Linux Mint 14 will be named “Nadia” and should be available at the end of November 2012.

In Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, Nadezhda “Nadia” Chernyshevski is Maya’s best friend.

Nadia is pronounced NAH-d’-yah. It is the English form of Nadya, which itself is the pet form of Nadezhda and is Russian for “hope”. It’s also a variant of Nadiyya which, in Arabic, means “moist, tender, delicate”.

Linux Mint 14 “Nadia” will feature the following editions:

  • Cinnamon
  • MATE
  • KDE
  • Xfce

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

  • $1000 (6th donation), Ian M. aka “bcc4foss
  • $150, Bernard S.
  • $100 (2nd donation), Nicholas H.
  • $100, Yves L. aka “amadeus128”
  • $71.85, Marie M.
  • $59.87, Devaraj D. C.
  • $59.87, Josue M.
  • $50 (28th donation), Matthew M.
  • $50 (6th donation), Ralph Siegler aka “ziggy
  • $50 (2nd donation), Roy B.
  • $50 (2nd donation), Philippe Desjardins-Proulx
  • $50, Edward M.
  • $50, Manz Web Designs, LLC
  • $40 (11th donation), Robert D B.
  • $40, Christian L.
  • $35.78 (29th donation), Olli K.
  • $35 (34th donation), Slavoljub aka “slw”
  • $35, aka “Lin_ux friend”
  • $35, Gastao V. C.
  • $30, Guillaume T.
  • $30, Anton M.
  • $29.94, Kees-Jan
  • $29.82, Michael Dewes
  • $29.82, Thomas K.
  • $25 (10th donation), Ronald W.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Vallin E.
  • $25 (3rd donation), Internet Beacon SEO Services aka “Internet Beacon
  • $25 (2nd donation), Robert R. aka “Sandgroper”
  • $25 (2nd donation), Kevin B.
  • $25, Michael O.
  • $25, Andy C.
  • $25, Rich Lee aka “laughingblade”
  • $25, Brad S.
  • $25, Geoffrey T.
  • $25, Robert W.
  • $23.95 (9th donation), Orlando M. M.
  • $23.95, Paulo N. aka “uLusu”
  • $23.95, Vadim M.
  • $23.95, Tobias T.
  • $23.95, Thomas K.
  • $23.85 (3rd donation), Dittmar S.
  • $23.85 (2nd donation), Marcus L.
  • $22, Chris N.
  • $20 (3rd donation), Daniel A.
  • $20, wb
  • $20, Daniel M.
  • $20, Ostap M.
  • $20, Charles B.
  • $20, Maria S. F.
  • $20, Shane N.
  • $20, Jonas H.
  • $20, Gregg L.
  • $17.96 (2nd donation), Lars K.
  • $17.96, aka “Roullio_n3”
  • $17.9, Livio G.
  • $15 (4th donation), James Day
  • $15 (2nd donation), Angus B.
  • $15 (2nd donation), Marcelo Parrela aka “Marcelo Parrela”
  • $15, Andson de Lima Gomes aka “Mitraton
  • $14.37, Keith W.
  • $11.97 (3rd donation), Kris G.
  • $11.97, Florian N.
  • $11.97, James P.
  • $11.97, Alrik S.
  • $11.97, Nicola G.
  • $11.97, Serverflux.com
  • $11.97, Werner G.
  • $11.97, Sebastiano C.
  • $11.97, José J. A. A.
  • $11.93 (4th donation), Bo J.
  • $11.93, Robert C.
  • $10 (17th donation), Tsuguo S.
  • $10 (17th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
  • $10 (17th donation), John A.
  • $10 (3rd donation), Belak Adam
  • $10 (2nd donation), Fyodor Kupolov
  • $10 (2nd donation), John M.
  • $10, Liborio Y.
  • $10, Delmir F.
  • $10, Mislav E. L.
  • $10, Mathias B. aka “Sorglos”
  • $10, Vladimir P.
  • $10, Jim E.
  • $10, Wwg.loewenstark I. I. G.
  • $10, Larimar Media aka “Larimar Media
  • $10, Chrull
  • $10, Tansel C.
  • $10, Mike C.
  • $10, Richard A.
  • $10, 3gv V. L.
  • $10, Romina R.
  • $10, John H.
  • $10, Dan L.
  • $10, Stephen W.
  • $10, Jon V.
  • $10, Richard J.
  • $8.38, Julius P.
  • $6 (2nd donation), Thomas M.
  • $6, M. D. aka “Karbono”
  • $5.99, Marcus K.
  • $5.99, Christoph M.
  • $5.99, Rod McCall
  • $5.96 (11th donation), Ronald Trip
  • $5.96 (4th donation), Marco aka “Dictionary-Maker
  • $5 (12th donation), Antonina K. aka “Tonya”
  • $5 (10th donation), Michael Gstettenbauer
  • $5 (6th donation), CouponCodeSwap.com
  • $5 (3rd donation), Philip J.
  • $5 (2nd donation), Happy Mint aka “😎
  • $5 (2nd donation), Jerry Jones
  • $5, Sami A.
  • $5, Mulia R.
  • $5, Brian P.
  • $5, Richard G. aka “ForeverLube
  • $5, Konstantin S.
  • $5, Kirill Shatalaev aka “ksh
  • $4.79, Markus F.
  • $4.77 (4th donation), SilFox
  • $4, Host-Resource.com
  • $4, Jose A. D.
  • $3.58 (9th donation), Sylwia Bialczak
  • $3.5 (2nd donation), Jacopo C.
  • $3 (2nd donation), Keith K.
  • $3 (2nd donation), Web Design Company
  • $3, Hamidreza S.
  • $3, Артем Т.
  • $3, Patricia L. Q.
  • $2.39, Alessio P.
  • $2 (14th donation), coaching for health
  • $2 (9th donation), Y.K. aka “Market Analysis
  • $2 (5th donation), Tiaan Steynberg aka “Jesica
  • $2 (4th donation), Vaclav Pavek
  • $1.35, George F. I.
  • $1.2, Patrick
  • $1 (9th donation), Namestaj
  • $1 (8th donation), Pharmacie en ligne
  • $1 (7th donation), http://uszipareacode.com
  • $1 (6th donation), http://uszipareacode.com
  • $1, Andrew R. L.
  • $1, Carolyn J. W.
  • $0.5 (9th donation), Javier Bassi

Sponsors:

Money raised in July:

* Donations: $3535 (141 donors)
* Sponsors: $8459 (149 sponsors)

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

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 3794 (1st)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 7,123rd

Events:

News and summary:

  • The Summer months are traditionally quiet but things are going very well for Linux Mint. Version 13 was a huge success and all planned editions (Cinnamon, MATE, KDE and Xfce) were successfully released. The quality of these 4 desktops allowed us to provide users with solid experiences and we can now focus on developing solutions and improving the desktop again.
  • In LMDE, Update Pack 5 reached “incoming” and should hit “latest” by the end of August. The mirror strategy was changed to face the upcoming demand in bandwidth and new servers will be purchased or rented by our project to make sure the release goes as smooth as possible.
  • MATE 1.4 was released and Cinnamon is getting close to a 1.6 release.
  • Development started on Linux Mint 14. The development team is looking into bringing improved “face” support to MDM, as well as a new “driver manager” (in replacement to Jockey which will be discontinued upstream) and improvements in the Software Manager.
  • Within the Cinnamon project, the team’s been working hard on bringing all the features people asked for in 1.4, including configurable panel heights, Cinnamon 2D, Alt-tab preview and outline modes, workspace names and OSD, improved keyboard navigation, Expo grid view, improved configuration tool and menu editor, improved logging, new Scale, Expo, Notifications and Brightness applets and a huge number of bug fixes. Versions from the current unstable 1.5 branch should hit the romeo part of the Linux Mint 13 and LMDE repositories shortly.
  • Announcing the mintBox was a fantastic experience. We were thrilled with the quality of the product and the sales were good. In association with CompuLab, we’ll soon extend the range to include new models, a low-cost unit featuring an SSD drive and a high-end unit based on the Intel i7 processor.
  • Finally, I’d like to thank all the donors and sponsors who help fund Linux Mint. Your contributions and financial help are empowering us and thanks to you we can achieve our goals without worrying about commercial aspects. Many thanks to all of you.

In the latest Update Pack to Linux Mint Debian (UP4) released in March, MATE 1.2 and Cinnamon 1.4 were made available as well as an option called “gnome2-frozen” which allowed users to stick to Gnome 2 and skip the Update Pack altogether.

Moving forward and in preparation for Update Pack 5, this repository is now discontinued.

An rsync archive was made available for users and mirrors interested in acquiring a copy of the content of Update Pack 3. This archive will remain open for a couple of weeks and is available at the following address:

  • rsync://debian.linuxmint.com::gnome2-frozen

This is our last goodbye to Gnome 2, a desktop we enjoyed working with since 2006 and which we can unfortunately no longer provide. Although there are still a few technologies which weren’t ported to newer desktops, we’re really proud of the work done by the MATE team and the results we’re getting with Cinnamon. Desktops like KDE and Xfce have also matured a lot and new solutions such as Shell and Unity provide additional alternatives to users.

The loss of Gnome 2 was a traumatic experience not only for users but for desktop distributions. Most of our focus in Linux Mint 12 and Linux Mint 13 went towards making this transition as smooth as possible. With Linux Mint 14 we’ll see the focus switch back towards iterative development/innovations and incremental improvements. Cinnamon will continue to improve and gain momentum but the focus will switch back to developing tools and improving the Linux Mint desktop experience itself, across all editions.