Linux Mint 7, based on Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope”, and planned to be released in May 2009, will be codenamed “Gloria”.

Question to Linux Mint users: In Mint 6, mintMenu was labeled “Menu” instead of getting the traditional release codename (“Felicia”). Do you think it should remain “Menu” in future releases or would you prefer us to use the codenames again?

Edit: Thanks for all your comments. It looks like the right thing to do is to name the menu “Menu” but to also have a tooltip on it showing not only the codename but also the version and edition of Linux Mint. Since the text is easily configurable I don’t want to add that choice to mintAssistant. I released an upgrade in Romeo for mintMenu to show that information in the tooltip.

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 6 “Felicia”. Congratulations and thanks to all the people who contributed to this release, to all the translators, to the upstream developers and projects which made this possible and above all to the development team for their continuous support.

Quick steps:

  • Download the ISO.
  • While it’s downloading look at the new features in Linux Mint 6, read the User Guide and make sure to quickly go through the known issues.
  • After the ISO is downloaded verify the MD5 (as described in the user guide).
  • Burn the ISO at low speed and enjoy Linux Mint 6.

Introduction to Linux Mint 6 and new features:

Based on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, Linux 2.6.27, Gnome 2.24 and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” comes with a brand new “Software Manager”, FTP support in mintUpload, proxy support and history of updates in mintUpdate, mint4win (a Windows installer), tabbed browsing in Nautilus and a lot of other improvements. For a complete list of new features read: What’s new in Felicia?

Introduction to the Universal Edition:

The Universal Edition is a customized version of the Main Edition with the following differences:

  • It comes as a liveDVD instead of a liveCD
  • It comes with built-in support for English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Hindi, Urdu, Greek, Finnish, Danish, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Czech, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Ukrainian, Thai, Turkish, Arabic, Korean, Hebrew, Catalan, Croatian, Esperanto, Farsi and Serbian.
  • It comes with no codecs, no support for restricted formats and no proprietary components.
  • It features an extra item in the Sound & Video menu which launches the installation of all missing codecs via a built-in .mint file

The purpose of the Universal Edition is to bring a localized live system to non-English speaking users of Linux Mint and to facilitate the distribution of Linux Mint in countries where software patents are enforceable. This edition replaces the previously called “Light Edition”.

System requirements and known issues:

A minimum of 512MB of RAM is recommended for the liveCD. Once installed the system works fine with as low as 256MB RAM. The installation process deals with 2.5GB of data compressed on a 700MB CD and it can hang or fail on systems with less than 512MB RAM. If you have between 256MB and 512MB RAM you may have to try to install several times.

To use mint4win, the Windows installer, we recommend a minimum of 256MB of RAM.

For a list of known issues read the Release Notes.

For upgrade instructions read this blog post.

Download Linux Mint 6:

You can download the Main Edition via torrent or via HTTP:

Size: 664MB LiveCD

MD5Sum: 484121e3f4ade5eb28b1358de05f2c1e

Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.de/downloads.html
HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=31

And for the Universal Edition:

Size: 1.2GB LiveDVD

MD5Sum: 0391350d55bab0dc89edc511f0df7a21

Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.de/downloads.html
HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=32

Europe:

Northern America:

Rest of the World:

Order Linux Mint 6 on CD/DVD:

Our partner on-disk.com ships Linux Mint 6 Worldwide for as little as $10. They also contribute $5.41 to Linux Mint for each CD/DVD sold.

The Main Edition can be purchased as a liveCD from here.

The Universal Edition can be purchased as a liveDVD from here.

Enjoy!

Have a lot of fun with “Felicia” and let us know what you think. Reviews will be answered and your feedback will be used to improve the distribution before the next release. We hope you enjoy this release as much as we enjoyed making it and we wish you a very nice experience with Linux Mint.

A little bit more than 8% of you are currently running Linux Mint 6 RC1 and you’re probably wondering how “stable” it is and how to upgrade it to the upcoming stable version. Well here’s some good news, it’s very stable and you can upgrade it with only two commands.

How stable is RC1?

RC1 is fit for usage. If you’ve got it installed, you don’t need to wait for the final release, you can already consider your system stable.

What’s missing in RC1 is the new Windows installer “mint4win” which only makes a difference for the liveCD, and a few bug fixes which you can get by “upgrading to stable”.

How to upgrade from RC1 to stable?

Install the following package:

  • gtk2-engines-ubuntulooks

Upgrade the following packages to their latest version:

  • mint-artwork-gnome
  • mintassistant
  • mintbackup
  • mintdesktop
  • mintinstall
  • mintmenu
  • mintnanny
  • mintupdate
  • mintupload

This can be achieved by running the following command in a terminal:

apt update; apt install gtk2-engines-ubuntulooks mint-artwork-gnome mintassistant mintbackup mintdesktop mintinstall mintmenu mintnanny mintupdate mintupload

Eventually restart X and you’re all set.