News

Hello everybody. I hope you’re enjoying the summer and the recent releases of Linux Mint 18.

I’d like to say a big thank you to all the people who donated to us in June and in July (July donations will appear in the next Monthly News). Welcome back also to ThinkPenguin and thanks to all our sponsors. You’re making our life much easier and your help is very important to us.

The Xfce edition is almost ready. Some of the last bug fixes got in the repository today and we’re getting ready for a stable release.

An announcement will be made also, for Linux Mint 17.3 Xfce users, as soon as the upgrade path is open.

On the KDE front, things are progressing slowly. There are so many differences between KDE 4 and Plasma 5, we’ve had to work on this edition as if it was a brand new product, inheriting very little from the past and with each component being added one at a time. Most of the critical issues were fixed with the exception of some compatibility issues between the screensaver, the session and the display manager. Important decisions also haven’t been taken yet, such as whether to ship this edition with MDM or SDDM and whether to maintain or to delegate Plasma updates. In terms of timing though, we’re likely to see these issues solved rather quickly and so we should have a BETA release this August.

In August, we’ll also start the next development cycle. We already have a couple of implementations ready to go in, and many ideas were discussed and planned for Linux Mint 18.1.

A quick word to LMDE users: The major components present in Linux Mint 18 (Cinnamon 3.0, MATE 1.14, the XApps etc..) are already in LMDE 2 “Betsy”. Except for a few features (the Mint-Y theme, which requires GTK 3.18, for instance) the other components will be backported shortly.

We received a few questions this month after the Ubuntu forums were breached for the second time. As a precaution, all Launchpad users should change their password. We encourage people not to point the finger or find comfort in cheap explanations. The bigger the project, the bigger the target. Instead, people should assess the quality of their own passwords and their uniqueness from one website to another, since it is only a matter of time and effort before one of these websites get hacked. Our sympathy goes to Canonical. We’re at their disposal if what we learnt after our own attacks can help them in any way.

Finally, we are working with our friends at CompuLab to refresh the MintBox Mini. The new model should be as tiny as before, but with more memory and more processing power. Shipping with bluetooth and dual Ethernet connectivity, we’re hoping to show you pictures, pricing and detailed specifications very soon.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by: