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Join the team - 2 new projects coming up
» Linux Mint BlogThe last community project was a success and it resulted in the creation of the mintCast podcast, hosted by the very talented Charles Olsen. You can still join and contribute to this project by visiting this link: [https:] I come to you today and the community of Linux Mint users, to find more people interested in [...] -
x64 Edition - News Update
» Linux Mint BlogHi, Very few bugs were found in Linux Mint 6 x64 RC1 and I’m happy to announce that RC1 users will not have to download the stable release. A few things happened however and the decision was made to include both Flash and Sun Java in 64 bit. So far, x64 came with a 32 bit Flash [...] -
mintCast - Episode 5
» Linux Mint BlogCharles Olsen and the mintCast team published another episode of their podcast. Happy listening everyone! In Episode 5: The News (Wine, Reading on paper vs reading on a screen, Windows 7 to kill Linux) Rothgar’s segment: CES 2009 (Palm Pre, Vaoi P, Asus Eee Keyboard), ext4 filesystem, Gnome-Art NG. Main Story: Templates in OpenOffice.org Website of the Week: [www.snopes.com] To subscribe [...] -
The Mint Newsletter - issue 72
» Linux Mint Blog* News about Mint Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” XFCE CE RC1 released! Mint tools updates for Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS * News about Linux The Linux Foundation’s “I’m Linux” Video Contest A new version of Ubuntu Brainstorm UbuntuDeveloperWeek beginning January 19 Watching the Obama Official Inauguration on Linux with Moonlight. A Firefox plugin was made ready on January 20 Pidgin had problems [...] -
Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” XFCE CE RC1 released!
» Linux Mint BlogThe team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 6 XFCE Community Edition RC1. Based on Xubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, Linux 2.6.27, XFCE 4.4.2 and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” XFCE CE comes with a brand new “Software Manager”, FTP support in mintUpload, proxy support and history of updates in mintUpdate, mintDisk [...] -
Mint 6 Review: Dedoimedo
» Linux Mint BlogDedoimedo recently reviewed Linux Mint 6 Felicia. The review is enthusiastic and covers some of the improvements brought in the latest release. Happy reading everyone. Link to the review: [www.dedoimedo.com] Comments: Dedoimedo writes: “Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, which means you’re in for rock-solid stability, an extremely friendly experience, rich [...] -
Mint tools updates for Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS
» Linux Mint BlogThe following updates were pushed towards the stable branch of the Linux Mint 5 repositories: mintUpload: 1.4 –> 2.0.2 (adds FTP support) mintUpdate: 2.7 –> 3.2.2 (adds proxy support, history of updates and new GUI) mintInstall: 3.9 –> 5.3.6 (featuring the new “Software Manager” frontend) mintMenu: 4.0 –> 4.1.2 (many under-the-hood fixes, adapted to the new software manager) mintSystem: 1.3 [...] -
Mint 6 Review: Meldroc
» Linux Mint BlogMeldroc published a nice review of Linux Mint 6 Felicia Main Edition. Happy reading everyone and here are my comments about it. Link to the review: [www.meldroc.com] Comments: Meldroc writes: “Linux Mint is a bit of a dark horse when compared with the big distros like Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat or Gentoo.” –> I had to wikipedia that expression before I [...] -
The Mint Newsletter - issue 71
» Linux Mint Blog* News about Mint Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” x64 RC1 released! Linux Mint 7 will be named “Gloria” mintInstall 5.3.6 - faster refresh We have had some problems in the forum - Mint is ever more popular and our servers become overloaded. We will soon have a new server and better bandwidth * News about Linux The latest news about the [...] -
mintInstall 5.3.6 - faster refresh
» Linux Mint BlogA new version of mintInstall was added to Romeo for Linux Mint 5 Elyssa and Linux Mint 6 Felicia. Changes: - The refresh process is now much faster. If data is already present (icons, mint files, screenshots) it doesn’t get downloaded again. From Romeo to Stable branches of the repository: - Romeo is where new packages go first. [...] -
Linux Mint 7 “Gloria”
» Linux Mint BlogLinux Mint 7, based on Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope”, and planned to be released in May 2009, will be codenamed “Gloria”. Question to Linux Mint users: In Mint 6, mintMenu was labeled “Menu” instead of getting the traditional release codename (”Felicia”). Do you think it should remain “Menu” in future releases or would you prefer us [...] -
Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” x64 RC1 released!
» Linux Mint BlogThe team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 6 x64 RC1. Introduction to Linux Mint 6 x64: This x64 edition of Linux Mint 6 is almost identical to the Main Edition but compiled for 64 bit processors (Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad, AMD Athlon X2 64 and all x86-64 compliant processors). [...] -
Temporary problems in the forum
» Linux Mint BlogThe forum works properly now! ———————————————————————— For the moment it seems not to be possible to post anything in the forum However it works fine if you just want to look at it, quite possible to view all posts like normal We hope to have it solved soon Edit by Clem: Everything is working fine again. Sorry for the inconvenience. [...] -
mintCast - Episode 4
» Linux Mint BlogCharles Olsen and the mintCast team published another episode of their podcast. Happy listening everyone! In Episode 4: The News (”I’m Linux”, browser market shares, artwork for the podcast) Rothgar’s segment: Overview of multimedia applications under Linux Main Story: Linux for writers Website of the Week: dafont.com To subscribe to this podcast use the following address: -
The Mint Newsletter - issue 70
» Linux Mint Blog* News about Mint Merlwiz and Exploder are happy to release LinuxMint-6-XFCE as an RC. A few things have to be checked and/or added to the repositories and Merlwiz needs to write release notes but it’s likely this release will be ready any time now. LinuxMint-6-x64 is ready for testing and will be released soon (at the [...] -
Upcoming releases…
» Linux Mint BlogHappy new year 2009 everyone. Here’s a quick update on what’s going on within the dev team: - Merlwiz and Exploder are happy to release LinuxMint-6-XFCE-DEV-020.iso (that’s how we refer to our internal builds) as an RC (Release Candidate). I need to check a few things, a few packages made for it need to be added [...] -
Donations & Sponsorships - December 2008
» Linux Mint BlogMany thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint: Donors: - $100 (12th donation), Az Van (newW2 - USA) - $100, R Muir-G. (UK) - $100, Robert C. (USA) - $100, Gary M. (USA) - $72 (2 donations), David F. (Ireland) - $71, Matteo P. (Italy) - $55, Andres V. (Colombia) - $50, Jerry B. (USA) - $50, Dan K. (USA) - [...] -
Mint 6 Review: TechieMoe
» Linux Mint BlogIntroduction TechieMoe reviews a lot of distributions and he’s consistently reviewed Mint since the release of version 3.1, Celena. He was the first to review Linux Mint 6 Felicia. Although he usually only scratches the surface (which I understand considering the number of reviews he publishes) he knows how to be harsh in his criticism and [...] -
mintCast - Episode 3
» Linux Mint BlogCharles Olsen and the mintCast team published the third episode of their podcast. Happy listening everyone! In Episode 3: Note-taking software under Linux Linux Mint 6 Felicia released Rothgar’s overview of Linux Mint 6 OpenSuse 11.1 released Economist website recommends Linux for netbooks Linux is holding our kids back… To subscribe to this podcast use the following address: [mintcast.org] For more information about this [...] -
Merry Christmas and happy new year!
» Linux Mint Blog2008 was a great year for us and we managed to achieve most of our goals. We released Linux Mint 5 Elyssa, our first Long Term Support release, then came three community editions (KDE, XFCE and Fluxbox) and we successfully started supporting a new architecture: amd64. Of course we didn’t manage to do “everything” we wanted. [...] -
Donations & Sponsorship - November 2008
» Linux Mint BlogMany thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint: Donors: - $500 (2nd donation), Michael Shimanski (USA) - $100, Beat Michel L. (Switzerland) - $100 (2nd donation), Filip Oscadal - [www.mxd.biz] MXD.BIZ - Internet Solutions (peep - Czech Republic) - $65 (7th donation), Temel Balci (Germany) - $50, Jeff T. (USA) - $50, Roger S. (UK) - $40 (2nd [...] -
Donations & Sponsorship - October 2008
» Linux Mint BlogMany thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint: Donors: - $200, John A. (Canada) - $91, Michael C. (UK) - $50, Michael B. (Australia) - $50, Harvey E. (UK) - $50, Gordon H. (UK) - $40, James F. (USA) - $40, Richard McL. (Canada) - $33, Jon G. (UK) - $33 (4th donation), Jerry Jackson (UK) - $28, Jose Luis R. [...] -
The Mint Newsletter - issue 69
» Linux Mint Blog* News about Mint Felicia final has been released Work is progressing on both the KDE and XFCE editions. * News about Linux Linus Torvalds figured out what the suspend/resume problem was IBM pushes “Microsoft alternative” desktop based on Ubuntu. IBM Lotus Domino 8 and Open Collaboration Client Solution powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux IBM software for Linux Linux Defenders to defend [...] -
Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” released!
» Linux Mint BlogThe team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 6 “Felicia”. 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. Quick steps: Download the ISO. While it’s downloading [...] -
Upgrade tool for Linux Mint 5 users
» Linux Mint BlogThe upgrade tool is ready. It makes upgrading from Linux Mint 5 to Linux Mint 6 trivial. Now, having said that… this is still a risky operation. Warning The recommended way to install Linux Mint is to perform a fresh install. We’re planning to release Linux Mint 6 tomorrow so I personally recommend you wait until then [...] -
Getting ready for the release…
» Linux Mint BlogAs you probably know the release of Linux Mint 6 is coming very soon. In fact the ISO itself is ready and some of you may have already found it in one of our mirrors. Be patient and bear with me for a few extra days. Although the ISO is ready, a few other things [...] -
mintCast - Episode 2
» Linux Mint BlogCharles Olsen and the mintCast team published the second episode of their podcast. Happy listening everyone! In Episode 2: Fedora 10 released Wine 1.1.10 Released Backing up your PC: mintBackup, FlyBack, Jungle Disk Microsoft segment - Preview of Internet Explorer 8 (by Adam Hainstock) Listener feedback To subscribe to this podcast use the following address: [mintcast.org] For more information about this podcast please [...] -
Note to Mint 6 RC1 users
» Linux Mint BlogA little bit more than 8% of you are currently running Linux Mint 6 RC1 and you’re probably wondering how “stable” it is and how to upgrade it to the upcoming stable version. Well here’s some good news, it’s very stable and you can upgrade it with only two commands. How stable is RC1? RC1 is fit [...] -
mintCast - Episode 1
» Linux Mint BlogI briefly mentioned mintCast in my previous post but I think it deserves a little more attention. MintCast is a brand new podcast “by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux”. It’s hosted by Charles Olsen, whom I’m sure you’ll get to know very well, and it’s currently aiming at releasing on a biweekly [...] -
The Mint Newsletter - issue 68
» Linux Mint Blog* News about Mint Mint is successful but we still cannot afford to have paid staff working on the project. All team members work on Mint in their spare time. This means that family matters (like moving house) can make a team member be absent from Mint for some time. This happens to Clem, the founder [...] -
Latest news
» Linux Mint BlogIt’s been a little more than two weeks and you’re probably wondering where exactly is the stable release of Linux Mint 6 Felicia. I was away for two weeks in Florida (great country by the way, I had never been to the US before) and I only got back last week. Then something came up and [...] -
The Mint Newsletter - issue 67
» Linux Mint Blog* News about Mint The first RC of Mint 6 Felicia is released Release notes here We want the community to test it thoroughly the next two weeks Much of the new stuff in Felicia will be ported to Mint 5 Elyssa In fact if you have enabled Romeo (our unstable repository) and installed/updated you will find Felicia familiar. It took [...] -
Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” RC1 released!
» Linux Mint BlogThe 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 [...] -
The Mint Newsletter - issue 66
» Linux Mint Blog* 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 [...] -
The Mint Newsletter - issue 65
» Linux Mint Blog* News about Mint Linux Mint 5 Fluxbox released! Work on Mint 6 has started and we hope to release soon after Intrepid (main and 64 bits) * News about Linux Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution Ubuntu explains OpenOffice.org 3.0 decision Why is openSUSE released on Thursdays The latest news about the kernel is always found here * News [...] -
Linux Mint 5 Fluxbox released!
» Linux Mint BlogLinux Mint is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 5 Elyssa Fluxbox Community Edition. This edition, maintained by Shane Joe Lazar, brings you the best and most essential tools from the Main and XFCE editions on top of an extremely thin desktop and the lightweight Fluxbox window manager. For a complete list of features please [...] -
The Mint Newsletter - issue 64
» Linux Mint Blog* News about Mint Linux Mint 5 x64 Edition released! mintMenu 4.1 was released (and 4.1.1 a small fix for hyphens in the search field) A nice improvement. Clicking on “Software Manager” now brings up the new mintInstall. All the very latest versions of Mint applications are in the Romeo repository. You can either enable it or go [...] -
Linux Mint 5 x64 Edition released!
» Linux Mint BlogLinux Mint is proud to announce that Linux Mint 5 Elyssa is now available on AMD64 for 64 bit processors. In the future the x64 edition will be released at the same time as the Main and Light editions. The purpose of the x64 edition is to offer the same desktop features as the Main edition but [...] -
mintMenu 4.1
» Linux Mint BlogIntroduction 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” [...] -
The Community Podcast project
» Linux Mint BlogThis 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 [...] -
Linux Mint 3.x reaches end-of-life
» Linux Mint BlogLinux 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 [...] -
Weekly Newsletter - Issue 63
» Linux Mint Blog* News about Mint Lots of improvements leading up to Mint 6 Felicia mintUpload to support FTP mintNanny introduced - a simple tool to prevent children from accessing certain websites Three new commands - search, apt contains and apt content. Mint is now to be on the major distributions page on Distrowatch * News about Linux Bruce Perens: A Big Change for [...] -
MintUpload 2, featuring FTP support
» Linux Mint BlogIntroduction
MintUpload is the little tool which pops up when you right-click on a file and select “upload”. Until now mintUpload was mostly used as a way to share files by uploading them to a public place somewhere on one of Linux Mint’s servers and by sending the corresponding URL to friends and family members (or to anybody really..). Some people also bought Mint-Space accounts and were able to set up mintUpload to add an additional upload service to it. These people could then share files in a similar manner but instead of using a public storage space and being limited to 2 days, they could use their 1GB of Web space and have their files kept there indefinitely.
Some people mentioned that mintUpload was great at sharing files with others but not so much at actually “uploading” them and we got a lot of requests to add FTP support to that tool.
Initially mintUpload was designed with novice users in mind, people who wanted to share large files with each others and who didn’t know what FTP meant or where to get free web space to store them. After gathering some feedback, we’ve come to realize that mintUpload also got popular with experienced users, people who even had their own FTP accounts and wanted a quick way to upload files to it without launching an FTP client. So we added FTP support to MintUpload by defining another type of service and letting the user define his own FTP services.
Installation
To install MintUpload you need the Romeo repositories. Perform an “apt update” and an “apt install mintupload” in a terminal.
If you don’t have Romeo set up, you can grab the packages from here:
Configuration
MintUpload lets you define “upload services” by adding files in /etc/linuxmint/mintUpload/services/
Here’s an example of an FTP upload service:
type=FTP
name=My own FTP service
host=myhost.com
user=myusername
pass=mypassword
path=myuploads
The “path” is optional, it lets you define where within your FTP service you want the files to be uploaded. In this example we’re not uploading them in the root folder, but within a directory called “myuploads”.
MintUpload will use any service defined with that format and saved as a file within /etc/linuxmint/mintUpload/services/.
Translations
MintUpload 2 will be one of the featured improvements coming with Linux Mint 6 Felicia. We’re actively trying to get the community to translate this tool. If you happen to speak another language than English, please help us translate mintUpload 2 by participating to this forum thread:
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=17551
Bug reports and feedback
Tell us what you think by posting a comment on this blog post. Report bugs here as well.
Note: Some people also asked for SFTP support. This won’t be in the scope for Mint 6 but we’ll work on it for future releases.
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.
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Introducing mintNanny
» Linux Mint BlogIntroduction
One of the features Mint has been lacking as a family desktop is the ability for parents to prevent their children from accessing certain websites. Parental control is easy to set up in Microsoft Windows and we got a lot of feedback from people who migrated to Linux and who missed this feature. Of course one could install DansGuardian and a few other packages but it’s not easy, it usually requires the use of a proxy and it’s also quite complex to configure. For Linux Mint 6 we came with a compromise and we decided to implement a minimal set of features but to make it as trivial to use as possible. So here comes mintNanny.
MintNanny is a small graphical interface which lets you “block” domain names. You can’t block domains for particular users or particular programs, the block is for everyone on the computer and for any protocol. When you “block” a domain in mintNanny it basically adds an entry to your /etc/hosts file and defines that domain’s IP address as being 0.0.0.0. This results in your computer not being able to communicate with the domain anymore. So if there are domains you really don’t want your children to have anything to do with, put them in mintNanny.
Remember that mintNanny blocks domain names, not IP addresses so if your children are smart enough to ping the domain from another computer they’ll be able to access it via its IP address.
Certain domains use subdomains and redirect to them so you might have to block them to. For instance if you want to block somewebsite.com you might also have to block www.somewebsite.com. As a rule of thumb try to access the website after you block it to see if your block was efficient enough.
Firefox caches DNS resolutions to speed things up. This means that it remembers where a website is until you close it. In other words, after you block a website, you’ll have to restart Firefox.
Installation
To install MintNanny you need the Romeo repositories. Perform an “apt update” and an “apt install mintnanny-gnome” in a terminal (or “apt install mintnanny-kde” if you run KDE).
If you don’t have Romeo set up, you can grab the packages from here:
Translations
MintNanny will be one of the featured improvements coming with Linux Mint 6 Felicia. We’re actively trying to get the community to translate this tool. If you happen to speak another language than English, please help us translate mintNanny by participating to this forum thread:
Bug reports and feedback
Tell us what you think by posting a comment on this blog post. Report bugs here as well.
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.
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Mint 6: 3 new commands
» Linux Mint BlogThree new commands made their way into Romeo last night: search, apt contains and apt content. All three of them are provided by mintSystem 5.5.
If you have Romeo set up as a repository simply type “apt update” and “apt install mintsystem”. Otherwise you can get the deb from here:
apt content package
“apt content” shows the content of package, it’s a shortcut for “dpkg -L”. For instance, if you type “apt content mintsystem” you should see the following:
clem@mars ~/Desktop $ apt content mintsystem
/.
/usr
/usr/local
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/bin/apt
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/linuxmint
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/icon.png
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/python
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/python/configobj.py
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/templates
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/templates/apt.conf
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/templates/preferences
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/GPL.txt
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/version
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/version/mintInstall
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/version/mintInstall/portals.list
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/version/mintInstall/release.id
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/version/mintInstall/sources.list
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/mintsystem
/usr/share/doc/mintsystem/copyright
/usr/share/doc/mintsystem/changelog.gzapt contains filename
“apt contains” tells you which package contains a particular file. It’s a shortcut for “dpkg -S”. For instance if you type “apt contains /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/GPL.txt” you should see the following:
clem@mars ~/Desktop $ apt contains /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/GPL.txt
mintsystem: /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintSystem/GPL.txtsearch for keyword in directory
“search” lets you search for files containing a particular keyword. You can get a list of options by typing “search –help”:
clem@mars ~/Desktop $ search help
usage: search [arguments] [options]
arguments:
for text
in directory
options:
-c | –case-sensitive
-s | –show-filenames-only“search” is easy to use. Let’s take an example and search for “workgroup” in /etc/samba. We type “search for workgroup in /etc/samba” and we see the following:
clem@mars ~/Desktop $ search for workgroup in /etc/samba
/etc/samba/smb.conf.ucf-old:26:# Change this to the workgroup/NT-domain name your Samba server will part of
/etc/samba/smb.conf.ucf-old:27: workgroup = MSHOME
/etc/samba/smb.conf:26:# Change this to the workgroup/NT-domain name your Samba server will part of
/etc/samba/smb.conf:27: workgroup = MSHOMEWe can refine the search by adding “–case-sensitive” or only show filenames by adding “–show-filenames-only”. For instance:
clem@mars ~/Desktop $ search in /etc/samba for workgroup –case-sensitive –show-filenames-only
/etc/samba/smb.conf.ucf-old
/etc/samba/smb.confLet us know what you think and if you find any bugs. These will eventually be backported into Elyssa and will be featured as some of Mint 6’s improvements.
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Donations & Sponsorship - September 2008
» Linux Mint BlogMany thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint:
Sponsors:
- $70, Philippe Lotz (alsaphil - France)
- $81, Linuxmint-Shop.de (Germany) - [www.linuxmint-shop.de]
- $76, LinuxISOS.de (Germany) - [www.linuxisos.de]
- $45, Linux Compatible Poker (USA) - [www.linuxcompatiblepoker.com]
- $40, Az Van (newW2 - USA)
- $30, LinuxMint-Forum.de (Germany) - [linuxmint-forum.de]
- $20, TOPIMMOBILIEN (Tim - Germany) - [www.immobilien-es.com]
- $10, Linux-Onlineshop (Germany) - [www.linux-onlineshop.de]
- $10, Tuxdevil Outsourcing LLC [www.tuxdevil.net]
- $10, Jim Rogers (USA)
- $10, MXD Internet Solutions (Filip Oscadal - Czech Republic) - [www.mxd.biz]
- $7, Panagiotis Papasaikas (Greece) - [www.andrew.cmu.edu]
- $5, Guillermo Enrique Guglietti (Canada) - [www.urbancsa.org]
- $5, linuxmint-italia.org (Pietro Martino / prior123 - Italy) - [www.linuxmint-italia.org]
- $5, Alex P.
- $5, Dimitris Athanasiou (RHO, Greece) - [www.speedtest.gr]
- $5, Vassilis Skoullis (Greece)
- $5, Robert Holland
- $1, Lintelligence.de. (d00p - Germany) - [www.lintelligence.de]
- $1, Linuxmint.de (d00p - Germany) - [www.linuxmint.de]
- $1, Ian Egland (Echolynx - USA)
- $0.5 Martijn van Loon (aapiethaaap - Netherlands)Donors:
- $200, Peter M. (Canada)
- $101, Frans Van O. (Netherlands)
- $72, V. Mark L. (Ireland)
- $72, Rafael G. V. (Spain)
- $72, Florian B. (Germany)
- $72, Christophe W. (Switzerland)
- $72, Gerard R. (France)
- $72, Matthias R. (France)
- $51 (2nd donation), Richard Svendsen (Norway)
- $50, Coleman D. (USA)
- $50, Theo L. (Switzerland)
- $50, David M. (USA)
- $50, Paul V. (Canada)
- $50, Ennien A. (Canada)
- $45 (4th and 5th donations), Andreas L. (Norway)
- $29 (6th donation), Temel Balci (Germany)
- $29 (2nd donation), Vincent V. (France)
- $21 (4th donation), Frank Bechstein (Germany)
- $20, IT Servants (USA)
- $20, Tim V.-B. (UK)
- $20, Nathan H. (USA)
- $15, Robert N. (USA)
- $14, Carl K. (USA)
- $14, Marc M. (Belgium)
- $14, Costas K. (Greece)
- $14, Thorsten M.-R. (Germany)
- $14, Robert H. (Germany)
- $14, Daniel A. (Luxembourg)
- $10, Theodore P. (USA)
- $10 (2nd donation), Henry W. (USA)
- $10 (2nd donation), James R. (USA)
- $5, John S. (USA)
- $5, Bryan T. (USA)
- $0.1, Rytis S. (Lithuania)Money raised in September:
* Donations: $1357.1
* Sponsors: $442.5 -
Mint 6: MintUpload to support FTP
» Linux Mint BlogMintUpload will support FTP as well as the already supported “Mint-Space” protocol. Users will be able to define FTP “services” with a name, a hostname, a username, a password and even an optional path. There is no immediate plan to add a graphical configuration tool to mintUpload but it will be possible to add FTP services by simply adding files in /etc/linuxmint/minUpload/services/. Here is an example:
type=FTP
name=My FTP Server
host=myftp.mydomain.com
user=me
pass=topsecret
path=uploadDirectoryFTP support in mintUpload will be one of the featured improvements coming with Mint 6 and it will also be backported to Linux Mint 5 Elyssa. It already works “in lab” and a package should hit the Romeo repositories this week.
Note to readers: 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.
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 62
» Linux Mint Blog
* News about MintElyssa x64 RC1 released
If any of you have ideas for how we can make Mint more known please feel free to leave a comment.
* News about Linux
Gnome 2.24 released
Released final versions lately
Pardus Linux 2008.1 ; Vector Linux 5.9.1 ; sidux 2008-3
Gentoo is having problems and cancels the 2008.1 release. They state “we overstretched our human resources during the prolonged 2008.0 release process” To bad…
An alternative to MS Exchange on Linux
The latest news about the kernel is always found here
* News about IT
The Netherlands Patent Office changes to open source software. The entire Netherlands public sector is to change in the long term
The European Parliament adopts a legislative report about telecom. It’s supposed to stop some attempts to block filesharing - however I can’t find that in the report linked to. More about it
Mozilla Releases 9 Updates To Firefox, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird
Zend Teams With Adobe to Marry PHP and Flex
Greenpeace ‘Guide to Greener Electronics’
Users fail to spot fake pop-ups
‘Uncloneable’ biometric passports pass the test
Wikileaks posts a hack of Palin’s e-mail account on Yahoo
Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail all vulnerable to Palin-style password-reset hack
‘Password Recovery’ Services may be crackers that gets you in deep trouble
Researchers discover PDF exploit packs
In-depth manual and automated assessments found nearly 97 percent of sites carry a severe vulnerability.
The notorious service provider Intercage is (was) a severe vulnerability in itself and got cut off from the internet
* Hardware news
First True 3D Processor Created, Runs at 1.4 GHz
New ‘On/Off Switch’ Protects RFID Cards From Hacks
Asus ships software cracker on recovery DVD
* Trivia and other links
* More about Linux Mint
How to donate
You find the Wallpaper of the Month in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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Elyssa x64 RC1 released
» Linux Mint BlogLinux Mint is proud to announce its very first 64 bits release: Elyssa x64 RC1.
The purpose of the x64 edition is to offer the same desktop features as the Main edition but in a 64 bits environment. We received a lot of requests to support the X86_64 architecture (commonly referred to as “amd64″) and we’ve managed to come with an edition which is almost 100% in par with our main desktop.
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.
The x64 Edition aims to be as similar to the Main edition as possible, but due to the nature of its architecture, its package base and its origins it defers in the following ways:
- Linux Mint x64 Edition was forked from Ubuntu Hardy as opposed to Ubuntu Edgy for the Main Edition,
- Linux Mint x64 Edition comes with a java plugin implemented by OpenJDK, as opposed to Sun for the Main Edition.
- Linux Mint x64 Edition comes with Xchat instead of Xchat-Gnome
- Linux Mint x64 Edition comes with Flash 9 instead of Flash 10
More packages are available for i386 than they are for amd64 and we also believe the Main edition to be a bit more stable than will in time be its 64 bits equivalent. The Main edition only recognizes RAM to a maximum of 4GB though and even on computers with less than 4GB RAM the performance gain provided by x64 over the Main edition can significantly enhance the user’s experience.
Introduction to the x64 edition:
We published a mini-benchmark and an introduction to the x64 edition within the release notes. To have a better idea of what x64 can do for you, please read http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa_x64.php
System requirements:
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.
Download x64 RC1:
Size: 682MB LiveCD
MD5Sum: 65a436f5ee945abceae18e5393d34213
Torrent download: [www.linuxmint.de]
HTTP download: [www.linuxmint.com]Europe:
- [cesium.di.uminho.pt] (Portugal)
- [ftp.heanet.ie] (Ireland)
- [ftp.klid.dk] (Denmark)
- [ftp.cc.uoc.gr] (Greece)
Northern America:
- [mirror.amarillolinux.com] (USA)
- [linuxmint.norhex.com] (USA)
- [linuxmint.secsup.org] (USA)
- [ftp:] (USA)
- [linuxmint.sourcemirrors.org] (USA)
Rest of the World:
- [mirror.aarnet.edu.au] (Australia)
- [ftp:] (Vietnam)
Test x64 RC1, report bugs and feedback:
The purpose of this Release Candidate is to gather as much feedback and bug reports as possible before the final release.
- Depending on your hardware x64 Edition could potentially be faster and show better performance than the Main edition. We’re interested to know how both editions compare so don’t hesitate to measure your boot time, and common scenarios and compare them on the same computer with the Main edition. Contact us by email and send us your benchmarks and your conclusions.
- Participate in testing the Release Candidate CD. If you find bugs please report them here: [www.linuxmint.com]
- Tell us what you think and give us feedback on this release by commenting here on this blog.
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Raiden’s Realm reviews Elyssa KDE CE
» Linux Mint BlogThis is the first review I’ve seen of Linux Mint 5 KDE CE so I’m delighted to get some feedback on this release. The reviewer, Steve Lake, also reviewed Linux Mint 5 by the past so I was interested to see how he compared KDE CE with the Main edition.
Link to the review: [www.raiden.net]
Digg the review: [digg.com]
Steve mentions the “LiveCD” here and there. As you probably noticed he actually refers to a live DVD, KDE CE being more than 700MB. By the past KDE CE came with a smaller ISO called “miniKDE” and for the first time since the start of this edition… it doesn’t. The reason for this is that we wanted to free Boo (Jamie Boo Birse, maintainer of the KDE Edition) so that he could start working on Mint 6. A lot of work has gone into this edition and it got released very late within our release cycle (The Main edition was released in June). The KDE edition failed to come with QT frontends for the Mint tools and hasn’t made the transition towards KDE 4 yet so there will be a lot of work for Linux Mint 6.
Steve says: “But once on the desktop I found that not much has changed since Mint 4 KDE appearance wise. Mint 5 KDE has as usual a beautiful selection of preinstalled software ready to use in the LiveCD, including Gimp, Inkscape, Thunderbird, Firefox, Scribus, Open Office, Krusader, Mplayer and many others. So every major important KDE and Linux app is there and ready for you to use. The menu hasn’t changed from the previous KDE version either, but there does appear to be more tools for those who enjoy using Compiz for 3d effects. Don’t expect to get Compiz working until you install the system, becuase for some reason, Compiz hates LiveCD environments.”
–> The look and feel in Mint 5 is a refinement of what was already there in Mint 4.0. Verdegal made the artwork for Daryna and what he produced was enhanced by another artist called Jernau. His work and improvements impacted all editions. Of course the KDE CE didn’t come with as many changes as the Main edition in that respect (extra themes for instance) but it improved the overall look and feel nonetheless. Screenshots of Daryna KDE CE are still visible here.
–> There are shortcuts in the menu to enable/disable Compiz. As Steve said, it works better once the system is installed, especially if you need extra drivers. I’ve had some success with Intel chipsets directly from the liveDVD though.
Steve said: “Speed and performance were very good for the entire LiveCD experience. It had a few loading lags, but nothing terribly bad, just normal stuff. Stability was good and the system did a great job with everything it needed to do. So, other than the initial scare due to a hardware glitch on my end (bad video card), the whole system ran perfect, and did just as good as its Metacity based cousin.”
–> Some benchmarks suggest that KDE uses less resources than Gnome. It used to be other way around a few years ago.
Steve said: “I’ve never seen any Linux distribution up to this point actually detect a network share on my network before and add the icon for it on the desktop. Mint 5 KDE did. So if I wanted to jump on my samba share, all I needed to do was double click and away I went. That’s a nice little added feature, especially for new users unfamiliar with how to get at such shares in a Linux or KDE environment.”
–> I’ll let Boo comment on this as I’m not sure whether we should thank him for adding this, myself for some reminiscence of the Network-Autobrowsing feature (introduced in Mint 4.0 and removed in Mint 5.. well in the Main edition at least) or upstream developers from KDE, Kubuntu or even 3rd party packages. Community Editions are tested and released the same way as other editions but the maintainer himself is responsible for the implementation and as far as the quality of the ISO is good he can make a lot of decisions without involving the team.
Steve said: “Linux Mint 5 KDE Edition uses the Linux 2.6.24-19 kernel, a newer Linux kernel known for great improvements in power management. That’s a nice thing to see.”
–> Elyssa KDE CE upgraded its package base to Ubuntu 8.04.1. That’s another difference with the Main edition. I prefered the conservative approach, Boo did a nice job with upgrading to 8.04.1 so this release comes with a 2.6.24-19 kernel.
Steve said: “One thing you may notice when you first get the system installed is that Mint needs 123 (117 initial + 5 additional) updates right away. That’s a lot of updates for something that’s just been freshly installed (and recently released). A lot of them seem to be upstream Ubuntu application and core system updates, but nothing that I wouldn’t advise against installing.”
–> This is something I insist on within the team, I’m very conservative when it comes to updates and I usually recommend to stay on par with was tested the most. In this case the package base is 8.04.1, every update after that makes the base differ from what was known as the latest stable Ubuntu release. This is a very controversial topic of course and people don’t like to think that package updates can potentially introduce new bugs but it’s something very important to us. We even developed our own package update manager (mintUpdate) to make sure users were selective in applying updates.
Steve said: “One thing that didn’t really show up properly until the installed version was the battery and power management. Mint 5 KDE has a new power management taskbar tool that is different from the old Kpower, and it seems to handle power management better, even though it couldn’t seem to detect my processor speed for some reason. Oddly enough, Kpower, the one tool that gave me good power management before is gone. And while the new tool does seem to offer better power performance, it leaves something to be desired in comparison to Kpower.”
–> We looked into that Boo and I. I’ll have to check the archives for that but I remember I was concerned with the message dialogs not being user-friendly when the battery ran out of power. On the other hand the previous tool had more features than the new one… I can’t remember whether it was kde-guidance or kpowersave in the end but the solution chosen by Boo pleased Exploder (Mint’s release manager) and this went forward. I’d love to hear more user feedback on this.
Conclusion:
I’m always looking forward to reading reviews about Linux Mint. It doesn’t only spread the word about what we’re doing it gives us important feedback and it also gives us the opportunity to talk about various things and to explain our choices, our decisions and why such and such features were implemented the way they were. Many thanks to Raiden’s Realm for reviewing this release.
If you want to help spread the word about this review, you can do so on digg.com. For questions and comments to us please comment here on this blog, and for questions and comments to Steve please post here.
Happy reading everyone.
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 61
» Linux Mint Blog
* News about MintLinux Mint 5 Elyssa KDE Community Edition is released
If you have RC1 (aka beta045) you don’t need to do anything. The difference between the two is that a bug that duplicated some folders in home is fixed
Linux Mint 5 Elyssa Fluxbox Community Edition RC1 is released
Keep your eyes open - more news soon.
* News about Linux
The next Ubuntu is to be called Jaunty Jackalope (let’s hope it becomes more than a myth…)
The talks at Ubuntu Developer Week are found here
Ubuntu puts all man pages on the internet
Mark Shuttleworth on design, user experience and development
Lenovo denies ditching Linux
The spread of the Linux virus Linux/Rst-B according to Sophos (quite a few root infected boxes out there)
The latest news about the kernel is always found here
* News about IT
The invaluable NoScript for Firefox plug-in just got a tad better.
A new version of VLC
ZoooS takes OpenOffice to web
Google to have data center at sea?
HP is trying to make Windows better
The Association of National Advertisers (US) wants the pact between Google and Yahoo stopped
Google-backed satellite project aims to give 3 billion more people Net access
Google closes hole in Single Sign-On service
Language of text messages can give you away
French oppose sinister government database
The major Internet outages so far in 2008
Phishing Cyber Gang Upgrades to Fast-Flux Botnet
Study: Weak Passwords Still Main Security Defense
San Francisco hunts for mystery device on city network
Threat From DNS Bug Isn’t Over, Experts Say
* Hardware news
Cisco pushes ‘network memory‘ to alleviate high-speed bottlenecks
Intel vPro and the future of tech support
Ultrasound to give feel to games
Startup introduces ‘unclonable’ chip technology
USB-stick with hardware AES-encryption has been cracked
* Trivia and other linksScientists get death threats over Large Hadron Collider (because of the risk of creating black holes) and it has already been hacked.
VMware Fusion Helps CERN Physicists Analyze Data From Coolest Place on Earth
* More about Linux Mint
How to donate
You find the Wallpaper of the Month in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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Linux Mint 5 Elyssa KDE Community Edition
» Linux Mint BlogWe are proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 5 KDE Community Edition:
I would like to thank Jamie “Boo” Birse for maintaining this edition. Our last poll indicated that 11% of Linux Mint users were running KDE CE so I’m sure this will come as great news
Notes:
- If you previously downloaded RC1 you do not need to upgrade/reinstall.
- There won’t be any miniKDE ISO coming with this release.Forum announcement: [linuxmint.com]
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Linux Mint 5 Elyssa Fluxbox Community Edition RC1
» Linux Mint BlogLinux Mint 5 Fluxbox Community Edition RC1 is out and available for download. I hope there’ll be numerous testers and that we’ll receive plenty of feedback.
Please find all relevant information about this release at this address: [www.linuxmint.com]
I’d also like to thank and congratulate Shane Joe Lazar for maintaining this edition and for the quality of this release.
Have fun with it and don’t forget to give us feedback.
Forum announcement: [linuxmint.com]
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 60
» Linux Mint Blog
* News about MintXFCE CE (stable) has been released
Fluxbox CE (RC) will be released about a week later
KDE CE RC1 was close to being stable. There was a tiny little glitch which now is fixed so hopefully it will be released any time soon. If you have the latest beta (045) you have the final, but with the glitch not fixed - and you will be told how to fix it
Work on the x64 edition is on hold for a few days, so we can release as per above
There won’t be any time dedicated to the Debian and Enterprise Editions until after the release of Mint 6 Felicia
There will be a revision 2 of Elyssa main around the time when Felicia is released
This and more is found in a blog post by Clem
mintInstall 5.1 and 5.2 was released in Romeo (the unstable branch of our repositories)
An interesting interview with Clem
* News about Linux
UbuntuDeveloperWeek first week in September
This is the Year of the Linux Desktop Breakout (heard it before?)
Linux under attack: Compromised SSH keys lead to rootkit
Open source release takes Linux rootkits mainstream - it cloaks itself by burrowing deep inside a server’s processor and availing itself of debugging mechanisms available in Intel’s chip architecture. What about AMD?
In defense of Ubuntu (by Jonathan Corbet)
Use of community Linux distributions like Ubuntu, CentOS and Debian are on the rise in the enterprise, PC world AU claims
Gentoo developer moves away from Gentoo
The latest news about the kernel is always found here
* News about IT
The Internet’s Biggest Security Hole (Not the DNS problem)
Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S. (This is not the security hole
You have to wait for an ad before you get to the article)U.S. to deploy DNSSEC in two years
The Brittish Home Office is considering to track in real-time every kind of electronic activity undertaken by citizens. They are not alone both Germany and Sweden have similar plans as noted in earlier editions of the newsletter. And the US backed Echelon has been running for a long time
Cisco buys PostPath, targets Microsoft Exchange
Mozilla introduces Ubiquity which is an application that is to connect other applications
Changes in the development of Ecmascript (Ecmascriptis the basis for javascript if not javascript in itself)
Microsoft to Acquire Greenfield Online in a transaction valued at approximately $486 million (US).
This is “fun” - Microsoft patents ‘Page Up’ and ‘Page Down’
Mozilla’s Google deal extended Here’s another article on that
Google to buy GeoEye satellite imagery
Google releases the Chrome browser (so far just for Windows)
A comic strip is used to introduce Chrome
Google Chrome takes more than just inspiration from Mozilla
If Google’s new browser isn’t even available on Linux, why is this great news for Linux?
Comcast sets monthly bandwidth limit for customers
A glitch in a computer, one of just two in the US that play the vital role of distributing flight plans brought air traffic to a standstill in the US
Engineer accidentally deletes cloud computing on FlexiScale
Facebook Application Transforms Social Network Into Botnet
The evil genius of XP Antivirus 2008
Attackers are increasingly using encoding
The Number of Machines Controlled by Botnets Has Jumped 4x in Last 3 Months
TeliaSonera IC launches child porn sites blocking service for free use by any ISP
Neo-Nazi forum hacked
Headcount for Bank of New York Mellon’s lost backup tapes rises from 4.2 million to 12 million personal identities
Skype ignores PayPal siphoning hijack scheme
* Hardware news
ATI to Enable High-Definition Video Playback on Linux-Based Computers.
Bad soldering behind nvidas problems?
Intel acquires Linux distro developer
* Trivia and other links
China counters U.S. invisibility cloak - this is almost scaring
* More about Linux Mint
How to donate
You find the Wallpaper of the Month in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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Linux Mint 5 Elyssa XFCE Community Edition
» Linux Mint BlogWe are proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 5 XFCE Community Edition.
For a list of improvements, new features, known issues and download mirrors please read the release notes: [www.linuxmint.com]
I would like to thank and to congratulate Merlwiz79 for maintaining this wonderful edition. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we had fun releasing it. Have fun and don’t hesitate to give us some feedback.
Forum announcement: [linuxmint.com]
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Donations & Sponsorship - August 2008
» Linux Mint BlogMany thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint:
Sponsors:
- $70, Philippe Lotz (alsaphil - France)
- $40, Az Van (newW2 - USA)
- $35, Linux Compatible Poker (USA) - [www.linuxcompatiblepoker.com]
- $30, LinuxISOS.de (Germany) - [www.linuxisos.de]
- $30, Linux-Onlineshop (Germany) - [www.linux-onlineshop.de]
- $25, Linuxmint-Shop.de (Germany) - [www.linuxmint-shop.de]
- $20, TOPIMMOBILIEN (Tim - Germany) - [www.immobilien-es.com]
- $12, Sito3p.com (Italy) - [sito3p.com]
- $10, Tuxdevil Outsourcing LLC [www.tuxdevil.net]
- $10, Jim Rogers (USA)
- $10, MXD Internet Solutions (Filip Oscadal - Czech Republic) - [www.mxd.biz]
- $7, Panagiotis Papasaikas (Greece) - [www.andrew.cmu.edu]
- $5, Guillermo Enrique Guglietti (Canada) - [www.urbancsa.org]
- $5, Kevin Gabbert
- $5, Dimitris Athanasiou (RHO, Greece) - [www.speedtest.gr]
- $5, Vassilis Skoullis (Greece)
- $5, Robert Holland
- $2, Khurt Williams (USA) - [islandinthenet.com]
- $2, LinuxMint-Forum.de (Germany) - [linuxmint-forum.de]
- $1, Lintelligence.de. (d00p - Germany) - [www.lintelligence.de]
- $1, Linuxmint.de (d00p - Germany) - [www.linuxmint.de]
- $1, Ian Egland (Echolynx - USA)
- $0.5 Martijn van Loon (aapiethaaap - Netherlands)Donors:
- $400 DistroWatch.com (Taiwan)
- $100 Jim Rogers (USA)
- $100 (2nd donation) Alan D S. (USA)
- $75 Jesus L. D. (Spain)
- $50 (2nd donation) Bjørn S. Nielsen (Norway)
- $50 Andrzej P. (Poland)
- $50 Wray H. (USA)
- $50 Ronald K. (USA)
- $30 Arron J. (UK)
- $30 Wolfgang P. (Austria)
- $30 James G. (Australia)
- $25 Vance R. (USA)
- $25 Ron N. (USA)
- $25 Kane M. B. (USA)
- $20 Kenneth B. (Canada)
- $20 Phillip H. (Australia)
- $20 Guillermo Enrique Guglietti - [www.urbancsa.org] (Canada)
- $20 Ryan McC. (USA)
- $20 (3rd donation) Andreas L. (Norway)
- $20 Brendan C. (Australia)
- $20 Jim D. (Australia)
- $20 Chua K. L. (Singapore)
- $17 Lisa B. (USA)
- $15 Bob McC. (UK)
- $15 David O. (UK)
- $15 Guglielmo F. (Italy)
- $10 Michael N. (USA)
- $10 Syed A. (USA)
- $5 Michael G. (Germany)
- $5 Alejandro R. (Uruguay)
- $3 Lothar S. (Germany)
- $1 Remy van E. (Netherlands)
- $0.5 Eder S. (Brazil)Money raised in August:
* Donations: $1296.5
* Sponsors: $331.5[www.linuxmint.com]
Spread the word:
[www.linuxmint.com] More » -
Coming up…
» Linux Mint BlogMint 5 editions:
- XFCE CE (stable) will be released early next week.
- Fluxbox CE (RC) will be released before next week-end.
- KDE CE RC1 was close to being stable, both Boo and Exploder are happy to call it stable. There’s a tiny little glitch with xdg-user-dirs which I want to fix so technically the final ISO will be different but if you’re running KDE CE RC1 you don’t need to wait for the final release, you’re already running a stable system.
- Work on the x64 edition is on hold for a few days.
- There won’t be any time dedicated to the Debian Edition before Mint 6 is out.
- There won’t be any time dedicated to an eventual Enterprise Edition before Mint 6 is out.
- Main and Light (which will become “Universal” and come with language packs) will have a new revision to include the new Firefox, Flash 10 (when it’s stable), and the latest version of the mint tools (mintUpdate 3, mintInstall 5..etc). This “revision 2″ might come after Mint 6 itself, it’s hard to say at this stage.
Mint 6 tools:
- MintUpdate 3 is ready.
- MintInstall 5 is ready.
- OEM support is planned for mintAssistant but work hasn’t started on that yet.
- An upgrade tool is planned and work on this should start very soon now.
- There are no significant improvements planned for the other tools.
- Improvements made for the tools in Mint 6 will make their way into the backport section of the Mint 5 repository.
Other than that:
… well we’ve got plenty of ideas, we’ll see how much we’ll do depending on how much time we’ve got
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Elyssa User Guide available in Greek and in Catalan
» Linux Mint BlogThe User Guide for Linux Mint 5 Elyssa was translated in Greek (by Marlene, Grimm, Twin and Ippokratis) and in Catalan (by wuying_ren). Links to both versions were added to the Elyssa Firefox start page.
You can also access the user guide from here: [ftp:]
Edit: Thanks to sdemchenko, it’s now also available in Russian.
Edit: Thanks to [linuxmint-italia.org] , it’s now also available in Italian.
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Interview by Help for Linux
» Linux Mint BlogI recently gave an interview to Pritesh Desai from “Help for Linux”:
I found some of his questions quite interesting as he went beyond the scope of Linux Mint and talked about other distributions, legal aspects surrounding the codecs and the advantages of Open Source for users and developers.
Happy reading everyone.
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mintInstall 5.2
» Linux Mint BlogI know what you’re thinking.. third announcement about mintInstall in less than a week. Well, things go fast at the moment we’re getting good feedback and I’d like to finalize mintInstall so I can start working on something else (namely x64 and an upgrade tool).
Hopefully, this is the last mintInstall update until Linux Mint 6. Here are the improvements since mintInstall 5.1:
- Under KDE, kdesu is used instead of gksu
- The gksu/kdesu dialog now shows a simple “Please enter your password” message instead of a long and obscure command line (the message is localized of course).
- Known categories (including all categories from the Software Portal) are now localized.
If you missed the previous announcements about mintInstall 5 you can read about them here:
MintInstall 5.2 is available in Romeo. If you don’t have Romeo enabled you can get the debs from here:
Let us know what you think, report any bug you may find and have a lot of fun with this brand new mintInstall.
To translate mintInstall into your own language, use this forum thread: [www.linuxmint.com]
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mintInstall 5.1
» Linux Mint Blog5 little improvements were added to mintInstall 5:
- A progress bar now appears when mintInstall is refreshing/loading
- A new button called “Versions” lets you see the packages and repositories defined by the mint file, and for each package the available and installed versions.
- The error message shown at startup was replaced with an information message asking you to refresh the application.
- All tables now show rows with alternate colours
- Email addresses are hidden within reviews (joeuser@hotmail.com shows as j…r@hotmail.com)
If you missed the announcement about mintInstall 5, read here:
MintInstall 5.1 is available in Romeo. If you don’t have Romeo enabled you can get the debs from here:
Let us know what you think, report any bug you may find and have a lot of fun with this brand new mintInstall.
To translate mintInstall 5.1 into your own language, use this forum thread: [www.linuxmint.com]
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IRC Quizz AllStars Table - August 2008
» Linux Mint BlogThe IRC Quizz wasn’t popular at all this month. Only one player.. and winner:
1 mocap — 0.225 pts, 2 games. * Congrats! *
There were 1 users playing 2 games.
If you haven’t joined the Quizz yet, it’s very easy:
- In Linux Mint: open up Xchat-Gnome (or Konversation) then when it’s connected join the #pimpmymint channel.
- On other platforms: Launch your favorite IRC client, connect to the irc.spotchat.org server and join the #pimpmymint channel.Note: Make sure to register your nickname with Nickserv so that the Quizz bot can remember you the next time you log in.
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Server hacked (again)
» Linux Mint BlogWe’ve been hit again by this: [www.linuxmint.com]
The good news this time is that we’ll be faster to get rid of it (we’ve got really up to date backups), the bad news is that we’re still obviously vulnerable despite the measures we took the last time. I’ll ask Michael (our sysadmin) to look into this and to find out how this could have happened.
I’ll keep you posted.. I just found out about it a few minutes ago.
Update #1: A backdoor virus was found so it’s possible we got re-infected from the inside. I’m currently re-applying updates to clean the website first.
Update #2: The Wiki, forums, blog, software portal and main website are now clean.
Update #3: I’ll be upgrading the forums to the latest version of phpBb today so they might be offline or disabled for a while.
Update #4: The forums were upgraded to the latest version of phpBB. We’re missing the global announcements and there’s a little problem with the theme but overall they’re back online and they should be working fine.
Update #5: The blog was upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress.
Update #6: The wiki was upgraded to the latest version of MediaWiki. We also know more about the problem now.. the first attack left a virus called PHP.RSTBackdoor.
Update #7: The planet was upgraded to the latest version of Gregarius.
Update #8: All the cleanup is done. All our tools were upgraded to their latest versions and we made new backups. Michael identified malware uploaded via mintUpload. We’re discussing the possibility to restrict, secure or even discontinue the free part of this service.
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 59
» Linux Mint Blog* News about MintmintInstall 5 was released in Romeo (the unstable branch of our repositories)
Clem states in the announcement for mintInstall that the Elyssa KDE CE should be released anytime now.
* News about Linux
Security alert:
Adobe Flash ads launching clipboard hijack attack - this works on Windows, Mac and Linux
Better MSN support in Pidgin
Linux popularity across the globe
The final release of Zenwalk Linux 5.2 “GNOME” edition
MEPIS released of antiX MEPIS 7.5 designed to run on computers with older or limited hardware
At approximately the same time as our server was hacked Red Hat / Fedora experienced a more severe intrusion
Link for Fedora (this is the message from Fedora published by IDG.se - the best link I found).
This is now resolved but some packages were signed by the intruder
Microsoft to pay Novell $100 mln more for Linux support
openSUSE to Add SELinux Basic Enablement in 11.1
10 Most Beautiful Plasma Themes for KDE 4 Desktop - more beautiful than Mint KDE
? (Mint still don’t use KDE 4)* News about IT
SecondLife rolls out Mono-powered servers
Thousands of UK file-sharers face legal action
Comcast to “throttle down” “bandwidth hogs”
UK.gov to spend hundreds of millions on “snooping silo”. This is very similar to a controversial Swedish act.
A rather technical article on security when you log in to your bank, for those who want a deep background. More here - about PCI-DSS
A growing list of name-brand websites are accused of exposing its readers to dangerous ads.
OSU Open Source Lab gets $300,000 from Google
US presidential candidate John McCain is a pirate
As a result of some skilful phishing 1.5m spam emails was sent from compromised University accounts
Scammers replace credit card readers in Irish stores
Groups urge states to tackle more cybercrime
* Hardware news
IBM and AMD first at 22 nm, challenge Intel’s manufacturing lead
Intel shows off solid-state drive road maps
Security flaw in Nokia cell phones - did they pay to get the information?
* Trivia and other links
* More about Linux Mint
How to donate
You find the Wallpaper of the Month in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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mintInstall 5
» Linux Mint BlogOne of the new features planned for the upcoming Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” is the ability to browse the Software Portal ([www.linuxmint.com]) and to install applications directly from the desktop. This feature is now ready and we’d like you to give us a hand in testing it.
We extended the scope of mintInstall and we developed a new frontend which downloads all the relevant data from the Software Portal so you can browse applications and install them without having to use the portal at all. We also defined how the portal and the frontend communicate with each others and formalized the data structure in XML. The frontend itself supports multiple portals (we’ll be talking to tuxsoftware.com for instance, hopefully getdeb.net too, and we’ll eventually publish documentation about this) so although you can only use it to browse the Linux Mint Software Portal right now, it’s only a matter of time before others portals become available.
Here’s a screenshot:
MintInstall 5 is available in Romeo. If you don’t have Romeo enabled you can get the debs from here:
Let us know what you think, report any bug you may find and have a lot of fun with this brand new mintInstall.
To translate mintInstall 5 into your own language, use this forum thread: [www.linuxmint.com]
Note: There was a lot I wanted to say about this but I’ll save it for the release notes. KDE CE is coming out soon, I need to work on x64 and there are still major developments I want to get done before Mint 6 (an upgrade tool for instance). To keep it short, MintInstall 5 is one of the new features planned for Mint 6 but it will also become available as an upgrade for Mint 5. It will stay in Romeo until we’re happy to consider it stable.. so we’re waiting on your feedback
Changelog:
- 5.0: Initial release
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 58
» Linux Mint Blog* News about MintOur server was hacked with downtime as a consequence. This was by a “bot” that scanned the net for vulnerabilities. We have now sealed the hole that made this SQL injection possible. We thank all that alerted us to what happened.
The 64 bit edition is advancing
I had hoped that a new beta (even final) of the XFCE edition would have been released. We are still plagued by an odd problem with log in/out so ….
* News about Linux
Canonical joins the Linux Foundation
Xandros acquired Linspire - now Linspire is no more
Dell’s “eee-killer” to have Ubuntu
Linus Torvalds fed up with “the security circus”
* News about IT
Dutch police and the FBI stops large botnet
Gmail and Google apps have crashed several times in the las week or so
Google has released Keyczar, billed as a “Toolkit for safe and simple cryptography”, under an Apache 2.0 open source license.
Important ruling in court in favour of open source
Loss of customer data spurs closure of online storage service ‘The Linkup’
Spam down 40% in second quarter of 2008 (Unfortunately only a swedish link - I can’t find the english link)
* Hardware news
AMD offers Linux drivers for new Radeon HD 4870 X2 at the same time the card is released
VIA quits motherboard chipset business
Materials that can make things invisible developed. Could improve computer hardware
A cheap way to replace copper in existing cables
* Trivia and other links
* More about Linux Mint
How to donate
You find the Wallpaper of the Month in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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Will the x64 Edition be for you?
» Linux Mint BlogThe PC market is in an interesting situation at the moment. Almost all the computers that are sold today come with 64 bit processors, which obviously support the AMD64 architecture but also i386. Owners of these computers are faced with a choice: running a 64bit operating system (AMD64) or a 32bit one (i386). The reality is that most of the software available at present is available for i386 and not always for AMD64. The older architecture is also more stable and is still seen as a reference by editors and developers. Last but not least, very few applications actually take advantage of the improvements of the new architecture so running an AMD64 operating system may actually not be faster than running an i386 one, and in some cases it could even be slower…
… so here is a new architecture which is ready, which a lot of people have the hardware for, but still… the software world doesn’t seem to be ready for it. I386 is still the predominant reference in the market and people will need a strong reason to change. That strong reason is the amount of RAM i386 can support: 4GB RAM. A budget computer (low to middle-range) now comes with 2GB of RAM and the upper market has already reached 4GB. No matter the performances, many users won’t run an operating system which doesn’t recognize all their memory. So we need to get ready and the same way we’ll have to support i386 after AMD64 becomes the reference architecture, we have to support AMD64 now even though it’s not fully on par with i386 yet.
I started working on the x64 Edition and I’m planning to make it as similar as the Main Edition as possible. Eventually I’d like to replicate all changes made to Main to x64 so that I can maintain both editions and release them at the same time. I’ve asked Chris (known as “lakehousetech” on the forums) to perform a benchmark and he compared the performance of Elyssa R1, Hardy i386 and Hardy AMD64. His results are available here:
As you can see, none of the three systems clearly outperformed the two others. So based on this benchmark performance wouldn’t be a reason for you to switch to the upcoming x64 Edition, not yet anyway. A real objective reason to make the switch would be if you already had more than 4GB RAM. Other than that we’d recommend you stick to what we do best and what receives most of our attention: The Main Edition.
This is also the reason why we’re considering this an edition rather than declining Main into two architectures. Every 6 months and with each release we’ll of course reconsider our position and re-assess the readiness of this architecture until it comes to par with i386 and we give it the same exposure as our main product.
x64 will start as a separate edition, one for enthusiasts and high spec computers. We’ll put all our efforts into it as it will eventually become our main product but for now we still consider it an alternative edition.
Comments and questions are welcome (I’m sure we’ll get a lot on this topic :)).
Note: It’s hard to say when this edition will be ready. The goal for Mint 5 was to start this edition and have an x64 version of Elyssa. We’re still aiming for this and this is receiving as much attention as ongoing development for Mint 6 (new mintUpdate, Application Manager (new mintInstall frontend), OEM support, Upgrade Manager). Once this edition is in place we’ll want to work on both architectures at the same time so there won’t be any delay between their respective releases.
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Server hacked
» Linux Mint BlogOur server was hacked and code was injected into it to make connections on our behalf to pinoc.org and download a trojan called JS/Tenia.d
For more information about this trojan: [us.mcafee.com]
If you visited linuxmint.com in the last two days we recommend you scan your computer to make sure this trojan isn’t present. As this attack exploited vulnerabilities within our PHP code we took the opportunity to clean it all and secure every single page against injections in the future. Linuxmint.com is now clean and secure but we experienced almost 20 hours of downtime and we lost almost 2 days of work into fixing this.
I personally received a lot of emails from the community, warning us about the problem. I haven’t had time to reply but I would like to thank the people who came forward. If you observe a problem in the future please do not hesitate to report it.
I’d also like to thank Michael (d00p) and Mats (husse) for the help they gave me on this. Husse, as always, catches my attention on what matters and if it wasn’t for d00p, our domain would still be down right now. I also apologize for the downtime and for the inconvenience. Comments and questions are welcome.
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 57
» Linux Mint Blog* News about MintEven 3.2 has been released. Quite a few new features, including better proxy support.
Distrowatch donates $400 to Linux Mint
Work is going on on the final versions (hopefully)
of the KDE and XFCE editions. There are only a few problems left to solve, but they seem reluctant to disappear* News about Linux
IBM, Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell, Red Hat to Deliver Microsoft-Free Desktops Worldwide An alliance has formed
IBM Contributes Key Open-Source Code for Linux Supercomputers
KDE 4 update Any similarity in that topic with slashdot is probably no coincidence
Ubuntu goes enterprise
VMware joins Linux Foundation
Google more and more involved in Linux
* News about IT
German hackers poke hole in great firewall of China
Hackers steal 40 million credit card numbers
‘Fakeproof’ e-passport is cloned in minutes
Vista’s Security Rendered Completely Useless by New Exploit
* Hardware news
AMD ditches Close-To-Metal, focuses on DX11 and OpenCL
* Trivia and other links
* More about Linux Mint
You find the Wallpaper of the Month in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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Distrowatch donates $400 to Linux Mint
» Linux Mint BlogLinux Mint just received a donation of $400. This is the single biggest donation the project received since it was started in 2006. The donation came from Distrowatch in association with LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com.
Distrowatch is known to donate a part of its income to upstream projects and distributions on a monthly basis. This single donation of $400 makes it the second biggest Linux Mint donor. By the past Distrowatch donated a total of $18,183 to the following projects:
* 2004: GnuCash ($250), Quanta Plus ($200), PCLinuxOS ($300), The GIMP ($300), Vidalinux ($200), Fluxbox ($200), K3b ($350), Arch Linux ($300), Kile KDE LaTeX Editor ($100) and UNICEF - Tsunami Relief Operation ($340)
* 2005: Vim ($250), AbiWord ($220), BitTorrent ($300), NdisWrapper ($250), Audacity ($250), Debian GNU/Linux ($420), GNOME ($425), Enlightenment ($250), MPlayer ($400), Amarok ($300), KANOTIX ($250) and Cacti ($375)
* 2006: Gambas ($250), Krusader ($250), FreeBSD Foundation ($450), GParted ($360), Doxygen ($260), LilyPond ($250), Lua ($250), Gentoo Linux ($500), Blender ($500), Puppy Linux ($350), Inkscape ($350), Cape Linux Users Group ($130), Mandriva Linux ($405, a Powerpack competition), Digikam ($408) and SabayonLinux ($450)
* 2007: GQview ($250), Kaffeine ($250), sidux ($350), CentOS ($400), LyX ($350), VectorLinux ($350), KTorrent ($400), FreeNAS ($350), lighttpd ($400), Damn Small Linux ($350), NimbleX ($450), MEPIS Linux ($300), Zenwalk Linux ($300)
* 2008: VLC ($350), Frugalware Linux ($340), cURL ($300), GSPCA (Linux webcam support) ($400), FileZilla ($400), MythDora ($500)As you can see Distrowatch isn’t only one of the most popular websites about Linux, it’s also one of the biggest financial supporter of small distributions and upstream projects. On behalf of the Linux Mint distribution I would like to thank Distrowatch, and in particular Ladislav Bodnar, for this donation and for all they’ve done for our project. Linux Mint is a successful distribution but it wouldn’t have been as popular if it wasn’t for websites like Distrowatch which allowed users to know about it in the first place. Today, we’re receiving the biggest donation since we started Mint. I feel really grateful. Thank you Distrowatch, Ladislav, and also thanks to LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com for being part of this.
Many thanks for supporting us,
Clem.
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mintUpdate 3 released!
» Linux Mint BlogIntroduction
We made a very controversial decision when we released Linux Mint 3.1 Celena. We decided to remove the Ubuntu update manager and a lot of people criticized us for doing that. As it turns out it was one of the best decisions we ever made (arguably and according to us.. of course). MintUpdate came right in time for the release of Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna and since then it regularly got updated to become one of the best update managers.
Today we’re going to rise the bar even higher with the release of mintUpdate 3 and we’ll be introducing yet another innovative idea: The ability to view the history of applied updates. The reason why mintUpdate was developed in the first place was to avoid uneducated updates but even with our 5 levels of filtering most users still blindly apply level 3 updates. With this new feature, after their system is damaged not only will they still be able to cry, but they’ll be able to tell us what updates they applied.. so we can in turn get a better idea of which level 3 packages should get a level 4 or 5.
New GUI
The graphical user interface was changed to look less minty (I know.. some people won’t approve and get emotional here) and more like other Linux tools. This is also to encourage other distributions to adopt what we think is now the best update manager on the market.
New features
All updates applied via mintUpdate are noted. The tool remembers the package name, the old and new versions, the level and the date of the update. From the view menu, you can now see the history of applied updates. The idea is to clear that list after you made sure everything was fine. This way, in case problems occur after you’ve applied updates you can narrow down the cause of the problems by identifying which update caused the regression.
MintUpdate runs in both user and root mode. Under Gnome, the proxy settings don’t always apply to root sessions so we introduced Proxy support. This will also make it easier for KDE users.
Improvements
- Log files are now saved in /tmp so they don’t take unnecessary space in /usr/lib and in /home anymore.
- The Internet detection was improved and the domain used for the ping is now configurable.
- The routine which checks for the updates (called checkAPT) was improved as were its ties with mintUpdate itself.
- The status reporting was improved. Logs are now clearer and show more information. In the GUI, status is now also reported via a status bar.
- The configuration moved from /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintUpdate/config to /etc/linuxmint/mintUpdate.conf and is now persistent (it won’t be affected by package updates).
Package and notes
Version numbers: We’re changing the way we assign version numbers to our tools in order to make it easier for them to be translated. The major revision number will change everytime the GUI is affected and a new set of translations is needed. All other changes will make the minor revision to be incremented.
MintUpdate 3 is availabe in the Romeo repository: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com elyssa romeo
The current version is v3.1 and is available here: [packages.linuxmint.com]
Non-Mint users will also need: [packages.linuxmint.com] or [packages.linuxmint.com]
Translations
mintUpdate 3 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=15695&p=95945
Feedback and bugs
Please post comments here on the blog if you find bugs in mintUpdate 3. 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.
Changelog
- 3.0: Initial release
- 3.1: Fixes a typo in the translation file.
- 3.2:
- Creates /etc/linuxmint if it’s not present (handy for non-Elyssa systems)
- If ping fails, tries to read google.com. This improves Internet detection on systems where ping is sometimes too slow.
- New translations: Italian, Catalan, Swedish, Czech, Japanese, Slovak, Norwegian-Bokmal, Spanish, Portuguese (Portugual & Brazil variations).
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 56
» Linux Mint Blog* News about Mint
Finally the Elyssa KDE CE edition beta 045 was released
Some news about Mint editions
* News about Linux
The number of computers sold with Linux preinstalled raises sharply in the UK
A better ATI open driver to appear
Launchpad 2 released
The 2.6.27 merge window closes - we can look forward to almost every webcam working
Jack Keane game shipping for Linux
10 good habits that improve your UNIX® command line efficiency
I stumbled upon TuxSoftware.com which has a selection of Linux software delivered by the Linux Software Installer which is based on mintInstall. This may have been mentioned in the newsletter before but it can’t hurt mentioning it again
* News about IT
Microsoft’s plans for post-Windows OS revealed
Much of the sale of Windows Vista is really Windows XP
Novell developers make their own Open Office - go-oo
2008 Best of Open Source Software Awards
British police shame 999 time wasters on YouTube
Travelers’ Laptops May Be Detained At US Border No Suspicion Required Under DHS Policies
Thailand bans Grand Theft Auto IV - I think it should be totally banned - I can’t see why promoting steeling cars and killing the drivers should be allowed even in a game - but that’s my personal view / Husse
Online threats materializing faster, study shows
FBI Warns of Storm Worm Virus
The hacking exploit Neosploit is “euthanized” - distributors citing support costs that didn’t justify the expense.
* Hardware news
New Version of IEEE 1394™ Standard Approved
A $10 high-resolution, lens-free microscope fits on a dime-size chip.
Foxconn sabotaging Linux - the BIOS in mother boards is crap for Linux
* Trivia and other links
* More about Linux Mint
You find the Wallpaper of the Month in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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Elyssa KDE Community Edition RC1 (BETA 045) released
» Linux Mint BlogLinux Mint 5 Elyssa KDE CE RC1 (BETA 045) was released today.
Links: Release Notes
Please report bugs here in the forums: [www.linuxmint.com]
Have fun and don’t hesitate to send us comments and feedback.
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Donations & Sponsorship - July 2008
» Linux Mint BlogMany thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint:
Sponsors:
- $70, Philippe Lotz, MBA, International Consulting & Coaching (alsaphil - France)
- $52, Linuxmint-Shop.de (Germany) - http://www.linuxmint-shop.de
- $45, Linux-Onlineshop (Germany) - http://www.linux-onlineshop.de
- $40, Az Van (newW2 - USA)
- $36, LinuxISOS.de (Germany) - http://www.linuxisos.de
- $20, TOPIMMOBILIEN (Tim - Germany) - http://www.immobilien-es.com
- $20, Espen H.
- $12, Sito3p.com (Italy) - http://sito3p.com/g_Go?Src=LinuxMint
- $10, Tuxdevil Outsourcing LLC http://www.tuxdevil.net
- $10, MXD Internet Solutions (Filip Oscadal - Czech Republic) - http://www.mxd.biz
- $10, Dimitris Athanasiou (RHO, Greece) - http://www.speedtest.gr
- $7, Panagiotis Papasaikas (Greece) - http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ppapasai/
- $5, Vassilis Skoullis (Greece)
- $5, linuxmint-italia.org (Pietro Martino / prior123 - Italy) - http://www.linuxmint-italia.org
- $5, Robert Holland
- $5, Kevin Gabbert
- $2, LinuxMint-Forum.de (Germany) - http://linuxmint-forum.de/
- $2, Khurt Williams (USA) - http://islandinthenet.com/
- $1, Lintelligence.de. (d00p - Germany) - http://www.lintelligence.de
- $1, Linuxmint.de (d00p - Germany) - http://www.linuxmint.de
- $1, Ian Egland (Echolynx - USA)
- $0.5 Martijn van Loon (aapiethaaap - Netherlands)Donors:
- $100 Michael Muller (USA)
- $100 S B Furniture Ltd (UK)
- $80 Antonio Marcos L.A. (Spain)
- $60 (in 2 donations), Andreas L. (Norway)
- $50 Alan D S. (USA)
- $50 (2nd donation) Edward B. (USA)
- $44 Heiko H. (Germany)
- $24 Paul D. (Netherlands)
- $20 Barry P. (UK)
- $10 Jan T. (Germany)
- $10 James R. (USA)
- $2 Luis M. (Portugal)Money raised in July:
* Donations: $550
* Sponsors: $359.5http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php
http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php -
Wallpaper of the Month, August Issue: Winner
» Linux Mint BlogThe votes were cast, and they are all in. The winner is clear.
Congratulations go out to akaNed for winning the 1st issue of Wallpaper Of The Month, his great work on this wallpaper got him a very well deserved win.
(see the full posting on the forums)This wallpaper has been submited to the linuxmint-art.org site, and cen be found HERE.
The submissions section for the September issue has been started, and is currently ongoing, so get your artwork ready, and post it HERE, and you could be the next winner.
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News about Mint Editions
» Linux Mint BlogKDE CE
Boo is experiencing problems with the installer. Language packs are correctly downloaded but not correctly installed by Ubiquity. This results in the selected language not being used by KDE and it’s delaying the release of KDE CE RC1. At this stage we believe the problem comes from a conflict in the Ubuntu repositories.
XFCE CE
Merlwiz finished his work on this edition. The ISO should be uploaded to our servers very soon now and it will then be tested by Exploder to see if it can be released.
x64
I started working on the x64 Edition. Since I’m starting from scratch on this edition there’s a lot of work involved but the progress is good so far and things are going fine. It’s too soon to know how long it will take for this edition to be ready yet.
Fluxbox CE
Shane submitted BETA 042 to Exploder, who only reported 4 bugs.. none of which were major issues. The next ISO from Shane is likely to pass Exploder’s tests and we’ll then be looking at a public release.
Other developments
mintInstall 4.0 has been in Romeo for a while now. Please provide feedback about it so we can move it to Elyssa.
mintUpdate 2.8 is going to bring a lot of changes and improvements to our update manager. It should be released in Romeo in the days to come. Please translate it (in the forums) as much as you can.
Flash 10 beta 2 is in Romeo. Please provide as much feedback as possible so it can make its way towards Elyssa.
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 55
» Linux Mint BlogWelcome to the Linux Mint Newsletter
* News about Mint
KDE CE RC1 Delayed This has been (mainly) because of a problem with localization - downloaded languages did not install. Even with a DVD sized ISO we can’t have all language packs in the ISO - bandwidth comes with a prize.
We get an increasing amount of spam in the forum (we are popular :)) but it’s becoming quite a nuisance….
* News about Linux
KDE 4.1 released
Google Gadgets for Linux
RealPlayer update fixes critical security holes which are for Linux as well
Launchpad to become open source in the next 12 months
Shuttleworth challenges open source to out-pretty Apple
Intel mobile Linux stack dumps Ubuntu
* News about IT
Microsoft donates cash to Apache
Speculation over back door in Skype
Google hits a milestone: found 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!
The dark side of the internet is growing. An infested site discovered every 5 seconds
Here’s someone leaving the dark side (MS developer goes to open source)
* Hardware news
Some nvidia mobile GPUs are flawed Dell releases BIOS update to alleviate. I think we may have a few people in the forum with this problem. It’s Geforce 8400M and 8600M that are affected.
D-Wave’s Orion: The First Commercial Quantum Computer?
* Trivia and other links
* More about Linux Mint
You find the Wallpaper of the Month in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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IRC Quizz AllStars Table - July 2008
» Linux Mint BlogAfter a whole month of tough competition here’s what the All Stars table looks like for July 2008:
1 dafdaf — 2.497 pts, 16 games. * Congrats! *
2 mitd — 0.175 pts, 2 games.
3 vacant — 0.096 pts, 1 games.
4 alex — 0.093 pts, 1 games.
5 MeansWell — 0.079 pts, 1 games.
There were 5 users playing 21 games.Congratulations to Dafdaf!
If you haven’t joined the Quizz yet, it’s very easy:
- In Linux Mint: open up Xchat-Gnome (or Konversation) then when it’s connected join the #pimpmymint channel.
- On other platforms: Launch your favorite IRC client, connect to the irc.spotchat.org server and join the #pimpmymint channel.Note: Make sure to register your nickname with Nickserv so that the Quizz bot can remember you the next time you log in.
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KDE CE RC1 Delayed
» Linux Mint BlogExploder found a problem in BETA 044 which was supposed to be released this week. It’s related to language support so we decided to postpone the release of RC1 until we get this fixed.
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Wallpaper Of The Month, August issue, Vote time
» Linux Mint BlogWell, it’s that time of the month, the very first Wallpaper Of The Month vote is now underway.
We have some incredible submissions this month, and I hope all of you will check out the amazing artwork done by our artist, and vote for you favorite.
The voting is done on the forums at Wallpaper Of The Month Voting
I am also going to be posting all winners to the linuxmint-art.org site, giving full credits to the original artist, so be on the lookout for them.
So head on over to the forums and vote for your favorite wallpaper, and let the artist know what you think.
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 54
» Linux Mint BlogWelcome to the Linux Mint Newsletter
* News about Mint
Elyssa XFCE Community Edition RC1 (BETA 025) released
Upcoming releases (More details here )
Preliminary dates
Friday 25 /07–> KDE CE RC1
Friday 01/08 –> XFCE CE Stable
Friday 08/08 –> KDE CE StableWallpaper Of The Week is changing format. It will change to “of the Month”
Linux Mint 5 Article: The Perfect Desktop
* News about Linux
The New and Improved Ubuntu QA
KDE 4.1 RC1 Release Announcement
42 of the Best Free Linux Video Software
Torvalds attacks IT industry ’security circus’
The new openSUSE Build Service tool (mentioned in the previous newsletter) used for Open-Xchange Server edition. The edition is immediately available for eight of the most popular Linux distributions (including Ubuntu)
* News about IT
Find out the name behind a Gmail address.
A project to secure the quality of Open Source financed by the EU
Europe Grants First Privacy Certification - EuroPriSe (Found in Dark Reading)
Cybercrime, Cosa Nostra-Style - sadly it’s getting worse
Record profit for Microsoft
* Hardware news
Oyster card system clams up
European Union regulators have expanded their antitrust case against Intel
* Trivia and other links
* More about Linux Mint
You find the Wallpaper of the Month in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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Upcoming releases
» Linux Mint BlogI’m planning the following three releases:
Friday 25 /07–> KDE CE RC1
Friday 01/08 –> XFCE CE Stable
Friday 08/08 –> KDE CE StableI’ll also be rolling out an R2 on Main and its new Universal Edition. Once all of this is out I’ll be experimenting with the x64 edition.
Shane is also working on the Fluxbox CE but I’m not sure how it will fit into all this at this stage, in terms of delays and schedule.
Note: The Universal edition will replace the Light Edition. It will come without codecs but with a .mint file to install them on the desktop, it will contain language packs for all major languages, a vanilla Grub (non-graphical) and it will come as a DVD.
Note: We’ll release “when ready”, as usual. Dates don’t mean much to us and that’s why we usually don’t communicate them. I’m only giving these dates to give people an idea but if something needs fixing then we’ll be releasing later that that of course.
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Elyssa XFCE Community Edition RC1 (BETA 025) released
» Linux Mint BlogLinux Mint 5 Elyssa XFCE CE RC1 (BETA 025) was released today.
Links: Release Notes
Please report bugs here in the forums: [linuxmint.com]
Have fun and don’t hesitate to send us comments and feedback. The Stable release should come in two weeks.
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Wallpaper Of The Week is changing format.
» Linux Mint BlogThe Wallpaper Of The Week competition is changing format. We will be going to a monthly format.
There are a few reasons for this change,
1: It will allow more time for artist to create new wallpapers, and as such, wallpapers of a higher quality and polish.
Now that is not to say that the wallpapers we have been getting are of a low quality, or saying that they need more pollish, this is just saying that you will have more time to create your art, and get it just the way you want it, without having to rush.
2: Having more time for submissions, means more people will be able to get involved.
As the Art-Team is a community project, the entire Mint community should have the opportunity to get involved, and having more time, will allow people who may not make new artwork on a semi-daily basis, get involved in the competition.
3: Management.
Changing to a monthly format, will make it alot easier to manage, there will be less posts on the forums, which will reduce the clutter a little, and also make it easier for users to find the proper post. Weekly competitions create too many posts, and some confusion as to what is the current issue, monthly will make it easier for all, as all you have to do is look for the month.
I posted a question and vote on the forums, and the vote has come back 3 to 1 for the change, this was not an arbitrary decision, I wanted input from the entire community, and I thank you all for your input and votes.
So, from this point on, the Wallpaper Of The Week, will be now known as, Wallpaper Of The Month.
The first round of voting will be done at the end of this week, and will be the August issue of Wallpaper Of The Month, we will then start taking submissions for the Septembers issue, and so on.
Again, thank you all for your votes, and input on this matter.
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Linux Mint 5 Article: The Perfect Desktop
» Linux Mint BlogYou’ve probably read an article from Falko Timme before. He’s famous for his “The Perfect Desktop” series. Falko recently looked at Linux Mint 5 Elyssa and detailed how to make a “fully-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop”. The article doesn’t try to review Elyssa but is more like a tutorial for novice users to quickly get a fully ready desktop up and running.
Link to the article: [www.howtoforge.com]
Comments:
Falko said: “Linux Mint 5 is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 8.04 that has lots of packages in its repositories (like multimedia codecs, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Skype, Google Earth, etc.) that are relatively hard to install on other distributions; it therefore provides a user-friendly desktop experience even for Linux newbies.”
–> Yes. This is one of the strength of our distribution. Thanks to Debian and Ubuntu we’re already sitting on one the biggest collections of packages. On top of this we’re actively trying to “import” extra packages and to maintain them in their latest version. For instance we’ve added Frostwire, ArgoUML, some GTK engines, Open Arena, Opera, Picasa, Real Player, Songbird, sunbird, Western Quake 3, Wine-Doors and we’re thinking of adding Urban Terror and Sopcast too. The more we grow as a distribution the more active we’ll become in maintaining our own packages.
Falko said: “When you log in for the first time, you will most likely see an open lock icon in the lower right corner which means that updates for the installed software are available.”
–> I really like the fact that Falko recommended the use of mintUpdate rather than APT or Synaptic to upgrade the system because by using APT or Synaptic the user would also apply all level 4 and 5 updates, which is considered a risk for the stability of the system. Having said that, I would also recommend to apply level 3 updates selectively. Starting with mintUpdate 2.8 level 3 will be considered unsafe by default.
Falko explained how to install various packages via Synaptic.
–> I don’t think Synaptic is appropriate for this kind of thing. I thought Falko should have given a command line to run here, it would have been much quicker. Anyway, this is an opportunity for me to talk about something I never mentioned before: Software packs. We can easily publish a .mint file in the software portal which will install a set of applications. This way, we can define packs. One particular pack which immediately comes to my mind is one that would install all the codecs and transform a Light Edition into a Main Edition. The .mint file could even be stored on the CD or on the desktop.. it doesn’t have to be only in the portal. We’ll have to think of other uses of this but if the idea of software packs becomes popular this is something we can easily implement. Who knows, the “Perfect desktop for Mint 6″ could be as simple as “install this mint file: click here”, technically we’re not far from it.
Conclusion:
I didn’t have much to say about this article. It’s quite well written and I’m sure it will help many people in getting their desktop closer to what they want. The instructions about VMWare in particular are quite handy. Happy reading everyone.
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 53
» Linux Mint BlogWelcome to the Linux Mint Newsletter
A security flaw in the DNS protocol has been fixed. This is for all operating systems and every appliance connected to the internet. Probably one of the most serious threats to the internet so far. Some background here - updates already in mintUpdate, please update your system. A warning has been posted in the forum
* News about Mint
I can’t guarantee it but it seems that a release of the Elyssa KDE edition is immanent - we are testing a beta with all problems hopefully solved. It is no easy task to make a good KDE edition. I also think the XFCE edition is near a public beta
Clem has been busy and posted a bunch of interesting info
Sections of the Mint repository
Some news about development We had to postpone the developement of QT frontends for the Mint applications in the KDE CE. The implications of Ubuntu 8.04.1 for development are considered
The implications of branding has been discussed. We like freedom, but not the freedom to use the Mint name and logo in any way or fashion.
Elyssa is used by 60% of the Mint users
mintInstall 4 released in Romeo (Romeo is the “unstable” branch of Mint repositories)
How should the Mint tools be named? This has wide implications and mintUpdate 2.8 will be released soon as “Update Manager”
There’s a poll for the naming here
The forum is growing and so is the interest for it from spammers. Please help keep the forum neat and report all spam you see.
The repositories were down for about half of July 7 It’s unclear if this was a hacker attack but there seems to be attempts to take the site down
* News about Linux
Linux Magazine has an article covering what they call “Spawn of Ubuntu” (which includes Mint)
GNOME hires Stormy Peters as Executive Director She has a past as an executive in HP
Xandros acquires Linspire - this obviously happened behind the scene and was not made public until some two weeks after it took place
openSUSE Build Service 1.0 Released The openSUSE Build Service allows developers to create and maintain packages for openSUSE and many other Linux distributions, including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, Red Hat, and Ubuntu.
ATI promises faster Linux drivers
A new version of Gentoo was released
Greg Kroah Hartman on the Linux Kernel (Youtube video)
An interview with Mark Shuttleworth
* News about IT
Samba 3.2 released
Web threats hits 12 month high
Vmware changes CEO and puts in a Microsoft veteran as CEO
The Windows version of VLC has a security flaw
As I stated in an earlier newsletter the Swedish law permitting bugging of all electronic communication that passes the country boundaries is aimed at Russia
The US congress passes amendments to the “FISA” Act which is similar to the Swedish act (Haven’t found a good link for this)
* Hardware news
Threats to the GPS system has been reported recently
The world may run out of some rare elements needed to make computer chips in a few years time
* Trivia and other links
* More about Linux Mint
You find the Wallpaper of the Week in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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Wallpaper Of The Week Winner (Issue 7)
» Linux Mint BlogThe votes are in, and the winner of this weeks WOTW is…..
In The Trees by akaNed
Congratulations to akaNed for his excellent work on this wallpaper.
This is going to be the last Wallpaper Of The Week, as we are changing to a new format, Wallpaper Of The Month. I will be posting more on this, and the reasons for the change in another announcement.
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Sections of the Mint repository
» Linux Mint BlogThe Linux Mint repositories contain all the software developed by us, imported by us or in a more general way, all the software we decided to maintain. If a particular package is in a Linux Mint repository it gets a higher priority than if it is in an Ubuntu repository, as a consequence, packages which are maintained by Linux Mint don’t directly get updates from Ubuntu, even if a newer version is put in the Ubuntu repositories. This is called APT pinning and it consists in always preferring Mint repositories over Ubuntu ones for particular packages, no matter what their respective versions are.
Linux Mint repositories are organized into different sections, which you can enable or disable based on your needs:
- main: This section contains all the software developed by Linux Mint. For example: mintUpdate, mintInstall etc…
- upstream: This section contains packages coming from upstream (in most cases from Ubuntu) which are patched, modified or repackaged by Linux Mint. For example: Firefox, Tomboy..etc
- import: This section contains software which comes from 3rd party developers and for which there are no (or outdated) upstream packages. Linux Mint packages these software applications and “imports” them into this section. Examples: Opera, Picasa, Songbird, Sunbird, Frostwire.. etc. In some cases the imported software is already packaged (some packages come from getdeb.net for instance).
- community: This section is disabled by default. We haven’t used it much so far but we’re planning to do so more and more. Sometimes, members of the community package things up and ask us to include additional software in our repositories. We’re planning to include these packages into this section.
- backport: This section is disabled by default. We haven’t used it much either, but we will use it more and more, especially with Elyssa, which is an LTS semi-rolling release. When a new version of a package becomes stable it is usually included in the repositories of the latest release. We’re also planning on porting these new versions back to Elyssa so Elyssa users can enjoy up to date desktop components until the next LTS release. The backport section is where we’ll include these new versions.
- romeo: Packages don’t stay in Romeo, they get there so we can test them and when they’re stable enough they go to another section. Linux Mint’s Romeo is like Debian’s Unstable, Mandriva Cooker or Fedora Rawhide… The only reason for you to use Romeo is to help us test new packages. For instance Romeo currently contains Flash 10 Beta 2, mintInstall 4.0 and will soon get mintUpdate 2.8. Romeo is quite unstable.. and as our stable releases carry female names we decided to give our unstable branch the name of a famous heart-breaker.
Finally, there is a website for the repository where you can see which packages and versions are in which section, where you can download debs and even source code: [packages.linuxmint.com]
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mintUpdate 2.8 coming soon
» Linux Mint BlogA new version of mintUpdate is coming very soon. Among the improvements, the graphical user interface has been completely revamped and a new screen lets you visualize the history of applied package updates.
Most Mint tools come with a big Mint logo and are called mintSomething. As most of them are innovative and provide features that are not present in other distros/OSes this stresses the fact that they were developed by us and contributes to make our distribution more popular. It also has negative effects as it lessens the chances for these tools to be adopted outside of Linux Mint. Finally, it probably makes more sense for the user, and so for the quality of our desktop, to call our tools depending on what they provide more than with a mintName.
I have to say… I really don’t know what to think of this right now, I’m hesitating. I can’t promise I’ll go with the majority vote on it, in the end I’ll do what I think is best anyway, but it would definitely help if I could get people’s opinion on this.
Note: There is a poll within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.
I’ll release mintUpdate 2.8 in Romeo under the name “Update Manager” and without branding. The interface looks less minty but more professional. I’d like to know what people think before I do that, and after they got a chance to see the new interface.
Also, and although this is marked as a Mint 6 Felicia improvement, since Elyssa is an LTS with rolling aspects, I hope you’ll soon be able to enjoy the ability to see the history of applied updates. It’s a very nice improvement and I hope you’ll like it.
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mintInstall 4.0 in Romeo
» Linux Mint BlogA few improvements were made to mintInstall:
- When installing an application, it now automatically detects the best strategy and the best repositories to use. As a consequence it’s much faster than it was in Daryna (this was already the case in Elyssa) but it’s as user-friendly too. It doesn’t ask you to make that confusing choice between default and local repositories anymore. If the mint file defines repositories, it uses them in conjunction with the mintsystem ones. If it doesn’t it looks for the packages in your own repositories. If it finds them it uses your repositories (no apt updates required), it it doesn’t it uses mintsystem’s.
- After installing an application a little dialog used to pop up.. saying “success”. This was redundant and not particularly useful. It was removed and the main window’s state is now updated to reflect on the result.
- In the frontend, if an APT search returns no result, the result dialog says “No result” instead of appearing blank.
- In the frontend, if you type anything in the textfiel, the value of the textfield is replicated in the other tabs.. a bit like the search plugins in Firefox, you don’t have to retype the same thing every time you change tabs anymore.
- Translations: Bulgarian was updated, Czech and Catalan were added.
Note: If you want to get mintInstall 4.0 without using Romeo you can get the deb package here: [packages.linuxmint.com]
Enjoy
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Elyssa reaches 60%, Flash 10 Beta 2 in Romeo
» Linux Mint Blog- 60% of Linux Mint users are running version 5 Elyssa. On the week of the release that number quickly came up to a rough 50% and has been slowing going up since.
- Flash 10 Beta 2 (10.0.525) was added to the Romeo repositories. Please report your experience with it so we can decide whether or not to add it to the Elyssa repositories before version 10 stable is out.
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Important considerations about the branding
» Linux Mint BlogLinux Mint has grown rapidly and as the founder and leader of this distribution, I’ll be honest, there are some things I’ve had to learn the hard way. I believe I made the right decisions in most cases but I can also look back at some of these decisions and see that I made mistakes. The technical side of things has actually been quite easy, being a developer and knowing what I want I never found it hard to implement something. I’ve also been lucky to find a great and helpful community from which a few highly skilled persons stepped up and came to help me develop the distribution. The hardest challenges were around the community itself, and the relationship with people actively trying to help or to develop initiatives related to Linux Mint. Among these challenges the branding in particular has always been an issue.
Before I go on about the branding I’d like to stress out the fact that everything we do is free, redistributable, shareable, modifyable and that anybody can fork or reuse or work for any use they see fit. That’s our idea of freedom and as said before, we hope you like it
The branding is an issue though. The first example was Ultumix, a distribution based on Linux Mint. Ultumix released an ISO of their distribution using the Mint splash screen and even described the ISO as “Linux Mint Ultumix Edition” on their website. Although it’s fine for them to modify our distribution and reuse it to create Ultumix, it creates a serious problem for us if they use our branding and confuse people as to whether or not we were the makers of that so-called edition. It’s a problem of responsibility and ownership. Our concern here, and I hope you’ll excuse my French, is that people might download this ISO thinking it’s one of our editions, dislike it and consequently have a negative opinion of us based on something we’re not responsible or even in control of.
That same problem happened also when the maintainer of one of our editions refused to follow our process and wanted to release the ISO before we could properly test it. It was fine for him to make that ISO and fine for him to release it publicly but as we consequently didn’t want to have anything to do with it, it was important for us that this ISO wasn’t using our name.
Lately our community grew in size and our distribution in popularity. A lot of websites about Linux Mint were created and we’re facing a new challenge. The presence of these websites is beneficial to all of us, for the website itself as it can generate some income from its own traffic or revenue through its own business activities (sales for instance), for users as it provides additional services and resources related to the distribution, and finally for the distribution itself as it rises awareness and creates more momentum in the community and on the Web in general. In general, any Linux Mint related initiative (whether it’s in the form of a web site, a derived distribution or something else) is beneficial to us, the only potential problem with it is branding. In the case of a website the concern is that visitors might think we’re the maintainers of a particular portal and if they’re unhappy with the service or the content on that portal they might get a bad opinion of the distribution itself. Again, the distinction needs to be clear so that responsability and ownership are clearly not mistakenly given to us for something we are not maintaining.
So how exactly do we let websites talk about us, dedicate themselves to us and at the same time enforce that distinction between who we are and what is around us. We need to clearly state how our branding can be used and this is something, by lack of experience, we’ve never really looked into until now.
So here goes (and this will be summarized on the website):
For derived distributions, localization, independent ISOs:
- Linux Mint Logo: Derived distributions need to make their own. If the goal of the distribution is to specialize Linux Mint without the will to create a brand of its own the logo can be a modification of the Linux Mint logo or the Linux Mint logo itself as long as something is put on top of it to clearly distinguish it from the official one. The Linux Mint logo cannot be used in the splash screens, boot menus or in the default wallpaper. The logo can be used within the menu and the mint tools and as part of alternative wallpapers.
- Linux Mint catchphrase (”from freedom came elegance”): The catchphrase cannot be used at all. It can however be translated in a different language (for localized independent Mint-related projects) or modified.
- “Linux Mint” name: The name can be referred to but it can’t be used as part of the project’s name.
- Mint tools: The mint tools can be modified or used without modifications. No restrictions apply to them.
- “Linux Mint Edition”: The derived project can under no circumstances describe itself as a “Linux Mint Edition”.
For websites:
- Linux Mint Logo and favicon: The Linux Mint logo cannot be used to identify the website. However it can be a modification of the Linux Mint logo or the Linux Mint logo itself as long as something is put on top of it to clearly distinguish it from the official one.
- Linux Mint catchphrase (”from freedom came elegance”): The catchphrase cannot be used to identify the website. It can however be translated or modified.
- “Linux Mint” name: The portal’s name can contain “Linux Mint” as part of its own name but it cannot confuse visitors and make them think it’s maintained by the distribution. For instance “Linux Mint Shop” is not an acceptable name as it implies the shop is maintained by Linux Mint. If it does it needs to state both in English and in the website’s language, on the website’s main page, that it’s an independent website, that it’s distinct from linuxmint.com and that it’s not maintained by the distribution itself.
- Domain name: The domain name can contain “linuxmint” but if it does it needs to state both in English and in the website’s language, on the website’s main page, that it’s an independent website, that it’s distinct from linuxmint.com and that it’s not maintained by the distribution itself.
It’s not an interesting topic or one I like to think about but that point had to be addressed. I’ll soon formalize all this and in the meantime I’d love to get your feedback on this.
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Winner of Wallpaper of the Week - Issue 6
» Linux Mint BlogThis weeks winner of Wallpaper of the Week is,
SpringWind by raindropmemory.
fullscreen
widescreen
Congratulations to raindropmemory for his excellent work on this wallpaper.
Also please be sure to check out this weeks Wallpaper of the Week vote for Issue 7
Submissions and vote can be seen in the forums HERE -
Repositories are down
» Linux Mint BlogThe repositories (packages.linuxmint.com) are currently down, giving 403 errors or not responding at all.
Sorry for the inconvenience. We’re aware of it and we’re trying to fix them as quick as possible.
Affected parts of the desktop: APT, mintInstall and Synaptic can only install from Ubuntu or 3rd party repositories. MintUpdate cannot work at all.
Update (7th July, 4:38pm GMT0): I made a temporary fix. The repository is working at the moment but expect some more downtime later when this gets properly fixed by Michael (d00p).
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Donations & Sponsorship - June 2008
» Linux Mint BlogMany thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint:
Sponsors:
- $70, Philippe Lotz, MBA, International Consulting & Coaching (alsaphil - France)
- $25, Az Van (newW2 - USA)
- $11, LinuxISOS.de (Germany) - http://www.linuxisos.de
- $10, Tuxdevil Outsourcing LLC http://www.tuxdevil.net
- $10, TOPIMMOBILIEN (Tim - Germany) - http://www.immobilien-es.com
- $10, MXD Internet Solutions (Filip Oscadal - Czech Republic) - http://www.mxd.biz
- $7, Panagiotis Papasaikas (Greece) - http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ppapasai/
- $5, Vassilis Skoullis (Greece)
- $5, linuxmint-italia.org (Pietro Martino / prior123 - Italy) - http://www.linuxmint-italia.org
- $5, Robert Holland
- $5, Kevin Gabbert
- $2, LinuxMint-Forum.de (Germany) - http://linuxmint-forum.de/
- $2, Khurt Williams (USA) - http://islandinthenet.com/
- $1, Lintelligence.de. (d00p - Germany) - http://www.lintelligence.de
- $1, Linuxmint.de (d00p - Germany) - http://www.linuxmint.de
- $0.5 Martijn van Loon (aapiethaaap - Netherlands)Donors:
- $100 (3rd donation) Harald Gauslaa (Norway)
- $80 (3rd donation) Theodore T. (UK)
- $80 Eric H. (Germany)
- $80 Paul G. (Netherlands)
- $60 (3rd donation) Erik Anderson (deadguy - USA)
- $51 (in 2 donations) William G. (USA)
- $50 (2nd donation) Michael G. (subslug - USA)
- $50 Holland StJ. (USA)
- $50 Nordgard W. (Norway)
- $50 Gary Arter (UK)
- $50 Eric H. (USA)
- $50 Ernest M. (Australia)
- $40 Dariusz Z. (Ireland)
- $40 (4th donation) Peter Fitzsimons (UK)
- $40 (2nd donation) Philippe W. (Switzerland)
- $40 Matthew M. (USA)
- $32 (5th donation) Temel Balci (Germany)
- $30 (2nd donation) Randolph MacK. (Verlager - USA)
- $25 Julia C. (USA)
- $25 Samantha O. (USA)
- $25 James S. (USA)
- $25 David K. (USA)
- $25 Scott H. (USA)
- $24 Joan P. N. (Spain)
- $24 Till H. H. (Germany)
- $21 Timothy R. (USA)
- $16 Alan O. (UK)
- $16 (3rd donation) Frank Bechstein (Germany)
- $16 (2nd donation) Bernd M. (Germany)
- $13 Julien D. (Belgium)
- $10 Jesse N. (USA)
- $10 Erik L. (Germany)
- $10 Richard L. (USA)
- $10 Douglas S. (USA)
- $10 (3rd donation) Jaxon L. (USA)
- $10 Juan G. M. (Spain)
- $8 (7th donation) Phillip Blake (antiquexray - USA)
- $5 Ricardo G. E. (Argentina)
- $1 Shane E. (Canada)Money raised in June:
- Donations: $1302
- Sponsors: $169.5
http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php
http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php -
Latest News
» Linux Mint BlogI just wanted to post about what happened these last few days and what’s coming up in the near future:
- We decided to postpone the developement of QT frontends for the Mint applications in the KDE CE. As a consequence, the bad news is that all mint tools will still come with GTK interfaces in Elyssa KDE CE and that due to a problem with how GTK handles transparency in systray GTK applications won’t be using the default KDE style by default. The good news is that, with this out of the way, there isn’t much holding Elyssa KDE CE from being released anymore… so we should see this edition come with a public BETA pretty soon now.
- Ubuntu released an update (8.04.1). I’m currently reviewing it. As always I tend to take a conservative approach and I’m not interested in updates which don’t fix any important known issues. If the decision is to catch up with 8.04.1 then Linux Mint 5 R2 will be released and I’ll take the opportunity to consider adding support for OEM installations and a fix for mintUpdate (which sometimes doesn’t always refresh itself).
- Firefox 3 stable was added to the repositories. Opera 9.5 is there as well (although this was added a while ago). We’ve also added Western Quake 3 ( [linuxmint.com] ) and we might add Urban Terror 4.1 soon.
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Weekly Newsletter - Issue 52
» Linux Mint BlogWelcome to the Linux Mint Newsletter
* News about Mint
There is one important point to add about the security flaw in mintAssistant
Create a root password!
Else you will not be able to use “Recovery mode”
mintAssistant recommends you not to do so, but then you get a random root password, which you will never know
Clem posted comments on reviews of Elyssa in the Blog
Apart from that not much has happened that is publicly known
Behind the scenes we are working hard on the KDE and Fluxbox versions and betas are tested with good result
Unless something happens I think we can see public betas soon
* News about Linux
There has been a large number of releases lately
Parsix, Pardus and Archlinux have all been released last week
Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition released
A new game for Linux - Zero Ballistics Beta for Linux available
Wine 1.1 released
* News about IT
Bill Gates retires from Microsoft
Microsoft prolongs support for XP to 2014
Microsoft is pushing freeware to help combat SQL injection attacks. SQL injection is widely abused to infect websites so they do things the attacker wants
How severe this can be can be seen in this article
Ericsson to sell it’s share in Symbian to Nokia for £209m
Spam DDoS assault cuts off south Pacific state
Swedish members of parliament that voted for the controversial bugging law mentioned in last weeks newsletter are flooded with protest emails
Critical security alert issued for Tor
* Hardware news
ATI and nvidia - the latest graphics card compete
Equipment to tell the position of a RFID tag intended for advertising
* Trivia and other links
* More about Linux Mint
You find the Wallpaper of the Week in the Blog
* Editors comment
As always - if you find something I’ve missed in the newsletter please tell me - you can post a comment here
Enjoy life
Husse
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IRC Quizz AllStars Table - June 2008
» Linux Mint BlogAfter a whole month of tough competition here’s what the All Stars table looks like for June 2008:
1 Kronophage — 1.680 pts, 13 games. * Congrats! *
2 christopher — 0.222 pts, 2 games.
3 thomas — 0.214 pts, 2 games.
4 djnm — 0.213 pts, 2 games.
5 OOp — 0.154 pts, 1 games.
6 mocap — 0.151 pts, 2 games.
7 StevenBrady — 0.133 pts, 2 games.
8 MeansWell — 0.127 pts, 1 games.
9 phonic — 0.092 pts, 1 games.
10 alex_ — 0.088 pts, 1 games.
There were 11 users playing 28 games.Congratulations to Kronophage who’s been at the top of the table for 3 months now.
If you haven’t joined the Quizz yet, it’s very easy:
- In Linux Mint: open up Xchat-Gnome (or Konversation) then when it’s connected join the #pimpmymint channel.
- On other platforms: Launch your favorite IRC client, connect to the irc.spotchat.org server and join the #pimpmymint channel.Note: Make sure to register your nickname with Nickserv so that the Quizz bot can remember you the next time you log in.
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WOTW Vote time (for WOTW #006)
» Linux Mint BlogHere are the candidates for this weeks WOTW (#006). What is your favorite, what would like to see get into the LinuxMint repositories? Vote on the forums and let us know, and we will listen.
Mint Code by akaNed
Mint Carved in Stone by Zwopper
SpringWind by raindropmemory
Here is the link to the vote
Link to vote on forums -
Linux Mint 5 Review: TechieMoe
» Linux Mint BlogTechieMoe.com often appears on distrowatch in the review section. The great thing about it is that it actually reviews new releases very often and very quickly. The bad thing is that it doesn’t take the time to review them properly and often only gives an overview of the new features, misses improvements, ignores their philosophy and barely scratches the surface. So Elyssa was reviewed on TechieMoe.com a few days after its release and it got a score (3 penguins) but none of its new features (as in not even one) were discussed…
… although one might wonder why somebody would review a product he knows nothing about and give a score to something he didn’t read the release notes, Moe rises a few interesting points so I decided to comment on his review nonetheless. Warning though: Moe doesn’t know much about Mint, to him it’s more or less Ubuntu, and he doesn’t have a clue what has changed between Daryna and Elyssa. I’m not sure whether he knows about the Release Notes and the User Guide or whether the pace and purpose of techiemoe.com simply doesn’t allow him to take the necessary time to know about the different distribution he gives a brief overview of.
Don’t take me wrong, it’s nice to have an overview of something sometimes, but as a review of something we’ve worked on for the last 6 months, I found it quite disappointing.
Link to the review: [www.techiemoe.com]
- Moe said: “It offers a stable base of Ubuntu along with several useful pieces that aren’t included for legal reasons”
–> For “licensing” reasons, as the problem here isn’t to do with legislation but mostly with patents.
- Moe said: “I like being given the choice to enable root and turn off fortunes. I was less than impressed by the fact that my regular user was still given sudo privileges after I enabled the root account, though. The end result was the same as if I’d simply not enabled it, so the choice is pretty futile.”
–> Now, this is the main reason why I decided to comment on this review. I find that point particularly interesting. Moe definitely has a point here and whether we agree or disagree with him on that point, we should look into this and see at the very least if mintAssistant, in the way it phrases the question and allows that choice, should also give the possibility to remove sudo-powers to the main user. I will look in how to improve mintAssistant to allow that choice to be made. At the moment it’s a yes or no question and the user needs to choose between sudo and sudo + root password, this can be made better and we’ll improve it for Mint 6.
- Moe said: “I realize that Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, and Ubuntu does everything with sudo. However I’d like to be able to make Mint behave the same as other distributions if I choose to enable the root account.”
–> Very valid point. I can see why a user would want to do that and I can’t see any reason why mintAssistant shouldn’t let him/her do it. We’ll fix that in Linux Mint 6.
- Moe said: “I make my user password hard to guess, and my root password close to impossible to guess, and in order to do anything terribly damaging an attacker would need at least root. Using the default Ubuntu and Mint setup, an attacker needs only to crack the user password (which is in theory easier to do) in order to make system-wide changes.”
–> I disagree with that and I don’t see any reason why the your user password should be easier to guess, especially if the admin can use and remember a complex password for the root account. Exposing the user account is not a good idea in the first place, not to mention that on a single-user system the user account is as precious as root since the only real value is in the data and documents stored in the user’s home, in information which can’t be communicated or lost.
- Moe said: “The first thing I tried was wireless drivers. Although a graphical configuration screen was available for NDISWrapper, I was unable to get my Broadcom card to work. I attempted to install Nvidia 3D drivers as well, but the script failed when it couldn’t find GLIBC. Apparently Linux Mint does not include the “build-essential” packages by default. I attempted to add “build-essential” using the disc, but I couldn’t find a way to define the disc as a source. In regular Ubuntu this is done in “Software Sources.” I looked around on the CD itself and could find no packages, so manual installation was out of the question.”
–> We placed broadcom drivers on the disc, there are mintWifi drivers in /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintWifi/drivers and we don’t include build-essential by default. The disc itself doesn’t act as a repository like the Ubuntu liveCD does. It’s a problem with the space available on the CD, because of our software selection we can’t add much on the CD itself.
- Moe said: “If found, it will take you to a website that lists the package, a description and gives an “Install Now” button. Clicking that downloads the appropriate files and you’re off. Although it’s an interesting feature, I don’t see any benefit to this over Synaptic.”
–> Community reviews, screenshots, ranking, the ability to explain to someone how to install something by just sending him/her a link he/she can click on or by sending him/her a .mint file by email (a few KB), browsing of applications in a particular category and by popularity, ability to make installers for virtually anything (a .deb is a .deb, a .mint file can install many .debs from different repositories, with different keys, it can run any kind of code, launch operations, make modifications on the filesystem, send emails..etc.. basically a .mint file can do much more than installing a .deb), application-centric approach as opposed to package-centric approach in Synaptic (people like to think of applications by their name, not by the names of the package(s) that represent(s) them).
- Moe said: “However, even with the multimedia codecs it installs I can’t help but ask myself why I’d choose Mint over regular Ubuntu. Given the choice, I’d still go with the devil I know. I know its limitations, and I can work around them. There’s too much unfamiliar territory in Mint.”
–> I completely agree. If you don’t see any difference between a derivative and its base distribution then you’ve got no reason to run the derivative, it’s pure common sense. Now having said that, we’ve been developing Linux Mint for nearly 2 years now, we’ve got really detailed Release Notes and a 100 pages User Guide going through each specificity of our distribution… I don’t think Mint is popular because people like black better than brown and although it’s fine for somebody not to show interest in new distributions, I though that was precisely the point in a review.
Conclusion:
I’d like to thank Moe for rising that point about mintAssistant and sudo. It definitely made me think further about it and I’m pretty sure it will allow us to improve this in the upcoming Mint 6. The review itself is disappointing and it summarizes how people see Mint when all they know is that it’s based off Ubuntu. If you run Mint in a VM for about 10 minutes and just poke it here and there… obviously it’s going to look like Ubuntu with codecs and a different theme. It reminds me of my niece (she’s been running Mint Main for a year now)… as I was testing KDE CE she kind of looked at it, saw that it had Firefox, OpenOffice and all that.. and she said “.. so it’s just blue then is it?”.
