The Linux Mint Blog

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 6 RC1. Congratulations and thanks to all the people who contributed to this release, to all the translators, to the upstream developers and projects which made this possible and above all to the development team for their continuous support.

Introduction to Linux Mint 6 and new features:

Based on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, Linux 2.6.27, Gnome 2.24 and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” comes with a brand new “Software Manager”, FTP support in mintUpload, proxy support and history of updates in mintUpdate, tabbed browsing in Nautilus and a lot of other improvements. For a complete list of new features read: What’s new in Felicia?

System requirements and known issues:

A minimum of 512MB of RAM is recommended. Once installed the system works fine with as low as 256MB RAM. The installation process deals with 2.5GB of data compressed on a 700MB CD and it can hang or fail on systems with less than 512MB RAM. If you have between 256MB and 512MB RAM you may have to try to install several times.

As an RC (Release Candidate) this release is targeted at developers and beta-testers who want to help Linux Mint find and correct bugs before the stable release. Please do not use this release as your main desktop. For a complete list of known issues read the Release Notes.

Translations, feedback and bug reports:

The testing will last for 2 weeks. Please report any bug you may find via the Linux Mint 6 RC1 Bug Thread and give us your feedback on this release by posting a comment right here on the blog.

Mint tools are being actively localized. Make sure to check that your language is supported by all the Mint tools. If it isn’t, please participate in the translating effort taking place on our forums.

Release schedule:

After these 2 weeks, we will prepare for a stable release (or a second RC if important changes were to be introduced), including the Linux Mint 6 User Guide, the finalized Software Portal, a desktop tour of Felicia and an Universal Edition ISO (which will replace the previously called “Light Edition” and feature support for all major languages on a live DVD).

The x64 edition will follow shortly after. In fact it was our initial purpose to release Main, Universal and x64 editions all at the same time. I had to deviate from that plan due to personal reasons and so this RC release only features the Main edition, but there is still a chance that all three editions could go final and be released as stable at the same time.

We’re also planning to release an upgrade tool which will automate the process of upgrading from Linux Mint 5 Elyssa to Linux Mint 6 Felicia.

Download Linux Mint 6 RC1:

You can download Linux Mint 6 RC1 via torrent or via HTTP:

Size: 662MB LiveCD
MD5Sum: ad4b630889b53aeba99aaa82d7b4bb41

Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.de/downloads.html
HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=31

Europe:

• http://cesium.di.uminho.pt/pub/linuxmint/testing/ (Portugal)
• http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/testing/ (Ireland)

Northern America:

• http://mirror.amarillolinux.com/linuxmint/testing/ (USA)
• http://linuxmint.norhex.com/linuxmint.com/testing/ (USA)
• http://linuxmint.secsup.org/testing/ (USA)
• ftp://mirrors.secution.com/linuxmint.com/testing/ (USA)
• http://linuxmint.sourcemirrors.org/testing/ (USA)

Rest of the World:

• http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/linuxmint/testing/ (Australia)
• ftp://202.78.230.5/LinuxMint/testing/ (Vietnam)

Enjoy!

Have a lot of fun testing this release candidate and let’s all hope it will help us make a great stable release.

* News about Mint

Intrepid has been released and work has started to produce Mint 6 Felicia

We will use another approach than earlier and make the production more scripted  which will make the editions a bit more like each other

Some of the news in Felicia have been presented earlier in the blog. This includes the new features in Intrepid and a bunch of Mint specific news
- MintUpdate 3 (see blog for list of improvements)
- MintInstall 5 (see blog..)
- MintUpload 2 (FTP support)
- MintNanny (see blog..)
- command line improvements (especially the new search command added to mintSystem)
- an upgrade tool (which will be released AFTER Mint 6)
- easy file-sharing within same network via integrated Giver
- upstream: multi-tabs in Nautilus and multiple Gnome 2.24 improvements
And more….
* News about Linux

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10) was released Desktop Server

Ubuntu Linux: 8 Million Users and Growing

Dell developer joins Ubuntu Core Development Team

Shuttleworth: Ubuntu developer Canonical may need 3-5 more years of funding

Microsoft invited the Samba Team to it’s home campus for a week of hands on testing with their engineers

Mac, Linux, BSD open for attack according to Kaspersky

Mark Shuttleworth on GNOME usability hackfest

Linux to Ship on More Desktops than Windows

What is PackageKit? It’s gaining support

Linus Thorvalds on GPL and Richard Stallman

Linux Hater’s Blog closed

The latest news about the kernel is always found here

* News about IT

Internet Watch foundation for reports on Child sexual abuse content hosted worldwide

EuroPriSe -the European Privacy Seal for IT Products and IT-Based Services

Google Book Search comes to an agreement with authors and publishers.

Google Web Server ranks #3 in the Netcraft Web Server Survey, with 5.76% of all domains

Google guarantees 99.9% uptime for Google Apps

Google abandons deal with Yahoo

Yahoo’s Yang says Microsoft deal still best option

The end of an era - Windows 3.x - On 1 November Microsoft stopped issuing licences

Microsoft has introduced Office web applications

Windows Live ID Commits to Support OpenID (and so does Google)

Check Your Passwords Against Brute Force Attacks

Student charged after alerting principal to server hack

6 nabbed for Sarkozy hack

French Senate passes bill to disconnect filesharers

BD+, the Blu-ray copy protection system that was supposed to last 10 years, has now been solidly broken

Click Fraud Increasingly Driven by Botnets

OpenOffice Multiple Vulnerabilties and Security Issue

Microsoft Blue Hat: Researcher Demos No-Hack Attack

Delayed Java update finally ships

Microsoft to open up ‘M’ language

Only hours after Microsoft released an emergency patch the hole in Windows was being abused

Sinowal Trojan May Be One of the Worst Crimeware Ever Created

McCain pulls ahead in pharmaceutical spam

If you’re currently running Linux Mint 5 Fluxbox CE RC1 you can upgrade to the stable version by following these instructions: http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=142&t=18070

If you’re currently running Linux Mint 5 x64 RC1 you do not need to upgrade to the stable release. Compared to RC1, the stable release fixes two minor bugs:

• The medibuntu repositories were defined in both /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d
• The default Samba workgroup name in /etc/samba/smb.conf was “WORKGROUP” instead of “MSHOME”

Introduction

Nothing groundbreaking was planned for mintMenu in Linux Mint 6 but it still needed many little adjustments, so here comes mintMenu 4.1 with the following changes:

• The search command (which is launched when you press enter after typing text in the filter bar) is now configurable.
• The menu icon is now configurable
• In the places plugin, “Software Portal” was replaced with “Software Manager” and now launches the new MintInstall frontend
• The menu name used to be “Elyssa” and is now “Menu” by default

Also, a lot of bug-fixing and refactoring was done:

• System plugin refactored (to the user that will look better aligned)
• Places plugin refactored (this gets rid of a bug that made “home”, “desktop” and “network” take the focus away from the filter bar)
• Pongo and formatting removed from localization files to make it easier to translate the tool
• MintMenu now relies on mintSystem to get common data
• About dialog now shows GPL licence
• All double capital letters were removed “All Applications”, “All Categories” etc..

Installation

Before you upgrade mintMenu you should make sure to clean your Gconf entries for it. This will make you loose your mintMenu preferences but that’s the price to pay to get the clean new shiny version:

1. Right click on mintMenu and remove it from the Gnome panel
2. Open a terminal and type “gconftool-2 –recursive-unset /apps/mintMenu”

Once you’ve done that you can get mintMenu 4.1 from the Romeo repositories, or you can get the debs from here:

• http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/romeo/m/mintsystem/mintsystem_5.5_all.deb
• http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/romeo/m/mintmenu/mintmenu_4.1.2_all.deb
  

Once the installation is finished, you can right click on the Gnome panel and add mintMenu again.

Translations

mintMenu 4.1 is currently supporting English and French. Please help us translate it by following the instructions written on this forum thread:

http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=17836

Feedback and bugs

Please post comments here on the blog if you find bugs in mintMenu 4.1. Give us feedback also if you like it and if everything’s fine so we can eventually consider it stable and move it down to stable repositories.

Spread the word

We’re trying to raise people’s awareness about the Mint project and we’ve added a Digg plugin to this blog. If you find this blog post interesting, please help us spread the word by submitting it as a Digg story or by digging it if it’s already submitted.

This is the third attempt at launching a podcast about Linux Mint and this time we want to get something working for and by the community.

We’re looking for:

• a benevolent dictator for this new podcast. Somebody who will be available frequently and who would be the real leader behind this project.
• people who want to co-host the show or contribute sections to it.

Once a team is in place we want that new podcast to have its own .com so it can generate its own revenue and develop its own model. Our intention isn’t to maintain this podcast ourselves, but to gather a team who will do that independently.

Ideally we’d like to see that podcast release on a weekly basis and cover the topics we talk about in this blog. We’d like it to be something the community would listen to learn more about Mint but also something we’d listen to to know more about our community.

Ideally we’d like:

• hosts not to read notes, but to speak and improvise.
• the format of the show to be clear (know what topics you will talk about before you start).
• the show to be serious without being formal
• the show to start small if necessary (don’t be too ambitious),  but to guarantee a weekly release.

PS: It takes one man for a project to succeed so if you’re motivated and confident about yourself, please come forward. Of course the bigger the team the better, but if many people are motivated and if they live in different regions of the World and can’t work together for some other reasons we can help launch more than one podcast.

There are many ways Linux Mint can help such podcasts (trafic, audience, content) and many ways these podcasts will help us as well. Let’s make this work, let’s give a voice to our community, let’s look forward to have a place where we can talk.

Linux Mint 3.0 Cassandra and Linux Mint 3.1 Celena will reach end of life on October 19th. Both releases were based on Ubuntu 7.04 which is planned to reach end-of-life at the same date.

Repositories will remain open for another while but no more updates or security fixes will be made available for these two releases.

Users of Linux Mint 3.x are asked to upgrade to Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna or to perform a fresh installation of Linux Mint 5 Elyssa.

Announcement from Ubuntu: “Ubuntu announced the release of 7.04 almost 18 months ago, on April 19, 2007. As with the earlier releases, Ubuntu committed to ongoing security and critical fixes for a period of 18 months. The support period is now nearing its end and Ubuntu 7.04 will reach end of life on Sunday, October 19th, 2008. At that time, Ubuntu Security Notices will no longer include information or updated packages for Ubuntu 7.04.”

Note: Linux Mint follows the Ubuntu release cycle with a new release every 6 months, a lifespan of about 1.5 years per release and 3 years per LTS release. LTS stands for Long Term Support. Linux Mint 5 is an LTS release.