Monthly News – October 2020

Many thanks for your support and your donations and many thanks to our sponsors, partners and all the people who help us.

Chromium

The Chromium browser is now available in the official repositories for both Linux Mint and LMDE. If you’ve been waiting for this I’d like to thank you for your patience.

To guarantee reactivity and timely updates we had to automate the process of detecting, packaging and compiling new versions of Chromium. This is an application which can require more than 6 hours per build on a fast computer. We allocated a new build server with high specifications (Ryzen 9 3900, 128GB RAM, NMVe) and reduced the time it took to build Chromium to a little more than an hour.

Although Chromium was present in Debian we noticed it was rarely up to date so the decision was taken to also build for LMDE. We had to adapt a few things and there were hurdles along the way but it’s finally here.

The package name is the same in Linux Mint and LMDE: “chromium”.

IPTV

Last month I mentioned we could develop an IPTV player and I received very positive feedback. Many of you showed an interest and curiosity towards it but I also noticed that the concept was often misinterpreted or not fully understood.

It’s still too soon to say whether this will be part of Linux Mint and how much we can focus on its development, but we got enough enthusiasm here to get the project started and build a prototype called Hypnotix.

You can download Hypnotix at:

http://linuxmint.com/tmp/blog/3978/hypnotix_1.0.0_all.deb

This is an early ALPHA, with no translations and a very minimal user interface and set of features.

It comes configured with a free content provider (FreeIPTV) which provides streams for a variety of TV stations. This was done so that anyone could use it and see how it works. The scope of the project is however limited to the development of a player application and does not include the maintenance or the provision of streams or multimedia content. This is done by the content provider.

Hypnotix doesn’t have preferences in its user interface, but you can configure it from the command line. If you have an IPTV content provider, you can specify its name and your M3U address this way:

gsettings set org.x.hypnotix providers "['Provider_Name:::https://m3u_url.m3u']"

You can follow Hypnotix’s development on Github at https://github.com/linuxmint/hypnotix.

Favorites

Do you often work on the same files? Do you rely on bookmarks and “recents” to find them? We are working on something which will help you access your favorite files faster than before.

Simply right-click a file and choose “Add to Favorites”. Similar to pinned files it becomes easier to spot by showing up at the top of your folder.

You can also get to it directly, no matter where you are, by using the “Favorites” section of your file manager:

Or the file selection dialog:

Or from the application you want to open it with:

Or in Cinnamon from a new section in the application menu or the newly dedicated “favorites” applet.

We’ve had bookmarks for years to quickly access some of our directories, it was about time we did the same for files.

Cinnamon

CJS 4.8 will use the newer Mozjs78. This was requested by other distributions and it makes Cinnamon easier to maintain outside of Linux Mint. In all distributions, including our own, this also results in slightly better performance, in particular during the startup phase.

Changes were made to the way Cinnamon interprets compatibility with spices. In the past, an applet or desklet which specified the versions of Cinnamon it was compatible with had to be updated to specify the newly released version of Cinnamon. Failing that it didn’t work properly. Starting with Cinnamon 4.8 this will no longer be necessary. Forward compatibility will be assumed and expected unless specifically refused by the applet/desklet. Multi-version (the ability for the spice to provide different source code for different versions of Cinnamon) will also become implicit. This will improve compatibility between spices and Cinnamon and reduce maintenance.

Improvements were made also to the way Cinnamon interacts with the spices server. Some data was cached by our global proxy and this sometimes introduced issues when updating spices. Future versions of Cinnamon will force the proxy to bypass the cache and always retrieve up to date spices.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Donations in September:

A total of $10,727 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 483 donors:

$108, Andrew M.
$108, Birgit N.
$100 (29th donation), Ray
$100 (6th donation), Matthew P.
$100 (2nd donation), Neil F.
$100, Douglas M.
$100, Claude M.
$100, Alexander A.
$90 (3rd donation), Neal K.
$80, dcm-thanks
$60 (2nd donation), David B.
$57, Holger T.
$54 (5th donation), Gerald H.
$54 (4th donation), Stuart H.
$54 (3rd donation), Roland H.
$54 (3rd donation), Jean C. A.
$54 (3rd donation), Stefan K.
$54 (2nd donation), Janez G.
$54 (2nd donation), Ulrich H.
$54, Jürgen J.
$54, Francois-noel F.
$54, Andrea C.
$54, Daniele B.
$54, Krzysztof D.
$54, Hannes D.
$54, Stefan L.
$54, Marc C.
$54, Peter P. aka “pp“
$54, Eric P.
$54, Cyril I.
$54, Armin K.
$54, Mario P.
$51 (3rd donation), Suyog B.
$50 (43th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (11th donation), Alfred H. aka “Varmint Al“
$50 (9th donation), Ian L.
$50 (8th donation), Cody W. H.
$50 (7th donation), Arrowhead Computer Consulting, LLC aka “Jim (JR)“
$50 (5th donation), Peter F.
$50 (4th donation), Brian M.
$50 (4th donation), Stephen T.
$50 (4th donation), Colin B.
$50 (4th donation), Roy V. K.
$50 (2nd donation), John F.
$50 (2nd donation), Terry P.
$50, Zach G.
$50, Stephen S.
$50, Sorin S.
$50, Daniel Z.
$50, Phong T.
$50, Steven C.
$50, Brendan F.
$50, Brandon P.
$50, John S.
$50, Bobby W.
$50, Scott P.
$50, Roy N.
$50, Priyesh P.
$50, Daniel L.
$50, Richard D.
$50, Jeffrey G.
$50, Simon B.
$50, Joe R.
$50, Elizabeth L.
$50, Aloysius R.
$50, Steven S.
$50, Ron S.
$50, Richard S.
$50, Randal B.
$50, Stephen N.
$50, Lance H.
$43 (2nd donation), Mathias P.
$43, Gianni O.
$43, Philippe A.
$43, Manuel López
$42 (5th donation), Martin K.
$40 (127th donation), Olli K.
$40, Eric D.
$40, Ian L.
$35 (8th donation), Ted S.
$35, Brian H.
$32 (11th donation), Stephen M.
$32 (8th donation), Steve Glyn.
$32 (4th donation), Thomas K.
$32 (2nd donation), David W.
$32, Mario S.
$30 (5th donation), Jonathan L.
$30, Jan Theake D.
$30, Steven L.
$30, Far West Computer Consulting
$30, Rob Z.
$27 (11th donation), Roger aka “Linux Workgroup Monitor Niel Belgium“
$27 (2nd donation),
$27, Jewe S.
$27, Jan B.
$25 (8th donation), Scott O.
$25 (6th donation), John C.
$25 (5th donation), Marc B.
$25 (5th donation), Edmond I.
$25 (4th donation), Timothy L.
$25 (4th donation), Alex O.
$25 (3rd donation), Donald K.
$25 (2nd donation), Mark G.
$25, Walter R.
$25, Frederick C P.
$22 (22nd donation), Doriano G. M.
$22 (21st donation), Michael R.
$22 (9th donation), Anonymous User
$22 (8th donation), Ben E.
$22 (6th donation), Peter E.
$22 (6th donation), Alonso C.
$22 (4th donation), Christian K.
$22 (3rd donation), Thomas K.
$22 (3rd donation), Stefan Becker aka “Appeltaler”
$22 (2nd donation), Detlef N.
$22 (2nd donation), Angelos N.
$22, Marjan V.
$22, Herman M.
$22, Lars S.
$22, PZL Games
$22, Otto N.
$22, Antonio S.
$22, Werner W.
$22, Mr Md N.
$22, Wilm-gert E.
$22, Miguel S.
$22, Matthias B.
$22, Stefan M.
$22, Hans B.
$22, Johnny Riber L.
$22, Sean M.
$22, Lothar P.
$22, Etienne L.
$22, Pablo G.
$22, Marcel V.
$22, Steiner A.
$22, Emma Clotilde T.
$22, Jaume T.
$22, Jordi R.
$22, Dirk D.
$22, Wolfgang N.
$22, Roger H.
$22, Hussain F.
$22, Erkki Ruohtula
$22, Louis A.
$22, Stefan E.
$22, Thorsten D.
$22, Millon M.
$22, Achille A.
$22, Hans-peter W.
$22, Enzo C.
$22, Alastair S.
$22, Luis Javier G.
$21 (7th donation), Robert M.
$20 (76th donation), Tree Service Kansas City
$20 (48th donation), Fence Baton Rouge
$20 (26th donation), Bryan F.
$20 (23rd donation), Mike W aka “bajan52”
$20 (5th donation), Nathan H.
$20 (5th donation), Robert L.
$20 (4th donation), Ken R. S.
$20 (4th donation), Christopher V.
$20 (3rd donation), Hans G. H.
$20 (2nd donation), Brent P.
$20 (2nd donation), Charles T.
$20 (2nd donation), Daniel T.
$20 (2nd donation), Miles S. P.
$20 (2nd donation), Steven S.
$20 (2nd donation), Tony N.
$20 (2nd donation), H. P. .
$20 (2nd donation), Carlos R.
$20 (2nd donation), Jon D.
$20 (2nd donation), George P.
$20 (2nd donation), Andrew L.
$20 (2nd donation), Bryan A. P.
$20 (2nd donation), opalInteractive
$20 (2nd donation), Peter L.
$20 (2nd donation), J. S. .
$20, Terry H.
$20, Esteban F.
$20, Tony K.
$20, Larry M.
$20, Tom K.
$20, Thomas L.
$20, Rory B.
$20, Ryans Products LLC
$20, Alexander B.
$20, Mehdi
$20, Robert E.
$20, Brandon V.
$20, Ranald C.
$20, Vincent P.
$20, Adrian B.
$20, Steven G.
$20, Brian H.
$20, Brandon B.
$20, Tom C.
$20, Travis S.
$20, Scott V.
$20, William D.
$20, The Lawn Ranger Ltd. Co.
$20, Michael G.
$20, Steven W.
$16 (44th donation), Andreas S.
$16 (2nd donation), Thomas K.
$16 (2nd donation), Felix N.
$16, Ronald H.
$16, Romain P.
$15 (26th donation), ajgringo619
$15 (3rd donation), Vladimir Litvinenko
$15 (2nd donation), Harry T.
$15, Michael W.
$13 (3rd donation), Ivan S.
$12 (13th donation), Lance A.
$12 (9th donation), Tsatsorin E. aka “Eugene713“
$12 (4th donation), Peter S.
$12 (2nd donation), Towing Service Las Vegas
$11 (14th donation), Nachtstuck Records
$11 (14th donation), Piotr L aka “xpil“
$11 (11th donation), Slobodan Vrkacevic
$11 (9th donation), Antonio aka “pengu73”
$11 (8th donation), José G.
$11 (8th donation), Francois B. aka “Makoto“
$11 (7th donation), Štefan V. aka “Thinker8”
$11 (7th donation), ThomaZ
$11 (7th donation), Wolfgang G.
$11 (7th donation), Daniel S.
$11 (6th donation), Soutarson P.
$11 (4th donation), Roberto R. D. T.
$11 (4th donation), Julien R.
$11 (3rd donation), Andrew L.
$11 (3rd donation), Juergen M B.
$11 (3rd donation), Lukas W. aka “Luk”
$11 (3rd donation), Adam B.
$11 (3rd donation), Dylan B.
$11 (3rd donation), Ravi S.
$11 (3rd donation), Nicolas R.
$11 (2nd donation), Vjeran B.
$11 (2nd donation), Viktor Jozsef H.
$11 (2nd donation), Giorgio S.
$11 (2nd donation), Philip W.
$11 (2nd donation), Peter S.
$11 (2nd donation), Paul O.
$11 (2nd donation), Dennis J.
$11 (2nd donation), Jaroslav K.
$11 (2nd donation), Petr K.
$11 (2nd donation), H. B. .
$11, Gabriele R.
$11, zzzzzzz .
$11, Jerome B.
$11, Sebastian S.
$11, José María G.
$11, jjb
$11, José H.
$11, Leonie H.
$11, Daniel S.
$11, Enrique S.
$11, Raphael S.
$11, Michael J.
$11, Johann F.
$11, Hansjörg G.
$11, Franz D.
$11, Stefan P.
$11, Daniel L.
$11, Wilhelm S.
$11, Dmitry P. aka “message”
$11, Christian W.
$11, David F.
$11, Karl-friedrich D.
$11, Daniel W.
$11, Giovanni F.
$11, Arend A.
$11, Laura G.
$11, Dennis V.
$11, Reiner H.
$11, Gorazd B.
$11, Christian G.
$11, F. Meneu
$11, Laura
$11, Bernhard H.
$11, Nabil R.
$11, Olivier R.
$11, Gian Franco G.
$11, Joerg P.
$11, Richard Z.
$11, Philip T.
$11, Jos K.
$11, Kurt Moraw
$11, Fafadji G.
$10 (71th donation), Tree Removal Raleigh NC
$10 (55th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (50th donation), Frank K.
$10 (34th donation), Rick R.
$10 (27th donation), LJNL aka “lauranl”
$10 (17th donation), Christopher R.
$10 (16th donation), Francois-R L.
$10 (14th donation), Sami Mannila
$10 (14th donation), Serhii B. aka “sinpavla“
$10 (13th donation), Mike M. aka “GrouchyM”
$10 (12th donation), Screw Piles Edmonton
$10 (9th donation), Free Spins
$10 (8th donation), Edward A.
$10 (8th donation), Interactiv Médias aka “ITActiv“
$10 (7th donation), Terry B.
$10 (6th donation), Dog Training Cheyenne
$10 (6th donation), Roy D.
$10 (6th donation), Locksmith Indio
$10 (6th donation), Kari H.
$10 (5th donation), Dmitry aka “Corpsee“
$10 (5th donation), Ian C.
$10 (5th donation), Mark W.
$10 (5th donation), Robert W.
$10 (5th donation), anonymous aka “victorsk”
$10 (5th donation), Marriage Counselling Edmonton
$10 (4th donation), blueredgreen
$10 (4th donation), Cezary F.
$10 (4th donation), Flamingo Merch
$10 (4th donation), Sebastian B.
$10 (3rd donation), Victor W.
$10 (3rd donation), cemento portland
$10 (3rd donation), Timeless Leaves
$10 (3rd donation), www.bmoremovingcompany.com
$10 (3rd donation), Jennifer A T.
$10 (3rd donation), Stephen S.
$10 (3rd donation), Frank H.
$10 (2nd donation), ezday computers
$10 (2nd donation), Piotr S.
$10 (2nd donation), Oleg Y. aka “oyerko“
$10 (2nd donation), Concrete Contractors Raleigh
$10 (2nd donation), Jorge R.
$10 (2nd donation), Aimee W.
$10 (2nd donation), Fence Company Raleigh
$10 (2nd donation), Wilfrid W.
$10 (2nd donation), Jose D. C.
$10 (2nd donation), aka “jl”
$10 (2nd donation), Glenn S.
$10, George D.
$10, Minzhe T.
$10, John S.
$10, John S.
$10, Dean L.
$10, Thomas D.
$10, Mauricio R.
$10, InAppDesigns
$10, ipmhigg
$10, Harold J.
$10, Kunal Gurnani
$10, Jose Luiz R.
$10, Magnus L.
$10, Rafaz P.
$10, Daniel G.
$10, Keep Mint running
$10, Leslie B.
$10, Wilfred Ivan C.
$10, Evan G.
$10, Carpet Cleaning Hertfordshire aka “OziClean“
$10, Michael R.
$10, Todd A.
$10, David A.
$10, Terry D.
$10, Kenneth W.
$10, Marvin H.
$10, Fresh Lawns Mowing
$10, Durwood A.
$10, zzzzzzzzz .
$10, William C.
$10, José Clóvis A.
$10, Eric R.
$10, Brian D.
$10, Ngian Xin Terry L.
$10, Photo Booth Rental
$9, Kamil D.
$8 (4th donation), Helmut S.
$8, Alex C.
$7, Bernardus L.
$7, Тюмень
$7, Jose Dimas S.
$7, Hobbyist
$6 (4th donation), Recipe Library
$6 (3rd donation),
$6, Del Santo F.
$5 (53th donation), Eugene T.
$5 (44th donation), Bhavinder Jassar
$5 (32nd donation), Dmitry P.
$5 (23rd donation), William Menezes
$5 (22nd donation), GaryD
$5 (18th donation), Hristo Gatsinski
$5 (18th donation), Jan Miszura
$5 (14th donation), Tutos-Informatique aka “tutos-info”
$5 (11th donation), Thomas R.
$5 (9th donation), Painter And Decorator Gloucester
$5 (7th donation), dgtworx.com
$5 (6th donation), Javier V. B.
$5 (5th donation), Timo K.
$5 (4th donation), Alex P.
$5 (2nd donation), Drone Photography Melbourne
$5 (2nd donation), Sandro B. aka “SBonafin”
$5 (2nd donation), Pedro Paulo S.Silva
$5, Kyle Newsome
$5, zzzzzz .
$5, Keila M.
$5, Dolores Q.
$5, Willem L.
$5, Wendy L.
$5, Andre A.
$5, Kyle K.
$5, Nikola Y.
$5, Marcin C.
$5, Alberto P. aka “IW1PRT”
$5, Daniele P.
$5, Alejandro B.
$5, William G.
$5, Benjamin G.
$5, Jhonatan P.
$5, John M.
$5, Ekaterina B.
$5, Philip H.
$5, Nyikero Gordon aka “Nyik”
$5, Manuel B.
$5, Luis F.
$5, Ulrich B.
$5, Manfred H.
$4 (5th donation), Artur F.
$4, Landscaping Sacramento
$4, Dominik E.
$3 (46th donation), Йошкар-Ола Восточный
$3 (12th donation), Oleksandr P.
$3 (4th donation), Csaba V.
$3 (2nd donation), Landscaping Midland TX
$3 (2nd donation), Andrew C.
$3 (2nd donation), Szilard S.
$3 (2nd donation), Alex_Sander aka “Auberge”
$3, Godfrey K.
$56 from 48 smaller donations