Monthly Stats – February 2013

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Platinum Sponsors:

Gold Sponsors:
Opera

Silver Sponsors:
Idera (formerly R1Soft)

Bronze Sponsors:

Community Sponsors:

Alyx Biologicals B.V.
Windows VPS Hosting
Kamal G
Mark Cohen
+++ PDF Reader for Android +++
BearElk Technologies, LLC
Caturix
Craig
D M Hamilton
Free Bounce House
Helmut Kleinhans
John Bayles Pianos
Kristian S.
Out of Hours IT Help Ltd
Peter Nilsson
Sascha Reinsch
SEER Interactive
The Survival Monkey
Unixmen- Linux News & Howtos
veille

To become a sponsor or to see the full list of Linux Mint sponsors, please visit: http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

Donations:

A total of $5,460 was raised thanks to the generous contributions of 213 donors:

$570 (9th donation), Mohammed A.
$321.92 (2nd donation), Richard G.
$257.53, Per S.
$100, Bob M.
$100, Magne L.
$100, Roland H.
$100, Shawn H.
$100, Jeffrey C. Drywater
$70, Christian G.
$64.38, Torben C.
$64.38, R L.
$64.38, Miguel A. A. L.
$64.38, Xaver G.
$51.51, Peter W.
$50 (41th donation), Slavoljub aka “slw”
$50 (35th donation), Matthew M.
$50 (4th donation), Engadine Cycles & Scooters aka “ECS“
$50 (2nd donation), Marcus M.
$50, ausmuso
$50, Massimo G.
$50, Leland O.
$50, Mike M.
$50, Konrad P.
$50, Federico R.
$50, Anthony L.
$50, Brett N.
$50, David K.
$50, Bruce P.
$40 (4th donation), Henk van C.
$40, xenoph
$40, Keith K.
$40, Jens M.
$40, C D. S. J.
$38.63 (36th donation), Olli K.
$38.63, Guillaume P.
$32.19 (3rd donation), Lars H.
$32.19 (2nd donation), Mark E.
$32.19 (2nd donation), Gerard V.
$32.19, Frank M.
$32.19, Bauke J. D.
$32.19, Aldo B.
$30 (3rd donation), Knut E. E. aka “Animoy”
$30, Philip E.
$25.75 (2nd donation), Oliver Anhuth
$25.75 (2nd donation), Iván B.
$25.75 (2nd donation), Ole P.
$25.75, Nicolas M.
$25.75, Niklas M.
$25.75, José R. L. B.
$25.75, Kirk J.
$25.75, Ikhwan H.
$25.75, Sergio C.
$25 (17th donation), Ronald W.
$25 (15th donation), John M.
$25 (3rd donation), Michael W.
$25 (2nd donation), Clyde D. aka “Lugh”
$25, Jon G.
$25, Lawrence Y.
$25, Brian M.
$25, Mark M.
$25, William E.
$25, Lorin Ricker
$25, Blake C.
$25, Joseph M.
$25, Steven S.
$25, Scott Anderson aka “lwarranty“
$25, Bryan F.
$25, Robert R.
$20 (24th donation), Tsuguo S.
$20 (3rd donation), Steven Campbell
$20 (2nd donation), Matt M.
$20, Christian D.
$20, John Bayles Pianos
$20, Hemant Karandikar aka “Hemant“
$20, Andrew I.
$20, Ken B.
$20, Frank M.
$20, Alan M.
$20, Billy M.
$20, Jamie L.
$20, KilUma
$20, James W.
$20, Tommy W.
$20, Jon G.
$20, Kurtis D.
$20, Antony P.
$20, Bryan P.
$19.31 (2nd donation), John Scott aka “‘Whitefort’”
$19.31, Daniel W.
$19, Istvan Sz.
$16.1, Maarten O.
$15.45, Jordi H.
$15 (6th donation), Geoff Perry
$15 (3rd donation), Zonic System General Trading – F.Z.E
$15, Brandon J.
$15, Gerald G.
$15, Max P.
$15, Mathew W.
$15, Dan R.
$15, J. H.
$15, Indarien’s G. T.
$15, iPhone & iPad apps
$12.88 (16th donation), Jarkko K.
$12.88 (2nd donation), Rene S.
$12.88 (2nd donation), Damien G.
$12.88 (2nd donation), Attila S.
$12.88, OH2GBA
$12.88, David A.
$12.88, Andrea L.
$12.88, Florival J.
$12.88, Jörn C. R.
$12.88, Richard M.
$12.88, Daniele P.
$12.88, Craig C. aka “NotoriousPyro“
$12.88, Raminder R.
$12.88, Nicolas B.
$12.88, Pavel S.
$12.88, Robert F.
$12.88, Bolko S.
$12.88, Robin K.
$12.88, Dominik K. aka “DrSky“
$12.88, Nick B.
$12.88, David E.
$12.88, Andreas L.
$12.88, Michael M.
$12.88, Dmytro K.
$12.88, Robert K.
$11.59, Tamas H.
$10.3, Mariusz K.
$10 (24th donation), Tony C. aka “S. LaRocca”
$10 (5th donation), Michelle and Daniel Grady aka “Pug Masters”
$10 (4th donation), Tony W.
$10 (2nd donation), Kazuyoshi K.
$10 (2nd donation), Silvio Rainoldi aka “ianaz”
$10, GoToGiftBaskets
$10, José R. F.
$10, Anisurahiman M.
$10, Christopher S.
$10, Akmal F.
$10, Alexandre A.
$10, Nikke J.
$10, Carl B.
$10, Купалов К.
$10, Andrzej W.
$10, Theis Hinz
$10, Dominik M.
$10, Peter T.
$10, Juan R.
$10, Daniel E.
$10, Robert E.
$10, Cody S.
$10, Chien C. H.
$10, Davide R.
$10, Colleen T.
$10, Enzo R.
$10, Ewnix.net IRC Network aka “phlux“
$10, Thomas Z.
$10, Scott P.
$10, Wired For Sound, Inc.n
$10, David D.
$10, Stefan H.
$10, Dan P.
$10, Иван Ф.
$10, Christopher B.
$10, Sivavinan S.
$10, William B.
$10, Клюшнев И.
$10, Dadykin A.
$10, Manpreet S. Dhillon
$10, Robert B.
$9.14 (4th donation), Librestickers.com
$7.73 (5th donation), Kevin D.
$6.44 (13th donation), Marco aka “Dictionary-Maker“
$6.44, Josef K.
$6.44, Daniel N.
$6.44, Patrick R.
$6.44, John T.
$6.44, Julio P.
$6.44, Armand O.
$6.44, Power M. aka “Batterie“
$6.44, Soutarson P.
$6.44, Marco A.
$5.15, Madis Veskimeister
$5 (5th donation), Dan Jackson
$5 (4th donation), Leon
$5 (3rd donation), L M.
$5, Vladimír V.
$5, Tri M.
$5, John S.
$5, Reborn Dolls
$5, Kinyua W.
$5, Irmantas R.
$5, Duta I. P. P.
$5, Ryan B.
$5, Jason G.
$5, Coupon Code Swap
$5, Aquarius Musical Enterprises
$5, William G.
$5, IT Whizz aka “kateh273“
$5, Jose M. D. A.
$5, Stefano G.
$3.03 (4th donation), Louis Pilfold
$3 (10th donation), Web Design Company
$2.58 (2nd donation), Thomas S.
$11.78 from 9 smaller donations

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

Rankings:

Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 3801 (1st)
Alexa (website ranking): 6,268th

Events:

LMDE 201303 RC was released
MDM was given a new HTML5 theming engine

Latest development:

Development is a lot of fun and it doesn’t take much to get started. If you’re tempted to join the team, don’t hesitate to follow our development on http://github.com/linuxmint and come and chat with the developers at #linuxmint-dev (irc.spotchat.org).

This month we’re giving you a preview of one of the new tools we developed for Linux Mint 15. It’s a new Mint tool and this one is called “mintSources”.

Until now Linux Mint used the upstream “Software Properties” tool developed by Ubuntu. Although it was working fine it wasn’t adapted to Linux Mint and it was heavily patched to work with our distribution. This created “technical debt” for our project and it prevented us from implementing solutions that were needed by Linux Mint (for instance, the ability to select mirrors for both the Ubuntu base and Mint repositories).

So a new tool was developed from scratch and was designed with derivatives in mind (primarily Linux Mint, but also LMDE, and our friends at Netrunner and Snow Linux).

From the main screen you can easily enable or disable optional components and gain access to backports, unstable packages and source code:

You can also switch to a faster mirror with one click of the mouse. The tool performs a speed-test of all available mirrors for you:

MintSources also lets you manage access to PPAs, which you can add easily by simply entering the name of the PPA.

You can of course manage additional repositories…

And manage your authentication keys (that’s only there for troubleshooting, since system repositories and keys are handled automatically and PPA keys are downloaded for you when you add a new PPA)

MintSources also has a “Maintenance” section which we use to place solutions to common problems.

The tool is now fully ready it will be included in Linux Mint 15. Of course there’s still one missing piece in the puzzle if we want to completely remove software-properties and that’s drivers management. LMDE already ships with DDM, the Ubuntu Software Properties tool can be reduced and repackaged into a standalone Drivers Manager, Jockey can raise from the grave or we can look into writing our own solution from scratch. It’s too soon to say which solution will be the best yet, but whatever happens we’ll pick the best one and we’ll get it all sorted in time for Linux Mint 15.

News and summary:

LMDE 201303 was approved. The stable release will be out this Friday.
MATE 1.5 and Cinnamon 1.7 were tested in QA conditions within Linux Mint 15 ALPHA ISOs. Both environments work well and are very close to feature completion. The team is working on fixing the bugs and finding all the little things that can be improved prior to their respective 1.6 and 1.8 releases.
mintMenu is being ported to MATE 1.6 and gsettings. These changes are required since MATE is getting lighter and deprecated some of its components (matecomponent, matecorba, mateconf..etc). The new mintMenu will look exactly the same as before and it might be slightly faster to load. The team also took the opportunity to give mintMenu its own keybinding handling, which means key combinations such as Control + Super_L are no longer necessary and the menu can simply be open by pressing the Super_L (Windows) key.
Many thanks to our sponsors, partners, donors and all the people who supported us this month and who allowed us to work on Linux Mint.