Search Results for: mate edition

Linux Mint servers

January 3, 2011 by Clem·17 Comments

Forums and community website:

The forums were moved to the USA to a new Cloud Server hosted by Rackspace, running Debian Lenny in 64-bit with 4GB RAM.

The community website remains in Toronto, Canada, where it’s now running on its own.

This configuration is more costly than before but this is not a problem considering the level of financial support we’re receiving from the community and the income generated through traffic in the distribution and the websites. During our tests, we found the forums would run smoothly with 8GB RAM and occasionally hang with 2GB RAM. It costs twice as much each time the amount of RAM is doubled on the server. Since we migrated the forums to their 4GB configuration 4 days ago, we only observed one period of downtime which lasted approximately 15 minutes. The rest of the time, the forums were faster and more responsive than before.

As I’m writing this post, there are 127 people connected to the forums, the server is showing a load average of 0.48, 0.42, 0.37 and using 2.6GB of its 4GB RAM.

The database in Toronto hasn’t gone down since the migration and the community website has had no downtime.

Development/test/archive servers:

We recently lost of test server in London which was also acting as our main public archive rsync server.

The public archive was moved to a second new Cloud Server hosted by Rackspace, running Debian Lenny in 64-bit with 2GB RAM.

The test server wasn’t replaced yet. We’re currently talking to Vault Networks (who already provides us with our Blog server in Miami) and Netrino (who is mirroring Linux Mint from the UK) to acquire a new server through sponsorship. If this fails, we’ll just purchase a new one.

We also started to experiment with remote development and remote release-related activities. The build and smoke-test of the LMDE 201101 32-bit ISO for instance was performed remotely in Miami. This allows us to test and modify ISO images remotely without suffering the delays associated with transferring the images back and forth between the server and our personal locations. I mentioned this briefly, but when the local area only provides a 128kbps uplink and uploading 1GB of data can take more than 2 days, this is a huge advantage for us. Most of our maintainers thankfully benefit from a decent broadband connection but this also represents a plus when we find minor bugs holding an RC release. We can then quickly and remotely modify the ISO, fix the minor bugs, and perform regression testing on it without going through another cycle with the maintainer. At the moment we’re only able to do this in 32-bit. The 64-bit server we’ll use as our test server will also be used for this kind of activities.

Our current status:

Our website is hosted in Stasbourg, France, by Nutime for a ridiculously low price. Michael Kaufmann (a.k.a “d00p”), who is also the owner of the Spotchat IRC network, supported us very early and worked in close collaboration with the team. Kuja and Michael regularly look after our hosting and perform administration tasks and monitoring for us and their involvement with Linux Mint goes far beyond hosting. Linux Mint couldn’t have taken off without their help at the time and though we moved most of our infrastructure to other dedicated locations around the World, we’re still in close relationship with them. Our IRC channels are operated for free on the Spotchat network, and we’re paying for a second dedicated server in Strasbourg which is hosting our repositories.

Vault Networks is our biggest sponsor and they’re providing us with a free dedicated server located in Miami. The server is used to host this blog, but also to seed torrents at high-speed during releases and recently to perform remote development and testing in 32-bit.

Our third biggest sponsor, SevenL, also provides us with a free dedicated server located in Toronto. The server helped us a lot when the traffic became more important and the growth of the project meant services had to be split and taken out of Germany. The forums were successfully hosted there for a long time. The server is now dedicated to hosting the community website.

An account with Rackspace was opened to allow us to quickly create cloud servers and allocate resources to them. Though this technology isn’t suited for remote development or testing, it’s extremely versatile and handy for web hosting and quick migrations. We currently pay for 2 cloud servers, one hosting our forums and the other one hosting our public archive. Due to the high cost of this service, it’s hard to say whether these servers will continue to host the public archive and forums in the future or whether we’ll be migrating these to proper dedicated servers in the future, but one thing is for sure, Rackspace is giving us a lot of flexibility here.

I would like to thank Vault Networks, SevenL and Nutime for the dedicated servers they provide to us. We rarely acknowledge their contribution outside the sponsors page on the website and their help is extremely valuable to us. Linux Mint is growing and many people have observed what is now a real infrastructure problem. We’re scaling and our servers are having a hard time dealing with the popularity of our desktop. Of course, this is extremely positive, though it does represent a real challenge. By communicating differently (hosting torrents both in Strasbourg and Miami, and linking to our HTTP mirrors directly from the blog) we managed to successfully release the latest LMDE without experiencing downtime on our website. With the recent allocation of a cloud server, we now enjoy stable forums and community website. It’s a matter of days before we address the situation with the test server and resume our activity for the upcoming KDE edition. And we’ll soon be able to remotely develop and test in 64-bit. It takes time, it’s not our area of expertise, but as you can see we’re tackling the problem slowly but surely and we’re receiving a lot of help and support from these three companies.

Update (2010-01-04): Our server in London is back and should be operational again as our test server within 48 hours.

Monthly Stats – October 2010

November 1, 2010 by Clem·36 Comments

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

$150, Jim D. aka “jajodo”
$135, Dr J. C. aka “Medicine Man“
$108 (2nd donation), Achim Leybach
$100 (2nd donation), Jordan S.
$100, Pascal A.
$100, Bruno C.
$100, Stephen P.
$100, Onofre Properties and Rentals
$100, Somers Rocks Press
$100, altair4
$100, Robert C.
$94.5, Olivier R.
$91, Balázs G.
$81.25 (2nd donation), Ian M. aka “iMitch403”
$81 (3rd donation), Jan W.
$78, Orlando M. M.
$67.5, Niranjan Radhakrishnan aka “niranj”
$65 (2nd donation), Edwin Vervliet aka “edwin”
$65, Jozsef B.
$61.75 (2nd donation), Ian M. aka “iMitch403”
$60 (2nd donation), David Gagne aka “davidgagne80”
$54.6, Nick Prosch
$52 (2nd donation), Olaf L. aka “olligod”
$51 (2nd donation), Suyog B.
$50 (7th donation), Jonathan B. Horen aka “JBHoren“
$50 (2nd donation), Richard H.
$50, John M.
$50, Carlos H. G.
$50, Glenn R.
$50, William R.
$50, Simon N.
$50, Paul E.
$50, 21st Century Cabinets
$50, Paul C
$50, Tim M.
$50, Michael L. aka “ddavid123”
$50, Philip M.
$50, Carl G.
$47.25, Sebastian W.
$47.25, Christian aka “nert”
$40, Johh D.
$40, Dale R.
$39 (5th donation), Wolfgang P.
$37, Jarosław N.
$35 (11th donation), Pete Molina aka “pmolina”
$35 (2nd donation), Sung P.
$33.75, J J. V. K.
$33.75, Harald T.
$33, Maxim A. aka “Sp1ker“
$33, Scott N.
$30 (2nd donation), Derek L.
$30, Jun Q.
$30, Graham J.
$27 (14th donation), Manuel F.
$27 (4th donation), Miguel Cunha Duarte aka “mcduarte2000“
$27 (2nd donation), Salvador T. S.
$27 (2nd donation), Gilles Jurek
$27, Christian P.
$27, Prepress by Sloane
$27, Andreas G.
$27, Ronnie T.
$27, Miss anon aka “Anonymous “
$27, Molnár P.
$26 (13th donation), Marco R.
$26 (8th donation), Olli K.
$26 (2nd donation), David T.
$26, Douglas H.
$26, Jon C. K.
$25 (3rd donation), Kamal G.
$25 (3rd donation), Kenny Hendrick aka “NprComputers“
$25 (2nd donation), Ventura M
$25 (2nd donation), Edward Comer aka “celem”
$25, Norman B. D.
$25, Dror C.
$25, Adam M.
$25, James J.
$25, John B.
$25, Kenneth D. H.
$23.45, Borja L. S.
$21, Илья Ш.
$20.25, Ian P.
$20 (7th donation), Matthew M.
$20 (3rd donation), Mark B.
$20 (2nd donation), David S.
$20 (2nd donation), Chad S. aka “seca”
$20 (2nd donation), Juhani K.
$20 (2nd donation), Jeffrey DeVries
$20 (2nd donation), Anonymous
$20, Roger P.
$20, John B.
$20, Trevor H.
$20, Kimberly P.
$20, Erling D.
$20, Jackson C. aka “Splintercat“
$20, Robert L.
$20, Zachary S.
$20, Martin H.
$20, Tom B.
$20, Russell N.
$20, Todd M.
$20, Daniel J.
$20, Roy C.
$20, Shreyas G.
$20, Robert K.
$20, Roger G.
$20, Hugh Dowling
$19.5, Simon C.
$18 (2nd donation), DLX Company
$18, Graham T.
$17, David R.
$16.2 (2nd donation), Kevin D.
$16, Vivian P. aka “VRP”
$15 (16th donation), slw
$15 (2nd donation), Michael C.
$15 (2nd donation), Greg Dawes aka “Greg-NZ”
$15, Vincent A.
$15, Stephan K.
$13.5 (10th donation), Temel Balci
$13.5, Michael T.
$13.5, Jörn G.
$13.5, Martin J.
$13.5, Volker K.
$13.5, C R. P.
$13.5, Ricardo J. G.
$13.5, Siniša M.
$13 (12th donation), Emil Pavlov aka “emil_pavlov”
$13, Christian B.
$13, Helmut T.
$13, Attila B.
$10.8, Vagn B. J.
$10 (6th donation), William S. aka “Supergoo”
$10 (3rd donation), Jose P.
$10 (2nd donation), Paul B.
$10 (2nd donation), Luis D.
$10, Mark C.
$10, Nobutoshi K. aka “FOUNCID”
$10, Alexandr Bobylov
$10, Dan N.
$10, Thomas M.
$10, Jacob T.
$10, Francisco Hernández aka “frankh73”
$10, Barry J. C.
$10, Jesus R. P.
$10, David C.
$10, Chandrasing P.
$10, John M.
$10, Andy’s Pens
$10, Justin P.
$10, Colin R.
$9.45 (5th donation), Sylwia Bialczak
$9, Kaarel K. aka “Kaar3l”
$8, Bernhard N.
$8, Jamie F.
$7 (2nd donation), Tiaan Steynberg aka “Jesica“
$7, Zoe Q.
$6.75 (2nd donation), Ulf S. aka “MonteDrago”
$6.75, Barry M.
$6.75, Michael L.
$6.75, Sven B.
$6.75, Kalle F.
$6.5, Ronald T.
$6.5, Fabio N.
$5.4, Álvaro S. T.
$5 (4th donation), Michael G.
$5 (3rd donation), Rashed aka “Rashed“
$5 (2nd donation), Susann aka “Blogger Su“
$5, Ankit M.
$5, Dominic B.
$5, Guillermo E. D.
$5, Jamie H.
$5, O.Mehmet. Y. aka “mehmet7”
$5, John F.
$5, Irondojo.com
$5, Simon R.
$5, Mr D. S. V.
$5, Owen G.
$4, Thomas L.
$3, Michał S.
$2.5 (2nd donation), Le T.
$2 (2nd donation), Craig Stock aka “craig10x”
$2, Philip C.
$1.5 (2nd donation), Charles Vlk aka “kunk”
$1.35, eCommerce24h.pl
$1.33 (2nd donation), Anton Konnoff
$1 (6th donation), free backlinks
$1 (3rd donation), Gonzalo C. aka “gcosta“
$1, Efriel Elyasa
$1, jk
$1, Ruben D. G.

Sponsors:

$231, R1Soft
$106, SEOMoves
$75, John Ritchie aka “Aging Technogeek”
$25, American Broadband Family of Companies
$25, Blayne B.
$20, Az Van aka “newW2”
$20, CEPTOR Datentechnik oHG
$20, Scott P.
$15, Atomidata
$12, Thomas S. aka “Thom aus Breuberg”
$12, Tim W.
$11, Promotional Mouse Mats
$10, Advermedia
$10, Angel M. D.
$10, Anthony Gallon
$10, Barry’s Tickets
$10, Brandon P.
$10, Dan Jackson
$10, Jack H.
$10, Jeramy R.
$10, Mugs Promotional
$10, Real Estate Centers
$10, Rob S.
$10, SEM Visibility
$10, TaoWoods Village
$10, Website Auditor
$10, William C. Mitchell aka “onewing”
$10, worldsrealestate.net
$9, Promotional Items
$8, Attila Vecsei
$8, Printed Clothing
$7, Jesse Burroughs aka “JpBя”
$7, Personalised Clothing
$7, Promotional Mug
$6, Clothing Promotional
$6, Martin Senftleben aka “DrMartinus“
$5, Don Brubaker
$5, Flemming D. Joergensen aka “DcyMatrix“
$5, J.A. Sin aka “Futari”
$5, Jeffrey S.
$5, Joe H. aka “JoeFootball”
$5, Kevin D.
$5, Lee K.
$5, Matthew Y.
$5, Nicholas H.
$5, Parental Control Software
$5, Printed Clothing
$5, Printed Mug
$5, Private Jets Charter
$5, Promotional Gifts
$5, Steve Burdine aka “Highfructose327“
$5, Thomas Howson
$5, Torstein Sornes aka “todda7”
$5, Turin
$4, Baby shower favors
$4, Chile travel
$4, Ian E. aka “EchoLynx “
$3, CreationsByRichie – Animated Banners & Graphical Designs
$3, Josef K.
$2, Caravan Awnings
$2, Douglas T.
$2, Joerg Dreckmann
$2, PapayaMedia.com aka “juankvillegas“
$2, SPAC Information and News
$1.5, Daniel A.
$1.5, Farbyte
$1, Недвижимость на Кипре
$1, недвижимость в греции
$1, Cyprus Resale
$1, Cyprus Weather
$1, Ethoseo Internet Marketing Bellingham, WA
$1, Frank S.
$1, giochi gratis
$1, Greg Flynn
$1, iPad News
$1, Online Pokerraum aka “donegon“
$1, Pokerschule
$1, Property In Greece
$1, redfoa
$1, redfoa
$1, Renelou Esperanzate
$1, Seth Forrestier
$1, surfinpeace.co.uk
$1, very-clever.com

Money raised in October:

* Donations: $5283.08 (189 donors)
* Sponsors: $929 (84 sponsors)

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

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

Linux Mint 9 Isadora LTS: 56.26%
Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 12.36%
Linux Mint 8 Helena: 11.49%
Linux Mint 10 Julia: 10.14%
LMDE: 3.79%
Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 2.32%
Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 2.30%
Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 1.34%

Web Stats:

Visits: 2,579,663
Unique views: 3,293,483
Pageviews: 4,239,064
Page impressions: 2,148,044
Search queries: 6,623,880
Forum users: 38,553
Forum posts: 321,498

Rankings:

Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1430 (3rd)
Distrowatch (traffic share): 5.1% (2nd)
Alexa (website ranking): 17,846th

Events:

Release: Linux Mint 10 RC
mintCast released 2 episodes: http://mintcast.org/

Summary:

October was an exciting month for us, with all the attention culminating around a single event, the release of Linux Mint 10 RC. The new artwork was well received within the community and we noted people were excited by the new features. I’d like to thank all the translators who are participating in translating it at the moment, and also all the people who raised bug reports. We’ve fixed a lot of bugs since the RC release, and even though nothing critical was found, the feedback gave us the opportunity to bring additional yet significant improvements. The stable release of Linux Mint 10 should be ready early this November and we’re hoping it will be among the most popular desktops we’ve ever released.
We’re traditionally hit by the gap between Ubuntu and Linux Mint in the release cycle, when there’s a new Ubuntu system out there, and no up-to-date Linux Mint released yet. Surprisingly this year, we managed to close this gap to a minimum with an early RC release and a longer delay between RC and stable. Our user base didn’t fluctuate by 10% like it usually does and our income is actually up this month.
Last month, I expressed worries about the low amount in donations compared to 2009. I don’t really know how to express the gratitude I feel towards the community right now, but it’s huge… you reacted more than we ever hoped. Almost twice as many people donated and we managed to collect more this month than we ever did before: $5283. This is a fantastic sign of support. It’s not only inspiring and motivating, it’s also extremely comforting going forwards and it shows us the level of support we’re having from you. Very few projects out there manage to get this far without corporate backing and focus on commercial activities. Thanks to you, we don’t have to worry about that, we’re at the top, fully focused on the distribution itself, and it’s all community-funded. It’s hard to describe how special this is and I feel really thankful and privileged by this.
The blog was moved to its own dedicated server in the USA. As a result both the website and the blog are now more responsive.
Coming up, we’re getting close to a stable release of Linux Mint 10 early November, a second LMDE release with the same features and an improved installer in December. Work also started on the other editions and we’ll have more news about them in the coming days.

Monthly Stats – September 2010

October 1, 2010 by Clem·33 Comments