Upcoming releases…

Happy new year 2009 everyone. Here’s a quick update on what’s going on within the dev team: 

 

– Merlwiz and Exploder are happy to release LinuxMint-6-XFCE-DEV-020.iso (that’s how we refer to our internal builds) as an RC (Release Candidate). I need to check a few things, a few packages made for it need to be added to the repositories and Merlwiz needs to write release notes but it’s likely this release will be ready sometime this week. 
– I’m happy with LinuxMint-6-x64-DEV-004.iso. I’ve been running it for a few days now and it looks stable to me. It still has to be tested by Exploder before we can talk about releasing it, but I’m confident it should happen in the days/weeks to come. When it does it will come as an RC. 
– Boo worked very hard on the KDE CE with a KDE 4 desktop. After a lot of testing and talking we decided KDE 4.1 wasn’t fit for usage and we couldn’t release it this way. The decision was made to wait for KDE 4.2 stable (which is planned for the end of this month) and to then design a Mint 6 KDE CE based on Kubuntu 8.10 but with Amarok 2.0 and KDE 4.2. This means there won’t be any KDE CE release this month.

37 comments

  1. Thanks Clem for the hard work.

    Boo did such a great job with Mint KDE 5 that the group’s decision to hold off Mint KDE 6 until the next stable release of KDE has to be the right one. For now, Mint 6 is the desktop of choice.

    Cheers!

  2. Thanks for the hard work.

    I´m running felicia on my desktop and on my netbook asus eeepc 900 with array kernel and eee-control and it works great.

    Btw the upgrade tool in linux mint 5 worked great.

    Keep up the hard work.I love linux mint.

    Thank you!

  3. Good news about the XFCE version, I’m really looking forward to it, I only hope that it doesn’t bork my soundcard settings as the main version did.
    Good work everybody!

  4. Getting antsy waiting for the KDE version, Using Elissa KDE right now.

    I have been using Linux Mint since 3.1 Celena but am a fan of KDE over GNOME. I have ‘toyed’ or ‘played with’ Linux since 2002, but when I just happened across Linux Mint and your Celena, I was sold!! 🙂 Two years ago I dumped all my Windows OSes and have been hard core Linux Mint since. Thanks.

  5. Kde 4.2 and Amarok 2.0 gee,…

    What a wise decision!

    I will wait for it with satisfaction and, meanwhile,
    runnung Mint KDE CE 5 Elyssa. – KDE v. 3.5.10 , very,
    very pretty and stable.

  6. thank’s for the news!
    I’m already very happy to install the x64 version and got full support for my 8gb Ram 🙂

    And the XFCE-Version will be great for my Laptop, too.

  7. Ahhh… so Linux Mint 6 KDE CE will be KDE/4.x, and not KDE/3.x, as had been previously “decided”. Sigh…

    I guess it’s time to move to another distro, since I cannot stomach KDE/4.x

    It’s been real.

  8. im a greenhorn to linux and i had a lot of trouble using fedora but linux mint was much easier to pickup and im really getting into it. im running mint 6 as the master o/s and vista as the slave o/s. i hate vista so much im trying to steer away from it and this disto makes is easy. after doing a few minor upgrades, it was very stable and everything worked. thanks a lot Dev team and keep up the good work. ill be one of your supporters for years to come if yo guys keep pushing out a quality product like this. /congrats

  9. Hello, fair codecrunchers…

    I would like to say that the decision to hold off on Mint KDE is a good one. It is still too far unstable to be usable. I’ve tried KDE 4 and 4.1, and they are still at least a year away from usability in the same sense as even KDE 3.3, at least in my opinion.

    Also, not to be a naysayer, but as someone else said that the upgrade tool worked fine from 5 to 6, mine chunked, as so I to setup a whole new Mint 6 partition from scratch. No problem though, as I know this was your first time working with such a beast.

    Linux Mint 6 is stable, effective, and has had no issues. Vista x64 Ultimate has crashed on me twice now for no apparent reason. I’m probably going to go back to XP Professional because I can’t stand the problems with Microcrap’s nonsense.

    All of that aside, you have all done a marvelous job.

    Cheers!

  10. As a Gnome user I haven’t had to deal with the KDE usability issue. I imagine it must be frustrating. I think you have made the right call in deciding to wait for KDE 4.2. A better product is worth the wait.

  11. Is there any chance that someone will make a ‘netbook remix’ of mint? I treated myself to an Acer Aspire One and tried the ‘ubuntu netbook remix’ of 8.04 which was brilliant to look at and use: the eal-breakers were no recognition of Memory Stick (which my digital camera uses) and no internal microphone for Skype) I also tried the XFCE Felicia which had the same problems.

  12. Thx Clem and all the linuxmint team.The only disanvantage in linuxmint was 64-bit issue.I can’t wait for it.Also would be great Linux mint comes also with stable KDE.Any chance having Amarok as default in GNOME,with some modifications maybe(skins,etc),Amarok 2 is very very cool!

  13. “As a Gnome user I haven’t had to deal with the KDE usability issue. I imagine it must be frustrating. I think you have made the right call in deciding to wait for KDE 4.2. A better product is worth the wait.”

    I performed a fresh install of Linux Mint 6 (ME). No problems with the installation or the procedure. If I were a GNOME user, I’d be very happy; but I’m not.

    So, I used Synaptic to install KDE. Mind you, it defaulted to KDE/4.x — no way to install KDE/3.x — and there the story really begins. I spent several hours experimenting with the limited user-configuration available for KDE/4.x and, at 4AM, I decided to reinstall Linux Mint 5 (KDE CE).

    As for “the right decision”, well, it means that we users of Linux Mint 5 (KDE CE) will have to “Just say ‘No!’ to LM6″… or embrace GNOME.

    The horror… the HORROR!!

  14. I agree it is most definatly a good idea to wait for a more stable release of KDE than to release it all too early, it’s going to be a difficult wait, but something worth waiting for. I admire your patience and restraint and not zooming in to adopt somthing, just because it’s new and shiny but it is a stable, user-friendy and productive environment as well. I like to look at mint as a distro that ubuntu should have been, I believe that they adopted KDE 4.1 to early and it had come back to bite them. Anyway, just congratulating you on making a difficult decision correctly.

    Well Done!

  15. I’ve been playing with KDE 4.2 Beta 2, and it is what KDE 4.0 should have been. I’m holding off on Mint 6 until next month, it would seem!

  16. @15,
    You do realize, that even if LM6KDE was based on KDE3 instead of KDE4, it will be inevitable that KDE distros will move to KDE4.

  17. I’m really excited for the KDE release. I would like to say to all these people putting down KDE 4, that you should really re-evaluate what you’re saying. For one, instead of complaining about having to use KDE 4 on Mint, why don’t you use it, and help improve it. Or, simply install KDE 3.5. It’s not like anyone is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to choose KDE 4. However, KDE 4 is obviously the future, so instead of rebuking it over and over again, why don’t you help the cause? If you don’t like something, help change it, don’t sit and complain that it’s not just like the old and worn(but yes, very stable) KDE 3.5. How is anything going to improve if you don’t allow it to change?

  18. Hey Clem and the troop, i’d like to propose some things that maybe will be useful for the user.

    1- Is there a chance to get Go-Oo (http://go-oo.org), at least in the repos, instead of the OOo ubuntu edition?. Since it has some features that aren’t in the default install, and it has better performance. Also, the opengl transitions in Presentation would be a nice add.

    2- Lionel Dricot, from Planet Ubuntu, in his blog has some good ideas for usability for the beginner users. http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?201-the-aristocratic-desktop-part-2-home-is-desktop ; Maybe some of them can be included by default in the next releases?.

    3- I had to remove the mint artwork because the metapackages cause conflicts with the ubuntu ones. Since i prefer Human instead mint’s default (no offense), i don’t have anymore the nice wallpapers and the gfxboot splash. Is there a way to make a dummy package, or something, that fixes that?

    4- There are some applets that might be handy, for example the quick-lounge-applet. It’s like the quicklaunch for windows (just to make a parallelism, i don’t want to copy it), and it provides a better organization of the shortcuts, instead of dragging them in the bar.

    5- I’ve noticed that the compiz plugins are a bit screwed, in what respects the config. In Elyssa i had all the animations and the windows previews, and the alt+tab worked flawless. Now, i’ve had to configure the animations, make the alt+tab working and activate and configurate the windows preview.

    6- Is there a way to get all the fonts installed by default, i mean the ttf-*, except the thai, syriac and those…; There are some nice ones that would make a better experience for the user. Same with the sub-pixel smoothing. In ubuntu’s brainstorm there are a lot of ideas where the ppl says that one of the first things that they do is run the sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config (then choose autohinter, then always and finally no), then use the slight autohint in gnome preferences (under the sub-pixel smoothing properties); Maybe that can be turned on by default too.

    That’s all for now :p.

    Cheers

    BTW, the nimbus theme isn’t include in the Felicia repos anymore and the new songbird either :S.

  19. for the fast-user’s, with a little trick you can already download the x64-version.

    This Text is written from Felicia x64, I’m very happy 🙂

  20. Thanks as always for keeping us in the loop. I’m glad you guys don’t cave to the pressure to release and rather wait for things to be done ‘right’.

    Thanks again for all your hard work!

  21. I’m cured! I no longer care about AMD64 Mint 6. Good luck with programs like Skype and Flash etc. Since I’m not doing scientific calculations I don’t believe I’ll see any speed enhancement. Mint 6 is such a beautiful OS I’m content to use it for a long time.

    I hope you finally have your broadband Clem. I couldn’t stand being without mine. So I know you suffered!

    I hope you’ve recovered from the states and everything is coming up roses.

  22. Sorry but the XFCE CE was delayed because of a bug.
    I believe I have fixed all bugs and will upload a new iso for testing soon.

  23. Once Exploder and Clem says it’s good to release for testing.
    It’s a control test to make sure we didn’t forget something or introduced a new bug.

  24. For all those keep requesting a new default theme for the upcoming releases…; Despite that merlwiz packaged the VERY nice OpenSolaris’s Nimbus; There is a cool GTK engine and theme(s) called murrina: http://www.cimitan.com/murrine/. It’s very customizable, even more… it includes experimental support for RGBA transparency and a configurator for the engine itself. In feisty it was in the repos, now seems that the MOTUs forgotten it. Would be nice to have it in the repos, if not as the new? default.

    If i don’t remember well there was a “fork” of Human called HumanMurrine that combines the look of murrine with the colors/icons of Human. Again, i couldn’t find it in the Felicia/Intrepid repos.

    Cya

  25. Been running the RC of Mint 6 64Bit and all is well! Thanks for the release and it’s working wonderfully! Each release of Mint just gets better and better!

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