Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

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

Donations:

$4959 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 242 donors: http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

• $124.52 (2nd donation), Christian M.
• $100 (7th donation), Mohammed A.
• $100, Ben W.
• $100, H Grove
• $100, Gordon B.
• $85, Zonic System General Trading – F.Z.E
• $62.26 (4th donation), Josue M.
• $62.26 (2nd donation), Swante S.
• $62.26, Antonio T.
• $62.26, Sylvain M.
• $62.26, Aidan M. C.
• $62.26, Frieder H.
• $50 (6th donation), Alex V. aka “Karashata“
• $50 (3rd donation), Robert K. aka “usmc_bob”
• $50 (3rd donation), James S.
• $50, Roy B.
• $50, Charles M.
• $50, Andrew H.
• $50, Daniel H.
• $50, Andrew M.
• $50, Brad D.
• $50, Evan N.
• $50, David Hrycyszyn
• $50, Thomas N.
• $50, Richard G.
• $49.81, Roland S.
• $45, Twitter Vote Report
• $40 (38th donation), Slavoljub aka “slw”
• $40 (3rd donation), Emil K.
• $40, J D. G.
• $40, Ragchew A. M. I.
• $40, Michael B.
• $37.36 (33rd donation), Olli K.
• $37.36, Gerd U.
• $37.36, Patrizio P.
• $37.36, Barry B.
• $35, Web Directory
• $31.13 (2nd donation), LDW
• $31.13, Manfred W.
• $31, William M.
• $30 (3rd donation), Rufus
• $30 (2nd donation), Scott S.
• $30, Kerry S.
• $30, Glen G.
• $30, Patrick C.
• $30, Dennis H.
• $30, Ryan J.
• $30, Richard C.
• $30, Reel D.
• $30, Stephen M.
• $30, Robert M.
• $30, Steven S.
• $25 (14th donation), Ronald W.
• $25 (5th donation), Peter T.
• $25 (3rd donation), Randy T.
• $25 (2nd donation), Chris N.
• $25, Eric S.
• $25, Dany V.
• $25, Richard P.
• $25, Zombiedude
• $25, Mujo A.
• $25, Waqas S.
• $25, William R.
• $24.9 (4th donation), Hendrik G.
• $24.9 (3rd donation), Lucien G.
• $24.9 (3rd donation), Mathieu P. aka “Pyros65”
• $24.9 (2nd donation), Geoffroy M.
• $24.9, Michael H.
• $24.9, Ingmar B.
• $24.9, Iván B.
• $24.9, Gabriele B.
• $24.9, Antonio G.
• $24.9, Sascha H.
• $24.9, Antti U.
• $24.9, Pierre L.
• $24.9, Lukasz G.
• $24.9, Wolfgang R.
• $22, Arnaldo
• $20 (21st donation), Tsuguo S.
• $20 (6th donation), Juergen G.
• $20 (3rd donation), Kevin B.
• $20 (3rd donation), Danie van der Merwe aka “Danie“
• $20 (3rd donation), Jonathan D.
• $20 (3rd donation), Mark R.
• $20 (3rd donation), Martin H.
• $20 (2nd donation), Dean P.
• $20 (2nd donation), Daniel M.
• $20, Matthew Graybosch
• $20, Charles P.
• $20, Eugen S.
• $20, Keith M.
• $20, Armando S. R.
• $20, Michael C.
• $20, James H.
• $20, Ted S.
• $20, Peter I.
• $20, Dor Tzur
• $20, Øyvind S.
• $20, Keith P.
• $20, Madhavan N.
• $20, Steve W.
• $20, Sean R.
• $20, Kyle R. C.
• $20, Malcolm F.
• $20, Alfredo R. R.
• $20, J K.
• $20, Alexander F.
• $19.99, Rama Polefka
• $18.68, Hamilton B.
• $18.68, Artur D.
• $18.68, Norbert H.
• $15 (20th donation), John A.
• $15, Howard S.
• $15, David J. S.
• $15, Rafael F.
• $15, Anders K.
• $15, Jailson S.
• $15, Maria R. D. Z.
• $14.94 (14th donation), Jarkko K.
• $12.45 (13th donation), Ronald Trip
• $12.45 (5th donation), Bo J.
• $12.45 (3rd donation), Siegfried H.
• $12.45 (3rd donation), Nicholas S.
• $12.45 (3rd donation), Jean-michel A.
• $12.45 (2nd donation), Manuel P.
• $12.45 (2nd donation), Demosthenes Koptsis
• $12.45, Kevin S.
• $12.45, Thomas W.
• $12.45, Viktor F.
• $12.45, Paul F.
• $12.45, Rudolf B.
• $12.45, Vincent P.
• $12.45, Sergio M.
• $12.45, Daniel C.
• $12.45, Jakob K. B.
• $12.45, Christian L.
• $12.45, Stéphane A. L.
• $12.45, David H.
• $12.45, Jesús O. M.
• $12.45, Severin F.
• $12.45, Riccardo P.
• $12.45, Georg P.
• $12.45, Erik D. K.
• $12.45, Alan H.
• $12 (21st donation), John A.
• $10 (21st donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
• $10 (7th donation), Charlie Robinson
• $10 (6th donation), Jose P.
• $10 (3rd donation), Tony W.
• $10 (3rd donation), Volker K.
• $10 (2nd donation), T. Lennon
• $10 (2nd donation), Edilbert N.
• $10 (2nd donation), Johan L.
• $10 (2nd donation), Jamie D.
• $10 (2nd donation), Tim MacD.
• $10, Johan D. K.
• $10, Quintin H.
• $10, Wayne L.
• $10, Actiecode.nl
• $10, Dan E.
• $10, Литвинов Д.
• $10, Jan P.
• $10, Nikolaus S.
• $10, Martin M.
• $10, Rene Y.
• $10, Simon R.
• $10, Patrick R.
• $10, Bryan W.
• $10, Joel K.
• $10, Paulus/laudaka
• $10, Tom T.
• $10, Jonathan Vasquez aka “FearedBliss“
• $10, Nathan Y.
• $10, Kristóf H.
• $10, Diego H.
• $10, Colin M.
• $10, Aimen RAISSI
• $10, Matt F.
• $10, Michail Schwab
• $10, Michael P.
• $10, Leonardo D. C.
• $10, Tsvetomir D.
• $10, Rodrigo C. C.
• $9.96, Jon Bjarkan
• $9 (22nd donation), John A.
• $8.9, Klaus T.
• $8.72, Aleksandr L.
• $8, Marcus F.
• $7.1 (3rd donation), Librestickers.com
• $6.23 (9th donation), Marco aka “Dictionary-Maker“
• $6.23 (3rd donation), Robert K.
• $6.23 (3rd donation), Mark W.
• $6.23 (2nd donation), Segundo -zenairenet-
• $6.23, Marcus F.
• $6.23, Nico E.
• $6.23, Jarkko Y.
• $6.23, Piotr G.
• $6.23, Simon Legouge
• $6.23, Philip B.
• $6.22, Radoslaw R.
• $5 (4th donation), Michelle and Daniel Grady aka “Pug Masters”
• $5 (2nd donation), Michal N.
• $5 (2nd donation), Guy B.
• $5, Slim Rijeka aka “Slim“
• $5, Ovidiu N.
• $5, Jehanzeb R.
• $5, Ratanak K.
• $5, Nicolas B.
• $5, Loi T.
• $5, Dexviajiboy aka “dexviajiboy”
• $5, Árpád T. M.
• $5, Andrew F.
• $5, Jon V.
• $5, Guy M.
• $5, Adam C.
• $5, Salem G.
• $5, Marko V.
• $5, Shirokih P.
• $5, Grant Gordon aka “Puffy”
• $5, Brent W.
• $5, Alan K.
• $5, Daniel H.
• $5, Steve W.
• $4.15 (10th donation), Sylwia Bialczak
• $4, Luiz Enciso
• $3 (7th donation), Web Design Company
• $3, Klaus T.
• $2.49, Tomas V.
• $17.49 from 14 smaller donations

Rankings:

• Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 3377 (1st)
• Alexa (website ranking): 6,789th

Events:

• Linux Mint 14 “Nadia” RC was released
• Linux Mint 14 “Nadia” was released
• MDM 1.0.8, Cinnamon 1.6 and MATE 1.4 were backported to Linux Mint 13 Maya

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…. well, we’ve got 2!

• Will Rouesnel (wrouesnel) for his attention to detail
• Michael Webster (mtwebster ), again, for working so hard on Nemo

Will joined us this month and immediately started helping us by looking at the various projects we had to see if he could contribute improvements. He authored a couple of commits on Muffin, Cinnamon and Nemo and if you’re running Linux Mint 14, you probably noticed the improvements he made to the Mint-X theme.

Theme legibility improvement by Will Rouesnel

 

As for Michael, it’s the second time he gets the title of “developer of the month”, and it’s still for the same reason: His outstanding work on Nemo.

Both Cinnamon and Nemo entered the next release cycle in terms of development (i.e. they’re getting a lot of new features in preparation for Mint 15 and are now considered “unstable”). Michael recently added space indicators into the sidebar which allow you to quickly assess the amount of free space left on all your mounted devices.

Free space indicators in Nemo’s sidebar by Michael Webster

He’s also working on adding features which are available in Caja and missing in Nemo (sidebar selection combo, zoom buttons, dedicated path bar).

News and summary:

• Many thanks to our sponsors, partners and donors. As always we received a fantastic amount of support from you!
• We’re back in a situation where we control our environment and we’re able to improve incrementally. Linux Mint 13 was an excellent release and its LTS support lasts until 2017. Linux Mint 14 brought 6 months of development and numerous improvements. The feedback was really good, and whether people’s hardware work better with one or the other, we now rely on two really strong releases both featuring the latest MATE and Cinnamon environments.
• Development started ahead of schedule on Mint 15. Cinnamon and Nemo in particular already received a lot of improvements.
• We’re also ahead of schedule on Linux Mint 14 KDE Edition and Linux Mint 14 Xfce Edition. They both passed QA and were approved for an RC release. They should be announced in the coming days.
• In LMDE, Update Pack 6 is almost ready to enter the “incoming” repository. The packaging for Firefox and Thunderbird was automated so LMDE users should receive updates for these two applications more often than before.
• Going forward, LMDE ISOs will be released in two versions: MATE and Cinnamon. The decision was taken not to maintain a KDE version of LMDE and to stop maintaining the Xfce version. This was a painful decision to make considering the quality of LMDE Xfce and unofficial LMDE KDE, but one that made sense for Linux Mint since LMDE Xfce represented only 4% of the Linux Mint audience. This is also consistent with our strategy to focus on what we do best, to do less and do it better and to invest less time in maintaining editions and more time in developing the core technology that they use. It was a tough call at the time when Linux Mint lost its Fluxbox and LXDE editions. They were great but they only appealed to a minority of our users and we can see the benefits of this decision now, we can release all our editions and switch to focusing entirely on the development of the next iteration much faster in our release cycle. Whether it’s Cinnamon, MDM, the Software Manager, the Mint tools, the LMDE live-installer or even new projects such as a Driver Manager or R&D plans related to the installation and/or base underneath Linux Mint, development is extremely important to us.

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