit by Clem: Hi, it’s not ready yet to replace KDE4. We considered adding it to 17.1 as a second session (you can install both KDE 4 and 5 alongside each other) but again, it didn’t feel ready enough for us to provide it to everybody. It’s easy to install for people who are interested in it via PPA. If there’s demand for it we can add info on this in the release notes.

  2. I’m glad you don’t update to KDE5, that would be a dealbreaker for me. It’s best to stay with what’s reliable and satisfactory.

    Edit by Clem: KDE 4.14 refines what was already a very stable desktop experience. The result is a very polished and mature environment and it’s perfectly in line with what we’re doing at Linux Mint, especially since we decided to stick to LTS. Plasma 5 was also tested in the scope of 17.1. It’s exciting and very promising, but we’re not in a hurry to switch or even to introduce it as a preview. We’ll wait patiently for it to develop and in the meantime we’ll continue to enjoy KDE 4.

  3. If I’ve read your announcement correctly, does this mean that Xfce will get Xfburn 0.5.2? If so: yay! 🙂

    Joyeux Noël et bonne nouvelle année!

  4. Response to Clem. As mentioned,I am using 16.0 cinnimon 32 bit as stable. I am trying 17.0 and 17.1 rebecca (32 bit) which will not allow mouse highlight and one (1) click. Also did the update of “update manager”. No change.
    Consider me as a “newbie”
    Thanks again for all the help.

  5. Hi Clem and Mint devs

    Great to see the new releases and the upcoming XFCE and KDE versions…I’m sure many people are waiting for them too. Upgrade to 17.1 went great…very happy with the new Mint. 🙂

    Clem, I had two thoughts on possible improvements in Cinnamon which would be nice to have but not urgent.

    1) It would be great if Transmission had a progress bar of some kind in the panel so you don’t have to keep opening the client to check on progress.
    2) It would be really awesome to be able to queue copying of files. So instead of two copy operations competing for disk I/O you could queue the second copy operation to immediately follow once the first one is done. Would be awesome for power users who copy lots of data around.

    Hope the December donations are really great as well and looking forward to more blog posts and Mint 17.2 🙂 Keep up the awesome work.

    Gabriel

  6. Thanks for the great work. I am looking forward to having 17.1 KDE edition. Glad that you guys stick with what is stable.

  7. You will visibly increase the number of bitcoin donations if you show a QR code instead of the lengthy text-string. Most people today have their bitcoins with them on the phone and use an app… Thanks. Awesome work!

  8. xfce and mate are very good for computers, that do not have to much resources, so that compiz it’s not a solution, but maybe will be possible, for the mint team, to offer expo for this desktops environments as an applet, something like cinnamon has, a hot corner. that will be great to have!

  9. Thanks to all the Mint Team. The “out of the Box Experience” of Mint is great.
    On my Notebook the installation of Mint 17 and later the Upgrade to 17.1 went without a flaw.
    I am looking foreward to the great things you all do in the future.

  10. I’m very pleased that compiz is given full consideration now, especially in XFCE. Thanks a lot for this work: Mint17+XFCE+Compiz gave me the best desktop experience so far.

  11. Hello, is that one day will put a joystick configurator directly in the system settings? For novice users always have problem in installing a tool for this function. [googletranslate].

  12. Thank you for all your efforts. Please keep my appreciation in mind as you read the rest of my comments.

    I’m with Richard on LMDE, but, I understand and appreciate your steadfastness in not releasing until it’s ready.

    In a broader sense, I am no longer sure of the reason to have a Ubuntu based version of Mint at all. Any indispensable Ubuntu package could be supplied as a Mint enhancement to the Debian repositories. Given your current move to Debian stable, maybe a better use of your time would be to offer two versions of LMDE, stable and testing, maybe even throw in an unstable version, and do away with Ubuntu altogether. In my view Canonical itself is unstable.

    I say these things as a long-time Ubuntu user (I remember upgrading from Ubuntu 6.06) until the Unity fiasco, then a Linux Mint user until LMDE appeared, and a LMDE user since then. Before moving to Ubuntu I was a Slackware, SUSE, and then Debian user, in that order.

    Thanks again for all your efforts, and for considering these comments.

  13. Yaay!!!

    Will upgrade to 17.1 as soon as KDE version “born”. 🙂

    Hoping the “clash” between Compiz and QtCurve.Opacity already settled down, because, XFCE still the besk DE for travelling, and I like transparent DE. 🙂

  14. I just want to say big thank you for grate release and good choice to stick with LTS releases.
    I have tried many times in past 4 years switch to Linux (different distros) but always I had some troubles or it was uncomfortable to use or upgrade every 6 month scared me.
    Linux Mint 17.1 Cinamon is a first distro which I have started to use on my work computer and I am really happy how it works and how easy it is. Especially speed and low resources usage is awsome.

    Keep the good work!

  15. Hi Guys,

    Great work on the releases to date.
    I am looking forward to the XFCE release to test over the break, before rolling it out to my in-laws’ old desktops.

    Are you going to give the same easy upgrade path from 17 – 17.1 through Update Manager?

  16. Please don’t go the path of systemd. The way it’s being pushed on everybody and the attitude of developers makes me very worried about future of linux ecosystem. Yes, we need a new init system but systemd is not it.

  17. Hi All,

    Mint 17.1 running great! Found and issue with Encrypted drive. Have encrypt my boot SSD drive (same as Mint 17 – no issue), on boot up screen is blank with “_” this character in top left corner. If I hit return I receive Pass Phrase incorrect prompt, then I am able to type PassPrase and login. Now knowing this when I boot up with “_” in top left corner, I just type Pass Phrase hit return with successfull log in. Looks like Pass Phrase is missing on boot up. Has anyone experienced this issue?

  18. +1 to add a Bitcoin QR code. I’ll donate (again) once that’s up. The latest Mate version is so good, I’m hesitant to screw around with the xfce edition (which worked so perfectly everywhere in 17). YOU’RE GIVING US TOO MUCH GOOD STUFF TO CHOOSE FROM!

  19. I second Pivot’s motion to do away with the Ubuntu-based version of Mint and to offer stable and testing Debian-based versions.

    It’s an excellent suggestion.

    Actually, I think the ideal Linux distribution would have the Mint Cinnamon UI, and an Arch base, like Manjaro. Manjaro does have a Cinnamon community edition, but the Manjaro Cinnamon UI is an ugly mess compared to the Mint UI, so I continue to use LMDE.

    I wish that my ideal of an Arch-based Mint would be realized, but implementing Pivot’s suggestion would be the next best thing.

  20. Complete noob, recently started with Mint 17 and just upgraded to 17.1.

    I love linux and tell as many people as possible how great it is.

    Have good experience between different PC’s also. i.e. LM17.1 is on a single 64bit 2.4g Athlon with 2.0gb RAM. Also have Xp on a dual 34bit 2.5g proc using 4gb RAM and a win7 dual 64bit running 4gb RAM and the Linux box smokes them all.

  21. Hi,

    Since the Rebecca upgrade, I cannot hibernate anymore when I have VirtualBox loaded on the bar. I need to quit VB before hibernate will work. It might be an issue with VB though.

  22. I love Linux Mint. I really do. I just don’t have the money to donate, so I send you this message instead.

    I like:
    + how easy it is to get accustomed to working with it
    + how easy it is to update packages and install new ones
    + how easy it is to execute MS W*nd*ws programs using wine (I only do this if really necessary, because running Wi**o*s programs is insecure by nature.)
    + how smooth it looks (Cinnamon)
    + how stable it is (thanks to Linux)
    + how much fun it is to use, even when doing tech stuff like developing software

    I don’t like:
    – erhhh, nothing…?

Leave a Reply to Richard Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *