The Linux Mint Blog

MintUpload will support FTP as well as the already supported “Mint-Space” protocol. Users will be able to define FTP “services” with a name, a hostname, a username, a password and even an optional path. There is no immediate plan to add a graphical configuration tool to mintUpload but it will be possible to add FTP services by simply adding files in /etc/linuxmint/minUpload/services/. Here is an example:

type=FTP
name=My FTP Server
host=myftp.mydomain.com
user=me
pass=topsecret
path=uploadDirectory

FTP support in mintUpload will be one of the featured improvements coming with Mint 6 and it will also be backported to Linux Mint 5 Elyssa. It already works “in lab” and a package should hit the Romeo repositories this week.

Note to readers: We’re trying to raise people’s awareness about the Mint project and we’ve added a Digg plugin to this blog. If you find this blog post interesting, please help us spread the word by submitting it as a Digg story or by digging it if it’s already submitted.

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* News about Mint

Elyssa x64 RC1 released

If any of you have ideas for how we can make Mint more known please feel free to leave a comment.

* News about Linux

Gnome 2.24 released

Released final versions lately

Pardus Linux 2008.1 ; Vector Linux 5.9.1 ; sidux 2008-3

Gentoo is having problems and cancels the 2008.1 release. They state “we overstretched our human resources during the prolonged 2008.0 release process” To bad…

An alternative to MS Exchange on Linux

The latest news about the kernel is always found here

* News about IT

The Netherlands Patent Office changes to open source software. The entire Netherlands public sector is to change in the long term

The European Parliament adopts a legislative report about telecom. It’s supposed to stop some attempts to block filesharing - however I can’t find that in the report linked to. More about it

Mozilla Releases 9 Updates To Firefox, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird

Zend Teams With Adobe to Marry PHP and Flex

Greenpeace ‘Guide to Greener Electronics’

Users fail to spot fake pop-ups

‘Uncloneable’ biometric passports pass the test

Wikileaks posts a hack of Palin’s e-mail account on Yahoo

Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail all vulnerable to Palin-style password-reset hack

‘Password Recovery’ Services may be crackers that gets you in deep trouble

Researchers discover PDF exploit packs

In-depth manual and automated assessments found nearly 97 percent of sites carry a severe vulnerability.

The  notorious service provider Intercage is (was) a severe vulnerability in itself and got cut off from the internet

* Hardware news

First True 3D Processor Created, Runs at 1.4 GHz

New ‘On/Off Switch’ Protects RFID Cards From Hacks

Asus ships software cracker on recovery DVD

* Trivia and other links

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Linux Mint is proud to announce its very first 64 bits release: Elyssa x64 RC1.

The purpose of the x64 edition is to offer the same desktop features as the Main edition but in a 64 bits environment. We received a lot of requests to support the X86_64 architecture (commonly referred to as “amd64″) and we’ve managed to come with an edition which is almost 100% in par with our main desktop.

As an RC (Release Candidate) this release is targeted at developers and beta-testers who want to help Linux Mint find and correct bugs before the stable release. Please do not use this release as your main desktop.

The x64 Edition aims to be as similar to the Main edition as possible, but due to the nature of its architecture, its package base and its origins it defers in the following ways:

• Linux Mint x64 Edition was forked from Ubuntu Hardy as opposed to Ubuntu Edgy for the Main Edition,
• Linux Mint x64 Edition comes with a java plugin implemented by OpenJDK, as opposed to Sun for the Main Edition.
• Linux Mint x64 Edition comes with Xchat instead of Xchat-Gnome
• Linux Mint x64 Edition comes with Flash 9 instead of Flash 10

More packages are available for i386 than they are for amd64 and we also believe the Main edition to be a bit more stable than will in time be its 64 bits equivalent. The Main edition only recognizes RAM to a maximum of 4GB though and even on computers with less than 4GB RAM the performance gain provided by x64 over the Main edition can significantly enhance the user’s experience.

Introduction to the x64 edition:

We published a mini-benchmark and an introduction to the x64 edition within the release notes. To have a better idea of what x64 can do for you, please read http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa_x64.php

System requirements:

A minimum of 512MB of RAM is recommended. Once installed the system works fine with as low as 256MB RAM. The installation process deals with 2.5GB of data compressed on a 700MB CD and it can hang or fail on systems with less than 512MB RAM. If you have between 256MB and 512MB RAM you may have to try to install several times.

Download x64 RC1:

Size: 682MB LiveCD
MD5Sum: 65a436f5ee945abceae18e5393d34213
Torrent download: http://www.linuxmint.de/downloads.html
HTTP download: http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=30

Europe:

• http://cesium.di.uminho.pt/pub/linuxmint/testing/ (Portugal)
• http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/testing/ (Ireland)
• http://ftp.klid.dk/ftp/linuxmint/testing/ (Denmark)
• http://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/linux/linuxmint/testing/ (Greece)

Northern America:

• http://mirror.amarillolinux.com/linuxmint/testing/ (USA)
• http://linuxmint.norhex.com/linuxmint.com/testing/ (USA)
• http://linuxmint.secsup.org/testing/ (USA)
• ftp://mirrors.secution.com/linuxmint.com/testing/ (USA)
• http://linuxmint.sourcemirrors.org/testing/ (USA)

Rest of the World:

• http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/linuxmint/testing/ (Australia)
• ftp://202.78.230.5/LinuxMint/testing/ (Vietnam)

Test x64 RC1, report bugs and feedback:

The purpose of this Release Candidate is to gather as much feedback and bug reports as possible before the final release.

• Depending on your hardware x64 Edition could potentially be faster and show better performance than the Main edition. We’re interested to know how both editions compare so don’t hesitate to measure your boot time, and common scenarios and compare them on the same computer with the Main edition. Contact us by email and send us your benchmarks and your conclusions.
• Participate in testing the Release Candidate CD. If you find bugs please report them here: http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=143&t=17276
• Tell us what you think and give us feedback on this release by commenting here on this blog.

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This is the first review I’ve seen of Linux Mint 5 KDE CE so I’m delighted to get some feedback on this release. The reviewer, Steve Lake, also reviewed Linux Mint 5 by the past so I was interested to see how he compared KDE CE with the Main edition.

Link to the review: http://www.raiden.net/?cat=2&aid=466

Digg the review: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Review_Linux_Mint_5_KDE_Edition

Steve mentions the “LiveCD” here and there. As you probably noticed he actually refers to a live DVD, KDE CE being more than 700MB. By the past KDE CE came with a smaller ISO called “miniKDE” and for the first time since the start of this edition… it doesn’t. The reason for this is that we wanted to free Boo (Jamie Boo Birse, maintainer of the KDE Edition) so that he could start working on Mint 6. A lot of work has gone into this edition and it got released very late within our release cycle (The Main edition was released in June). The KDE edition failed to come with QT frontends for the Mint tools and hasn’t made the transition towards KDE 4 yet so there will be a lot of work for Linux Mint 6.

Steve says: “But once on the desktop I found that not much has changed since Mint 4 KDE appearance wise. Mint 5 KDE has as usual a beautiful selection of preinstalled software ready to use in the LiveCD, including Gimp, Inkscape, Thunderbird, Firefox, Scribus, Open Office, Krusader, Mplayer and many others. So every major important KDE and Linux app is there and ready for you to use. The menu hasn’t changed from the previous KDE version either, but there does appear to be more tools for those who enjoy using Compiz for 3d effects. Don’t expect to get Compiz working until you install the system, becuase for some reason, Compiz hates LiveCD environments.”

–> The look and feel in Mint 5 is a refinement of what was already there in Mint 4.0. Verdegal made the artwork for Daryna and what he produced was enhanced by another artist called Jernau. His work and improvements impacted all editions. Of course the KDE CE didn’t come with as many changes as the Main edition in that respect (extra themes for instance) but it improved the overall look and feel nonetheless. Screenshots of Daryna KDE CE are still visible here.

–> There are shortcuts in the menu to enable/disable Compiz. As Steve said, it works better once the system is installed, especially if you need extra drivers. I’ve had some success with Intel chipsets directly from the liveDVD though.

Steve said: “Speed and performance were very good for the entire LiveCD experience. It had a few loading lags, but nothing terribly bad, just normal stuff. Stability was good and the system did a great job with everything it needed to do. So, other than the initial scare due to a hardware glitch on my end (bad video card), the whole system ran perfect, and did just as good as its Metacity based cousin.”

–> Some benchmarks suggest that KDE uses less resources than Gnome. It used to be other way around a few years ago.

Steve said: “I’ve never seen any Linux distribution up to this point actually detect a network share on my network before and add the icon for it on the desktop. Mint 5 KDE did. So if I wanted to jump on my samba share, all I needed to do was double click and away I went. That’s a nice little added feature, especially for new users unfamiliar with how to get at such shares in a Linux or KDE environment.”

–> I’ll let Boo comment on this as I’m not sure whether we should thank him for adding this, myself for some reminiscence of the Network-Autobrowsing feature (introduced in Mint 4.0 and removed in Mint 5.. well in the Main edition at least) or upstream developers from KDE, Kubuntu or even 3rd party packages. Community Editions are tested and released the same way as other editions but the maintainer himself is responsible for the implementation and as far as the quality of the ISO is good he can make a lot of decisions without involving the team.

Steve said: “Linux Mint 5 KDE Edition uses the Linux 2.6.24-19 kernel, a newer Linux kernel known for great improvements in power management. That’s a nice thing to see.”

–> Elyssa KDE CE upgraded its package base to Ubuntu 8.04.1. That’s another difference with the Main edition. I prefered the conservative approach, Boo did a nice job with upgrading to 8.04.1 so this release comes with a 2.6.24-19 kernel.

Steve said: “One thing you may notice when you first get the system installed is that Mint needs 123 (117 initial + 5 additional) updates right away. That’s a lot of updates for something that’s just been freshly installed (and recently released). A lot of them seem to be upstream Ubuntu application and core system updates, but nothing that I wouldn’t advise against installing.”

–> This is something I insist on within the team, I’m very conservative when it comes to updates and I usually recommend to stay on par with was tested the most. In this case the package base is 8.04.1, every update after that makes the base differ from what was known as the latest stable Ubuntu release. This is a very controversial topic of course and people don’t like to think that package updates can potentially introduce new bugs but it’s something very important to us. We even developed our own package update manager (mintUpdate) to make sure users were selective in applying updates.

Steve said: “One thing that didn’t really show up properly until the installed version was the battery and power management. Mint 5 KDE has a new power management taskbar tool that is different from the old Kpower, and it seems to handle power management better, even though it couldn’t seem to detect my processor speed for some reason. Oddly enough, Kpower, the one tool that gave me good power management before is gone. And while the new tool does seem to offer better power performance, it leaves something to be desired in comparison to Kpower.”

–> We looked into that Boo and I. I’ll have to check the archives for that but I remember I was concerned with the message dialogs not being user-friendly when the battery ran out of power. On the other hand the previous tool had more features than the new one… I can’t remember whether it was kde-guidance or kpowersave in the end but the solution chosen by Boo pleased Exploder (Mint’s release manager) and this went forward. I’d love to hear more user feedback on this.

Conclusion:

I’m always looking forward to reading reviews about Linux Mint. It doesn’t only spread the word about what we’re doing it gives us important feedback and it also gives us the opportunity to talk about various things and to explain our choices, our decisions and why such and such features were implemented the way they were. Many thanks to Raiden’s Realm for reviewing this release.

If you want to help spread the word about this review, you can do so on digg.com. For questions and comments to us please comment here on this blog, and for questions and comments to Steve please post here.

Happy reading everyone.

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We are proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 5 KDE Community Edition:

http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa_kde.php

I would like to thank Jamie “Boo” Birse for maintaining this edition. Our last poll indicated that 11% of Linux Mint users were running KDE CE so I’m sure this will come as great news  

Notes: 
- If you previously downloaded RC1 you do not need to upgrade/reinstall.
- There won’t be any miniKDE ISO coming with this release.

Forum announcement: http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=16871

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Linux Mint 5 Fluxbox Community Edition RC1 is out and available for download. I hope there’ll be numerous testers and that we’ll receive plenty of feedback.

Please find all relevant information about this release at this address: http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa_fluxbox.php

I’d also like to thank and congratulate Shane Joe Lazar for maintaining this edition and for the quality of this release.

Have fun with it and don’t forget to give us feedback.

Forum announcement: http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=16784

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We are proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 5 XFCE Community Edition.

For a list of improvements, new features, known issues and download mirrors please read the release notes: http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa_xfce.php

I would like to thank and to congratulate Merlwiz79 for maintaining this wonderful edition. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we had fun releasing it. Have fun and don’t hesitate to give us some feedback.

Forum announcement: http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=16624

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