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Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

 

Platinum Sponsors:

Blue Systems - Netrunner

Gold Sponsors:

Opera

Dedicated Hosting Server *

Silver Sponsors:

R1Soft

Milton Security Group

Bronze Sponsors:

ThinkPenguin.com

Vault Networks *

AYKsolutions Server & Cloud Hosting

7L Networks Toronto Colocation *

Brucey99

  

Community Sponsors:

To become a sponsor or see the full list of Linux Mint sponsors, please visit: http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

Donations:

$3659 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 184 donors: http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

  • $304, Central Contracts
  • $124.52, Martin L.
  • $100 (9th donation), Jordan S.
  • $100, Pejman G.
  • $100, Antony B.
  • $87.17 (8th donation), Wolfgang P.
  • $62.26 (3rd donation), Ralph H.
  • $62.21 (4th donation), Lyudmyla H.
  • $50 (30th donation), Matthew M.
  • $50 (29th donation), Matthew M.
  • $50 (8th donation), Ralph Siegler aka “ziggy“
  • $50 (4th donation), Carl G.
  • $50, Gene D.
  • $50, Samuel W.
  • $50, binareoptionen.org
  • $50, Tim B aka “stripedtomato”
  • $50, Carl T.
  • $50, Carol T.
  • $40 (36th donation), Slavoljub aka “slw”
  • $40, Jan K. aka “fotonix”
  • $37.36 (31st donation), Olli K.
  • $37.36, Ferdinand U.
  • $37.36, Deborah H.
  • $37.36, Philippe D.
  • $35, Craig S.
  • $31.13 (2nd donation), John H.
  • $31.13, Nadim K.
  • $31.13, Robert P.
  • $31.13, Jim aka “Jimbo”
  • $30, Lowpriced-laptops.com
  • $30, Øystein R.
  • $30, Richard W.
  • $30, Samuel P.
  • $25 (12th donation), Ronald W.
  • $25 (4th donation), Vallin E.
  • $25 (3rd donation), John S.
  • $25 (2nd donation), Donald F.
  • $25, George J.
  • $25, Tom S.
  • $25, Clifford S.
  • $25, Robert Y.
  • $24.9 (11th donation), Orlando M. M.
  • $24.9 (5th donation), Hartmann Maier aka “hkmle”
  • $24.9 (3rd donation), Joachim M.
  • $24.9, Tobias R.
  • $24.9, Andrea S.
  • $24.9, Stefan S.
  • $24.9, Roman H.
  • $24.9, Linux Mint Test – Erfahrungen.com
  • $24.9, Peter P.
  • $24.9, Paul G.
  • $23.95 (2nd donation), Hans-joachim U. K.
  • $23.95, Max P.
  • $21, Carl C.
  • $20 (19th donation), Tsuguo S.
  • $20 (4th donation), Benoit Frigon
  • $20 (2nd donation), mr m r b.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Sean H.
  • $20, John H.
  • $20, David K.
  • $20, Online V. G. L.
  • $20, Bruce H.
  • $20, Candelario E.
  • $20, Renars C.
  • $20, Luke C.
  • $20, Patrick S.
  • $20, Gerald J.
  • $20, Loïc R.
  • $20, Todd M.
  • $20, Robert M.
  • $20, J. R.
  • $17.96 (12th donation), Jarkko K.
  • $15 (19th donation), John A.
  • $15 (4th donation), Greg Dawes
  • $15 (3rd donation), Dean F.
  • $15 (2nd donation), Jonathan D.
  • $15, Igor V.
  • $15, Mark S.
  • $12.45 (5th donation), Jens-uwe R.
  • $12.45 (3rd donation), Werner G.
  • $12.45 (2nd donation), Mathieu P. aka “Pyros65”
  • $12.45, Juergen M.
  • $12.45, Philippe C. -. P.
  • $12.45, Vesa K.
  • $12.45, Geoffrey R.
  • $12.45, Milan S.
  • $12.45, Evgeni Kunev
  • $12.45, Holger B.
  • $12.45, Enrique
  • $12.45, Stefan G.
  • $12.45, James C.
  • $12.45, Giovanni T. aka “giova86“
  • $12.45, Marco D. B.
  • $11.97 (2nd donation), Chris W.
  • $11.97 (2nd donation), Siegfried H.
  • $11.97, Goldynet
  • $11.97, Antonio Troina aka “thoeni“
  • $11.97, Alex C. B.
  • $11.97, Richard C.
  • $10 (19th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (12th donation), Ronald Trip
  • $10 (7th donation), CW P.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Salinas A. Alcides
  • $10 (3rd donation), Keith H.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Christopher R.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Elwood R. Hoffman aka “TrsSHO”
  • $10, Murray C.
  • $10, Andrew K.
  • $10, Essam G.
  • $10, Daniel B.
  • $10, Ana M. L.
  • $10, Jonathan M.
  • $10, Justen P.
  • $10, Dmytro P.
  • $10, Brandon S.
  • $10, Ashish Nabira
  • $10, Prashant Shah
  • $10, Pawan K.
  • $10, Geoffroy M.
  • $10, Danil S. aka “sgtpep”
  • $10, Ömer B.
  • $8.71 (2nd donation), Teemu V.
  • $8, Corbin A.
  • $7.18 (7th donation), lupinehorror
  • $6.23 (3rd donation), Marcin Skiba aka “marcinski”
  • $6.23 (2nd donation), Jose J. A. M.
  • $6.23 (2nd donation), Florian Bermuth aka “Vaothien”
  • $6.23, Vasilis aka “billm”
  • $6.23, Xavier Barbot aka “Reyvax“
  • $6.23, Satkit.com aka “Reballing Solder Stations “
  • $6.23, Satkit.fr aka “Arduino hacks“
  • $6.23, Alberto D. V. M.
  • $6.23, Patrick E.
  • $6.23, Leonid R.
  • $6.22 (7th donation), Marco aka “Dictionary-Maker“
  • $6.14 (3rd donation), Shane K aka “BeyondCr”
  • $5.99 (3rd donation), Stef A.
  • $5.99, Yuriria H.
  • $5.99, Wolfgang Friedrich aka “wof”
  • $5.99, Toni C.
  • $5.99, Mark W.
  • $5 (14th donation), Antonina K. aka “Tonya”
  • $5 (9th donation), Paul B. aka “Dude”
  • $5 (4th donation), David E. aka “DubiousAlliance”
  • $5 (2nd donation), Xavier Barbot aka “Reyvax“
  • $5 (2nd donation), Paul S.
  • $5 (2nd donation), CouponCodeSwap.com
  • $5, Robert F.
  • $5, Heiko O.
  • $5, Eva aka “www.voyance-partel.com“
  • $5, Elwood R. Hoffman aka “TrsSHO”
  • $5, Steven M.
  • $5, Sergio Ramirez G. aka “SeRGio”
  • $5, Justin O.
  • $5, L M.
  • $5, Brandon Kessler
  • $5, Kevin K.
  • $5, Damian K.
  • $5, som99
  • $5, Alan G.
  • $5, Gadget Shop Online aka “Andrew Luecke“
  • $4.01, Luis F. S. G.
  • $4 (3rd donation), Fastest Hosting
  • $4, Dani D.
  • $3 (4th donation), Web Design Company
  • $3, Sergiy G. aka “emutant”
  • $2.49, Kristian S.
  • $17.3 from 17 smaller donations

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 3414 (1st)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 7,433rd

Events:

Developer of the month:

Each month we feature one developer and explain his contributions to the community. Development is a lot of fun and it doesn’t take much to get started. If you’re tempted to join the team, don’t hesitate to follow our development on http://github.com/linuxmint and come and chat with the developers at #linuxmint-dev (irc.spotchat.org).

This month’s “developer of the month” is: Gwendal Le Bihan (glebihan)!

Gwendal is famous within the development team for his work on many aspects of Linux Mint and for his key role in the Cinnamon and Nemo projects. This month, he stepped away from Cinnamon and focused on another project: the Software Manager (mintinstall).

He implemented two extremely important improvements: Debconf support and replacing aptd with aptclient.

  • AptClient is mintInstall’s new very own interaction layer with APT. The Software Manager no longer crashes when aptd’s dbus interface goes down. Installation and removal of software is smoother and without lag and the application is now able to run as root, which means you no longer need to input your password every time you click the install button.
  • Debconf is a Debian technology which allows packages to ask users questions during their installation. For instance, if you try to install the Microsoft Fonts you’ll be asked to agree to the licencing terms and this all happens via Debconf. In a terminal, Debconf would use an ncurse interface, in the Update Manager it uses a GTK frontend, and in the Software Manager… well… it didn’t work at all until now. This made it impossible for packages which used debconf to be installed via the Software Manager and users had to use Synaptic or the command line instead.

Gwendal is now looking at a long list of mintInstall ideas gathered by Vincent Vermeulen (Mint Moderator) from the Community Website.

The improved Software Manager will be featured in Linux Mint 14 and backported to Linux Mint 13 and LMDE.

News and summary:

  • I’d like to thank our sponsors, partners and donors. Linux Mint wouldn’t be what it is without their support. Many thanks for your contributions and for allowing us to focus on our work without worrying about the financial aspects!
  • I’ll be very brief in this section because I’m eager to get back to work and get Linux Mint 14 closer to its final state. The Linux Mint 14 repositories are ready, we’re half-way through the production of the ISOs internally and we’re feeding the release with development and upstream improvements. We’re a bit ahead of schedule and things are looking extremely bright for the upcoming release. Technologies such as MDM, MATE and Cinnamon have matured in the last 6 months and we’re really excited about some of the new features we’ll unveil in Linux Mint 14. There are currently regressions in Ubiquity (partitions detection), which introduces full disk encryption and LVM support,  and G[NOME|TK] 3.6 (theme engine and screensaver) because these are still very new but they’ll be fixed in time for the RC release.
  • As an LTS release, Linux Mint 13 will receive backports and follow most of the changes coming in Linux Mint 14.
  • LMDE will receive these backports as well, and an Update Pack 6 with ISO images later on this year.

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Introduction

Cinnamon 1.6 (along with Muffin 1.1.0 and Nemo 1.0.1) was released yesterday. You can read the release announcement and an overview of the new features at: http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?p=207

These technologies are brand new and we do not recommend you upgrade to them. They were however added to the Romeo section of the LMDE and Linux Mint 13 repositories for Cinnamon enthusiasts to get an early taste of what is coming next. As we receive more feedback and bug reports, the Cinnamon 1.6 branch will mature, with a series of small point releases (1.6.1, 1.6.2 etc..) and will eventually replace Cinnamon 1.4.

Warnings

Be aware that Cinnamon 1.6.0 and Nemo 1.0.1 are brand new:

  • Translations in 1.6.0 are only complete for French, German and Dutch (click here for the dev. status on translations)
  • Cinnamon 1.6 introduces many new features and 1.6.0 is the first public release, so we’re expecting bugs 🙂
  • Most themes aren’t compatible with Cinnamon 1.6 yet. If you upgrade to Cinnamon 1.6, we recommend you use the default “cinnamon” theme.
  • Nemo 1.0.1 is stable but it comes without support for most popular extensions (dropbox, extract-here..etc..)
  • Nemo 1.0.1 isn’t supported by most themes out there and doesn’t support Nautilus themes, so it won’t integrate with your theme as nicely as Nautilus does.

How to enable Romeo

To enable Romeo, click on Menu->Preferences->Software Sources. Then tick the “Unstable packages (Romeo)” checkbox.

Note: Make sure to disable Romeo after you upgraded Cinnamon. We use Romeo internally to test packages before they reach the repositories so pointing to it is usually a bad idea.

How to upgrade to Cinnamon 1.6

Once you’ve enabled Romeo, launch the Update Manager and click on “Refresh”.

Select the Muffin and Cinnamon packages as illustrated above and click the “Install Updates” button.

When you’re finished, disable Romeo in the Software Sources, terminate your session and log in Cinnamon again.

You can run “cinnamon –version” in a terminal to make sure you’re using 1.6.0.

Nemo 1.0.1

Using Romeo you can also install the “nemo” package.

Nemo will replace Nautilus in Cinnamon and Linux Mint going forward. This project was announced at http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?p=198

Note: Although Nemo is Cinnamon’s official file browser, Cinnamon does not depend on it, so you can continue to use Cinnamon with Nautilus, Marlin or any other file browser.

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Current Status

  • It is not safe to upgrade any package unless your mirror points to UP5
    • Here is the current status of the LMDE mirrors:
      • debian.linuxmint.com (USA): UP5
      • http://debian.lth.se (Sweden): UP5
      • http://mirror.rts-informatique.fr (France): UP5
    • To change which mirror you’re pointing to:
      • make sure “mint-debian-mirrors” is installed
      • open a terminal and run the following command: mint-choose-debian-mirror
  • Make sure to read http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/update-pack.html
  • If you experience issues or if you’re going through the update at the moment, don’t hesitate to connect to the IRC chatroom (irc.spotchat.org, #linuxmint-debian)

Introduction

Update Pack 5 was released as the “latest” update pack today. If you’re not using Linux Mint Debian, please ignore this post.

Using the Update Manager

… to update itself

The Update Manager always updates itself before other packages. If you see an update for “mintupdate-debian“, accept it and wait for the Update Manager to restart itself.

… to check your APT sources

  1. Click on the “Update Pack Info” button
  2. Make sure “Your system configuration” shows up as green and doesn’t show any warnings or errors
  3. If you see a warning or an error, follow the instructions given and repeat the process until they’re gone.

… to know more about Update Pack 5

In the “Update Pack Info” window, make sure to read all the information related to Update Pack 5. Some of it might be irrelevant to you, but it will only take you a minute and it might you save you hours.

… to upgrade to Update Pack 5

When you’re ready and you know all that there is to know, press the “Install Updates” button.

During the update you’ll be asked a few things. One is quite important.. the new kernel will ask you where to install Grub. Answer with the location of your current Grub menu (which on most systems is “/dev/sda“).

FAQ

Will LMDE get new ISO images with Update Pack 5?

Yes, in the coming weeks/months, the following editions will be released either with Update Pack 5 or Update Pack 6 (depending on whether UP6 is a quick/short follow-up update-pack or not):

  • Cinnamon
  • MATE
  • Xfce