by ·155 Comments

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $151, Alan D. S.
  • $150 (8th donation), Andreas S. aka “Unforgiving67“
  • $137.97, B. Nikola aka “Germmare“
  • $133.61, Eduardo H. D. L. R.
  • $120.12 (9th donation), Andreas S. aka “Unforgiving67“
  • $100 (7th donation), Gregor M.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Jan C.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Michelle F. P.
  • $100, Arnaud L.
  • $100, Basil R.
  • $100, William H.
  • $100, Anthony P.
  • $100, Kirsti D.
  • $100, James R.
  • $100, Sj P.
  • $100, Ian C.
  • $80.17 (2nd donation), Muharem Hrnjadovic
  • $80.17, Claude K.
  • $75, Mario Gervais aka “IIJETHROII”
  • $75, Ian
  • $75, David F.
  • $67.64 (2nd donation), Thomas K.
  • $66.81 (3rd donation), Christian aka “nert”
  • $66.81, Iain S.
  • $66.81, Howard C.
  • $66.81, R.S.
  • $66.81, Miguel J. C. S.
  • $55, Laurie R.
  • $53.45 (8th donation), Pasi K.
  • $53.45, Renaud B. aka “Poussah“
  • $50 (10th donation), Tsuguo S.
  • $50 (9th donation), Tsuguo S.
  • $50 (5th donation), Peter S. aka “Pierre”
  • $50 (3rd donation), Bruce R.
  • $50 (3rd donation), Ronald W.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Sri Gadis Ranti Junus aka “ranti“
  • $50, Darcey M.
  • $50, Jm B.
  • $50, Brian Warner
  • $50, John C.
  • $50, jwillar
  • $50, Mohammed A.
  • $50, Anton T. aka “Atilla”
  • $50, Ralph S.
  • $50, Arvind A.
  • $50, Stephen M.
  • $50, Taras K. aka “TarasMK”
  • $40.58 (4th donation), Frederic S.
  • $40.58, Steve D.
  • $40.58, Florentino A. P.
  • $40.58, Mikel S.
  • $40.58, Gregoire aka “dont’ think straight, free your mind“
  • $40.08 (2nd donation), Darth
  • $40.08, Michael Zenger aka “Maikee“
  • $40.08, Carlos L. R. R.
  • $40 (7th donation), Philippe W.
  • $40, James H.
  • $36.08, Alexander B.
  • $33.82, Samuele R.
  • $33.82, Michael S.
  • $33.4 (3rd donation), Ron D.
  • $33.4 (2nd donation), Ben E.
  • $33.4, Swante S.
  • $33.4, Stefan S.
  • $33.4, Malcolm M.
  • $33.4, Joep G.
  • $33.4, Dirk B.
  • $33.4, Alfonso G. B.
  • $32.46 (3rd donation), J J. V. K.
  • $30 (26th donation), Slavoljub aka “slw”
  • $30 (2nd donation), Steve Guard aka “SteveG”
  • $30, Carl P.
  • $30, Andreas J.
  • $30, Konstantin B.
  • $30, Lee D. K.
  • $27.06 (21st donation), Olli K.
  • $27.06, Andy M.
  • $27.06, Elie C.
  • $27.06, Gabriele B.
  • $26.72 (26th donation), Manuel F.
  • $26.72 (2nd donation), Derek Turner aka “frderek“
  • $26.72, Jorma M.
  • $26.72, Sebastian B.
  • $26.72, Javier F. G.
  • $26.72, cologne
  • $26.72, Michel B.
  • $26.72, Radek S.
  • $26.72, Nicola P.
  • $25.97, Andres A. R. G.
  • $25.97, Owen Llywelyn
  • $25 (10th donation), John M.
  • $25 (6th donation), Kamal aka “anim8”
  • $25 (4th donation), Adam D.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Todd M.
  • $25 (2nd donation), Greg White
  • $25 (2nd donation), Gary L.
  • $25, Glenn S.
  • $25, Gary C.
  • $25, Simon L.
  • $25, Alexander A. Zaytsev aka “bugz“
  • $25, Athula H.
  • $25, Kevin B.
  • $25, John K.
  • $25, Daniel H.
  • $20.29, BLB
  • $20.29, Arjan V. B.
  • $20.29, Stev L.
  • $20.29, Roger L.
  • $20.04 (5th donation), Jarkko K.
  • $20.04, Kirk P.
  • $20 (20th donation), Matthew M.
  • $20 (19th donation), Matthew M.
  • $20 (18th donation), Matthew M.
  • $20 (17th donation), Matthew M.
  • $20 (16th donation), Antonio M. aka “Rob Brill’s book-keeper”
  • $20 (9th donation), Michael Krusch aka “MAD”
  • $20 (6th donation), Colin C.
  • $20 (3rd donation), Masashi A.
  • $20 (3rd donation), Al H.
  • $20 (2nd donation), Douglas J. B.
  • $20, David H.
  • $20, Alistair S.
  • $20, Utah B.
  • $20, Zdravko M.
  • $20, William J. aka “yoyo58”
  • $20, Sean H.
  • $20, Kendall G.
  • $20, Frans E.
  • $20, Rae L.
  • $20, Ivar T.
  • $20, Marc-alain D.
  • $20, James Day
  • $20, Martin M.
  • $20, Jurica J.
  • $20, Philip S.
  • $20, William D.
  • $20, Tod D.
  • $20, Peter H.
  • $20, William G.
  • $20, Greg P.
  • $15 (2nd donation), Y.B.
  • $15, Vincent R.
  • $15, Daniel H.
  • $15, Sepehr G.
  • $15, Herve B. aka “Setaou“
  • $13.53 (11th donation), Ulf S. aka “MonteDrago”
  • $13.53, Francesco S.
  • $13.53, Tasos G.
  • $13.53, Ulrich H.
  • $13.36 (17th donation), Paco C.C. aka “kannabix”
  • $13.36 (16th donation), Emil Pavlov aka “emil_pavlov”
  • $13.36 (5th donation), Paul Evans aka “paul”
  • $13.36 (3rd donation), Raimond L.
  • $13.36 (2nd donation), H.XU aka “yattote”
  • $13.36 (2nd donation), Volker K.
  • $13.36 (2nd donation), Stephan K.
  • $13.36 (2nd donation), Daniel H.
  • $13.36 (2nd donation), Barry J. C.
  • $13.36, André D. V.
  • $13.36, Jesus T.
  • $13.36, John H.
  • $13.36, John H.
  • $13.36, xaguilars
  • $13.36, Vilmantas B.
  • $13.36, Massimo D.
  • $13.36, Artur S.
  • $13.36, Norbert S.
  • $13.36, Harry aka “Haribo“
  • $13.36, Jean-michel A.
  • $13.36, Pekka N.
  • $13.36, Guy W.
  • $13.24, Annett R.
  • $13 (3rd donation), Matt R. aka “kiswa”
  • $12.98, Peter V.
  • $12.98, Attila M.
  • $12.34 (2nd donation), Martin F. Schumann aka “mfs”
  • $12 (2nd donation), John A.
  • $10.39, Gervasio D. I.
  • $10 (10th donation), Kiril Sotirov
  • $10 (9th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (5th donation), Jose P.
  • $10 (5th donation), Sinisa Majstorovic
  • $10 (4th donation), David M.
  • $10 (4th donation), Adriano Ribeiro aka “drr00t”
  • $10 (4th donation), Ian W. aka “Wiggy25”
  • $10 (3rd donation), Wilson de Carvalho Jr. aka “24horasonline“
  • $10 (3rd donation), zetay
  • $10 (3rd donation), Matthew C.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Marcus K. aka “TH3B4R0N“
  • $10 (3rd donation), Thomas M. aka “Zeppo”
  • $10 (2nd donation), jomar (john b.) aka “beta_tester“
  • $10 (2nd donation), Wilson de Carvalho Jr. aka “24horasonline“
  • $10 (2nd donation), Thomas S.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Peter Meloncelli aka “driekus”
  • $10 (2nd donation), Attila K.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Dirk Kleinert aka “Fhyrst”
  • $10 (2nd donation), Peter Larson
  • $10 (2nd donation), Marcel P.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Vjaceslavs L.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Martin H.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Simon M.
  • $10 (2nd donation), Frank Martin aka “”kitanis””
  • $10, Michael S.
  • $10, Eduardo W.
  • $10, Scott C.
  • $10, Jesse M.
  • $10, Pokerblog
  • $10, Michael P.
  • $10, Yanuar Arafat aka “cingicanga“
  • $10, Kostya V.
  • $10, Stephen M.
  • $10, Michael S.
  • $10, Nick T. aka “vxnick“
  • $10, John C. aka “John“
  • $10, Everett P. I.
  • $10, Luis A. G. V.
  • $10, Jason C.
  • $10, Michael P.
  • $10, Kuo-Hsing T.
  • $10, Mr V. M.
  • $10, Evgeny Z. aka “rus-fan”
  • $10, Karol Bryd
  • $10, Michael K.
  • $10, Jan S.
  • $10, Michael M.
  • $10, Sam Liddicott aka “samjam“
  • $10, Niall R.
  • $10, James G.
  • $10, Brad R.
  • $10, Nathan C.
  • $10, Anna G.
  • $10, Gilson B. D. A.
  • $10, CouponCodeSwap.com
  • $10, Terry C.
  • $10, Danilo S.
  • $10, Søren F.
  • $10, Barry B.
  • $10, Ivan Komarov aka “Komarik“
  • $10, Y.K. aka “Programmer Jobs“
  • $10, white_
  • $10, Rene S.
  • $10, Lawrence S.
  • $10, Iakov D.
  • $10, Ken Y.
  • $9.5, Pranay Parab aka “Krow“
  • $8, Manuel T.
  • $7.77, Martin M.
  • $7.5 (9th donation), Michael K.
  • $7 (3rd donation), Tauras G.
  • $6.76 (3rd donation), Jan V. P.
  • $6.76, Stefano R.
  • $6.76, Christian O.
  • $6.76, Alexander N.
  • $6.68 (3rd donation), Arnold Bechtoldt aka “arnoldB“
  • $6.68 (3rd donation), Robert M.
  • $6.68, Bernard Sluzalek
  • $6.68, Oren K.
  • $6.68, Innes N.
  • $6.68, Unghvary P. aka “paul”
  • $6.68, Anders Larsson aka “The Larsson“
  • $6.68, Matthew J.
  • $6.68, Istvan N.
  • $6.68, Dmytro M.
  • $6.68, Stijn V. aka “5oak”
  • $6.68, Sebastian W.
  • $6.68, Richard M.
  • $6.68, _ aka “gimphilfe“
  • $6.68, tfk
  • $6.68, Dimitri M.
  • $6.68, Marco Garofolo aka “Mark”
  • $6.49, Ulrich H.
  • $6.49, Luis Leiria aka “lulei”
  • $6, Isidoro L.
  • $6, Daniel D.
  • $5 (8th donation), Michael Gstettenbauer
  • $5 (5th donation), Johnny Reel aka “Jraz“
  • $5 (4th donation), Antonina K. aka “Tonya”
  • $5 (3rd donation), Hawk Computer
  • $5 (3rd donation), Hrvoje R.
  • $5 (3rd donation), Earl Dukerschein aka “Bitflogger“
  • $5 (2nd donation), David E. aka “DubiousAlliance”
  • $5 (2nd donation), Y.K. aka “Programmer Jobs“
  • $5 (2nd donation), James R.
  • $5, Ockert L. R.
  • $5, Kjell O. B. aka “kob”
  • $5, Michael H. aka “Hook”
  • $5, Investment Property
  • $5, Suni G.
  • $5, Tho T.
  • $5, Tommaso F. aka “Crimson“
  • $5, Kay O. B.
  • $5, Zuhairi Z.
  • $5, Arun M. aka “Setdosa”
  • $5, Alex V. aka “Karashata“
  • $5, Greg M.
  • $5, Dan S.
  • $5, Donald S.
  • $5, Cláudio R. D. C. N.
  • $5, Esteban F. aka “Eka“
  • $5, Steinar Hovland
  • $5, Martin M. P.
  • $5, Original Vagabond Art
  • $5, Douglas B.
  • $5, Colin S.
  • $5, Ipanema Design
  • $3.33, Ricky L. F. J.
  • $3.14 (2nd donation), Pradini P.
  • $3.14, Ronny P. P.
  • $3, Sergey Berezka aka “berezka”
  • $3, Rachanont aka “elixer“
  • $2.7, Jose A.H.
  • $2.7, Jon G.
  • $2.5, George L.
  • $2 (8th donation), black mold test kits
  • $2, Clayton S.
  • $2, Robert T.
  • $2, Lin R.
  • $1.95, Roman K.
  • $1.95, Mattia B.
  • $1.35 (2nd donation), Sebastian N. aka “Phaephio”
  • $1.34, Stefan Beller
  • $1.34, Gianluca Z. aka “zanfi“
  • $1 (3rd donation), Sylvestre Burgos aka “sylvestre“
  • $1 (2nd donation), Laurentiu Lozan aka “coroner“
  • $1, Otoniel S.
  • $1, Xsysnet aka “zaragoza”
  • $1, User Experience Specialist
  • $1, Vitamini i Minerali
  • $1, Yatin C.
  • $1, cialis
  • $1, Mantas Malcius
  • $1, Авточасти
  • $1, Tyson aka “Press Release Monkey“
  • $1, Adrian Parfeni
  • $0.5, Alexis E. C.

Sponsors:

Money raised in November:

* Donations: $7632.31 (335 donors)
* Sponsors: $1542.78 (150 sponsors)

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

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 2762 (1st)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 7,800th

Events:

News and summary:

  • Linux Mint 12 was released. As expected, the introduction of MGSE, Gnome 3 and MATE received an outstanding success, while the disappearance of Gnome 2 was identified by some as an important regression.
  • Now more than ever, people need more choice. As many Gnome 2 users will face a switch, either when older releases reach end of life, or when LMDE switches as well, it’s extremely important we continue to improve the user experience on both MGSE and MATE, while providing additional desktop alternatives (KDE being our main priority).
  • MGSE significantly improved post-release and received updates and bug fixes on an almost daily basis.
  • MATE received critical bug fixes and is now much more stable than it was in the RC and even in the stable release. The momentum it gained by being part of this release helped it tremendously. MATE is more well-known, and it’s starting to attract developers. A website was created for MATE and the code is now managed by a team, which I joined as project manager. As MATE becomes more and more full featured and as it is gaining in stability, we’re considering releasing a dedicated MATE edition.
  • Work on the KDE and LXDE editions started. The Linux Mint staff was increased to 3 full-time members this December in an effort to bring alternative desktop choices to users in a timely manner.
  • The donations we received this month were simply amazing. This is an all-time high since the creation of the project and the support we’ve been getting from the community during this release has been fantastic. The figures speak for themselves, $9,175 in total, 335 people offering help via donations, 150 sponsors, and this is just the visible tip of the iceberg, the tangible financial support! We’re also receiving patches, suggestions, ideas, bug fixes, and help in so many other ways. The IRC and forums are booming with people helping each others. There’s a lot to be proud of when you’re part of such a community. Many thanks for your support and to everyone out there in the community who help make Linux Mint better.

by ·52 Comments

Our main sponsor, eUKhost, now provides Linux Mint with an additional dedicated server.

The server is located in Milton Keynes, UK, and features the following specifications:

E3-1230 Quad Core Intel Xeon CPU (SAS)
8 GB DDR3 RAM
2 x 300 GB SAS 15k rpm RAID 1
3000 GB bandwidth

This £189/month server is provided to Linux Mint for free as part of eUKhost’s sponsorship.

During the release of Linux Mint 12, the traffic on our website was so high we had to disable most of the modules from the community website. Everything is back online and the community website is now hosted on its own dedicated server.

I’d like to thank everyone for their patience during the downtime and of course our partner eUKhost for providing us with this new server.

by ·188 Comments

An important bug fix is coming towards Linux Mint 12 for the MATE desktop. This fix addresses the following issues:

  • 100% CPU usage with certain themes
  • Panel disappearing with certain themes
  • Notification daemon freezing with certain themes

What was the cause of the issue?

The issue was a compatibility problem between the Ubuntu version of GTK and MATE which affected users depending on the theme they were using. Some themes were known to work well (Carbon, Mint-Z-Mate, Clearlooks), but most were problematic and made MATE both buggy and slow.

We removed an Ubuntu patch in GTK (010_make_bg_changes_queue_repaint.patch) and repackaged it in Romeo (the unstable branch of the Linux Mint repository).

With this new version of GTK, MATE seems stable and fast with all themes.

How to test the fix?

If you’re using MATE in Linux Mint 12 and you’re interested in testing these fixes before they become available to everyone else, please follow the steps below:

  1. Open the Update Manager
  2. Click on “Edit”->”Software Sources”
  3. Enable “Unstable packages (Romeo)”
  4. Click on “Close”
  5. Click on “Refresh”
  6. Sort the list of updates by version number
  7. Apply all updates which version is “2.24.6-0ubuntu5linuxmint1”

Once the updates are applied you will need to log out and log back in.

Why is this going through Romeo?

Romeo isn’t often used, and when it is it’s usually for a few hours and within a small group of people. Community testing usually happens between RC and stable releases. GTK is a core component in Linux Mint and so it normally wouldn’t be modified once the RC release is out. Because these bugs severely impact the stability and performance of MATE, we don’t want to wait until Linux Mint 13 to release this fix to you, but we need to ensure some level of community testing is applied to them before we let it out.

With your feedback we want to ensure this fix improves MATE and causes no other regressions.

What is the future of MATE?

In the future, MATE will likely be the only available implementation of a Gnome 2 desktop and it’s extremely important it gains in stability and features to get to the point where it can act as the true successor of Gnome 2.32 and give people who do not want to change desktops a path in future releases.

In the RC release of Linux Mint we included a first version of MATE with mintDesktop support. In the Stable release we significantly improved the MATE experience by porting mintMenu to it, by adding Mint-Z-Mate, and by fixing a critical bug which caused Caja to crash.We then followed up with updates for mintMenu and we’re now introducing this update which should put an end to most of the critical issues users are facing while using MATE.

Once we manage to get a stable desktop, the next step is to add additional features to it and to configure it so that it looks and behaves exactly like Gnome 2 did in previous releases of Linux Mint. Ultimately, our goal with MATE is to reach the stage where you can’t tell the difference with Gnome 2. It might take a while before we get there but as MATE gains momentum, it should happen eventually.

We consider MATE yet another desktop, just like KDE, Gnome 3, Xfce etc… and based on the popularity of Gnome 2 in previous releases of Linux Mint, we are dedicated to support it and to help it improve. The most popular Linux desktop was, and arguably is, Gnome 2. It is no longer possible for Linux Mint to provide Gnome 2 but there are two promising alternatives available, Gnome 3 which is stable and which could lead to an even better desktop than the one we previously had but which lacks features and flexibility at the moment, and MATE which design is identical to Gnome 2 but which lacks stability at the moment. The future will tell which of these desktops will eventually become the most popular. In the meantime we’ll be working hard to bring more features and configuration options to Gnome 3 and more stability to MATE.

 

I’d like to thank all the people who will participate in this test, for their help and for their feedback.