Donations & Sponsorships:

Many thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint:

Donors:

• $100, Bill S. (Canada)
• $100, Jack W. S. (Denmark)
• $100, Richard M. (UK)
• $50 (2nd donation), Herbert L. (UK)
• $50, Andrew B. (USA)
• $50, Jamie G. (UK)
• $50, Larry B. (USA)
• $50, Clive B. (UK)
• $41, Andreas S. (Germany)
• $34, Peter K. (Netherlands)
• $34 (2nd donation), Lothar S. (Germany)
• $30, Robert P. (USA)
• $27, Bernard L. (Norway)
• $25, Gary B. (USA)
• $25, Dean Di P. (USA)
• $25, Tim B. (USA)
• $25, William S. (USA)
• $25, Paul B. (USA)
• $25 (2nd donation), Jim D. (Australia)
• $20, Felipe M. V.  (Mexico)
• $20, James T. (USA)
• $20, Yance F. (USA)
• $20 (4th donation), Jaxon L. (USA) – http://um-reloaded.blogspot.com/
• $20, Syrinx (Canada)
• $20, Jose D. G. (USA)
• $20, Matthew W. (USA)
• $20, Seth S. (USA)
• $15 (3rd donation), Brian B.  (USA)
• $15, Jacob S. (USA)
• $15, Andrew M. (Australia)
• $14, Asgeir K. (Norway)
• $14, Eniko V. (Italy)
• $14, Marion T. (UK)
• $14, Germano S. (Italy)
• $14, Robert B. (UK)
• $10 (2nd donation), Richard Garrison (garrisonr – USA) – http://www.richard-garrison.com/
• $10 (3rd donation), Henry W. (USA)
• $10, Steven M. (USA)
• $10, Dan B. (USA)
• $10 (2nd donation), Jindrich Radic (Czech Republic)
• $8, Israel V. (USA)
• $7, All-Access Customer (USA)
• $7, Matthias Z. (Germany)
• $7, Frantisek Z. (Slovakia)
• $7 (2nd donation), Wilken S. (Germany)
• $7, Eoin S. (Ireland)
• $7, Giuseppe P. (Germany)
• $5, Alex K. (USA)
• $5, Sean D. (USA)
• $5, Timothy K. (USA)

Sponsors:

• $70, Philippe Lotz (alsaphil – France)
• $50, Linux-Onlineshop (Germany) – http://www.linux-onlineshop.de
• $45, Linux Compatible Poker (USA) – http://www.linuxcompatiblepoker.com
• $40, Az Van (newW2 – USA)
• $20, TOPIMMOBILIEN (Tim – Germany) – http://www.immobilien-es.com
• $10, Jim Rogers (USA)
• $7, Jesse Burroughs (JpBя – USA)
• $7, Panagiotis Papasaikas (Greece) – http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ppapasai/
• $5, Dimitris Athanasiou (RHO, Greece) – http://www.speedtest.gr
• $5, Vassilis Skoullis (Greece)
• $5, linuxmint-fr.org (ludal – France) – http://www.linuxmint-fr.org
• $5, linuxmint-italia.org (Pietro Martino / prior123 – Italy) – http://www.linuxmint-italia.org
• $5, Guillermo Enrique Guglietti (Canada) – http://www.urbancsa.org
• $5, J. Cain (ronnoc – USA) – http://realestatepointe.blogspot.com/
• $5, LA Express
• $5, MPD Digital
• $3.5, Ian Egland (Echolynx – USA)
• $2, Joerg Dreckmann (Germany)
• $1, BusinessSale – http://www.webvaluer.org
• $1, very-clever.com – http://www.very-clever.com
• $1, Busybits – http://www.busybits.com
• $1, linboo.com – http://www.linboo.com
• $1, Expert Bookings – http://www.expert-bookings.com
• $0.5 Martijn van Loon (aapiethaaap – Netherlands)

Money raised in March:

* Donations: $1256
* Sponsors: $300

http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php
http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

• Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 7.99%
• Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 19.76%
• Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 72.24%

Web Stats:

• Visits: 1,277,408 (+18.66%)
  
• Pageviews: 2,437,531 (+17.62%)
• Page impressions: 1,019,289
• Search queries: 2,630,797
• Forum users: 14266
• Forum posts: 131709

Rankings:

• Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1482 (3rd)
• Distrowatch (traffic share): 2.5% (3rd)
• Alexa (website ranking): 37,932th

Events:

• Linux Mint 6 KDE CE RC1 was released: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=655
• Linux Mint 6 Fluxbox CE RC1 was released: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=651
• Linux Mint 4 Daryna reaching end of life: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=698
• mintCast released 3 episodes of their podcast: http://mintcast.org/
• Don Cosner, our release manager, also known as Exploder had a baby 🙂

Summary:

• We’ve had a really successful month. If we ignore the depreciation of the US dollar our income went up 31%. Both sponsorship and donations were up as well. Of course we’re comparing a 31 days month with a 28 days one, but still, the results are extremely good.
• The activity also grew on the forums and the traffic got bigger on our start pages, indicating a growth of our user base.
• Our Distrowatch rankings went down but their website only covered 2 of our releases this year. In comparison Ubuntu hit their frontpage 6 times with 4 Alphas, 1 Beta and 1 revision release. This is not a complaint and Distrowatch have explained their stand on this, but our apparent lack of activity partly explains the figures. We’ve also lost our novelty factor and if Mint is still quite new in some circles it is well known by now among Distrowatch visitors. The traffic share is at 2.5% which is very good but not accurate since it’s only based on the figures for April, which just started.
• 20% is the share of Elyssa LTS among Linux Mint users. It is quite low. Mint 5 LTS will get updates, the latest tools and innovations, long after Mint 6 and even Mint 7 will be made obsolete. It represents the best alternative for people who don’t want to upgrade every 6 months. In fact people moving away from Linux Mint 4 Daryna, which is about to reach end of life, are typical users who do not follow Linux Mint with each new release and instead of migrating to Linux Mint 6 Felicia which will be replaced by Linux Mint 7 Gloria in a few months they would be better off opting for Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS. We made changes to our download page to put more emphasis on Mint 5 LTS and we’ll make our best to promote it more efficiently. This is a sign of a lack of communication and we’ll address it.

The team is proud to announce the immediate release of Linux Mint 2!

Linux Mint 2 is a giant step forward. Based and compatible with Windows Vista, with full DirectX support it comes with all the tools you need to start being productive: a text editor, a disk defragmenter, a command prompt, the demo of an antivirus and some 3rd party software to play the first 10 minutes of your favorite DVDs!

For as little as $299 you can get your copy of Linux Mint 2 shipped to your door step. Each copy sold comes with a certificate of “guaranteed sense of security” which protects you against our own software patents Worlwide!

Happy April fools day everyone and thanks to Shade Vortex for the idea and the artwork.