Many thanks for your support and the help you’re sending us. We received 675 donations and $22,803 in December alone! We’ve never received so much before, I don’t think we’ve ever received funds from so many people either, and the figures at the top of that list are incredible. This was before Christmas and after the release of Linux Mint 19.1 and the message is very clear, you love what we do 🙂

It’s always a treat for us to unveil what we’ve been working on and to have it ready on release day. That’s when we get feedback and we see people enjoy it. Witnessing a happy user who is delighted with the changes we implemented is very special, and so is the general feeling that a release went well and that its reception was very positive. We get that thanks to a vocal community here on the blog, on the forums and on IRC. When a month later stats show close to 700 people were so happy with us they sent us money, it gives us a sense of scale and we know there’s also a silent audience who enjoyed what we did. It’s humbling, it’s motivating, it’s really a great feeling. Thank you very much for this, not just for the money, but for that awesome feeling you’re giving us.

The 19.1 release and the port to LMDE 3 went well so we were able to start the development cycle early this month. Normally we catch up with pull requests (we currently have 92 open) and we start implementing what’s on the roadmap, but as we’ve got time in front of us and in reaction to some of the feedback we gathered, we spent most of January on R&D, design considerations and ambitious tasks. Three areas in particular were given attention: Artwork, performance and the idea of splitting Cinnamon into different processes. I usually prefer to talk about what we achieved rather than what we envision and this certainly isn’t a promise. We’re deep into this at the moment, it will lead to improvements but some of these ideas and projects will also probably fail or not lead to anything in the short/middle term.

In terms of artwork, we’re considering adding more contrast (again), changing the default font, and giving our boot and splash screens (isolinux, grub and plymouth) a new look. We’re also looking at the possibility for the boot screens of the live ISO to support language and keymap selections.

Another area we’re working on is the Linux Mint website. We purchased some beautiful designs and we’re selecting them and adapting them to turn www.linuxmint.com (and eventually also community.linuxmint.com) into websites which look more modern and which look good no matter what device you browse them with.

In Cinnamon we’re reviewing two internal components: DocInfo, which is responsible for the management of recent documents, and Appsys (in conjunction with cinnamon-menus) which is responsible for application metadata (how to launch a particular app, how to build the application menu, which windows are related to which app, what icons/actions does an app have..etc..). There is a lot of technical debt in these two components and they account for most of the loading time.

We’re also looking at the application menu at lot, simplifying its use of DocInfo and Appsys of course, but also trying to reduce its impact on framerate (itzexor in particular is looking at the Clutter and St objects we’re using and optimizations in PopupMenu classes) and being smarter with lazy-loading. Some of the discussions lead to the idea of replacing the “All applications” category with a category which would list recently used and newly installed applications, other than the functional interest in such a feature, it would allow us to boost the menu performance.

Michael Webster is working on something really complicated, something we’ve talked about since the dawn of time… splitting Cinnamon into multiple processes. He’s studying the possibility of having applets run in their own process and render objects remotely. This is very ambitious and pretty much R&D at this point. We’re hoping he’ll succeed with a prototype. Failing that there’s also the idea of keeping the rendering of the applet content in Cinnamon itself and only delegating the processing (similar to dbus–menu), or to keep Cinnamon and applets together and split away the WM.

Jason Hicks continues his work on improving the grouped window list, the window manager and optimization of input lag. It’s a bit complicated within the team now because we’re all focused on slightly different areas but they often impact each others. We’re not going as fast as we’d want, it’s hard to reach consensus at times, the design concepts at play are complex and some of the metrics are very hard to measure, but we’re talking about this a lot and making progress slowly but surely.

We spent time on our own development tools also, in particular on something called cinnamon-stat-stracker which is able to measure loading times, and idle resource usage (CPU, RAM, FDs..etc) over time.

We welcomed gm10 within the team. He’s contributing a lot to some of the mint tools, in particular to the Update Manager and the Software Sources.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Donations in December:

A total of $22,803 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 675 donors:

$4500 (3rd donation), Neil V.

$825 (2nd donation), Blue Ridge POS, LLC aka “Dewey”

$500, Gerald L.

$272, Mathias H.

$250, Charles E.

$218, James B.

$218, Postbank S.

$200, Robbie S.

$182 (3rd donation), Tanev, T.

$150 (3rd donation), John M.

$115 (5th donation), Stefan S.

$109 (5th donation), Martin R.

$109 (3rd donation), aka “Phantasus”

$109 (3rd donation), Jürgen A.

$109 (2nd donation), Oliver Z.

$109 (2nd donation), Eric P. K.

$109 (2nd donation), Thorsten L.

$109, Wolfgang B.

$109, Wolfgang B.

$109, Andreas G.

$100 (7th donation), Efran G.

$100 (5th donation), martywd

$100 (5th donation), Mirza B.

$100 (5th donation), Sean O.

$100 (4th donation), Kory W.

$100 (3rd donation), David Clearwater

$100 (2nd donation), Joseph R.

$100 (2nd donation), Steve M.

$100 (2nd donation), Ross D.

$100, Norman S.

$100, John S.

$100, Charles H.

$100, Clint E.

$100, Michael S.

$100, Brian H.

$100, Russell I.

$100, Peter C.

$100, Gilbert L.

$100, Dominic A.

$98, Eugen A.

$80 (3rd donation), MAHASWAMI SOFTWARE PRIVATE LIMITED aka “VENKAT K”

$75 (4th donation), Rich H.

$75 (4th donation), Walter W.

$70 (4th donation), Marie I.

$60 (2nd donation), James L.

$60, Volker H.

$55 (2nd donation), Michael D.

$54 (5th donation), Paul S. E. aka “Paul”

$54 (5th donation), Frank M.

$54 (4th donation), Christian D.

$54 (3rd donation), http://societyofcontrol.com

$54 (3rd donation), erwn

$54 (2nd donation), Torsten P.

$54 (2nd donation), Jean-françois H.

$54 (2nd donation), J. J.

$54 (2nd donation), Alain V. L.

$54 (2nd donation), Arnd S.

$54 (2nd donation), Joachim J.

$54, Robert L.

$54, Christian S.

$54, Lois H.

$54, Sabrina B.

$54, Markus L.

$54, Ilka T.

$54, Thomas B.

$54, Jean-baptiste P.

$54, Matthias S.

$54, Remy P.

$54, Per Hultqvist (SoftTeam AB)

$54, Patrice O.

$54, Martin D. O.

$54, Jörg G.

$54, Alois K.

$51, Sukhorukov

$50 (31st donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”

$50 (27th donation), Larry J.

$50 (12th donation), Thomas T. aka “FullTimer1489”

$50 (9th donation), Hans J.

$50 (8th donation), Stephen A.

$50 (8th donation), Adam H.

$50 (7th donation), Douglas J.

$50 (7th donation), Robert H. B.

$50 (7th donation), cocasema

$50 (6th donation), Bill R.

$50 (6th donation), Cody W. H.

$50 (5th donation), Wade T.

$50 (5th donation), Basic I. I.

$50 (4th donation), Steven C.

$50 (4th donation), Harry H. I.

$50 (4th donation), David S.

$50 (4th donation), Steven C.

$50 (3rd donation), David W.

$50 (3rd donation), Paul R.

$50 (3rd donation), William G.

$50 (3rd donation), Daniel B.

$50 (2nd donation), Sergey Starosek aka “star”

$50 (2nd donation), Andrew Brockinton aka “Landrew”

$50 (2nd donation), Jim P. aka “in memory of Dad”

$50 (2nd donation), Stacey F.

$50 (2nd donation), Michael L.

$50 (2nd donation), Mike M.

$50 (2nd donation), Omar T.

$50 (2nd donation), Ralph P.

$50 (2nd donation), Jerry A.

$50, Steven N.

$50, Robert H.

$50, Thomas S.

$50, Shawn H.

$50, Gerald S.

$50, Falcon I.T. Services

$50, Peter T.

$50, Eirikur H.

$50, Jeffrey M.

$50, Carlos M.

$50, John H.

$50, James S.

$50, Prashanth V.

$50, Robert H.

$50, The Voorhees – Fine Audio

$50, Charles N.

$50, James D.

$50, greerd

$50, Richard B.

$50, KLDev

$48, Robert B.

$45 (6th donation), Pavel B.

$45, Paul S.

$44 (3rd donation), Ben E.

$44 (3rd donation), Brian M.

$44 (2nd donation), Manfred S.

$40 (24th donation), Wolfgang P.

$40 (2nd donation), Luca D.

$40 (2nd donation), Robert T.

$40 (2nd donation), Peter B.

$40, Sharon S.

$40, Georges A.

$36, Jean H.

$34 (5th donation), Rosalea R.

$33 (8th donation), Luca D.

$33 (4th donation), Jean-claude M.

$33 (4th donation), Stephen M.

$33 (3rd donation), Frank J.

$33 (3rd donation), Jürgen F.

$33 (2nd donation), Reijo H.

$33 (2nd donation), Urs N.

$33, Michael B.

$33, Edvinas N.

$33, Roberto B.

$33, Christian M.

$33, Rainer G.

$33, Jean-Pierre Bovee aka “NRJCut”

$33, Roberto B.

$33, Joseba S. I.

$33, Jakob B.

$33, Ivo

$32 (2nd donation), Clifford H.

$30 (45th donation), Curt Vaughan aka “curtvaughan ”

$30 (4th donation), Stuart B.

$30 (4th donation), Devendra R.

$30 (3rd donation), Marcus H.

$30, Franke-polz F.

$30, W. P. K.

$30, Grady O.

$30, Stephen B.

$30, Bruno D. P.

$30, Deepak K.

$27 (23rd donation), Andreas S.

$27 (7th donation), Martin I.

$27 (6th donation), Michael S.

$27 (5th donation), Frank V.

$27 (4th donation), Andreas M.

$27 (3rd donation), E F

$27 (3rd donation), Marco V. D. B.

$27 (3rd donation), Heiko P. aka “CyCroN”

$27 (2nd donation), Michael M.

$27 (2nd donation), Martin S.

$27 (2nd donation), crumpy

$27 (2nd donation), Mike C.

$27 (2nd donation), Hendricus P. D. V.

$27, Raymond L.

$27, Johann S.

$27, Marinus V. D. W.

$27, Mathias J.

$27, Andreas S.

$27, Jules B.

$27, Neil M.

$27, Andreas S.

$25 (26th donation), Larry J.

$25 (12th donation), Kevin S.

$25 (8th donation), Jack C.

$25 (6th donation), Vaughan B.

$25 (6th donation), Frances K.

$25 (5th donation), Rene H. aka “Hogi”

$25 (4th donation), Gary E.

$25 (4th donation), Brian H. Y.

$25 (4th donation), Andrew C.

$25 (4th donation), Daniel B. M.

$25 (3rd donation), Edmond I.

$25 (3rd donation), Frederic R.

$25 (3rd donation), Brian S. G.

$25 (3rd donation), Yuriy G.

$25 (3rd donation), B. Kell

$25 (3rd donation), William E.

$25 (2nd donation), Wiilliam N. H.

$25 (2nd donation), Ed T aka “EdBot”

$25 (2nd donation), Bruce G.

$25 (2nd donation), George A.

$25 (2nd donation), Ed T aka “EdBot”

$25 (2nd donation), Ben J. aka “webwrx”

$25 (2nd donation), Lukas S.

$25 (2nd donation), Robert S.

$25, Mia D.

$25, Danilo U.

$25, Iam D.

$25, John E.

$25, Lee A.

$25, Steven V.

$25, John A.

$25, David B.

$25, Allen C. W.

$25, Danilo U.

$25, Desi D.

$25, Maureen J.

$25, Edward H.

$25, Scott M.

$24, Tommy H.

$23 (24th donation), Johann J.

$22 (22nd donation), Derek R.

$22 (18th donation), Alessandro S.

$22 (9th donation), Pentti T.

$22 (8th donation), Rüdiger K.

$22 (8th donation), David M.

$22 (6th donation), Mark A.

$22 (6th donation), Samuel H.

$22 (5th donation), Jens

$22 (4th donation), Ralf O.

$22 (4th donation), Stephen G.

$22 (4th donation), Alonso C.

$22 (4th donation), Kleiner Funk-Electronic

$22 (3rd donation), Jesse C.

$22 (3rd donation), Christian K.

$22 (3rd donation), Ralph K.

$22 (3rd donation), Torsten B.

$22 (3rd donation), Ralf R.

$22 (3rd donation), Benjamin L.

$22 (3rd donation), August F.

$22 (2nd donation), Jitao D. Z.

$22 (2nd donation), Santiago

$22 (2nd donation), Herberth M.

$22 (2nd donation), Sebastiano C.

$22 (2nd donation), Robert W.

$22 (2nd donation), Olaf K.

$22 (2nd donation), Martin H.

$22 (2nd donation), Illia D.

$22 (2nd donation), Eric W.

$22, Norbert M.

$22, Hennessy G.

$22, Michael G.

$22, Frederic W.

$22, Dimitrios A.

$22, Plamen K.

$22, David H.

$22, Michel S.

$22, Bert A.

$22, Millennium V.

$22, Giuseppe R.

$22, Yaroslav Z.

$22, Kai H.

$22, Karl-heinz L.

$22, Willi S.

$22, Mikael Egevig aka “archfrog”

$22, Jan L.

$22, Sebastiano C.

$22, Abelhauser B.

$22, António M.

$22, Bostjan S.

$22, Christos P.

$22, Andrej B.

$22, José A. A. C.

$22, Ralf U.

$20 (18th donation), Mike C.

$20 (13th donation), Lance M.

$20 (9th donation), Justin Oros

$20 (7th donation), John D.

$20 (7th donation), Nigel B.

$20 (6th donation), Arrowhead Computer Consulting, LLC aka “Jim (JR)”

$20 (6th donation), Brandon W.

$20 (6th donation), Luis G.

$20 (5th donation), Anthony L.

$20 (5th donation), Bryan F.

$20 (4th donation), Andrzej C.

$20 (4th donation), Leopoldo G.

$20 (4th donation), a donor

$20 (4th donation), Andrew C.

$20 (3rd donation), Harjit T.

$20 (3rd donation), Akos T.

$20 (3rd donation), Larry P.

$20 (3rd donation), Pablo L. aka “LAFO”

$20 (3rd donation), Joseph M.

$20 (3rd donation), Jean-Michel R.

$20 (3rd donation), Bruce F.

$20 (3rd donation), Mike W aka “bajan52”

$20 (3rd donation), Mladen M.

$20 (3rd donation), Jose M.

$20 (3rd donation), Damian C.

$20 (2nd donation), David W.

$20 (2nd donation), Michael B.

$20 (2nd donation), Kevin M.

$20 (2nd donation), Jeremy K.

$20 (2nd donation), Greg Z.

$20 (2nd donation), Dave M.

$20 (2nd donation), Steve L. aka “Bigfella”

$20 (2nd donation), M D. H.

$20, Jim K.

$20, James L.

$20, Geir V.

$20, Martin M.

$20, Stacey C.

$20, Roy L.

$20, Paul A.

$20, Willard C.

$20, Jason B.

$20, Michael H.

$20, Digvijay C.

$20, Richard A.

$20, Ian F.

$20, Pierre P.

$20, Matthew L. A. aka “Matt”

$20, Craig W.

$20, Jerry C.

$20, Thomas H.

$20, Scott P.

$19.1 (13th donation), Ke C.

$19.1 (10th donation), François P.

$19.1 (7th donation), Malte J.

$18, Zhdanov A.

$18, Volodymyr R.

$16 (16th donation), Francisco L. D. A.

$16 (7th donation), Mark C

$16 (6th donation), Nigel B.

$16 (5th donation), Dirk M.

$16 (2nd donation), goppermann

$16 (2nd donation), Richard W.

$16 (2nd donation), Amy K.

$16, Guillaume H.

$16, monsieur

$16, Ralf W.

$16, Lorenz A.

$16, Tomasz Brewka aka “Tomek”

$16, Timothy D.

$15 (9th donation), Laura NL aka “lauranl”

$15 (7th donation), Andy N.

$15 (5th donation), Constantin M.

$15 (4th donation), Valentin B.

$15 (4th donation), Dmitriy S. aka “mpolk”

$15 (4th donation), Doug F.

$15 (3rd donation), William B. Z.

$15 (2nd donation), Neil B.

$15 (2nd donation), Barry L.

$15 (2nd donation), Brian H.

$15, Jessica H.

$15, Jay Nielsen

$15, Howard W.

$15, Marius A.

$15, Diego R. D. M.

$15, Громов С.

$15, John J.

$15, Daniel A.

$14, Haley B.

$13 (3rd donation), Theofanis-Emmanouil T.

$13, John C.

$12 (93th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”

$12 (37th donation), JobsHiringNearMe

$12 (3rd donation), Geoff M.

$12, Axel R.

$11 (13th donation), Arvis Lacis aka “arvislacis”

$11 (11th donation), Eskild T

$11 (10th donation), Per J.

$11 (10th donation), Eskild T

$11 (9th donation), Michael P. aka “www.perron.de”

$11 (8th donation), Isidro P. A.

$11 (7th donation), Annette T.

$11 (6th donation), Ishiyama T.

$11 (6th donation), Michiel B.

$11 (6th donation), Alan B.

$11 (5th donation), Michele C.

$11 (5th donation), Soutarson P.

$11 (4th donation), Soeren S.

$11 (4th donation), M. B. .

$11 (3rd donation), Vittorio F.

$11 (3rd donation), Alexander P.

$11 (3rd donation), Thomas T.

$11 (3rd donation), Jan S.

$11 (3rd donation), Derek B.

$11 (3rd donation), Tomislav K.

$11 (2nd donation), Andreas G.

$11 (2nd donation), Gerard V. S.

$11 (2nd donation), Vittorio F.

$11 (2nd donation), Karl K.

$11 (2nd donation), Patrick H.

$11 (2nd donation), Krylov A.

$11 (2nd donation), Eyvind C.

$11 (2nd donation), Bernard W.

$11 (2nd donation), Jan S.

$11 (2nd donation), Peter G.

$11 (2nd donation), Hayden P.

$11 (2nd donation), Florian J.

$11 (2nd donation), John T. C.

$11, G J. W.

$11, Giovanni F.

$11, Cristian S.

$11, Michael V.

$11, Nick T. aka “NickTux”

$11, Pierre C.

$11, Christian T.

$11, Rudi K.

$11, Ilan S.

$11, A E. K. Y.

$11, Johan A. W.

$11, Volker W.

$11, Marko J.

$11, Javier F.

$11, Alrik S.

$11, Amirreza B.

$11, Stefan P.

$11, Jörg B.

$11, Behzad M.

$11, Slavomir S.

$11, Drazen B.

$11, Roger

$11, Richard T.

$11, Alonso F.

$11, Enric C. L.

$11, Albert B.

$11, Marcus B.

$11, David C.

$11, Andreas B.

$11, Viktor Y.

$11, Christian H.

$11, Jacques U.

$11, Rui Ch

$11, Florian K.

$10 (37th donation), Thomas C.

$10 (28th donation), Frank K.

$10 (28th donation), Carlos W.

$10 (25th donation), Paul O.

$10 (12th donation), Wilson G.

$10 (11th donation), Hemant Patel

$10 (7th donation), John T.

$10 (6th donation), aka “AsciiWolf”

$10 (6th donation), Martín P. D. L. G.

$10 (5th donation), Doug Berch

$10 (5th donation), Jeff F.

$10 (4th donation), Michael B.

$10 (4th donation), Carlos V. M.

$10 (4th donation), Suraj S.

$10 (4th donation), Ellis

$10 (4th donation), An L.

$10 (4th donation), AJ Gringo

$10 (4th donation), Clifton S.

$10 (4th donation), Franz W.

$10 (4th donation), Mohamed A.

$10 (3rd donation), C T Johnson, Inc

$10 (3rd donation), Christopher B.

$10 (3rd donation), Ken R. S.

$10 (3rd donation), Troy T.

$10 (3rd donation), Joao K.

$10 (3rd donation), Timothy L.

$10 (3rd donation), James M.

$10 (2nd donation), aka “tomec”

$10 (2nd donation), Richard S.

$10 (2nd donation), Ivan V.

$10 (2nd donation), Anatolii B.

$10 (2nd donation), Brian S.

$10 (2nd donation), Armin G.

$10 (2nd donation), Robert G.

$10 (2nd donation), Nick T. aka “NickTux”

$10, Reinaldo R.

$10, Timothy J. I.

$10, Ram M

$10, Thiago C.

$10, Mark Siegrist

$10, Steve T.

$10, Brent T.

$10, Raven K.

$10, Richard B.

$10, Nathan S.

$10, Martin D.

$10, Stefan S.

$10, Pablo B.

$10, Zbigniew S.

$10, Chris R.

$10, Matthew M.

$10, Andrew Brockinton aka “Landrew”

$10, Bartosz B.

$10, Tomasz P.

$10, Mackie D.

$10, Nedeljko Visnjic

$10, Francisco A.

$10, Miodrag R.

$10, Waiyan M.

$10, Reynaldo M. M.

$10, Javier I.

$10, William M.

$10, David S. aka “minty-D”

$10, Warner C. S.

$10, Robert M.

$10, Samukov N.

$10, ignite

$10, Jean-pierre T.

$10, Rue C.

$9 (13th donation), Tomasz K.

$8 (4th donation), Cyril U.

$8 (2nd donation), Eric H.

$8, fulgorit aka “fulgorit”

$7.77 (3rd donation), Mirko Bukilić aka “Bukela”

$7 (21st donation), CV Smith

$7 (8th donation), Mutsuhide.G aka “Yamato.G”

$7 (4th donation), Gabriele I.

$7 (3rd donation), Jan R.

$7 (2nd donation), Dražen D.

$7, Darren Gedye

$6 (9th donation), gmq

$6 (2nd donation), Tomasz W.

$5 (31st donation), Eugene T.

$5 (23rd donation), Todd A aka “thobin”

$5 (22nd donation), Bhavinder Jassar

$5 (15th donation), Kjell O. B. aka “kob”

$5 (13th donation), Olaf B.

$5 (12th donation), Lumacad Coupon Advertising

$5 (10th donation), GaryD

$5 (10th donation), Elsukov V.

$5 (8th donation), Pokies Portal

$5 (7th donation), Mutsuhide.G aka “Yamato.G”

$5 (6th donation), rptev

$5 (6th donation), Antonio Carlos L. Sampaio

$5 (5th donation), Ian E.

$5 (5th donation), Alfred Tan aka “pinuno”

$5 (4th donation), Stefan N.

$5 (4th donation), Johanna R.

$5 (3rd donation), Adam G.

$5 (3rd donation), Arndt (Games4Linux.de)

$5 (3rd donation), Michele M.

$5 (3rd donation), Jouni S.

$5 (3rd donation), Mikhail S.

$5 (3rd donation), Sergei K.

$5 (3rd donation), Andrew I.

$5 (2nd donation), Corrado N.

$5 (2nd donation), Saito T.

$5 (2nd donation), Minnigaliev R.

$5 (2nd donation), Mintnix

$5 (2nd donation), Kurt W.

$5 (2nd donation), Yang X. Nan

$5 (2nd donation), John C.

$5 (2nd donation), Florian P.

$5 (2nd donation), Cristiano G.

$5 (2nd donation), Norton L. C.

$5 (2nd donation), Kevin D.

$5 (2nd donation), Albor J. A.

$5 (2nd donation), 王 朝松

$5, Mark Evers aka “Marquisha”

$5, Guillaume O. aka “Gandalf81”

$5, Cristiano G.

$5, Norbert K.

$5, Miguel aka “maxenzo2”

$5, Marco B.

$5, Giuseppe R.

$5, Samuel C. R.

$5, Musaad A.

$5, Bruno F.

$5, J.Renato.R.Prado aka “jprado”

$5, Michael L.

$5, Julio B.

$5, Marisol B.

$5, Alfonso B.

$5, Kerim G.

$5, Mariusz

$5, Michael K.

$5, Michael B.

$5, Гриц С.

$5, Roger L.

$5, Marek F.

$5, Sebastian K.

$5, Dante N.

$5, Ron W.

$5, Anonymous

$5, David A.

$5, William B.

$5, Isaac Baez

$5, Oscar C.

$5, Guillaume O. aka “Gandalf81”

$5, Claudio M. N.

$5, Riza S.

$5, Shawn Q.

$5, Markus F.

$5, Sadettin Y.

$5, Milan H.

$5, Aleksandrov A.

$5, Vadym M.

$5, Keith O.

$5, David R.

$5, Christian I.

$5, Pulay R.

$5, Antonios T.

$4 (4th donation), Servis PC Znojmo CZ

$4, Зюзин К.

$4, Michel LeSieur aka “Lesmic”

$4, Martin H.

$124.3 from 67 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php