Merry Christmas and happy new year!

by ·61 Comments

2008 was a great year for us and we managed to achieve most of our goals. We released Linux Mint 5 Elyssa, our first Long Term Support release, then came three community editions (KDE, XFCE and Fluxbox) and we successfully started supporting a new architecture: amd64.

Of course we didn’t manage to do “everything” we wanted. We had plans to investigate the enterprise market, mintAssistant was to receive OEM support and we were to give another try at Debian CE. But overall we did well, and even with Linux Mint 6 coming more or less a month later than expected, and x64 still not on the same schedule as i386, I’m convinced we didn’t just do well, but we also found ways to work more efficiently.

There’s a lot of great things coming up. Linux Mint 6 Felicia is going to get reviews and we’ll be giving them a lot of attention (not only to please our egos but because they’re usually full of positive feedback and constructive criticism which will help us improve while designing Mint 7). I also like answering reviews as it gives me a unique opportunity to talk about what’s going on behind the curtains, why things are as they are, what drove our decisions…etc.

The x64 edition will come quite fast, early in the year. The changes planned for it are “exactly” the same as for the main edition and almost all Mint 6 packages are already available for amd64.

And then will come the CEs of course, with Boo starting on a brand new KDE4 desktop 😉

I’m sure 2009 will be full of surprises, upstream innovations, great developments, challenges and we’ll certainly have a lot of fun. I’d like to thank all of you who use Linux Mint and have contributed ideas, supported us and made this distribution what it is today. Some of you have been following us since the very beginning. All we’ve done is listen. It’s your ideas, your feedback which made all this.

As project leader and founder of Linux Mint I sincerely feel grateful for what you’ve done to it. I did have a vision when starting this whole thing, but the more I listen to you, the better the picture gets. This is your vision, and I hope we continue in the future to capture it as well as we did in 2008. The Open Source nature of this project means we can build on the shoulders of giants, achieve great things without reinventing the wheel. It also means we’re all in it together, thinking about it, benefiting from it and contributing to it. It’s a great experience and I’m delighted to see what a nice desktop Linux Mint has become and what a great community you’ve turned out to be.

Many thanks to all of you and until we get the opportunity to have even more fun together, I whish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

61 comments

  1. I started using linux mint fluxbox-ed for just 2 months ago, and I must say, I am very surprised. I really hope that this project is going to stay alive for a long time in the future. I know that I finally found my favorite linux dist, and its called linux mint 😀

    I wish all mint developers and users a merry christmas and a happy new year!

    /Simon Utter

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  2. Thanks Clement and the rest of the team. Merry Christmas and happy prosperous new year to you too. May the Great God pour blessings upon you all and your families. To all Linux Mint users this message goes to you too. But consider a simple tool that would simply formatting. I realize how dangerous it could be using gparted, you can end up formatting wrong drives by mistake. A simple utility would do guys, think about it. Mint should be simple and elegant! Enjoy! (South African Mint User/Lover)

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  3. Thank you for excellent work. If I had one suggestion for the LinuxMint, it would be concerning printing or saving files. There is no way to choose on the fly which folder into which to save or print a dbf or other file. Or whether to create a new folder.

    Otherwise, a beautiful experience.

    Have a happy holiday and a great year ahead.

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  4. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Clem!

    You know how to listen to Mint users, for sure. I myself made a suggestion about including Gufw in Felicia and you not only responded to my email, but you actually did introduce Gufw. What a fantastic team of developers!
    I’ve always been a Gnome user, but I’m looking forward to the KDE 4 edition. Boo, we believe in you!

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  5. Merry Christmas Clem!

    I just switched to Linux Mint after a lifetime on Windows, and the difference is huge. It’s just a much better OS. Thank you for all the hard work.

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  6. Merry Christmas to you Clem! Thanks for a great Linux distro. I am primarily a KDE user and only use one Gnome distro, namely Mint. One thing I would like to see is a modification of the installer to allow me to more easily install grub on the root partition rather than in the mbr.

    Most of my computers multiple boot with Windows XP and other Linux distros. I use a third party bootloader to manage the various OSs. For this reason I normally download the “alternative install” iso when I want to install Ubuntu. Maybe there is a simple solution to this with Mint than I am just not aware of. Aside from that I love Mint. I am just about to install “Felicia” which I downloaded last night.

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  7. Thanks again for my favorite Christmas Present — Linux Mint 6 “Felicia”. Felice Navidad, Merry Christmas, and have a Cool Yule! May the New Year bring even better developments….

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  11. Seasons Greetings! Congratulations – Linux Mint 6 is a revelation! I downloaded and installed it yesterday in a VMware Fusion virtual machine – the “out of the box” experience is the best of any distro I’ve tried (and I’ve tried quite a few).

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  12. I just started using Mint after toying with Ubuntu for a while.
    Love the look, feel and use of mint. Love the search feature in the menu system.

    Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to All.

    PS I am running this on my EEEpc with 900mhz chip and this is working pretty good. Going to install on my Desktop 64bit Quad. Imagine how that is going to fly!!!!!!

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  13. Merry Christmas, happy new year.
    Thanks for my favorite present (Linux Mint Felicia”).
    It is a GREAT DISTRO.
    I have a very good support in office suite (in my language Greek) and i suggest it without second thought as we say in Greece…to EVERYONE!

    (^_^)

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  15. I have played with a lot of distros and Mint is the best. Thanks for all your hard work!

    I am looking forward to a CD version of the KDE 4 desktop. If you’re not working on it then I’m gonna have to ask St. Nick for it again next year.

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  17. I’m finding that I boot into Kubuntu and XP less and less (XP recently only because Firefox under Mint reFUSED to connect to attwifi at a Starbucks). However, I do like a lot of KDE things so I’m looking forward to KDE 4.1.3+ (whatever version they’re at by then) in the packages so I can have 1 Mint install with a choice of desktop environments rather than having multiple installations.

    So everyone back off and give Boo some room! KDE is coming hurray! hurray!

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  19. 2008 has been a great year of Mint achievement and developments .
    Congratulations to you, Clem, and to the great Mint team.

    I personally want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy and prosperous New Year.

    npap

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  22. I just came back to Linux and found this Distro to my severe liking…any chance I can get some ZUNE support…I know everyone has an IPOD but me…qq..or some extra Logitech G15 functionality

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  27. Merry Xmas & a successful & blessed 2009!!

    I say ‘thanks’ for your wonderful distro versions; and I am recommending Mint to anybody who cares to listen to my & your songs!!

    I am looking forward to installing Linux Mint 6…. And I hope you guys will install support for the ‘wireless’ Aheros drivers, (which sort of went ‘public’), since many of the Oriental Laptop & Netbook manufacturers seem to ‘prefer’ these drivers!!

    Thanks!!

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  31. This has, indeed, been the year of the Mint 😉

    Congrats to all for you hard work and dedication.

    I’m sure 2009 will bring even more goodness 😀

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  34. Congrats Clem and mint crew.Thanks for creating the only distro my wife will actually use. Happy Holidays to you and yours.

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  35. I’m not sure why you have to update an already near perfect OS. I have been running the last incarnation of Linux Mint since it’s release and haven’t got one complaint. I changed the desktop environment running between XFCE and Fluxbox got rid of the fluffy stuff that Mint has loaded, installed all the server tools I needed and been running Mint as a Server: Mail, Ftp, Web, File, SQL, with all the usual server things installed with 20 users up and working away. It looks to my users just like Windows 2003 Enterprise/SQL It’s been running 27/7 since the last incarnation of Linux Mint without one single problem. My users don’t have a clue that the server OS has been changed from Win 2003. Not even the President of my company. He is just happy that we haven’t had any down time for several months. I created FloppyFW and wrote it to a CDR. Try hacking that. Who needs Windows? I’m glad Windows is around because it gives the bad guys a target. Anyway for the folks who are looking for an stable and easy to use OS you just can’t beat Linux Mint. Keep up the good work.
    Have a great New Year.

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  36. MERRY X’MAS & A very HAPPY NEW YEAR !!! …. to the great mint TEAM and to ALL mint lovers. Thank you for a very wonderful distro. I am very proud of MINT and continue to spread the word whenever possible. All the best for 2009!

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  37. I discovered LinuxMint about 3 days before Christmas after having spent years looking for a distro that was crisp, clean and user friendly. I have finally found it!!

    This is by far the best distro ever – I love it. Keep up the good work and have a great and blessed Christmas holiday and a wonderful and productive new year.

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  39. Thank you for the excellent work, you have done. I wish you Marry Christmas and of course the new releases:)
    You’re the best! Linux Mint is the best linux distro i’ve ever used.
    Thanks for all your team.

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  41. Merry Xmas all! Mint 6 is the best OS on the planet! Now dual booting with the dreaded XP on my xmas present Acer Aspire One. I love it! (XP is going away soon).

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  43. Thanks Clem for MINT, you are a visionary and I love mint and more and more people will love it I’m sure. Youŕ work is a great inspiration for all. Merry Christmas for you, and for your family and friends and happy 2009 with all the mint that we need. 🙂

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  45. received a Mint cd from an attendee at a local computer swap meet. He really touted it. Upon install I think mint6 is the best linux distro I have used (suse,kubuntu,ubuntu) and better than XP and Vista. Hope to learn more about mint’s features (only 3 days use) in the future. Great work guys/girls. Best christmas gift (computerwise) in years.Best of wishes for all the developers and users in the coming year.

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  46. Linux Mint is excellent work of people who love linux,and Linux Mint Community is also very good I really happy that I found this distro and community. Thank you very much;)

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  47. Clem and the whole Mint Team:

    Merry Christmas and the most prosperous New Year. Linux Mint is the most entertaining distro I have ever tried. A long time KDE supporter, I am starting to envision a world where Gnome is Mint Green!

    You have made my hobby most enjoyable: I look forward to watching the project grow.

    Till 2009…

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  48. I received a computer from my parents for Christmas, 30 mins later they were asking why Vista looked different from their computer…and what was linux mint? New Computer, New Mint, Awesome start for the new year!

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  50. Dang Dag Nabber, Just Giver. Ive been on a long struggling road to eliminating anything Winblows on all 12 (and growing I might add) of my machines, Tools I call them for short. Winblows has always been a struggle and a very heated one at times …prob lost due to temperament 6+ Tools so far with the Binford 2000 sledge hammer….by the way it can be a very great release tooo, hahaha. In about 1996 I was introduced to Unix which ultimately steered my interest to Linux. Ive tried just about all. Finally fell onto Ubuntu 6.04, and wow it is like getting a gift every time a new distro matures. I came across Mint I think about a year ago or so but never tried it due to the success of Ubuntu maturing. As of a few days ago I was having a few issues on my Gamer Tool that has Vista and Ubuntu 8.10. For some reason 8.10 was gaining a mind of its own so I wiped that hard drive and started Unetbootin I think its called, This is my second time that I made a usb boot start for an OP. As I was scrolling down the OP’s that it supports I saw Mint and there web site address clicked on it and what really caught my eye was the Irish Flavor hehehe anyways thought to my self heck why not, haven’t tried it yet. So of I went making a usb boot disk. Ive been using it for a few days now and yes this was another one of those great Christmas presents, Dont get me wrong I still have 6 Ubuntu tools set up and they will probably stay that way for a while but yes Mint has been the best Present I have received in many yrs. Thanks women and men for making a very superior Op. You are part of my Tool chest now and am looking to Possibly expand your OP to one of my laptops and especially my netbook. With the advent of Netbooks coming out and gaining a very quick public interest you might want to really watch that segment of the market??? Thank you again, I hope you had a very Merry Christmas and I’ll be with you all through the New Year.
    Your friendly neighborhood Dummer Plumber Michael Hendrick.

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  51. Someone please do a KDE 3.5.10 version of Mint 6. Also, a nitpick, but nfscommon and smbfs packages should be installed by default to access NFS/SAMBA file shares as part of the “out of the box” experience.

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  52. I had installed Linux Mint 6 few days ago on my laptop, it works perfectly! I’m really satisfied, and wishing you merry christmas and happy new year 🙂

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  54. Clem and the great Mint Team:

    Happy New Year and the great successful Mint year. I love Linux Mint since its Cassandra and its great Mint Menu with search application field. Hopefully my loved OPERA web browser and its Operamail will be included as well……..

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  55. I have dabbled with Linux for several years and I am too idle to realy get to grips with command line stuff. A few months ago I gave Ubuntu a try and was very impressed with the way it was almost simple to use, but struggled to get the commercial codecs to work for DVD replay. I then tried Mint from a cover disc and was realy impressed. DVD replay no hassle and managed to get Google earth to install from the .bin file off Google’s site.

    Very impressed!

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  57. I was an Ubuntu and windows user until 2 months ago when I discoverd Mint.
    Now my desktop and 2 notebooks have Mint 6;I think that should say enough…
    Keep up the good work !

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  59. I have been using Linux Mint for 4 Months now and Linux for year. and I must say this project got a huge success in its goal.
    In just in 2 months Mint is on every computer on my home and My parents and sister are also using Linux who are not very friendly with the computers!
    I wish this project a long life, on this X’mas and New Year. 🙂

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