Linux Mint Newsletter Issue 10

From The Linux Mint Wiki

1 Bianca KDE Edition
2 Romeo
3 mintInstall
4 A few interesting links

Bianca KDE Edition

A second release candidate, BETA 022, was released which fixes the following bugs:

http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php/Bugs_in_Bianca_KDE_BETA_020

This release introduces a new KDE style called domino and uses the Bianca Green theme which was present in the main edition. Modifications were brought to the panel to make the KDE Edition look more professionnal. The kde-guidance bug which prevented some modules to be loaded was fixed. Kcontrol now replaces the system settings. Both dolphin and tastymenu were upgraded, dolphin now features a sidebar and the icon and button text in tastymenu can now be configured.

The stable release is still planned for the 20/04/2007 and a list of bugs has been published for this second beta release:

http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php/Bugs_in_Bianca_KDE_BETA_022

Romeo

Opera 9.20 was added to Romeo. This new version features a "speed dial" which allows the user to quicly access his/her favorite websites. The package needs one more positive feedback to make its way into Bianca.

mintInstall

Some people heard us talk about mintInstall and pointed out they knew very little about this project. mintInstall is supposed to replace the need for CNR (Click and Run) in Linux Mint and it should be released and installed by default in the upcoming Cassandra.

The idea behind mintInstall is to have a Web portal with categories and software applications, ratings and reviews. The user will browse the portal with Firefox and if he wants to install something simply click on an "install" button/link in his Web browser. This will download a very lightweight file (a .mint file) which doesn't actually contain the software, but instructions to pilot APT. A GTK client (mintInstall) will pop out with the application's name, logo and description.. asking whether the user want's to install the software or cancel the installation.

The mint file will be able to tell APT which repositories to use, which keys to download, what steps to follow, which packages to install and even what progress to report to the user. Users will then be able to install any application, whether it's present in their repositories or not, just by clicking on a link. mintInstall should run on any version of Linux Mint, or other Debian-based distributions.

Development previews of mintInstall should soon hit the Romeo repository.