1. How do I upgrade to Elyssa?

The RC (Public BETA) releases are not meant to be “used”, they’re meant to be “tested”. Of course, people have been waiting for Elyssa for a long time and I can understand why they can’t wait for the Stable release and why they replace their main OS with these RCs. This is OK, it’s possible but it’s not “recommended”. The reason we publish these RC releases is for people to test them and for us to fix as many bugs as possible before the release becomes stable. The proper way to test an RC is to install it, this way you test the liveCD, the installer and the system is fresh. By upgrading to it instead of installing it, you’re not helping us test it.. you might in fact report problems that are related not to the release itself but to the way you performed the upgrade… Also, until the branch is actually stable, we are not in a position to publish upgrade instructions since these might still change.

So we’re hoping you keep Daryna as your main OS and test these RCs for us, to report bugs and help us out, on a separate partition or a virtual machine.

When Elyssa is stable we will publish upgrade instructions and you will be able to upgrade to it from Daryna stable, Elyssa RC1 (beta 032) and Elyssa RC2 (beta 048). Again, if you’re running RC1 or RC2 we strongly recommend you perform a fresh install when Stable comes out.

2. When are the other editions coming?

The KDE CE is being tested by the team. Boo has given Exploder 2 ISOs already. QT frontends for all the mint tools are planned but still missing.

Work on the X86_64 edition will begin as soon as Elyssa stable is out.

3. What happens if Elyssa doesn’t work for me?

Ubuntu is a great base but it’s also an innovative and adventurous distribution… like us actually, so the problem with this is.. where do we get stability and consistency between releases? How do we ensure there are no regressions? To be honest, we don’t. So there might be a few people for whom Daryna worked great and who won’t be as lucky with Elyssa. Don’t despair.. we’re planning on backporting all the mint tools to Daryna. So whether you run Elyssa or keep Daryna in the future you will be able to enjoy all the fixes and improvements we’ve made within the Mint tools.

I’ll talk about this more in details later as we start backporting applications into Daryna.

4. Where is the User Guide for Elyssa?

It will be made available as we’re getting close to the stable release.

5. I can’t find application X in the Elyssa Software Portal, where is it?

We’re still adding applications to it. For instance Skype and Google Earth were added yesterday along with 109 other applications… as we’re getting close to the stable release the portal will be containing more and more software. If it’s missing something after the Stable release is out, please let us know by posting about it in the forums.

6. I found a bug in Elyssa RC2, where can I report it?

Here: http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=0&t=12853

Make sure you also read the release notes, because:

– They might answer some of your questions
– They might show you features you didn’t know about (check the section called “What’s new in Elyssa?”)
– They might mention limitations/issues we already know about.

The release notes are available here: http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa.php

7. Where is the torrent for Elyssa?

Here: http://www.linuxmint.de/downloads.html

8. Other questions?

Anyone?

Well I have started on the Elyssa KDE Beta’s using the new Hardy base. My first Beta is up and running live in a virtual machine and it is all looking great so far. I think that since there is not much of a change in KDE 3 (3.5.8 to 3.5.9) that this will speed up development for me. I see the big slow down being porting the mint applications to Qt3. Well I had better get back to work.

Cheers Boo

What is the difference between a Community Edition and the Main Edition? And if a Community Edition isn’t somehow as official as the Main Edition then what’s the difference between Community Editions and derivative distros? Hopefully after this blog post things will become a little clearer for everyone.

Linux Mint’s purpose is to make an elegant and efficient desktop operating system. As you can see the project is extremely focused on its main purpose and only supports one architecture (x86), one desktop (Gnome) and basically one edition, the Main Edition. Of course the community has other needs and the projects, without loosing focus on its core purpose also wants to address these needs. So the system in place for this is a “best-effort” strategy which consists in appointing a maintainer from the community to work on what we call a “Community Edition”.

Let’s take the KDE Community Edition for instance. Jamie Boo Birse, from Australia, is the man who develops, maintains and is responsible for making a variation of Linux Mint using KDE instead of Gnome. His ISO is part of the Mint family, it’s tested and released in exactly the same way as the Main Edition but he does all the work, the team doesn’t. Now of course, he is himself part of the team but only working on this in his spare time.

So what’s the difference between his edition and the Main one for instance…? Well, it’s labelled “Linux Mint”, it bears the Linux Mint branding and the quality of its releases directly affect the image of Linux Mint as a whole. It’s tested and released in exactly the same way as the Main Edition…. basically it’s almost the same as if it was an official edition. The only reason it’s called a “Community” edition is because it’s maintained by Jamie Boo Birse, in his spare time, and because Jamie doesn’t get paid or compensated in any way for what he does. So the difference between the Main Edition and Community Editions doesn’t have to do with quality, or level of testing, it simply has to do with dedication and focus.

If tomorrow Jamie Boo was hired by Linux Mint and became a full time employee, the main difference wouldn’t have to do with quality or testing. The quality is already very high and we demand as much testing on Community Editions than we do on the Main one. The main difference would be that the KDE Edition would be something we could commit as much as we do with the Main one. Tomorrow we would be in a position to say, this KDE Edition will be released as fast and as frequently as the Main one. In fact the Main one wouldn’t the main one anymore, but probably a Gnome one.. if we started focusing and committing as much on the KDE edition.

So in brief, a Community Edition is of high quality (same as the Main one), very well tested (exactly as the main one), released in exactly the same way as the Main Edition and the only real difference is that we can’t demand as much in terms of work, delays and schedule on Community Editions because their maintainers do not get compensated for it. It’s a best-effort kind of thing but only gets released when its quality is as high as expected.

Now when we look at a derivative distribution it’s a complete different story. We don’t communicate with the maintainer, we don’t test, and we’re not responsible for the release. Basically we have no control over what is done in a derivated distribution and we can’t guarantee its quality. For this reason it is extremely important to us that derivative distributions do not associate themselves with us by using our branding our confusing their users by telling them they’re a “Linux Mint Community Edition”.

We’ve had trouble by the past with two derivative distributions:

– Ultumix started as an independent project but for some reason they thought it would be a good idea to call themselves “Linux Mint Ultumix Edition”. Since we never agreed to that, and we never participated in the making of it, it obviously isn’t an edition, since it’s got nothing to do with Linux Mint, only the technical fact that it’s based on it.

– Maryan Linux started as the Linux Mint E17 Edition. Maty was appointed as its maintainer and it was agreed we’d have a Daryna E17 CE (Community Edition). The problem was that Maty never submitted any ISO to the team, no tests were ever run on this edition and at the same time he was communicating release dates to the public and planning to release it himself. If we can’t test an ISO and take control on its release strategy we can’t guarantee its quality and for that reason it can’t be called “Linux Mint”. The edition was discontinued and Maty rebranded it as a separate distribution called Maryan Linux.

Both Community Editions and derivative distributions are good for Linux Mint. Editions allow us to offer a wider range of desktops without much efforts, derivative distributions all us to see new ideas implemented based on the technology we develop and outside of our control. The important thing of course for anybody interested in making his/her own variation of Linux Mint is to know what he/she wants to achieve, not in term of technique, but in term of organization. Does the maintainer want to make an edition (ie. another Mint desktop) or does he/she want to start maintaining his own project (new organization, new way of working, independance from the Linux Mint project..etc).

We always welcome new editions/distributions, the important thing is to clearly distinguish between the two. I hope Ultumix will sort out their branding issues and that we’ll be able to commit more in to delivering and maintaining some important community editions maybe to move them back to official editions and give them the same level of priority as the Main edition gets once Linux Mint starts growing.