I’ll go through the details later on but I can already confirm that there will be a second BETA release for the Main Edition of Linux Mint 5 Elyssa. If things go as planned and provided Exploder agrees to release it, I’m hoping to have it ready and available for download on Monday the 26th of May.

A huge number of changes were made since BETA 032 so we couldn’t afford to go towards a stable release without having a second BETA release tested by the community.

Among the major changes:

– Firefox 3 upgraded to RC1.
– A lot of bugfixes (I’ll detail these in a later post)
– A lot of changes in the package base (I’ll detail this as well).

I’ve also cleaned a lot of things and the ISO is currently 630MB… Of course it will get bigger as we approach the BETA release as there are things I also want to add (spell checkers for instance).

With each stable release of Linux Mint come two very important documents. The first one is the user guide. It’s a downloadable PDF eBook of about 100 pages which explains various aspects of Linux Mint. It starts with explanations on how to install Linux Mint, then it details how the Linux Mint tools work and how to make the best out of the desktop. It’s easy to read and covers both simple and advanced topics. It also gives details on the specificities of Linux Mint so no matter how experimented you are with Linux, you will definitely learn a few things by reading this guide.

The guide is currently available in English, in French and in Italian directly from the Start page. If you’re not using Linux Mint or if you start page is set to a custom address, you can download these guides from our download mirrors:

http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/4.0/

The Release Notes consist of a web page which details information about a particular release. Release notes are mostly written for users of the previous release which are about to install a new release. They go through the new features and innovations of the new release, known issues that users should be aware of, and upgrade instructions may users decide to upgrade rather performing a fresh install. Linux Mint Release Notes are usually easy to read and interesting from a user’s point of view as they don’t only provide relevant information but also insist on new tools and features. For instance, by reading the release notes a user could get to know about a newly added console tool which wasn’t present in the last version nor documented in the user guide.

Linux Mint is indeed easy to use but not all its innovations and features always catch the attention of the user. If you like using Linux Mint and if you would like to know more about your desktop you should take the time to read both the User Guide and the Release Notes. For Mint users to make the best out of Mint the start page now links to these documents.

So happy reading everyone, and many thanks to Carlos Porto for this redesign on the start page.

With Ubuntu releasing 8.04 “Hardy” BETA we took a look at the new base and upgraded a Daryna desktop to it to see how it behaved.

The desktop seems faster and more responsive. The kernel is 2.6.24, it comes with CFS, the new linux scheduler and chances are this improves things a lot. Gnome 2.22 also seems snappier and comes with its own compositing effects so you can achieve minimal effects without actually using Compiz (we’re planning to add this to mintDesktop so you can configure this easily).

Rhythmbox 0.11.5 handles Magnatune, Jamendo, Last.fm, online radio, iPod support, podcasts, library monitoring, CD ripping, lyrics, album artwork etc… and it should replace both Amarok and SoundJuicer.

Firefox 3.0 comes with smart bookmarks, uses less RAM than its predecessor and integrates better with Gnome. The system gets the popular PulseAudio and PolicyKit frameworks. Xorg 7.3 provides better auto-configuration and Ubuntu improved the screen configuration tool. Brasero and Deluge should replace Serpentine and the Gnome integrated features for disc burning and torrent downloading. Inkscape isn’t part of the default selection but the new version comes with native PDF support.

Since Daryna most of the mint tools were improved but also localized and made more robust. We focused on stability for this release and although we postponed ambitious designs and innovations for Mint 6 a lot of small yet noticeable improvements made their way into the Mint 5 roadmap. It looks like this also happen with Ubuntu and with quite tangible improvements coming from upstream, in particular from the Gnome and the kernel projects.

We were already excited by the LTS aspects of Mint 5 (which we’re planning to extend, not as a complete rolling distro, but in order to guarantee that most desktop applications stay up to date), by the performance gains of the new mintUpdate, by the new features of mintMenu and mintInstall, by the overall GUI, localization, and stability improvements of our tools. Now we’re seing this new scheduler in action and a brand new Gnome deskop, already nicely integrated together by Ubuntu. What a release Elyssa is going to be! After we merge all these improvements together, Mint 5, and Hardy before it, are going to be real killer releases!

We’ve seen a lot of innovations on the desktop for Linux Mint 4.0, this time the release is going to be equally innovative but with more maturity. If we could ever make the desktop which was going to kill Windows, then this would be it. Ladies and gentlemen prepare yourselves for one of the greatest Ubuntu releases and right after that for one of the best desktops you ever got to see.

Ok, maybe I’m overdoing this a little 🙂 Time will tell, but from what I can see things look extremely promising.