Monthly News – October 2023

Many thanks for your donations and for your support!

Here are the news for this month.

Romeo

Debian releases (which Mint and Ubuntu are based on) are named after toys from the movie Toy Story. In this movie there’s a child who breaks toys. His name is Sid. Debian named its unstable release after him. Sid breaks toys, Sid breaks Debian, this is where the unstable software goes.

Mint releases are given a girl name. Each release has her Romeo which can potentially break her heart. Romeo is where the unstable software goes.

Unstable Mint releases are not available to the public until they reach BETA. For instance right now you can’t download Mint 21.3. It doesn’t even have a name yet. To push unstable software and make it available to alpha-testers we don’t use a release, we use a repository component.

In the Mint repositories, for any release, you’ll find stable components (main, upstream, import, backport), and the unstable component: romeo.

You can enable this component in the Software Sources. Of course it’s not recommended unless you want to help us test unstable software, at the risk of experiencing regressions and possible package conflicts.

In the past Romeo was used by the development team to quickly test packages. Unstable packages were put there for just a few hours, sometimes even just a few minutes.

Going forward we’ll use Romeo to push new features and the changes we’re working on in preparation for the next release. This will allow alpha-testers to run unstable versions of Cinnamon, Xapp, Mint tools etc.. without having to compile anything. It will also replace our unstable PPA.

Hypnotix

New features were added to Hypnotix, the TV viewer application, in preparation for the Linux Mint 21.3 release this Christmas.

Channels will be able to be saved as favorites.

Your favorite channels will be independent of their provider. This will allow you to have all your favorites in one place, even if they come from multiple TV providers.

Another important change was made. Under the hood, Hypnotix uses libmpv which itself relies on yt-dlp to stream Youtube channels. Although the upstream yt-dlp project is quick to react to Youtube changes when they break compatibility, the yt-dlp system package (whether it’s in Debian or Ubuntu) isn’t updated as often.

To ensure Youtube channels continue to work when the yt-dlp package is outdated we added the ability for Hypnotix to download and update its own local version of yt-dlp.

Note that for security reasons updates are triggered manually and the local version of yt-dlp only gets used by Hypnotix (it does not replace the system version for other applications).

Wayland

The work started on Wayland. As mentioned earlier this year, this was identified as one of the major challenges our project had to tackle in the mid to long term. Priority had been given to ISO tools and Secureboot over new features for 21.3 already, we felt it was time to invest some resources into Wayland as well.

Here’s Cinnamon running in Wayland:

We don’t expect it to replace Xorg as default any time soon, not in 21.3, not in 22.x, but we want to be ready all the same.

Cinnamon 6.0, planned for Mint 21.3 this year, will feature experimental Wayland support. You’ll be able to select between Cinnamon (the default session, running on Xorg) and Cinnamon on Wayland from the login screen.

The Wayland session won’t be as stable as the default one. It will lack features and it will come with its own limitations. We won’t recommend it but you’ll be able to give it a shot if you want to and it’ll be there for interested people if they want to give us feedback.

A board was set up to keep track of Wayland development. It’s available at https://trello.com/b/HHs01Pab/cinnamon-wayland.

As you can see on the board many things are missing or broken but we’ve got a functional session with window, applications and workspace management. We’re able to log in, run most apps, manipulate windows, workspaces, nemo, the panel etc..

We wanted to have a clear picture of the work involved, so we wanted to start now. In terms of timing we don’t think we need Wayland support to be fully ready (i.e. to be a better Cinnamon option for most people) before 2026 (Mint 23.x). That leaves us 2 years to identify and to fix all the issues. It’s something we’ll continue to work on. Whenever it happens, assuming it does, we’ll consider switching defaults. We’ll use the best tools to do the job and provide the best experience. Today that means Xorg. Tomorrow it might mean Wayland. We’ll be ready and compatible with both.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Donations in September:

A total of $8,922 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 335 donors:

$200, Michael U.
$146, Kevin W.
$120 (3rd donation), George C.
$108, noppx
$108, Simon J. Sparks
$108, Stefan A.
$100 (40th donation), Fast Junkie
$100 (14th donation), Tomasz E.
$100 (5th donation), John B.
$100 (4th donation), Carl T.
$100 (4th donation), Jamison G.
$100 (3rd donation), Nathan M.
$100 (2nd donation), Irene S.
$100 (2nd donation), James S.
$100 (2nd donation), M J W.
$100, Russell I.
$75 (5th donation), David B.
$75 (5th donation), Frank R.
$70 (3rd donation), Jan A.
$60 (5th donation), Ross D.
$54 (19th donation), Naoise G.
$54 (8th donation), Rasmus A.
$54 (7th donation), Oliver E.
$54 (6th donation), Marco V.
$54 (4th donation), Ivo K.
$54 (3rd donation), David G.
$54 (3rd donation), John L. aka “John Appalling”
$54 (3rd donation), Wolfgang L.
$54 (2nd donation), Armin S.
$54 (2nd donation), Georg D.
$54 (2nd donation), Marion
$54, Adam A.
$54, Dr. Rudolf B.
$54, Florian G.
$54, Jean-pierre S.
$54, Jürgen P.
$54, Louis V.
$54, Márcio F.
$54, Martin Tobias S.
$54, Paul Willem G.
$54, Rainer B.
$54, Tomi M.
$54, Volker K.
$50 (76th donation), Anthony C. aka “ciak”
$50 (55th donation), Michael R.
$50 (15th donation), Alfred H. aka “Varmint Al”
$50 (9th donation), Carl G.
$50 (9th donation), Paul K.
$50 (5th donation), Benjamin E.
$50 (5th donation), Pear D.
$50 (4th donation), Tom D.
$50 (3rd donation), Brittany Taylor F.
$50 (3rd donation), David C.
$50 (3rd donation), Helio A. K.
$50 (3rd donation), Kris R.
$50 (2nd donation), Alan W.
$50 (2nd donation), Charles H.
$50 (2nd donation), Kenneth J. L.
$50 (2nd donation), Mitchell L.
$50, Allen B.
$50, Austin W.
$50, Bryan T.
$50, David R.
$50, Jay H.
$50, John M.
$50, Kevin R B.
$50, Logan W.
$50, Michael L.
$50, Paul M.
$50, Terry P.
$50, Walter G.
$50, William C.
$50, Yanik Magnan aka “Sakurina”
$49 (8th donation), Alexander M.
$43 (4th donation), Christophe A.
$43 (4th donation), linmint
$43, Benoit P.
$40, Dennis K
$40, Mark H.
$39, Antoine J.
$38, Walter G.
$32 (2nd donation), Izak N.
$32 (2nd donation), Jean-claude M.
$32 (2nd donation), Jerome T.
$32 (2nd donation), Ngoc-bang D.
$32, Fabricio O.
$32, Marc A.
$32, Salvatore S.
$32, Uwe S.
$30 (14th donation), B. H. .
$30 (2nd donation), Patrick C.
$30, Rocco L.
$29, Illya K.
$27 (4th donation), Peer V.
$27 (2nd donation), Eric D.
$26 (5th donation), Marion P.
$25 (31st donation), Linux Mint Sverige
$25 (13th donation), Richard N.
$25 (5th donation), Andrew E.
$25 (3rd donation), Mark H.
$25 (2nd donation), James J M.
$25 (2nd donation), Urs S.
$25 (2nd donation), Wayne W.
$25, Ann K.
$24 (2nd donation), Matthias P.
$22 (40th donation), Peter E.
$22 (10th donation), Rob B.
$22 (6th donation), Alexander J.
$22 (6th donation), Arvi O.
$22 (6th donation), Stefan W.
$22 (5th donation), Anthony C.
$22 (5th donation), Francisco R.
$22 (5th donation), Nurettin G.
$22 (5th donation), Thomas G. aka “thg14”
$22 (4th donation), Fred P.
$22 (4th donation), Robert S.
$22 (3rd donation), Laot L.
$22 (3rd donation), Luc F.
$22 (3rd donation), Marek S. (LMDE Supporter)
$22 (3rd donation), N Wynne Carter aka “W7nneC”
$22 (3rd donation), Peter C.
$22 (3rd donation), Roberto R.
$22 (2nd donation), Aleksi L.
$22 (2nd donation), Frank D.
$22 (2nd donation), Guillaume P.
$22 (2nd donation), J S.
$22 (2nd donation), Jeroen A.
$22 (2nd donation), Juan Francisco J.
$22 (2nd donation), Pauli R.
$22 (2nd donation), Sebastian G.
$22 (2nd donation), Tamas M.
$22, Albin L.
$22, André K.
$22, Antonio S.
$22, Bernd S.
$22, Christos Stylianos V.
$22, Dietrich R.
$22, ExplainingComputers
$22, Florian H.
$22, Heiko P.
$22, Jan Frode S.
$22, Jean C.
$22, John B.
$22, Joscha M.
$22, Kyle G.
$22, Mario N.
$22, Matteo F.
$22, Paolo C.
$22, Roberto P.
$22, Thomas K.
$20 (60th donation), Bryan F.
$20 (26th donation), vagrantcow
$20 (24th donation), Denis D.
$20 (6th donation), Alan C.
$20 (6th donation), Linda P.
$20 (6th donation), Zbigniew D. aka “Ayel”
$20 (4th donation), Glenn M.
$20 (4th donation), Jay H.
$20 (3rd donation), Benoit R.
$20 (3rd donation), Everett F.
$20 (3rd donation), Michael G.
$20 (3rd donation), Peter F.
$20 (2nd donation), Antony L.
$20 (2nd donation), Gilles S.
$20 (2nd donation), Grace Faith Jack
$20 (2nd donation), James C.
$20 (2nd donation), Ken S.
$20 (2nd donation), Robert M. Jones
$20, Ahed F.
$20, Alan K.
$20, Dana S.
$20, Dave O.
$20, David C.
$20, Eryk D.
$20, Gary D.
$20, Guy L.
$20, Hamish A.
$20, J K.
$20, James P.
$20, Jimmy A.
$20, Kathleen G.
$20, Kelly A.
$20, Mark T.
$20, Pius F.
$20, Reuben F.
$20, Sako E.
$20, Sean O.
$20, Timothy W.
$20, Tony W.
$20, Vesa J.
$17 (2nd donation), Donatas D.
$16 (69th donation), Andreas S.
$16, Jean-charles R.
$15, Malcolm N. aka “Mal”
$13 (3rd donation), Jewgeni S.
$13, Zane S.
$11 (87th donation), Johann J.
$11 (41th donation), Daniel S.
$11 (38th donation), Thomas R.
$11 (18th donation), Tugaleres.com
$11 (16th donation), Denys G.
$11 (14th donation), Adis H.
$11 (12th donation), Gabriele I.
$11 (9th donation), Karlheinz R.
$11 (7th donation), Antoni Aloy Torrens
$11 (7th donation), Iker P. M.
$11 (7th donation), Johann K.
$11 (6th donation), David T.
$11 (6th donation), Sebastian M.
$11 (6th donation), Stefan S.
$11 (6th donation), Zile
$11 (4th donation), Ivan Zhelev
$11 (4th donation), Matthias S.
$11 (3rd donation), Haris A.
$11 (3rd donation), Jouni P.
$11 (3rd donation), Kari H. aka “foxterrier”
$11 (3rd donation), Mejores Casinos España y Latam
$11 (3rd donation), Pavlo Pyshkin aka “quantum control”
$11 (3rd donation), Peter B.
$11 (2nd donation), Anthony S.
$11 (2nd donation), Attila I.
$11 (2nd donation), Christian S. aka “krizz”
$11 (2nd donation), Frank T.
$11 (2nd donation), Hotti H.
$11 (2nd donation), Jose C. aka “Revenarius”
$11 (2nd donation), Kiril P.
$11 (2nd donation), William M.
$11, Aleks S.
$11, Andreas T.
$11, Anthony E.
$11, Antonio F.
$11, Christoph Holstein
$11, Claude L.
$11, Dfiler W.
$11, Dirk N.
$11, Dominique M.
$11, Donatas D.
$11, E
$11, Fabian H.
$11, Gerhard S.
$11, Gerhard S.
$11, Giacomo M.
$11, Hanspeter Z.
$11, Imre S.
$11, John T.
$11, Jörg K. aka “Jku”
$11, Mario L.
$11, Marko U.
$11, Matthieu J.
$11, Moez B.
$11, Pekka S.
$11, pixelEDI
$11, Renate W.
$11, Rosemarie S.
$11, Smoon
$10 (90th donation), Thomas C.
$10 (84th donation), Frank K.
$10 (37th donation), Philip Woodward
$10 (16th donation), Harold R.
$10 (14th donation), Michael V.
$10 (11th donation), Link building training aka “Link building training”
$10 (10th donation), Michael K.
$10 (10th donation), Stephen F.
$10 (8th donation), Organic CBD Gummies
$10 (7th donation), Dave S.
$10 (7th donation), Filippo F.
$10 (6th donation), Harald S.
$10 (4th donation), Denis C.
$10 (4th donation), Juan R. aka “Zorencen R”
$10 (4th donation), Thevirtua
$10 (3rd donation), Bengt Falke
$10 (3rd donation), Minneapolis Roofing Contractors
$10 (3rd donation), Samuel S.
$10 (3rd donation), Wayne C.
$10 (2nd donation), Amer E.
$10 (2nd donation), Kyle R.
$10 (2nd donation), Ryan S.
$10 (2nd donation), Samantha aka “cobertos”
$10, Alan L.
$10, Antonio C.
$10, Eduardo M.
$10, Éric A.
$10, Helptek Computer Services
$10, Jeremiah H.
$10, John K.
$10, Jorge Alberto R.
$10, Keith E.
$10, Krisztian Janos V.
$10, Mathew C.
$10, Michael M.
$10, Michael S.
$10, Paolo Domenico A.
$10, Paul C.
$10, Pavin Joseph
$10, Rob G.
$10, Ruotong C.
$10, Yves G.
$8 (32nd donation), Sami Mannila
$8, Faraz M.
$7, Dave R.
$6 (2nd donation), Przemyszaw T.
$118 from 31 smaller donations