Linux Mint 11 – coming up May 2011

I received many emails and questions about Linux Mint 11, whether it was coming with Unity or Gnome 3, when it was going to come out and what should be expected from it… so, here’s a bit of information about our upcoming release.

ETA (Estimated time of arrival)

We’re on schedule.

Linux Mint 11 should have two releases:

an RC release in the middle of the month a stable release by the end of May.

As always, we release “when ready” and we can delay a release if we’re not happy with its quality.

The Desktop

Linux Mint 11 comes with Gnome 2.32, the traditional Linux Mint desktop layout, mintMenu and the same desktop elements featured in previous releases.

Compiz is installed by default and so is fusion-icon, which lets you switch easily between Compiz and Metacity.

Software Selection

LibreOffice replaces OpenOffice.org as the default office suite.

Banshee replaces Rhythmbox as the default music player.

gThumb replaces F-Spot as the default photo application.

Gwibber is no longer installed by default.

padevchooser, paman, paprefs, pavumeter and pavucontrol are no longer installed by default.

Changes

The update manager is faster than before and comes with numerous bug fixes. It also features multiple UI improvements.

The deskstop settings tool is now desktop-agnostic and serves both generic settings (such as the ability to enable/disable fortunes in the terminal) and desktop settings specific to Gnome, KDE, Xfce..etc. In Xfce it will eventually replace mintconfig-xfce and mintdesktop-xfce.

The software manager looks much more polished. It loads marginally faster and now features a splash screen. Its templates were refined to give the user a much nicer browsing experience. The installation and removal of applications are now simulated before the application screen is shown, allowing the software manager to show precisely how much data is to be downloaded, how much space is required on the hard drive and exactly which packages are to be installed and/or removed.

Mint-x-theme comes with numerous improvements, bug fixes for Gimp, Banshee, Synaptic, Deluge and round radio buttons.

A new “apt download” command was introduced which downloads a .deb package locally along with all its dependencies.

Flash Square runs in native 64-bit while 32-bit users can choose between the stable 10.2 and beta 10.3 plugins and have both installed at the same time, easily switching between them using “update-alternatives”.

Firefox 4, Chromium and Opera come with an improved mint-search-addon plugin.

With the upstream changes in Unity and Gnome 3, some of the big Linux Mint projects (netdiscovery, restoration snapshots) were postponed and more time was given to ensure this release would feature a functional yet traditional desktop. In many ways, Linux Mint 11 feels like a more modern and more polished version of Linux Mint 10. In contrast with the many distributions adopting new interfaces, Linux Mint 11 will feature the best Gnome “2” desktop you’ve ever got to see.

Well, that’s what we’re aiming for anyway 🙂

Wish us luck and stay tuned for the RC release.